‘I return, with sadness,’ wrote Delli in a message addressed to the Indigo Examiner,
to my familiar theme of these past three years: the reckless attire of the girls and young women of our shire. On Monday afternoon of this week, I was walking in the memorial park with my wife when we came across three girls lounging on the grass in their school uniforms—I would put their age at fourteen or fifteen. The skirts of all three girls were so disarrayed as to reveal their undergarments, providing an incitement to any male of the town who happened to be in their proximity. These three girls seemed completely unaware of the state of their attire, or is it possible that they were all too aware and were rather pleased with themselves? May I offer, once more, a warning to parents who have been overwhelmed by the salacious propaganda of our media? Your daughters are at considerable risk. If our community is like most other communities in Australia, it harbours men who are only too willing to act on their worst impulses and see in the display of a girl’s undergarments an invitation to dalliance. No doubt the young girls I and my wife encountered in the memorial park think of themselves as perfectly in control of their destiny at any given time, but such was the conviction of my own daughter, whose liberty I was advised (ill-advised, as it transpired) not to interfere with. My daughter was sexually abused by a family acquaintance and eventually took her own life in a mood of profound shame at her treatment. I would hope that no parent in our town ever endures the pain I suffered when I was compelled to identify my beautiful daughter’s body in the city mortuary.
Have a care, mums and dads of Yackandandah! Look to your daughters! Encourage their modesty! In years to come, you will reap their gratitude!
Yours most sincerely,
Prof. Emmanuel Delli
Delli added his address and telephone number to the message and emailed it off. This letter was only the latest of a long chain he’d sent to the Indigo Examiner and the Border Mail, same subject each time, same reference to Sofia Delli’s death and its circumstances. In the first six months of his correspondence with the local newspapers his letters had been printed each week, winning the professor a host of fans. But then Daanya Delli sent a letter of her own to the Border Mail and sympathy dried up.
I refer to a series of letters signed by Professor Emmanuel Delli of Yackandandah that have appeared in your newspaper over the past few months. I am the wife of Professor Delli, and the mother of the daughter he refers to in each of his letters. I would like to take this opportunity to correct some claims made by Professor Delli regarding the death of my daughter, Sofia, in September 2006. Sofia was not sexually abused by ‘a family acquaintance’. At the time of her death, she was involved in a relationship of her own choosing. She was of the legal age of consent when she entered into this relationship. I would also like to inform members of the general public that I do not share Professor Delli’s views on the subject of immodesty in the Shire of Indigo. People in the shire, particularly in Wangaratta where I work, have approached me to speak their mind on Professor Delli’s views, making the assumption that Professor Delli and I are of the same persuasion, but this is not true at all.
Dr Daanya Delli, Yackandandah
Delli responded to the letter with threats of violence against his wife. He wrote a letter of retraction to the Border Mail in his wife’s name, but when the correspondence editor called her to confirm her authorship she denied it, then stood firm against tempests of abuse.
Delli’s one-time business partner and the carefree girls of the shire were not his only targets. He sent off letters to newspapers all over the world; he maintained blogs on the websites of the bitter and resentful. He took delight in contradicting long-held views that in the past had earned him a reputation for subtle political analysis. When the more prestigious newspapers declined his submissions he sent them on to the tabloids, with his CV. He gave these articles arresting opening lines, designed to catch the eye of editors interested in incendiary prejudices: ‘Let us be candid about this: torture, even in its more protracted forms, is a reliable ally of democracy.’ The few articles that were published in Australia and overseas drew worried responses from former colleagues, music to Delli’s ears; he felt a more intense pleasure in ripping apart his reputation than he ever had in its creation. All of his friendships had withered away; not even loyal relatives in the Kurdish community came to see him anymore, and Daanya’s friends, too, had withdrawn with sadness. Delli exulted in their head-shaking, their hand-wringing, their long sighs of pity.
As important as Delli’s correspondence was to his wellbeing, his chief joy was celebrated each weekday afternoon when his wife arrived home from the clinic in Wangaratta. He fashioned small dramas of humiliation for Daanya to endure (‘high jinks’ he called them) relishing the planning as much as the events themselves. His mission was to wear away the loyalty and stoicism that sustained Daanya, but he wanted to do this gradually, emulating those professional tormentors who commence their task by eliciting mere shrieks of pain, before reducing their victims to howling beasts.
Daanya’s return to the faith of her family gave Delli wonderful scope for the exercise of his high jinks. His wife had never bothered with prayer in the past, Islamic or Christian, but she’d taken it up twice a day as a recommitted Muslim. Prayer acted as a steadier for Daanya—Delli understood that and granted her an uninterrupted morning session. Ah, but Daanya’s afternoon prayers—what sport!
He’d purchased what he needed for the imminent high jinks and now that his messages were all despatched, he had only to wait for the sound of the car in the driveway. He watched the clothesline moving in the light afternoon breeze, barely able to suppress his glee over what he had in store for his wife. His dead children in framed photographic portraits smiled at him from the wall. A strip of paper lettered in thick red felt-tip was stuck with Blu-Tack beneath each of the children; one read ‘PERVERT’ and the other ‘HARLOT’. He removed the strips each afternoon before his wife could see them and replaced them the next day when she left for the clinic. Daanya might leave him if she saw them, or perhaps she’d just lose her mind; Delli couldn’t risk it. He adored his wife for the richness of her responses to pain. Could anyone in the world equal her? The white knuckles, trembling lips, whispered pleas, the times she ran from the house and stood in the backyard with head bowed, hands clamped over her ears, singing a Kurdish folk song about mountain streams and wild flowers and an absent sweetheart. Oh, and the trips to the supermarket when he insisted on tagging along, that big, brave smile of hers, refusing to disown him when he asked at the check-out, with phony courtesy, if the cashier’s acne felt as painful as it looked. So detested in the town, and yet such a gentle, lovely wife! He saw in every face, and gloried to see it, ‘His poor missus!’
Oh, little lambs, little lambs of Yackandandah, little lambs of Australia, little fools, little nincompoops! Delli scorned the man he used to be, such a charming fellow, a twinkle in his eye, a great favourite with the ladies, the Omar Sharif of the campus, a class act. Pah! He thanked God or the Cosmos or whatever numinous force it was that had given him the power he owned now, this thrill in his blood that made him feel as if he could lay hands on flesh and leave an unhealing scar, this loathing that laid waste to the sanctimony and sentimentality all around him. He was never tired these days. His vigour streamed into every niche of his being like a burning white light. Was there any happiness more liberating? This was the greatest of appetites. Everything was possible. He could murder if he wished, and prosper by it.
Daanya’s car crunched along the gravel of the driveway and the professor let out a yip of delight. He snatched the captions from beneath the pictures, concealed them in a drawer. The driver’s-side door of the car slammed, the rear door opened, the rear door slammed. Daanya appeared in the backyard carrying a green recycle supermarket bag in either hand. She lowered them to the lawn and reached up to feel the washing. A wicker basket had been left waiting under the clothesline, and Daanya now began to unpeg the clothes, f
olding each garment before placing it in the basket. The professor commanded himself to be patient. Daanya threw him a brief smile and the professor waved back, mocking, murmuring through the teeth of his own smile, ‘Dunce!’ And why did she bother with all this Muslim nonsense when she dressed herself like any other professional working wife? She didn’t even bother to cover her hair but let it fall in curls halfway down her back. The Muslim business was insincere and was meant to spite him, that was what the professor believed, but oh ho!—how that had backfired!
Daanya struggled to the back door with the laden basket awkwardly clasped under one arm and the two shopping bags in the other hand. Delli waited smiling inside the door in order that his wife could see how easily he might have assisted her by opening it, by taking some of her burden. She struggled past him to the kitchen and he followed her, tingling with delight, ham that he was, now that his performance had commenced.
Daanya let out a brief groan of relief as she dumped the shopping bags and the basket on the kitchen table.
‘Hello, husband,’ she said.
‘Hard day at the clinic?’ said Delli.
‘The usual.’
‘A shame.’
Daanya took off the white jacket she wore with her skirt and hung it from the back of a chair, at the same time kicking off her shoes. She poured herself a brandy, showing the bottle to her husband as an invitation to join her. He declined, as he always did; he did his drinking alone. From her handbag Daanya fetched a packet of Winfield Blue and lit up one of the three cigarettes she permitted herself each day. She didn’t sit, but propped against the sink, sipping. This was the easier part of her evening’s ordeal, the ritual part.
‘Drinking, smoking, what a wicked Muslim!’ said Delli, as he did each evening.
‘Mm,’ said Daanya.
Delli stood with his arms folded in the doorway. He loved the wary look on Daanya’s face, the watchfulness.
‘You’ll go to hell.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘I’ll be glad to see you off, when you’re ready. Bon Voyage!’
‘As you so often say, husband.’
Delli switched to Kurdish and whispered with a smile, as if he were blowing a kiss, the equivalent of ‘Cunt!’
‘Please!’ said Daanya, in English.
‘You look like a whore,’ said Delli.
‘I’ve known whores who are far finer human beings than me,’ said Daanya. ‘It’s no insult.’
‘Finer human beings than I,’ Delli corrected. ‘Nominative.’
‘Finer human beings than I,’ said Daanya.
Delli sauntered across the kitchen, hands in his pockets. He plopped himself down on a chair.
‘What’s for dinner?’ he said. ‘Or, what’s for din-dins, as Australians say? A babyish people, are they not, Orstrayuns? Din-dins, bikkies, vegies.’
‘Not in my experience, no.’
‘Oh but they are! Very babyish. Especially the men. Fat little babies. They marry women who take the role of despots. They like it, the babymen. They like to be bossed about. Their brides are their mummies. Not I.’
‘No, not you, husband. Lasagna.’
‘Ah, the international cuisine here at chez nous! Chops one day, lasagna the next! I detest this country, have I ever mentioned that?’
‘Often.’
‘Often, yes. But she doesn’t agree with me, the Angel of Wangaratta! No, she loves Orstrayuh! It’s what she wants for the whole world! Isn’t that right, Little Angel?’
‘Yes. It’s what I want for the world. Beauty and sanity.’
‘But the Indigenous chappies, that’s a big problem, isn’t it? Speak up, Little Angel!’
Daanya repeated the ‘Yes’ she’d murmured. ‘It’s a tragedy. I don’t condemn this land because of it. I’ve said so before, husband.’
‘She don’t condemn the Orstrayuns, but. The Angel of Wangaratta, she’s got a big heart, she ’as! You make me sick.’
‘Yes, I get that impression.’
‘Fat little white men, fat little white women celebrating their multicultural happiness, they who can barely spell the word. “Look at us!” they say. “We welcome the world!” Pah! They welcome nothing. They have black people living in their own shit, but do they care? Abos. Indigenous chappies. “Send us your poor, your coloured, your funny crinkly-haired people!” Somebody has to thrust their noses in their hypocrisy before they can see it. Now there’s a mission for you, missus new model Muslim! Go out and convert the abos! Give them some bombs! They should be throwing hand grenades at their masters, if they have any self-respect. Teach them the lessons of your blood-soaked faith!’
Daanya had extinguished her cigarette and was unpacking the shopping bags.
‘Ah, the forbearing wife of the old monster!’ said Delli with his crocodile grin. ‘She doesn’t reply. It is beneath her dignity.’
‘It is, I’m afraid,’ said Daanya, keeping busy.
‘Always so courteous, the gentle wife of the old monster! Always so nice to everyone! The Angel of Wangaratta! So beloved in the community! Do you know, she has started a scheme to provide treatment to little darkies with worms and lice! The Angel does not shrink from the touch of the little Indigenous chappie! Oh no!’
‘Emmanuel! Please!’
‘Emmanuel! Please!’
Delli rejoiced. Watching his wife, stirred by her beauty, he did not have to fear his desire for her. He had discovered that with discipline, lust could be converted to loathing. He had no doubt at all that he could hold his hand in fire until the bones of his fingers showed before he would abandon his scorn. It meant that much to him.
‘And now, prayer?’ he said when Daanya picked up her ablution bowl—a big, creamy terracotta dish—and showed signs of making her way to the sun room that served her as a prayer chamber.
He waited at the bathroom door while she half-filled the bowl from the bathtub taps. When she commenced her preparations for prayer, he fetched from the refrigerator the glistening pink pork chop he’d purchased from the butcher’s shop that morning, slipped it into his coat pocket in its plastic bag then strolled to the sunroom to hear his wife wash. ‘In the name of Allah, most gracious, most merciful…’ Daanya washed her hands up to the wrists, and breathed in the warm water vapour and cleansed her mouth.
Delli sat on a stool in the corner warbling like a garrulous crow. ‘The angel makes wudu!’ he said, imitating the singingness imparted to the Arabic by the lilt of Daanya’s Kurdish accent, then went on in his mock Ocker, ‘D’yuh fink yer Gawd knew about Orstraya, Li’l Angel? ’E don’t say much about it in ’is big book, no ’e don’t. Don’t say much ’bout the pladdypus, f ’rinstance. Bloody stroinge hanimul like yer pladdypus, and old Allah has’n got a word to say ’bout it!’
Daanya ignored him. She completed wudu with the whispered words, ‘I witness that none should be worshipped but Allah, and that Muhammad is His slave and Messenger.’ At that moment, Delli slipped the pork chop from its plastic bag and tossed it into the ablution bowl. Daanya groaned; Delli skipped from the sunroom screaming with laughter.
His wife didn’t follow.
He waited in a state of gleeful anticipation for the quarrel to come, but instead heard Daanya continuing her prayers.
He wandered back to the sunroom and found his wife standing with her hands raised. ‘God hears those who call upon him. Our Lord, praise be to you.’
‘Your prayer is polluted, idiot!’ he hissed. ‘Do I have to tell you the rules? Who’s the Muslim here?’
Daanya ignored him.
‘That’s pig in there, fool!’
He stood seething while Daanya completed her prayers. She carried the bowl to the bathroom and emptied it. The chop she dropped into the kitchen bin. Delli glared at her. ‘You have fouled your religion,’ he said. ‘Your God is abhorred.’
‘My God,’ she said, ‘knows who put the meat in the water. He’s not a fool.’
‘No, he leaves foolery to you. Whore!’
&
nbsp; ‘Control yourself.’ Daanya was going about the business of preparing dinner.
‘Next time I’ll piss in your water!’
‘Please yourself.’
Delli seized his wife by the face and squeezed her cheeks between his fingers until her lips were bunched like bleeding fruit.
‘Do you know how easily I could kill you? I could tear your face from your skull if I wished!’
He released her. She stood with her chin raised for a minute or more, then continued her preparation of the meal. But as she worked she addressed Delli, speaking sometimes over her shoulder, sometimes facing him where he stood scowling. She didn’t raise her voice.
‘I have seen things that you haven’t seen,’ she said. ‘I have seen small children gutted like goats. Our own children had not been born at that time. They were brought to me by mothers screaming as if their feet were in the fire. They said to me, “What can be done, what can be done?” I said, “Alas nothing, nothing can be done.” I wept with the mothers and wept each day for months on end. A year later Joseph was born and I stopped weeping.’
Delli’s eyes kept stealing to the block of knives on the kitchen bench. Each day, for the thrill of it, he sharpened the knives with a whetstone.
‘I had seen the sorrow that children can cause. But I chose to have my own. How can I be bitter, in your way? Am I to say, “Oh, but those women who lost their children to dreadful men were poor and uneducated, it is unfair that such a fate has overtaken my children”?’
Delli grunted. ‘What are you, then? A book of homilies? Are you, Little Angel? You make me sick.’
Daanya broke the mince into fine fragments in one pan, at the same time tending the cheese sauce in another.
‘And this is not halal,’ said Delli. ‘You defy your God with your picking and choosing. You have no faith, Muslim girl. Your so-called faith is a thing of spite and nothing more, if you had the courage to admit it. You, a doctor, embracing the faith of desert-dwellers! Of ignorant brigands! Do you think Islam or any other nonsense faith could have given the world anaesthetic? What did Jesus have to say about sutures or bacteria? What did Abraham have to say? Do you think your profession could have grown from hocus-pocus? You can’t even remain loyal to reason!’
Joyful Page 16
