The Infernal Optimist (22 page)

I got a philosophy a life. When times be tough and you can do bugger all about it, me Rule a Survival is to kick back. The bad times were pretty bad. I still felt sick and sad and angry whenever I thought about Angel and Hamid. And I always wondered what happened to Azad and Marley and Bhajan, and how April and Thomas was getting on. I hoped Abeer and Bashir and Noor got out and got to be kids again, and that all the others got their freedom too. Me, I did all right in the end. See, I did me military service, and though it wasn’t much fun, She Who reckons it really did make a man outta me. Times were good. And when times are good, kicking back is even sweeter. And kicking back was exactly what I was doing, puffing on me hookah, working on me smoke rings, when I saw this lady coming through the door a the shop. I reckoned she was a bit of all right. She glanced around at the carpets and stuff.

‘G’day,’ I said. She looked up from the rugs.

‘G’day,’ she said. But her tone be real surprised. ‘You speak like an Australian.’

I smiled and shrugged.

‘You been to Australia?’

‘You could say that. Where are you from?’

‘Sydney, but—’

‘Where in Sydney?’

She was looking at me like she was having trouble putting two and two together, what be an expression what means four. ‘You know Sydney?’

I gave her me best International Man a Mystery smile.

‘Do you know Rushcutters Bay?’ She said it like she was testing me.

‘Bayswater Road. Picolo Bar, Barrons, Candy’s Apartment and that joint up on the corner what have the chicken and pizza. Big park round the bay what has yachts in. And Dancers. You know Dancers?’

She laughed. ‘I’ve been past it. I don’t think I’m exactly their target audience. How the—’ She paused and wiped her forehead, what was perspiring, with a tissue.

‘Hot as buggery, innit—pardon me French.’

‘You
are
Australian, aren’t you?’ The lady had cute dimples what reminded me of April.

‘Sort of. Not really.’

She looked a million hard pointy question marks at me.

‘It’s a long story,’ I said. ‘It’s got both really sad and really funny bits in.’

‘I’m just travelling. I’ve got time,’ she said, smiling. ‘If I’m not interrupting.’

I gestated round the shop. There was a few other customers at the moment but they seemed happy enough just looking.

Just then, She Who Followed Me to the Ends a the Earth came in from the back room with a tray with glasses a mint tea. Our son what was only little but had big ears and one eyebrow like his dad, followed close behind with a plate a sweets. I swear She Who is a witch what knows every time a pretty woman be in the shop. She offered tea to all the customers, including the lady, and then to me own good self. ‘Thanks, darl,’ I said.

‘I’m Marlena,’ goes She Who. She put down the tray and held out her hand to the woman, giving me a tiny look a accusation.

‘I’m Penny,’ said the woman.

‘I was just gonna introduce youse,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I’m Zeki. Zek for short, what I is as you can see. And this little one what has inherited all me good looks and charm is Babar, what means lion.’

The woman laughed and shook Babar’s hand. He offered her a sweet what she took and thanked him for. ‘What a lovely boy you are.’

‘You too,’ Babar replied, smooth as cream. ‘Lady, that is.’

One a the customers came to the counter holding a small kilim. ‘Do. You. Speak. English?’ he asked She Who, who winked at me.

‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘And I must say, that’s a
very
good choice. You don’t find many like that these days.’ Except out the back where we keep them, but she wasn’t gonna tell him that. Marlena learned heaps about rugs and shit when she first came. I was in the army, so me rellies, including me
Uncle Abi, showed her the ropes and taught her to speak some Turkish, too. She can sound real authoritative.

Penny, what was sitting down now, and me, we watched Marlena sell the Yank the kilim, plus another rug what was bigger, plus a set a tea glasses, and two evil-eye keychains. The next customers, a couple from England, was fingering another kilim what they liked but they was complaining about the price. ‘There is an old Turkish proverb,’ She Who quoted to them. ‘That which is cheap is cheap for a reason; when you pay money, you get value.’ The woman looked to her husband. He nodded and handed over the plastic.

As she wrapped up the deal, I glanced at me watch. ‘Looks like time for more tea, darl,’ I said.

‘Nice watch,’ Penny said.

‘It’s got what they call sentimental value,’ I said.

‘Keep an eye on your dad,’ Marlena said to Babar. She went into the back to make more tea and bring out another kilim like the one the Yank bought cuz it be our most popular.

‘She’s a good saleswoman, your wife,’ Penny said after they left. I got all puffed up like she be talking about meself.

‘I always told her she was a natural born businesswoman.’ It turned out to be true. She Who told me that if she hadn’t a taken the leap and come with me when I was deported, she probably woulda ended up emptying bedpans and sweeping hospital corridors the rest of her life.

Penny turned back to me. ‘So, Zeki. What’s this long story of yours?’

The author gratefully acknowledges a generous New Work grant for
The Infernal Optimist
from the Australia Council. I also thank the U-Committee of the University of New South Wales for making me UNSW Literary Fellow for 2004, a fellowship which provided not only invaluable financial assistance, but also an office on the friendly campus of the College of Fine Arts, where I wrote much of the second draft of the book. The Tasmanian Writers’ Centre, with the support of the City of Hobart and Arts Tasmania, gave me a home in the Hobart Writers’ Cottage in April 2005 as part of their 2005 Island of Residencies Program, where I pushed the work to completion. Thank you all.

My agent Lesley McFadzean and her predecessors Rose Creswell and Annette Hughes believed in the
Optimist
from the beginning. Lesley helped me find an ideal publisher in Linda Funnell of Fourth Estate and I have been delighted by the enthusiasm for this novel on the part of Linda and all her
colleagues at HarperCollins Australia, especially my editor Sophie Hamley.

Others who have supported and helped me include Peter Bishop of Varuna, A Writer’s House; refugee activist and fellow Villawood visitor Judy McLallen, who contributed the notion of ‘knitters and kayakers’, and Jonathan Cohen, who gave me the delightful malapropism ‘for all intensive purposes’. Most of all, and from the bottom of my heart, I thank former detainees Morteza Poorvadi and Amir Mesrinejad, who took the time to read the entire draft and offer many useful suggestions, as well as Mahmoud Mohammed Ali and other Palestinian, Kurdish, Iraqi, Bedoon, Afghani and African refugees, many of whom were also ‘Villawood alumni’, and even some Villawood guards, who asked to remain nameless but were generous with both their time and knowledge. I am, of course, ‘infernally grateful’ to Attila, a former Villawood ‘five-oh-one’, for inspiration, encouragement, stories and insights. My partner, Tim Smith, was his usual supportive and wonderful self; it is to him that this book is, as Zeki might say, lovingly devotioned.

Linda Jaivin is a novelist, translator, essayist and playwright. She lives in Sydney.

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