STORY

Ali wasn’t very good at babysitting, not from the balcony anyway. His daughter banged on the door. “Dar-e-sho bezar, aziz” he said – shut it, for god’s sake. “I’m stoned, sweetheart.”

“I want mummy,” she shouted.

“So do I,” he whispered, motioning for silence. What he really wanted was his dad, to be well enough after his heart attack to call him. He needed to hear his father’s voice.

Ali looked down from the eighth floor of Walter Sisulu House and took a drag of his joint. The estate was quiet for a Wednesday afternoon. A woman carrying two bags clean clothes was coming out of the laundrette. He spotted a local drunk, and a boy doing a wheelie on bicycle that was clearly too big for him. Walk down the street in Brixton and you may well bump into a boy mid-wheelie. Supposedly it’s empowerment, or an act of defiance. In fact, it’s a declaration of impotence. The child is king for a few seconds. With the front wheel lands reality: you are just another boy on a bike.

Ali met Bita when they were both at university in Tehran. It was the autumn of nineteen ninety-eight. They were arguing politics at a friend’s rooftop party, one exchange led to another and they left with each other’s phone numbers. They were married by the following spring. Ali’s father had agreed to let them stay in an apartment he owned, for six months. It was furnished but the bed was a bit creaky so they got a futon. Months later, after Ali’s arrest, Bita found herself sleeping on it alone, with only a pillow to hug. That first summer, Ali, along with Sam, the boy at whose dinner party they had met, had helped to organise a number of sit-ins in the student protests of June nineteen ninety-nine. The men who whipped them assured them they would never be able to sit again.

Now, in London, standing on a flattened box that once contained cartons of Frosties, Ali bellowed a cloud of smoke. He didn’t like smoking pot but felt compelled to. Time passed more quickly that way. On brighter days the sky reflected the concrete grey of their housing estate. Inconsiderate pigeons gave the balcony a lick of fresh emulsion every day. The lift smelled of piss. This was what they’d left Iran for – a country that wouldn’t allow them to work.

In Britain, he couldn’t be a dustman, let alone the dentist he had been training to be. Two years into his course he wound up in prison.

“Two years?” his father joked. “Well, you must have learned to do a few teeth in that time!”

“Gums too,” said Ali.

They liked to joke, the two men. It was the best way of avoiding a war.

“At least you weren’t trying to be an anaesthetist,” said his dad.

“Why?”

“You’d know how to put people to sleep but not how to wake them.”

“I’d wake them,” said Ali.

“How?”

“Pull their teeth out.”

He felt he had talked to his dad more since leaving Iran than he had throughout most of his childhood.

“You’ll see him,” Bita assured him. “It won’t be long.”

On the day of the demo Ali asked Bita not to turn up.

“Sod off,” she said.

Her headscarf came off. A teenager in a khaki uniform waited for her to put it back on before smacking her in the face with his rifle butt. Ali hated this story.

He hastily stubbed out his joint on the wall as he heard Bita come in. She worked in a pizza shop from noon till three. Having a degree in English literature made her perfect for telephone orders. Ali had packed his mini-cab job in two weeks before. His last fare took him all the way to Enfield. They made him pull up outside a dodgy-looking semi-detached house in a quiet street.

“Blad, we ain’t got cash wivus-yeah,” one of his two customers told him. “Comeupstairs, yeah, you getme.”

Ali took a glance at the house and saw the silhouette of an ogre peering through the curtain.

“It’s okay,” he told them. “Be my guests today.”

“Bwoay. Man show respec – respec’ bruv.”

“Where you from?” the other chipped in.

“Iran,” said Ali.

“Bwoay. Dem gonna bomb you man.”

“That’s Iraq,” said Ali.

“Ah. Mix dem up, man.”

These two clowns, thought Ali, won’t pay for a ride and want a geography lesson.

****

“Smoking again,” Bita said, in the doorway, weighed down with shopping.

“Let me help you,” Ali said, limply.

“What you got there?” said Bita.

“Puff.”

“No, your other hand.”

“Oh.”

He’d forgotten about the specs.

“Lens fell out, I tried to super-glue it. My hand got stuck.”

“Who’s got a crazy baba?” said Bita, turning to her daughter. “You have darling”.

“She hasn’t stopped crying,” said Ali, stooping to pick the bags up.

“Would you, if your dad spent his days smoking?”

“Leave me alone Bita, I broke my glasses.”

“Koshol,” she said – nutter.

"Poor little dard-done by Bita does the shopping.”

“I’m not in the mood, Ali. I do it every week.”

“Well, I don’t like going to Lidl.”

“It’s cheap”.

“The women there have beards.”

“Why don’t you cook instead of talking crap.”

“Sangam,” he said – I’m stoned.

“Get the food on, Ali,” said Bita. “I’ll throw you off the goddamn balcony. Now, baby, you need a bath, don’t you?”

“I’ll give her splash – you cook.”

“Splash yourself. You’ve had that shirt on for three days. There’s frankfurters. Cook me an omelette.”

“Where’s baba’s kiss?”

“Leyli, give your daddy a kiss.”

Ali hugged his daughter, kissed her. Then as he went to pull her cheek he poked her in the eye with the handle of his glasses.

“Ahmagh!” said Bita – idiot – and withdrew Leyli to the bath tub.

Ali held his thumb and finger under the force of the kitchen tap. Slowly the damned thing peeled off and, without thinking, he rubbed his eyes.

“Aiyeee!” he screamed.

“What happend?” Bita shouted.

“Super-glue. In my eye. Shit.”

He groped his way hastily to the bathroom, grabbed the shower-head off Bita, held it to his face.

“Cold, cold, cold!” he shouted.

Bita switched taps. A cool jet soothed Ali’s brow.

Then, she squeezed a yellow duck at her daughter. It wheezed. Its chest popped out, greeting Leyli’s frown with a smile.

Ali wrapped a towel around his face, pressed it into his eyes, and felt his way to the living room. Slumped on the couch, he started to doze off and was woken half an hour later by the sizzle of onions –that smell he loved so much: Bita’s frankfurter omelette.

"Thank you darling," he shouted.

"Ahmagh-joon”– dumbo – “your glasses are in the sink, I emptied tea leaf on them.”

His glasses were indeed immersed in tea leaves, onion and aubergine peel.

"Did you write to the Home Office?" said Bita.

"No. I can’t see a thing today. NHS glasses fall apart."

"Don't blame their health service. You just wanted to try out that super-glue you bought."

"Yeah, I broke my glasses to test the glue."

"Why else spend three pounds on something you don’t need?”

"I bought it just in case."

“There’s no ‘in case’ on our budget you moron. I'm buying twenty-one-pence baked beans and Imelda Marcos is buying super-glue.”

“Imelda?”

“Oh shut up you donkey.”

****

When his friend Jamshid called, Ali was usually – "Come round, we’re cooking."

"That taryakee” – opium head – “is not coming here," Bita whispered. She could tolerate pot but had no patience for what she regarded as its more pernicious cousin.

"Jamshid needs to eat," Ali whispered, his hand on the receiver.

"He works in a burger shop."

"He'll fix the damp."

"He needs to fix his life," said Bita. "Tell him no."

"Okay, I’ll go out."

"Ali, tell him no.”

"Jamshid, aziz, Bita and I are doing a candle-lit thing tonight.”

She joined Ali on the sofa. He was pinching egg and sausage slices into pitta bread twists, making the ketchup bottle squelch at intervals. On TV, Baghdad was on fire. Bush and Blair’s shock and awe campaign was in its third day. On another channel experts discussed how quickly a missile from Basra could reach Wolverhampton. There was no talk of oil, of course.

Ali and Bita gave each other a look. Both had been on the big march, in Hyde Park the government had tried to ban.

“It’ll spoil the grass,” one official said.

“How English,” Ali had thought. “About to attack another country and they’re worried about the lawn.”

“What are those things called?”

“What things?” said Bita.

“Those little men, English put in their gardens?”

“Gnomes.”

“It starts with G.”

“It’s a silent G.”

“You sure?”

“Put the tea on. Ali.”

He switched off the telly.

“Oi,” said Bita.

“I hate that Ethiopian.”

“He’s a reporter. He’s doing his job.”

“For the imperialists.”

“How do you know he’s Ethiopian?” said Bita.

“He looks like the owner of Café Nile.”

Music blasted out, as it did every night, from downstairs. Leyli began to cry.

“Bastards,” said Ali. “I can’t hear myself think.”

“Little danger of that happening, eh Ali?”

"It must be them who pee in the lift, I know it," said Ali. "Probably use the toilet to travel up and down the building.”

“Say something to them.”

“No,” said Ali. “They won’t listen to me.”

Bita sometimes brought pizzas home. They’d reheat it under the grill, always with pepperoni and beef. Bita preferred vegetarian and made more concessions for Ali than he did for her. After all, he had been inside. When they bonked, a rarity now, she ran her fingers across the scars on his belly, never asking how they got there.

Placing a rolled-up corner of pizza into his mouth allowed him to momentarily wash away his woes. He ate two more slices and squeezed his belly a couple of times. The diet would start tomorrow.

*****

Ali sucks on a straw, sending smoke curling into his bong – a bottle of Evian, its water dark and grimy and the name one letter away the infamous prison, Evin. He shot in the smoke in sharp breaths and then swivelled the bottle so the straw faced Jamshid.‌ Jamshid was a good few years older than him and as skinny as the paperclip to which the shit was attached. He banged on about Mr Reformist President. “Sure, sure,” Ali would say.

At odds politically, the pair were comrades at the bong.

Jamshid grabbed the skewers and lovingly threaded them with minced meat. Ali inhaled.

“Toms?” said Jamshid.

Ali pointed to a shopping bag on the floor.

Jamshid placed the skewers inside the grill, which by now had warmed up a treat. He turned the dial back on the rice cooker to make its base crispy.

“Poor Ali,” thought Jamshid observing his morose-looking friend. Gently, without wishing to appear insensitive, he opened the fridge and reached for the only egg that in there. He cracked it open, scraping the two halves against each other until the yolk remained. Then he tried to balance it in a saucer. But the shell wouldn’t stay upright.

“In the cabinet,” said Ali.

Jamshid took out a Turkish tea glass. The egg was fine now.

“Sure you won’t eat?” said Jamshid.

“Yes, aziz, enjoy, enjoy.”

Water bubbled furiously as Ali took a deep drag. Then, sensing Jamshid’s unease at having to cater for himself, he took the reins as chef. Jamshid sat on the stool and sucked on the pipe, burning the opium with the red-hot coat-hanger piece, thinking of the yolk he was about to mix in with his plate of steaming rice.

“Have a skewer,” said Jamshid.

“No,” said Ali.

He wiped a tear from his cheek, then another. Jamshid was at a loss, he wanted to embrace his friend but there was food on the go.

“It’s okay,” said Jamshid. “Come on, have a kebab.”

He ushered Ali back on to the stool and whipped kitchen towel off a roll noticing, as he handed it to Ali, the damp in a corner of the ceiling he’d promised to fix months ago. Of course, there was a backlog of such promises. One day he would be clear-headed enough to deliver on them but not now.

“Ali, I don’t want the egg,” he said abruptly.

“What egg?” said Ali.

“There’s only the one.”

“I don’t take egg with my rice,” Ali said.

******

With Jamshid gone, Ali was in front of the TV, watching a game show. A stern-looking woman eliminated contestants, one after the other. Ali’s favourite game was backgammon. His father always won. Chess, he’d never bothered to learn, despite his father’s best efforts.

“Where did dad learn?” he wondered. There were a thousand questions he had yet to ask.

******

“Ali,” said Bita.

He opened his eyes. Bita was wrapped in a towel, water dripping from her hair on to her. She joined him on the sofa. They watched the latest on Iraq. He held her tight and stroked her face. With his left hand, he reached for the remote and turned the TV off. Except for the sound of some kids and the odd car horn, it was quiet. They dozed off and Ali checked as he always did for a third presence but there was only the two of them.

The prospect of war made Ali feel powerless. It was bad enough not having a national insurance number. Far from relieving his father’s suffering by electing to live his own life of misery, Ali was suffering in tandem. At the opium bong, Ali remembered a passenger once took to the airport, an Iranian doctor from Stockholm.

“A British passport won’t make you happy,” the man had said, in an apparent attempt to make him feel better about not being a dentist. “We doctors have a higher suicide rate than you refugees.”

You refugees. Ali thought of his friend Parand, a cardiologist who delivered Chinese takeaways in Elephant & Castle.

He rolled a fat spliff. Smoked crammed his skull. He felt about to puke. Unable to find the remote, he staggered towards the telly to turn it off manually. Its every image triggered psychosis. He helped himself to the floor and assumed a foetal position. Skunk. It was the same every time. He had to make it back to the sofa before Bita returned and, when she did, make sure the mere sight of her would not trip him out. His elbow cushioned his head. Was he communing with his dad? It’s so difficult to tell when you’re baked.

*****

Ali’s dad would be fine, thought Bita. It was Ali she was worried about and how their lives were so interlocked. A man had come into the pizza shop that day with a group of businessmen and stolen glances at Bita while they were lunching. His face was gentle, his manner earthy and he was unfazed by her awful, orange OK Pizza uniform. He didn’t seem involved in his companions’ small talk. He looked more Lebanese than Iranian she decided. “If he’s Iranian,” she found herself thinking, “then no way.”

No way what? She twisted her ring, she was married – but to whom? Why did Ali not steal glances towards her? Years ago, he had impressed her with his wit and charm. A few of his friends from that night on the rooftop were still in prison. Perhaps this is why he creates his own prison, she thought, why he chooses to torture himself. One thing was for sure, Ali’s relationship with his father was not coloured by Iran’s political realties – no matter who was in power, their relationship would always be fraught.

“Men have so much evolving to do,” she remembered Ali saying, “a whole gender that doesn’t feel free to cry unless their football team loses”. Before bed that night Bita destroyed the number the man in the shop had slipped her. They’d got talking when he stepped up to ask for chillies. He was cheeky, a charmer, and while there was no way she would have given him her number she had agreed to take his.

At two in the morning Ali was woken by the unsettling purr of pigeons snoring on the balcony. He picked up half a joint from the ashtray on the floor and felt his groin. No lump. No cancer. He put the kettle on, looked in the fridge picked up a box of dates, emblazoned with a picture of the ancient citadel of Bam, a kitsch montage with palm trees. He was proud of the citadel, of its history, both ancient and recent – he and Bita made had bonked within its walls. Now, Ali had pretty much given up sex altogether. It tripped him out, all those emotions, making love to someone he felt for so deeply. He preferred to smoke and to think about Bita instead. Then he wouldn’t have to get too involved, he could choose to be alone. Sometimes Ali wondered why she simply didn’t go for a ‘proper’ man, a dapper, with-prospects type.

Leyli, that’s why.

“Kiss baba, kiss baba,” Bita would say. Whoever this grumpy man was, it was clear to Leyli she had to love him even though when he held her she felt like a teapot.

The phone rang. In a shot, Ali was in the living room.

“Alo.”

“Salaam Ali.”

“Baba jan! Salaam! Wait a minute.”

He rushed back into the kitchen, packed up all the gear, and put it out of sight on the balcony.

“What happened?” his father asked, his voice lacking its usual bass.

“Nothing, I left the cooker on.”

“Smoking?”

“No dad, I was cooking.”

“You had the munchies?”

“No.”

“Then why would you cook an egg at four am?”

“Why are you calling at four am?”

“Because I know you can’t sleep.”

“How?”

Here was living proof that his father still had it in him – the man on the phone was no one else. Yet Ali felt an anxiety now native to him that tugged his very being. He didn’t like talking to anyone when he was stoned, least of all his dad.

“I called to tell you not to worry.”

“Thanks dad. Where are you?”

“Hospital. I’m in the toilet though, so we’ll keep it short.”

“You’re calling me from the loo?”

“We’re not allowed mobile phones.”

“Of course.”

“Go, sleep, son, don’t worry about a thing.”

“I’m cool.”

“Bita hasn’t left you?”

“Not yet.”

“Keep up the good work.”

“Thanks baba jan.”

“Now, if you excuse me I need to have a pee.”

Ali laughed. Replacing the receiver, he felt a sense of bliss at hearing his father joke. He went off to ‘celebrate’ with the bong. In the morning, of course, he would feel ratty and vile. He put the kettle – tea was the best antidote to a downer. He retrieved his pipe from the dustbin and smoked. But no matter how much tea he imbibed and smoke he inhaled, he still felt distinctly subterranean. Then that awful music started downstairs. He went to the bedroom and scrambled about for his keys went downstairs and knocked on his neighbour’s door.

“Turn it down,” a man’s voice intoned. Feet shuffled on the other side of the door. Then there was silence. He knocked once more. A skinny woman with a white aertex Adidas vest and pockmarked skin opened it. A man stepped up behind her. Behind him was another man. For a moment, they stood inspecting him like a hydra. He was clearly no cop or council official. So what did he want?

“That music,” he piped up, the Hydra looking him up and down, “Can I what it is?”

“What, blad?” said one head.

“Can you tell me who was in the song?”

“Bounce, fool,” said the smaller head.

Ali didn’t bounce in time. He was pounced on for his cheek and came to hours later in A&E. There was dressing on his face, his nose was cut, it felt as big as a ball and needed resetting.

The next morning he got his bearings, in the bed next to him was an old man, still snoring away. Opposite was an old woman, who unlike her two visitors was very skinny. Ali imagined her smoking cigarettes and her grown-up children pleading with her to quit. He imagined her husband who had died of cancer thirty years ago. Then he wondered what on earth he was doing in the same ward wondering about this old woman, his face all numb and swollen.

*****

“Why did you bring her?” said Ali. Bita had come with Leyli. Mr Rodgers, who lived opposite their noisy neighbours, had seen everything through his spy-hole and called an ambulance.

“Leyli shouldn’t be here. Take her away. I’ll be good in a few hours.”

“She wanted to come.”

“Hey pretty thing,” he said. “Don’t look sad.”

“She wanted to see her daddy, didn’t you Leyli. Look, she’s got something for you.”

Leyli reached into the Krazee Kittens pouch around her neck and produced a red nose.

“A red nose!” said Ali. He took it out of the wrapper and then realised he couldn’t put it on.

“It’s Red Nose Day,” said Leyli.

For a few moments the three of them were silent. Ali, of course, was thinking how Iran deserved a Red Nose Day, comedians raising money for charity, or at least a Red Turban Day.

Bita watched as the old woman’s family said goodbye. Ali made a promise to himself to clean the balcony and, in time, his act. All he wanted now, though, was for his wife and daughter to leave and for his smoking companion to make a delivery. He asked Bita for her mobile.

“There’s no need to call him, Ali,” she said. She planted a kiss on his forehead and squeezed a small ball of opium into his palm.