‘We went to Geelong,’ a young woman was telling another. ‘But the nice part. My parents have a place down there that’s super close to the beach. But the nice beach.’
Taking her sandwich from the waiter and shoving it into her bag, Nell edged her way out of the café. The rain was heavier now, beating at the pavement as if washing the city of its past. She opened her umbrella gingerly, then stepped into the deluge. She made it halfway down the block before reluctantly ducking under an awning for relief. She could feel the water seeping into her stockinged feet and she grimaced. Dry feet were a fundamental part of maintaining a balanced mood and Nell could feel the grumpiness creeping up on her. Her feet and underwear – so long as these two things were dry she could do anything, which was why she avoided rain and boats. As she grumbled about her feet, she noticed a similar displeasure on the faces of other thwarted lunchtime shoppers and errand runners. One young woman in particular was looking especially annoyed with her grime-splattered boots. Nell’s brain suddenly clicked.
‘Rani?’
Of all their university friends, Rani was the only one to land the kind of job they’d all talked of finding, working for an outer suburbs community legal centre. While the rest of them had their office perks like travel opportunities, healthy bank accounts and agency-sponsored after-work drinks, Rani alone claimed to have a balanced conscience that she liked to mock-flaunt at their frequently less frequent catch-ups. Infrequent, Nell realised; they’d not seen each other since before Nell landed the position with Williams & Williams.
‘What are you doing in the CBD?’ Nell asked, leaning into the hug.
‘Ruining my boots, for one thing,’ Rani grimaced. ‘And meetings. Funding issues. Again. I swear it’s like we spend half our time trying to convince the government not to cut funding instead of actually helping clients. But at least it means a day somewhere with proper coffee. Speaking of, should we? Want to get out of this rain and humour an old bird from the ’burbs?’
They settled into a snug laneway café that smelt of roasting beans and things without gluten. As their coffees arrived, Rani finished her story about the refugee client she’d recently helped get out of an unwarranted public transport fine then looked at Nell intently. All Nell had to contribute was: ‘Sometimes DB refuses to read my work unless it is the right font. Arial. Size twelve. This is the right font. Sans serif or death, that’s his current motto.’ But she didn’t share this because, compared to Rani’s story of helping extricate the vulnerable from an outrageously unfair system weighted against them, her own story made her sound like a glorified assistant for a moderately insane typesetter. Rani, it turned out, was leading a team of graduates at her community legal centre, and also volunteered one day a week assisting people seeking asylum at the local refugee legal centre.
‘It’s so busy right now.’ She shook her head. ‘Silence for years and then suddenly thirty thousand people issued with letters telling them they have a month to lodge an application for a temporary protection visa. You can imagine what that’s been like. And then you’ve got the Minister going and making ridiculous comments about queue jumpers and illegals on the television, so all our clients are suddenly getting harassed on the street more than usual.’
Her workplace, too, was overwhelmed, thanks to a renewed national interest in domestic abuse.
‘We’ve got more family violence than we know what to do with. That’s the thing they don’t seem to get. Fine, put however many millions into an awareness campaign, but as soon as those ads hit the telly, who do you think is suddenly seeing more clients than we’ve got capacity for? It’s brutal. I mean, we just can’t make it to every hearing because there simply aren’t enough of us, and we know clients aren’t showing up because they’re scared to be there on their own. That’s what’s criminal. The money from the Royal Commission can’t come soon enough.’
Rani folded a sugar sachet in half and shoved it into her empty glass.
‘You’re not looking to do some pro bono stuff, are you?’ she asked, her face twisted in mock servitude. ‘Corporate social responsibility and all that jazz? We’d kill for some more lawyers. Little bit of warm and fuzzy to go alongside those decent salaries you get? Anyway, just a thought. I better keep going. Can’t afford to be late for a funding meeting in these times of rampant budget trimming. Keep fighting the good fight, Swansea.’
Rani raised a comic fist in the air then she ducked through the door and out into the rain.
Back in the office, DB watched as Nell shrugged off her blazer, tapping his finger on his watch, head moving disparagingly from side to side like a grim laughing clown from a carnival alley.
‘I know, I know,’ Nell muttered, unpausing the program that tracked her billable hours.
She spent the afternoon tinkering with a costs disclosure that DB had asked her to rework, her mind on Rani’s half-joked offer. She saw the version of herself that veered leeward from the one that had accepted the Williams & Williams position, the one who had written essays at university with titles like The Lawyer as Conduit for Equity and A Short Discourse on Justice and Access. That innate sense of justice had been the reason she’d studied law in the first place. And embarrassing as it was, yes, true, she’d also been inspired by the slick, articulate lawyers that traipsed the made-up courtrooms of the silver screen, battling for the disenfranchised and downtrodden, eloquent and impassioned and having hot TV sex with one another in their chambers. Because they did good, those spunky television lawyers, fighting for what was right and fair and just. She sat at her side of the partner desk for hours, ignoring the ache in her back and the strain behind her eyes, her fingers mechanically wandering the keyboard as her mind remained elsewhere. When DB rose from his side, his workday complete, Nell straightened her back.
‘Can I speak to you for a moment before you go?’
DB looked pained. ‘Can’t it wait until tomorrow?’
He hurried off towards the elevator without waiting for her response. After a while, the elevator returned, this time depositing Mr Williams on their floor. He strode towards one of the head of department corner offices. Near miss, DB, Nell smiled to herself. Mr Williams noticed her and offered a friendly wave. Nell returned it, blushing, then stood to collect her blazer. She paused. It was now or never, wasn’t it?
‘Mr Williams?’ she called out. ‘Can I please speak to you for a second?’
Part 2
6
Aida
In the century leading up to my birth, Iran had seen two revolutions and two coups d’état. This was modern Iran, the back-and-forth power struggle as the monarchy, the mullahs and the mercantile circled each other for supremacy. The reality is the stuff of Hollywood movies – exiles, betrayals, the CIA lurking in the shadows – though Hollywood has yet to tell this tale without the pizazz and licence that make fiction of fact. Yet for most of my childhood my head swam with tales of old Persia, fuelled by the stories from my father and grandfather of the time before the Arab invasion brought Islam to our nation. This was when the Persian Empire spread from the Indus River in the east to modern-day Ethiopia under the rule of Kourosh – Cyrus the Great – when our stories were equal parts history and mythology.
My grandfather would tell me tales of the mighty Achaemenid descendants of Cyrus – Darius, Xerxes, Artaxerxes – building brick by brick their glorious new capital in Persepolis. He took me there once during a family holiday down south, my brothers running off in search of undiscovered treasures as the two of us wandered hand in hand through the ancient city buried for centuries under dust and sand and forgetting. I posed for a photograph before a statue of the homa bird, a griffin-like creature thought to live its life in flight, never resting permanently in any one place. In this picture my arms are spread wide as if I myself am flying, my mouth pouting in a narrow, funnelled attempt at a hooked beak. I remember how my grandfather laughed at this, his thin body rocking back and for
th in the way my father’s does now. Those thin bodies that were once as tall and handsome as cypress trees, before time left them wilted.
I was far more fascinated by Naqsh-e Rustam, the ancient necropolis carved deep into heavy rock high up in a nearby cliff face, for I knew the name Rostam from the stories told to me by my father. Here the great Zoroastrian kings were laid to rest, their bodies placed in the rocky burial chambers touching neither earth nor fire. Did I want to ride a camel? my grandfather asked, indicating to where my brothers mock-raced each other along the road despite the scowls of the weathered camel handlers. But I was more interested in scrutinising the gaps in the rockwork and the fine bas-relief accompanying them, imagining myself prone inside as the vultures picked my bleached bones clean.
‘Does it hurt?’ I asked him.
‘Does what hurt?’ he replied. ‘The camels?’
‘History,’ I said, and he had no answer to this.
My happiest memories are of visiting my grandparents in their small village near Kashan, where they retired after my grandfather made his money in Tehran. The joyful anticipation that radiated between my brothers and I as we tussled in the back seat of the car, bidding farewell to crowded, cramped Tehran. The carefree whistle in my father’s exhalation as he returned to the home of his ancestors. My mother’s stoic brow, steeling herself for my grandmother’s questions and critiques. Sometimes Damavand, the tallest mountain in the Alborz range that hugs the north of the city, would manage to peep through the pollution long enough for us to wave goodbye, and then we would be on our way, stopping only in Qom to dodge the mullahs and buy sweet sticky sohan for my grandmother. My grandparents’ village lay in the desert – not the golden soil of Yazd or soft dunes of Maranjab – but hard, rocky desert of stone and shrubs that was dry yet fertile given the right conditions. The houses in their tiny village were squat and block-like, stacked side by side like a child’s plaything. There had been a school once, and a factory for making hinges, both now closed as the village shrank. A doctor visited the clinic once a week to tend to the ageing occupants, who were all related to us in one way or another (and sometimes both), for this was a place where cousins sometimes married cousins to build up their real estate. Despite its appearance, the village soils still thrived, and with the help of hired youth from a larger village nearby produced pomegranates, walnuts, figs, almonds, apricots, plums, blackberries, tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers and turnips. Roses, too, with rosewater forming the backbone of their income.
We’d pile out of the car, the sharpness of the air hitting our lungs so different from Tehran’s bitter chemical fug. My grandparents’ house had two main rooms, both lined from wall to wall with carpets of all colours and styles: Mashhadi, Kashani, a bold nomadic weave depicting the tree of life. Here we would sit down to eat and later to sleep, half in one room, half in the other, all haunted by the apnoeic snoring of my uncle Asadollah, who never seemed to be roused by the frustrated manhandling of the would-be sleepers around him. Huddled together around the korsi, its coal fire fighting off the cold desert night, my father and grandfather would take turns telling us stories from the Shahnameh. Of wise Sam, abandoned Zal, and of course the mighty Rostam, each trying to outdo the other with poetic phrasing and flourishing details, as Uncle Asadollah prayed hastily in the corner because he’d forgotten to do it earlier. His belly tucked into his striped pyjamas, he wheezed and panted each time he lowered himself to the ground in a secondary soundtrack to our evening. And often this is how I would fall asleep, my head resting on my mother’s shoulder as familiar voices sung me into sleep.
It was early still but late enough to pull herself out of bed after another restless night. Aida closed her notebook, sliding it beneath her pillow. After she dressed, she crept out of the house. As usual the letterbox was empty, save for some flyers and junk mail. Sometimes, even though she knew the postman didn’t call until the afternoon, Aida checked it in the morning just in case. Just in case she’d missed it the day before, just in case it had landed in a neighbour’s letterbox first. Just in case she was losing her mind. She chided herself, looking around to see if there were any neighbours about, but thankfully the street was clear of anyone who might puzzle at her incessant routine. This is what I have become, she thought to herself. A degree from one of the best universities in Iran and her day revolved around checking the letterbox and giving out résumés that went straight into rubbish bins.
She pulled the sleeves of her jumper down over her knuckles. The weather was changing now, autumn settling in with a mild chill that had plunged their little house into premature winter. It had been raining, too, a light drizzle that was steadily building in purpose. She looked up as the front door slammed. Elham stood wrestling an umbrella open as Niki steered a course straight for the nearest puddle, her face set in maniacal determination.
‘Niki!’ Elham called warningly, just as Niki landed, showering herself with stale, dirty water. She looked utterly impressed with herself. Elham greeted Aida, tilting her head towards the letterbox.
‘Nothing?’
‘Nothing.’
‘No news is good news,’ Elham offered, her nose wrinkled. ‘What will you do today?’
‘Keep looking for jobs,’ Aida replied, her eyes on the heavy clouds. ‘Rain, hail or shine!’
Elham made a clicking noise with her tongue. ‘You’ll drive yourself crazy, all this looking. And you want to work where? In some shop or café when you are a journalist who studied English?’
Aida shrugged. It didn’t work like that. Here she had no contacts, no understanding of the system. No permanent visa, which was the most important part. Elham clicked her tongue again.
‘Give your mind the morning off. Come drop Niki at kinder.’
Aida began to decline the offer but stopped. Elham was right. It was getting to her, day after day of silence and rejection fuelling the uselessness that permeated her entire being. It had been enough before, when none of them had work rights, but now to have the right but not the opportunity – this was far worse.
‘Okay.’
Elham raised her eyebrows, surprised. ‘Really?’
‘Areh,’ Aida smiled.
Beside them, Niki was eyeing the puddle again, considering a rematch. She raised a boot-clad foot in the air.
‘Let’s go now, then,’ Elham said, smiling back. ‘Niki! Nakon!’
Niki watched her mother, a single foot still hovering over the water. Elham raised a stern eyebrow and Niki lowered it, guiltily, until it rested at the edge of the puddle.
‘Berim,’ Elham announced.
And off they went indeed, Aida and Elham huddled beneath the umbrella and Niki stomping through the rain. They walked the few blocks to Niki’s kinder, joining the hodgepodge procession of patterned umbrellas and prams advancing in caravan towards the building. At the entrance, Aida watched Elham key in a code to release the gate. Niki paused then turned to Aida.
‘Come,’ she commanded in aloof English, marching into the building.
Surprised by the attention, Aida followed her. Torn between her usual state of wilfully ignoring Aida and her innate desire to showcase her kinder, Niki toured Aida through the building, pointing out various areas, barking their names with casual indifference.
‘Kitchen – toilet – painting – playground – naughty corner,’ she rattled off, her hands gesturing casually as if she were welcoming a film crew through her newly renovated home.
They paused before a large glassed area that looked out onto the play equipment outside. Its surface was peppered with the smudge and smears of a hundred little hands. Oblivious, Niki pressed her nose against the glass.
‘Rabbit,’ she announced, pointing to an A-frame hutch in one corner. ‘Detention.’
Aida glanced at the wire mesh that kept the rabbits inside, but Niki had already resumed her tour. They viewed the reading area and the art cupboard before Ni
ki suddenly bored of her new occupation and raced off in the direction of the other children without a backward glance. A tall girl with dark braids was throwing a ball to another little girl, and Niki leapt between them, delighted. The three of them dove for the ball, giggling and tumbling, then chased each other across the room. Elham watched them, her face momentarily pained.
‘They can’t put her back in detention. Look at her here.’
Niki successfully wrestled the ball from the others, hysterical with power and joy. As Aida and Elham made their way towards the exit a brightly dressed woman caught up with them. She was soft and round, her open face anxious to please.
‘I’m Heather,’ she introduced herself. ‘One of the centre managers.’
Elham nodded hesitantly at Heather then looked to Aida with uncertainty. She reminded Aida of her own kinder teacher, Parisa-joon, and she wondered for a moment if they were all pumped out of a floral-scented perennially nervous mould in a factory somewhere. Heather rested one hand on the other, both atop the curve of her stomach.
‘I just wanted to have a quick chat about Niki,’ she said, a jolly fake smile on her face. ‘Is that . . . do you . . . is that okay?’
She looked at them both nervously and Aida’s mind filled with images of all the terrible things Niki might be responsible for: never-ending tantrums, her fascination with casting things into the toilet, the rabbit – please don’t let it be anything to do with the rabbit, or the toilet, or both.
‘What is it?’ Elham asked in Persian and Aida shrugged.
She nodded for Heather to continue.
‘Let me start by saying that Niki is a lovely little girl. Just lovely.’
The Book of Ordinary People Page 7
