The Last Living Slut (9 page)

Standing in the middle of the terminal in my sexy summer dress—my grandmother still in her Islamic hejab—I held out my ticket to a lady walking past. “Gate three,” she mouthed slowly. I didn’t know what it meant, but I knew that if I kept repeating it to strangers they’d show us the direction for the plane to Manchester.

Finally, on our way to the proper terminal, we emerged outside, shuffling along with our suitcases into the cold August air. I looked at my grandmother—and saw she was struggling to breathe.

Anneh was determined to be at my side in this strange country. At the age of sixty, she had left behind her home and security, left behind her family and her life, and even risked her health. She suffered from acute asthma, and had flown away from the sun to embrace England’s damp, cold climate.

The English air had made its premiere on my exposure-hungry skin and poisoned my grandmother’s lungs. Anneh stopped and clutched her chest right there. I dug her inhaler from the bottom of her leather handbag and watched as she pumped four neat puffs into her tightened lungs. “She’ll be fine now,” I tried to convince myself, all the while repeating “gate three, gate three, gate three” in my mind.

We sat on the curb so Anneh could rest and catch her breath.

“You stay here while I go find the plane.” My voice sounded oddly grown up to me, even though I was terrified. I didn’t know what to do. Her face was ashen. I dashed back into the terminal. Inside, I desperately tried to find a friendly face to ask about this wonderful place called “gate three.” No luck.

I ran back outside. Anneh looked even worse. Dread froze my throat. Her cushioned cheeks were purple. A choking whistle mixed with a wet crackling sound came out of her mouth. She fought to breathe. Her wide eyes pleaded with me to help her. I was desperate and unable to communicate with anyone. At that moment, I deeply regretted skipping all those private English classes my parents had arranged. My grandmother couldn’t breathe. She was dying right before my eyes and no one else could see it.

Again I ran into the terminal to get help. Again, my frantic jabbering drew only blank stares. When I ran back outside, an ambulance was parked by my grandmother, and a policewoman was helping her to her feet. I loved that policewoman so much at that moment.

I remember climbing into the ambulance, and then . . . nothingness.

Chapter 17

E
ven now, no matter how much I stretch my brain, I cannot remember what happened from the moment I climbed into the ambulance until I woke up the next morning in the hospital. It’s as if those few hours have been wiped from my memory forever. The next thing I knew, I was awake in a hospital room and my uncles were at my grandmother’s bedside.

A few days later, my uncles drove my grandmother and me to Manchester. The August weather was cloudy and drab—always gray, still, and vacuous. The thick syrup smell of the local brewery seeped into the city each afternoon when my aunt took me to the laundromat and into town to buy strawberries, which had been a rare treat in Iran during the war.

We moved in with my uncle and aunt into Cooper House, a concrete tower of public housing that still sits red and stubborn on the curve of Boundary Lane in Hulme, Manchester, its stairways full of bloodied sanitary towels, full of story. That tower will probably always be there, no matter what happens in the world. It is the cockroach of apartment buildings. To me it will always also be full of my grandmother: her history, her brilliant light, her soul, her hair the color of honey, her bad eyesight I once made fun of.

I will never forget dancing around the grounds in my red rah-rah skirt, the one I wore to make me feel more alive. I’d put it on and skip through the stairwells in Cooper House, all the way from number twenty-eight, where we lived, to my friend’s place at number eighteen. And all the while, in the marble of my eye, I saw the beautiful patterns of the carpets in our house in Iran. The rich tapestry of maroons and purples by the doorway in the main front room, in the courtyard by the fishpond, and in our garden of pomegranate tree and roses. And every day, my grandmother was slowly dying.

My uncle and aunt had escaped to England via Turkey. Since they had just started to make a life for themselves in this new world—with a new baby—there was no money and very little food. The flat was tiny. I felt imprisoned, so far from the existence I had left behind. I wanted my family and my dolls. But my main concern was finding something to eat. Every day, my grandmother and I were starving.

“If you look on the ground as you walk around town, you’re bound to find a penny here and there,” my uncle suggested. “Those pennies will add up and you can buy yourself a chocolate bar.”

So I began watching the ground meticulously whenever I walked outside.

In the afternoons while my aunt and uncle rested, my grandmother and I snuck into the kitchen to look for white bread or rice to fill us up. One glorious night, when Anneh returned from one of her many visits to the hospital, she brought back a handful of pears. That night, after the lights were switched off, we lay in our tiny room in the dark, me on the floor, my grandmother on the bed, eating our pears and laughing with joy, as if we were drunk. I felt like a princess that night.

Still, the ghostly pock-hollowed soul of this new world surrounded me, and I had no idea where to go or what to do. Every night I dreamed of Iran. The dreams were so vivid that, when I woke up, I was shocked to find myself on a strange floor looking out at the same tall gray buildings. One night I dreamed about all my friends playing by a sunny lake. We picked fruit from the trees, and I flirted with Babak, a boy from my Iranian school whom I’d had a major crush on. He had a smooth, tanned body. He flirted back. It was nice to see his face; I felt like I was there, until I woke up suddenly. When I realized I was actually in England, I felt sick and terrifyingly alone.

Every morning when I awoke, I would hear the
khut khut khut
of the sewing machine on which my aunt and uncle made their illegal bread and butter. A short Pakistani man named Ismail, with a head as hairy as a boar, brought denim pieces in all shapes and sizes to the house each day. The two of them would cut, sew, stitch, trim, and iron zippers, buttons, and pockets by a yellow lamp well into the night. The more jeans they made, the more cash they received. Sometimes I would help. I had to be a good girl so the grownups would be happy with me.

Not long after landing in Manchester, I was sent to a local school in Hulme to learn English. I really wanted to be able to talk to other kids, but the first English words I learned, naturally, were swear words. “Fuck” was the first one, “hell” the second. Every day after classes I went to the big library in the town center to listen to language cassettes and read phrase books. I started writing poetry and songs about my time in England and keeping a diary about my experiences.

All this time, my grandmother was dispatched to the hospital every few days with asthma attacks that choked her throat. Eventually, my uncles tired of looking after her, and dumped her in a Cooper House flat to live by herself. I don’t know how she remained so sunny and optimistic. She had come to England for me and she wasn’t going to let her granddaughter down, even if it meant she could barely breathe.

I wrote letter after letter begging my mother to let me come back home, telling her how much I missed my family and friends, explaining how scary it was to walk by the kids in gangs every time I went to shop for bread. I wondered why my mother had sent me here. In Iran, at least, we had enjoyed the luxury of food.

Chapter 18

Fuckin’ Paki, She ain’t No Brit! Skin is Brown and She Smells like Shit.

I
turned to books and writing to escape my life in England. I had brought over all my favorites in their Persian translation.
Huckleberry Finn
kept me full of passion, and I devoured stacks of novels by Iranian writers: political fairy tales about the inequalities of the rich and poor, stories of wild women with unfathomable beauty, unrequited love, wicked stepparents, and one about a princess who fell in love with a bald, penniless pigeon keeper.

After a few months, my uncle decided to send me away from the squalor of our public housing to a more refined environment deep in the southern countryside to begin the process of Anglifying me. Somehow they’d discovered a charitable English family willing to provide me with food and shelter. So off I went to live with the Carsons in their little stone cottage and attend Long Acre School. The Carsons were old-school hippies who found the idea of an Iranian girl fresh from the ravages of war gorgeously exotic and über-trendy. They took me off my uncle’s hands without hesitation.

Their cottage had a massive garden with beautiful flowers and tall trees, and the Carsons had given me my own room. This is it, I thought. I’m finally in the quaint and peaceful place I imagined—a place where the food and the people will both be nice. Proper England!

Long Acre School sat in a tiny, postcard–English village with perfectly trimmed hedgerows and white fences—a place where people ate politely and said how-do-you-do. The school was in a white building with ivy crawling up its craggy skin. Finicky daisies lazed around its skirts. It had children inside it, well-fed gingers and blondes and blackberry brunettes. They were bread-and-butter-for-tea, rosy-cheeked sorts, destined for Swiss finishing schools and vacations in the south of France. They had not seen many dark-skinned people, let alone an Iranian girl with a mustache.

The Carsons’ friends came to gawk at me one by one. Me: sweaty, with the aroma of exotic spices from the bazaars just like they had seen in Marrakech once while traveling in North Africa. How marvelous to have this quietly withdrawn creature from war-torn Iran in their midst, with her fabulous olive skin and traumatized soul.

The Carsons had a three-legged dog named Pickle and a three-legged cat called Flowerpot. The Carsons liked to rescue things from wretched lives. I loved those two animals so much and ended up taking care of them. They had a seven-year-old son named Billy who had long hair and cocoa-buttered skin. I hated that little fucker. I hated that stone cottage as well, because it had such a low ceiling. I hated that I couldn’t speak English very well. And I hated being alone without my family and friends. Jacket potatoes and silence gagged me.

At school I was known as the silent, smelly Paki and bullied with much glee and fanfare. “Fuckin’ Paki, she ain’t no Brit! Skin is brown and she smells like shit,” sang a gang of girls. My cheeks flamed with embarrassment.

The constant taunts and bullying made me so anxious that I started involuntarily peeing myself as I entered the school doors. Droplets of pee trickled down into my underpants, and I would tighten my muscles to block the flow. Then I became the pathetic sheep-girl with the pain lodged in her throat, eyes buried deep in the ground as I entered the classroom of two dozen eleven-year-olds.

The first few weeks of class weren’t too bad because I didn’t understand all the words flung at me. But because of that, it turned physical. The three main girls who hacked at me with their venom-sopped words were named Sally, Michelle, and Jessica. Their eyes, slick and quick, would twinkle as they’d walk toward me, chanting racist slurs, cricket bats at the ready.

I responded by burying myself deeper in my favorite books, like
Tom Sawyer
and
The Prince and the Pauper
, which I read in Iranian. I lost myself in their adventures and fantasized about running away with Huckleberry Finn, whom I felt would make a wild and exciting boyfriend. Oh, how I longed to be naughty—to play games with my cousins and knock on neighbors’ doors and run away. I wanted to eat
ash-e reshteh
and see my mummy and friends and family. I just wanted to be home and be myself, the naughty show-off who had many friends and was adored.

One day I opened my desk to find steamy chunks of dog shit next to my beloved
Tom Sawyer.
My book was ruined; my desk stank. All because I was different.

I learned a lot of English very quickly in those first few months at Long Acre—because I had to. Dairy Milk quickly became my favorite chocolate bar, Wham! my favorite pop group. Between lessons I wrote letters to my mum on red paper, enclosing little trinkets from England: hair clips for my little sister and cartoon stickers for my brother.

18 August 1984

Dear Ma,

Hello. I hope you are completely well and my brother and sister also. How is dad? I am really missing you. I wish you were here. Mum, you don’t know how many different types of toys there are here and what beautiful toys they are. Everywhere you go there are toys and clothes. Clothes that a person wouldn’t even dream of. There is a doll here called Barbie and she has everything, lots of shoes, clothes, makeup table, lipstick, eye shadow, kitchen, car, wardrobe, a husband. I wish you were here so you could buy me things that I want. The clothes are very, very beautiful here. The shoes shimmer with beauty. There are lots of beautiful things here but only the rich can buy them. The rich areas are really nice but the rest of the areas are so bad. For example, there are gangs of children who go around stealing and smashing car windows and no one says anything. I live in a really poor area. But at school I am learning the piano. I see mums holding their kids’ hands and I wish you were here. I am really upset that you’re not here.