On this day, I beat myself so hard I numbed both my chest and hands. A month after
my ‘acceptance’ to the University of Melbourne, I still hadn’t been found out. Instead
of the customary hymn, ‘Hussain, Hussain’, I was chanting ‘idiot, moron’. Some members
thought I was so in the zone they stepped back to admire me beating my lanky body
senseless.
I drove to the 7-Eleven, where I’d been working for a while—to pay for my acting
courses, and to distract me from my woes. I had to get into Medicine, and I did not
know how. I concocted a new plan as I drove.
Faking Your Medical Degree in Eight Easy Steps
If anybody asked why it was taking me so long, I’d just tell them I was ‘specialising’
or something.
First things first: I’d been so engrossed in my scheming that I hadn’t noticed the
flashing blue and red lights behind me. I pulled over.
‘Good evening, sir. Any reason why you ran a stop light back there?’
‘Did I?’
‘Is this your vehicle?’
‘Huh?’
‘Is this your car?’
‘Yeah, nah, mate.’ I flashed my best, most pious smile.
‘Have you got your licence on you?’
I did have my licence on me. But I was still on my L-plates. This was embarrassing.
I’d turned eighteen two weeks ago, but I’d also failed my driving test. I was a fake
top student who’d been accepted into a fake degree, and I was a fake legal driver
too.
I handed the cop my learner’s permit and read a verse from the Koran, hoping it would
scramble his vision, Jedi mind trick–style. It didn’t. It never does.
‘You’re unlicensed, mate.’
‘Technically.’
‘What do you mean technically? You’re on your L-plates.’
‘Yeah, nah, but I know how to drive.’
‘Any reason why you’re driving unlicensed?’
‘I have to get to work.’
‘Any reason why you’ve failed to display your L-plates?’
That was an easy one. ‘If I put on my L-plates then you’d know I was an L-plater.
Can’t give it away that stupidly.’
He looked at me Clint Eastwood–style, ducked back to his car, and came back with
two $500 fines and a court notice. ‘Do not drive this car again,’ he warned.
I waited six minutes so he was completely gone before cranking up the engine.
At the 7-Eleven, I put my name badge on—
Sam
—and took over for the night shift.
Most nights, around 2 am, a few young Muslim boys came into the servo to keep me
company, loitering deep into the night. One of them was the member who’d read the
latmia
at the mosque. He was very devout, had a longer beard than all of us combined,
and wore a green shawl to mark that he, too, was a Sayyed.
‘You beat your chest good tonight,’ he said approvingly. ‘You’ve gained great heavenly
rewards. Is that a new issue of
Hustler
?’
Normally, Sayyed liked to read them alone in the staff toilets, because he wanted
to conduct ‘research on how to have sex’. After he’d come out, the colour leaping
off his face, I’d reseal the magazines using a lighter.
Young Sayyed took his
Hustler
, and I took up the mop and bucket and began my nightly
cleaning duties. As I scrubbed, I wished there was a cleaning system for the mind—some
Men in Black
–type device to wipe your whole hard drive. Alas, the best I could do
was shine the floors until they sparkled and wonder how I was supposed to drive home.
Mashhad, Iran, 2013: one day until visa expires
Reza’s Paradise is closed when my driver and I arrive there after dinner, so I thank
him liberally for his time and tip him three times more than the quoted price. It’s
the best money I’ve spent all week. He’s sixty-seven years old, and he kicked me
around this enormous city like a piece of clockwork. Thanks to him, I have the exit
paper. I am indebted to his soul.
It’s three in the morning, and accommodation is a no-go. So I seek refuge at Reza’s
shrine. At least my father’s nearby. I leave my luggage in the allocated spot and
walk in as a pilgrim. There are guards whose job it is to keep such pilgrims awake,
so I haven’t been able to sneak any shut-eye. But I’m away from the snow outside.
It is warm and cozy.
◆ ◆ ◆
My visa expires tomorrow, so when the sun comes up today, I need to finish two more
urgent tasks. First, I must get Dad’s body
sorted at Reza’s Paradise; Australia won’t
accept him unless he’s been embalmed to ‘international standards’.
Second, my passport—that handy thing—is still at the cemetery, and I’m not sure how
much longer I can keep getting by with my swim pass.
Today is Friday, which is the weekend in Iran. Getting a plane ticket for me—not
to mention one for Dad—out of Iran tomorrow will be tough work. Finding an open travel
agent that has two tickets at such late notice…just the thought of it makes me nauseous.
I take deep breaths and try to think of the worst-case scenario.
If I can’t get a ticket to Australia, I’ll get a ticket
out of Iran
—any destination
will keep me out of jail tomorrow. Once I’m in whatever country will have me and
my dad, I can try to get us home to the Kangaroo Continent from there.
At 5.30 am, I pray and leave the shrine, knowing this—inshallah—will be my last time
here. If I have another opportunity, it’ll be because I’m stuck in Iran, and everything
I’ve done so far will have vanished into the air.
◆ ◆ ◆
I arrive at Reza’s Paradise at 7 am. It seems an eternity since I was last here,
a trick embellished by the fact that the lady who refused to hand back my passport
isn’t there this morning. A different clerk asks me to pay the fee before they can
proceed to prepare the body.
As I pay, I realise this is pretty much the last of my money. I have just enough
Iranian currency to pay the storage fee and get me back to the city. I don’t want
to think about how many cabs I’ve caught this week. Nor about the fact that banks
here are closed on the weekends.
At the charnel-house, the young man whose job is to ‘prepare’ the body invites me
in so I can help him move my dad.
A silent scream rips through me. I haven’t seen Dad in days. It feels like years,
even, and I still haven’t accepted he is gone. The young man drags the black sack
out of the refrigerated room. He unzips it, but I don’t need to look at Dad’s calm,
cold, resting face. I can tell from the thick black hair who the body is.
‘God rest his soul. He’s been washed and put in a shroud as you asked.’
I don’t reply.
‘Now pull him with me, on three.’
He counts and on three we lift Dad and haul him outside, setting him down beside
a wooden box.
‘This box looks small,’ I say.
‘No brother, it’s perfect.’
‘He’ll get squeezed in.’
‘That’s a solid box. It won’t hurt him, brother, I promise.’
His tone is calm and true. It eases my anxiety a hair tip’s per cent. ‘On three,’
he says. And we lift my dad and place him in the box.
I suffocate looking at it.
‘He will be okay, brother,’ the man says. ‘Now I am going to put some chemicals on
his body, eyes and face, so maybe you are going to want to step outside.’
◆ ◆ ◆
At 1 pm, the cab pulls over by the sixth travel agent we’ve tried since leaving Reza’s
Paradise. This one is closed too.
I press the driver: the next one, please.
He tells me to come back looking again on Monday.
Fed up with the negativity, I leave the cab and hail another.
But all the other cabbies are telling me the same thing: I won’t find an open travel
agent today or tomorrow.
At my fourth refusal, I ask one of the drivers if he won’t take me to
every single
travel agent in the entire town
. And if he’s right and I’m wrong, I’ll look very
foolish and he’ll still have the money from driving this foolish guy around.
He thinks about it, nods, and drives me directly to the national airline carrier’s
authorised agent. He tells me this is the only one with a remote chance of being
open. This is what it boils down to. This is the last one.
I drag my luggage across the road.
It’s closed too, of course.
I drop Dad’s suitcase, chuck the guitar on top and let go of the walking stick.
The cabbie is long gone, and every shop is closed. I stand alone in the middle of
the silent, empty road, a backpack glued to my back, surrounded by the rubble of
my long, quixotic quest. I do a 360-degree spin, don’t notice my surroundings. It’s
all a blur. I look up. The clouds are laughing violently.
Then I look back at the closed shop. Another trick of the eye? Or is there someone
moving in there? I adjust my focus.
An old lady behind the door is putting on her chador, busying herself by the door,
ready to leave the office.
I pick up my rubble and tear across the road. I bang on the window frantically. Startled,
she freezes.
I try to force the door open but it’s locked from the inside. I bang on it like a
madman. She gestures, ‘We are closed.’ She’s clearly terrified.
Desperate, I start knocking harder and shaking the door, shouting and crying, ‘Emergency…please
open…emergency.’
As I bang in a frenzy, my hands suddenly lock. Then I feel a kick to the back of
my knees and I slump to the ground.
A big-boned, thick-moustached, middle-aged man
sits on top of me, landing a blow to my face.
‘What do you want with my wife?’ he yells.
I try to protest, but he’s squashing my airways.
‘Why are you here at this hour?’
He sinks his knee deeper into my stomach. I wheeze in pain.
‘Did you know she was coming to work? Is that why you’re here?’
Finally, he lets some pressure off. ‘I’m here to buy a ticket! I can’t breathe!’
‘What ticket? This place is closed. It’s Friday! You son-of-a-bitch liar, you!’
‘If this place is closed then what is that woman doing in the shop?’
‘You tell me.’
The woman rushes out and shouts around: ‘Call the police! Call the police!’ But the
road is dead as ever, except for this mess right here. I stop struggling—I can maybe
use his weight to my advantage. I take a few breaths, go limp, and my mind comes
alive. All it takes is an open-handed strike to the throat and he’s on the ground.
‘I’m not here for your wife,’ I pant. ‘My father has passed away. I am not from here.
I want a ticket.’
The woman kneels over her big husband, yelling hysterically for help. She’s shaking
uncontrollably. ‘Murderer! Murderer!’ she yells.
Her husband raises a hand, very much alive, and grabs her shaking hands. ‘Wait, wait,’
he says, struggling to breathe. ‘I think this young man does just want a ticket.’
◆ ◆ ◆
The lady had come to collect some belongings she’d left behind at the office; her
husband had been sitting in his car, waiting to collect her, before the lunatic had
come knocking and he’d rushed out to her aid.
She can’t book a ticket for me, she regretfully explains. ‘The systems are asleep.
Even if they were open, your dad will need a special “cargo ticket”, which no travel
agent has.’
Things are looking dark again. Then she lights up my sky. She hands me the name of
the sole cargo-only agent in Mashhad. And what do you know? Cargo moves around the
clock. So they’re open weekends.
I want to kiss both the lady and her husband, open-mouth.
Melbourne, Australia, 2002
My family assembled outside the house, forming an honour guard to wave me off into
the world—their very own future doctor.
Mum held an ornamental bowl filled with water and tossed it at my feet. A blessing.
My stomach turned.
It was my first day at university in my fake degree.
I had not enrolled in an Arts degree; three years seemed like plenty of time for
people to get suspicious. Instead of this, I thought I might study in the library,
sit in on lectures (no one checked the roll there), study my atoms off and try to
take an admissions exam in a year’s time. But the truth was, I had no real plans
beyond boarding the tram.
I disembarked at the University of Melbourne and joined the throng of actual students,
willing myself to be one of them as they converged upon the grounds.
Among them was Luay, who had not bothered maintaining the polite pretence that I’d
been admitted to my degree.
He waved at me, in a facade of friendliness. ‘How?’ he asked me. ‘I just want to
know how. How did you get here?’
‘The number 19 tram, bro.’
‘I will get to the bottom of this,’ he seethed. ‘I worked my backside off trying
to get here. You did nothing, and everyone thinks you’re the real deal. They’ll find
out you’re not, though, and when they do, I’ll be watching.’
What’s worse, I ask you, than having an enemy like Luay? Having an enemy like Luay
who is totally, completely accurate in everything he thinks about you.
He kept his gaze steady as he melted off into the crowd, ready to make friends with
people who belonged there—people like him.
I, on the other hand, was prepared to be a loner. No witnesses, no one who might
sniff me out—and, of course, no one I might injure with my elaborate charade. I peeled
off and headed for the library. I had books to read.
The trouble with an eighteen-year-old boy deciding to be a loner is that eighteen-year-old
boys are never really alone. Not when they can chat online. That’s how I met Sisi,
who was still in Year 12. She said she wanted to be a doctor.
This was the perfect opportunity to complain about my ‘degree’.
People introduce
me as doctor-Osamah this and doctor-Osamah that
, I complained.
I just want to scream,
I’m moron-Osamah!
You’re too funny
, she typed.
Please don’t say that. It ends bad.
Gotta go
, she typed.
Are you gonna be here later?
Of course I would be. I was online every night. After a long shift in the library,
then another at the 7-Eleven, I would look forward to chatting with her long into
the night.
Her interests included scripture
and
sports. How cool was that? Polar-bear cool.
She played cricket; she even knew how to bowl without bending her elbow. And she
was good enough to play basketball at state level, only the religious barriers meant
she could never take part in games. I was desperate to get in the nets with her and
have a tonk.
When she told me she was ‘Mooz’ and explained it was slang for Muslim, I went around
for days introducing myself as Osamah the Mooz.
The only trouble was, we weren’t the same kind of Muslim.
Sisi was of Lebanese heritage, and her dad was of the view that Iraqis were the nucleus
of all the Middle East’s problems. My mother, for her part, was of the view that
the Lebanese had ruined Middle Eastern food, which was almost as serious an allegation.
When she told me she liked Usher, I froze. Wasn’t music a sin? I didn’t speak to
her for days while digesting it. Then I stopped playing
Age of Empires
—the greatest
game on earth—long enough to start amassing a secret stash of CDs: Foo Fighters,
Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Will Smith, Sixpence None the Richer, and Usher too.
I applied stickers to their cases showing passages from the Holy Koran and hid them
in plain view.
The funny thing about a life of fraudulence and deception is that even this kind
of slapdash existence eventually settles into a routine. Before I knew it, I was
three months into a strange but peaceful existence: get up, catch tram, pretend to
go to uni, go instead to the library and study what I can. Work at the 7-Eleven then
head home and chat to Sisi, talk about our secret music. Get up. Do it all again.
Luay was still up my backside about the results, and his attempts to catch me out
were getting increasingly cartoonish. It would’ve been embarrassing if it wasn’t
also kind of scary. High-school data is publicly available, provided you have the
student number and the date of birth. Thankfully, nobody knew my real birthday, least
of all Luay. My passport said December, but I was really born in March. Most of our
documentation had been destroyed during the war, and when we’d come to Australia,
Dad had bumped me up a few months so I could skip primary school.
But Luay kept running up to me when he saw me around campus, asking why he’d never
once seen me in a tutorial, and who my tutors were. Finally, I approached a bald
man crossing the street in view of Luay, and I asked him politely if he’d mind nodding
his head at me.
‘What?’ he said.
‘Please, sir. Huge favour. Nod your head?’
He smiled politely, declined and hurried off, which I dare say was even more convincing
for my purposes. As he walked off, probably thinking I was crazy, I raised a hand
and yelled, ‘Thank you, professor! Now I understand.’
I turned around and grinned at Luay. Instant tutor.
But the whole process was exhausting, and getting more so by the day. With 1 April
coming up, I considered taking advantage of the auspicious date, revealing the lie
to my family and yelling ‘April Fool!’ I thought I might claim the whole thing as
an elaborate practical joke, and implore them to appreciate my commitment to the
gag.
All the while, I was finding ways to make Sisi love and loathe me.
I’m going crazy with school
, I typed.
You have to chill out, Osamah.
Maybe I do, but if so, I’m only hot because of you.
She’d pretend to log out, but I could see she’d read my message.
DaKoolGuy83: Get it? Chill? Like, because I’m feeling hot… Hello? You there?
DaKoolGuy83: Hello?
DaKoolGuy83: Yellow?
DaKoolGuy83: Red? Blue?
The day Essendon played the West Coast Eagles at Colonial Stadium in May, I applied
the last layers of gel to my hair, wrapped myself up in my Bombers scarf, and got
out of the house before Mum could foist Moe Greene and Ali on me.
‘But you always take them with you!’ she yelled as I bolted out the door.
Of course I always took them with me—they were Moe Greene and Ali. But today was
the first day I was getting to meet Sisi.
I waited near Gate 3, as agreed, feeling jumpy. She’d never sent me a photo, but
we’d been talking for four months. I thought I would just
know
it when I saw her.
I was wrong about so much, but it turned out I was right on this one. She was a beautiful
girl with long, straight blonde-brunette hair, blue jeans and a cardie. We locked
eyes. I knew it was her; she knew it was me. There are some things you can’t fake,
and if you’re lucky, you don’t need to. Sisi was a knockout, and I was one lucky—no,
triple-lucky—dude.
‘Hello!’ I said. I didn’t even try to act cool. ‘I like your jumper.’
‘Oh, thanks. It’s a cardigan,’ she said. ‘How are you?’
‘Um. Dazzled.’ I flashed her a smile, doing my best to be just as dazzling. She cast
her eyes downwards. A crowd of footy fans marched by, yelling, ‘Carn ya Dons!’ and
cursing.
‘So, Osamah who barracks for the Bombers and likes to pray,’
she said. ‘Do you want
to go watch the game, or do you feel like walking around the stadium seven times
for pilgrimage?’
We chose the game, and it passed like a dream. It was funny: I just wasn’t nervous.
As soon as we got home, we both jumped online to dissect the whole experience. We
were still Osamah and Sisi, same as always, thank God.
Let’s go to a movie. An action movie
, she said.
I grew up around boys.
I grew up around girls, so I’d rather go dress shopping
, I typed.
And then, we listened to the same Usher song quietly on our headphones, trading instant
messages about how the song made us feel. Despite the distance, I felt so connected
I was tingling.
At the movies, we were closer. It was like an electric shock. I remembered the times
I’d tried to sneak into the cinemas in Iran. This time, I was free and I was actually
with
Sisi, even if Mum thought I was at the library studying, and even if Sisi thought
I was enrolled in a Medical Science degree.
‘Suck on a fat cock and choke in cum!’ yelled a Mafia wiseguy.
Johnny Butterknife calmly withdrew a large kitchen knife from his jacket and slid
it through the wiseguy’s throat.
‘How about you check if there are any cocks in hell, you motherfucking wiseguy,’
he whispered, ‘and gag on a bouquet of dicks while you burn?’
Action movies.
Even with the awkward dialogue, which was great, but not romantic, our arms were
inching closer and finally, we were touching, skin to skin.
How could we have gone back to our bedrooms after that? When the credits rolled,
we snuck quickly into another cinema, screening
Swordfish
. No sooner had we sat down
than an actress started giving Hugh Jackman a blow job under the desk.
I pretended to check the time. I pretended to check my nails. I didn’t want to come
across as a guy who liked that kind of thing. When I looked back up, Halle Berry
was baring her breasts, magnified times a hundred on the screen.
This was not a good situation. Casually as possible, I put the popcorn on my lap.
More hoping to distract Sisi than anything else, I moved my hand onto her thigh.
She tensed up for a second, but made no move to reproach me. Actually, she let me
keep it there for the whole film.
Q.
Guess what kind of person is ripe for an arranged marriage in the eyes of a small
Muslim community in Melbourne’s inner north?
A.
A top student who’s studying to be a doctor.
The community was on all of our cases about getting married. After all, marriage
supplied the other half of a person’s religion. Eighteen was a ‘dangerous age’, especially
in the Wild, Wild Tempting West, and therefore the perfect time to complete one’s
practice.
Combine that with the academic proof that you’ll become a worthy husband, and believe
me, the pressure quickly starts to mount.
One night, I came home from my secret life at the library and before I could rush
upstairs to chat to Sisi, Dad showed me a grainy photo of a different young girl.
‘What do you think?’ he asked, eyes twinkling.
‘She’s sort of alright,’ I mumbled.
And that’s how I consented to an arranged marriage with Yomna.
◆ ◆ ◆
Once this process gets started, it all happens very fast.
That same afternoon, I was squeezed into a suit and then onto a couch at Haj’s, a
respected member of our community. Dad was on one side of me; Haj was on the other.
Two of Haj’s elder sons sat on another sofa, quiet but on guard. Mum was the only
woman present, on the other side of the room. There were a few community elders,
prayer beads in their hands. One of them was Abu Ghazi, our resident octogenarian.
‘How the cleric’s son has managed to stay single this long is beyond me,’ he said.
‘At twenty-one I had three wives. I understand this is Australia and the laws make
it tricky—still, I’m sure you’ll get around to your second soon. Anyway, that’s later.
You must take care of the first. I am in my eighties and I still make the effort
each morning to tell my wife how wonderful her breakfast was.’
Abu Ghazi had divorced his first wife, and the third had died in her sixties. His
surviving wife was his second—‘not my favourite, by any means’, he was fond of saying.
‘There is no shame in telling your wife your feelings,’ he went on. ‘Do not let anyone
try to convince you these romantic gestures are empty. I once even told my wife’—he
paused for effect, and to cough—‘the dead one, I mean, that I really liked her company.
‘My first wife once asked me: “Abu Ghazi, if there was a flood here and you could
only rescue one of us, who would you choose?”
‘I naturally replied: “I cannot choose. It is forbidden. In Islam a man must treat
all his wives equally, and show them the same amount of affection.”
‘Still, she pressed me. “My dear wife,” I told her, “you are all
my wives. Besides,
we are in Karbala. The desert! How could anyone imagine a flood in such a place?
It will never happen!”
‘As it turned out, this was a mistake on my part: she reminded me that Noah’s Ark
had happened. “So tell me, Abu Ghazi!” she said. “Tell me! If there was a flood here
and you had to choose between us, who would you save?”
‘I looked at her for a minute, with all her wrinkles. I looked at my youngest wife,
so pretty. Then I turned to my oldest wife and said, “But darling, you know how to
swim, don’t you?”’
The room erupted with laughter, especially from the elders, who all began convulsing
with a bout of synchronised coughing. Without further ado, Dad and Haj took over.
It was their solemn task to read the ceremonial engagement vows.
There is really no easy way out of an arranged marriage. If I’d declined the grainy
photo of Yomna, they’d only have whipped out another. Most of my friends from the
mosque had already been married off last year.
Once the vows were over, Dad said, ‘You are quiet.’