“Pas d’argent,” was all I managed to say.
As far as I could make out, they wanted to get Gertrude the right way up. I got the impression that even in her battered state, they were considering taking her as compensation. More men arrived with another donkey and thick ropes. There was a lot of loud discussion and argument about the best way to get the taxi back on its wheels and up on the road. They tied the ropes on wherever they could and started to heave—men and donkeys. It didn’t work. The taxi was too heavy. There was more discussion, more time passed. No one seemed to have anything more pressing to do.
A bus passed by. It was dusty but a relatively modern coach. Dark faces stared out at our misfortune. The bus stopped further down the road and then reversed back. Men got out to see what had happened. Even in that remote part of the world, people couldn’t resist stopping to stare at an accident.
They were all talking at once in an unintelligible babble. I was feeling dizzy. I needed to put my head between my knees, but there was nowhere to sit.
Someone was shouting words that didn’t sound quite as incomprehensible as the others. It took me a few moments to realise that the words were English. Someone in a pink shirt pushed through the crowd and grabbed both my arms. That stopped me from falling over. I tried to get the person in front of me in focus. I thought I must have been hallucinating.
“Jesus,” Val said. “I thought you were dead.”
Twenty-Five
Barter
I was angry and deliriously happy at the same time. I felt like crying and singing. I wanted to put my arms around his neck and tell him I hated him. I thumped him in the chest.
“What are you doing here?” I made it sound like an accusation.
“I’m here for a number of reasons.”
That wasn’t an answer I was expecting.
My eyes filled with tears. He took a step closer to me and drew me into a hug. I buried my head in his shoulder, clinging to the fabric of his shirt, breathing in the smell of his skin. I could hear the crowd muttering, disapproving, but I didn’t care how many Muslim men were calling me names under their breath.
“I think we’re breaking the law,” I said.
Val let me go and looked at me.
“When I saw the taxi overturned by the side of the road, I thought ... Are you okay?”
“Yes. Cuts, bruises ... I think I’ve cracked a rib, but I’m okay.”
“Where’s Dolf?”
I pointed to where Dolf lay baking in the sun. “He’s got a broken arm.”
Val went over to him.
“Hey, man,” Dolf said in a croaky voice.
I could tell he was glad to see Val.
Some of the men from the bus took sticks from a bundle of firewood and did a better job of propping up the quilt to shade Dolf than I had.
I looked at Val. “So what exactly are you doing here?”
He glanced at me sideways, a guilty look in his eyes.
“I came for the taxi,” he said. “I paid for the carnet. Remember? I won’t get my sixty-seven quid back unless I take Gertrude out of Iran.”
I’d had the tiniest hope that he had come because of me. As usual, any pleasure related to Val was short-lived.
“Oh.” I looked over at upside-down Gertrude. “That could be difficult.”
“So I see.”
“There’s another small problem,” I said.
“What?”
“I hit a goat.”
“Shit.”
The goat herder came over to Val, hoping that he was the one who could solve his problems. Val said a few words in another language. The goat herder’s angry mouth transformed into a smile.
“Can you speak their language?” I asked.
“Farsi? No, I just learned a few basic words on the bus.”
Val managed to explain that the taxi was his and that he needed it. He showed them the carnet. The goat herder handed it to the bus driver to read. He nodded. The goat herders muttered to each other and glared at me. I’d lied when I’d said the taxi was mine. I was obviously a car thief.
Val went over to talk to the bus driver. He pointed at Gertrude and at the bus.
They only had six words in common, but the bus driver nodded.
“He’s going to get the taxi the right way up,” he said.
“Does he want money?”
“I expect so, but we’ll deal with that later.”
The bus passengers gathered around. I helped Dolf move out of the way. There was a lot of debate about where to tie on the ropes. The bus driver manoeuvred the bus as close to Gertrude as he could, and the ropes were attached. He took off with a jerk. The rope stretched taut, then snapped. Everyone shouted an opinion about what would work. They connected two lengths of rope and tried again. There was an awful scraping of metal on rocks, more yelling, some re-knotting. The bus lurched forward again and Gertrude swung onto her wheels. Everyone cheered.
They tied the ropes to what was left of the bumper bar. The driver repositioned the bus and towed Gertrude back onto the road. The bumper bar came off. The road had a gentle slope and Gertrude began to roll slowly backwards. She was heading for the other side of the road where she would plummet down into the valley. The bus passengers, who had done nothing but stand on the sidelines and offer advice, suddenly sprang into action. They tried to stop her from rolling, but she was too heavy. It was up to me. As Gertrude rolled past, I dived in through the passenger-side door. I nearly fainted from the pain in my chest, but I managed to get both hands on the handbrake and yank it on.
There was no cheering for my heroic effort.
The men retied the rope to the front axle and Gertrude was towed to a flat place beside the road. She sat there lopsidedly, with a flat tyre, crushed all down one side, windscreen gone, one door hanging off and some liquid (probably brake fluid) leaking into the sand. I wondered why I’d risked my life for that sad excuse for a vehicle. The bus driver lent us a tyre pump so we could blow up the tyre, and Val offered him some money for all his help. He waved his hand in refusal.
An argument started over what to do next. The goat herders wanted the bus driver to tow the taxi somewhere, but the bus driver was already late. At least that’s what Val thought they were saying. Someone decided it was one of those times of the day when they had to pray. The passengers went to the bus to get small rugs and knelt by the side of the road. Val and I were the only ones still standing. We looked at each other. There was a lot we might have said, but neither of us spoke.
The passengers rolled up their prayer rugs and got back on the bus. The bus drove away. Val didn’t go with them.
With mime and gestures, the two goat herders indicated that they wanted to push the taxi to wherever it was they lived. There was more discussion while Val and I helped Dolf get to his feet, and into the back of the taxi. He cried with pain.
They told Val to get in and steer. They were completely confused when he shook his head and pointed to me. I got into the driver’s seat and turned over the engine. It wouldn’t start. No surprises there. I opened the bonnet. There were no spark plugs, no distributor. I knew very little about diesel engines. I shut the bonnet.
Val and the two men pushed the taxi onto the road. They kept pushing until they reached a slight incline. Gertrude slowly started to roll. One of the men jumped into the moving taxi and squatted in the luggage space next to the broken food box. Val got on the cart with the other man. We didn’t have to go far. Less than half a mile back along the road, the man beside me pointed to an almost invisible track off to the right. I turned down it and we coasted towards a cluster of buildings—three cubes of mud thatched with straw.
Two women came out of the house. They wore plain brown tunics with trousers underneath. Their head scarves were tied so that they covered the lower half of their face. Only their eyes were visible, but I could tell that they weren’t smiling. One of them went over to a hole in the sandy earth with a few stones around it. She picked up a bucket made o
f an old cooking oil tin tied to a length of rope and threw it down the hole. It was a well. She hauled the bucket back up. I went over and peered down. The surface of the water was a long way down and there were things floating on it. The woman dipped a clay bowl into the bucket and offered it to me. I’d only had a few mouthfuls of water since morning; I’d never been so thirsty in my life. Thoughts of dysentery and cholera flashed through my mind, but I took the bowl and drained it. The water tasted like seawater.
The two women cleaned my cut and wrapped a piece of coarse material around it. They talked to each other as they did this, glancing at me and Val as they spoke. I had no idea what they were saying.
“What about Dolf?” I asked when they had finished.
Dolf was still lying in the back of the taxi.
They shook their heads.
“Why won’t they look after Dolf?”
“I don’t know,” Val said. “Perhaps a man has to tend to him.”
We got Dolf out of the taxi and settled him on some straw in a sort of barn. I could see the goat herder pulling the dead goat off the cart. He fetched an ugly-looking knife and slit its stomach open. Thick blood ran out into a bowl. The goat was so small. He skinned it, took out its innards and I didn’t look away. A few weeks before, I might have been horrified, but the sight of the butchering didn’t upset me. Nothing was thrown away.
A man arrived who everyone treated with respect. He examined Dolf’s arm and then gave him something to drink. It smelled like alcohol of some description and Dolf coughed when he drank it. The man wrenched Dolf’s arm to get the broken bone into position. Dolf screamed with pain and then cried like a child. I held his hand. They gave him some more of the alcohol and he went to sleep. The man used a stick as a splint and bound the arm tightly with a length of cloth. The two goat herders and the doctor sat down next to us and spoke to Val. They wanted to talk about compensation. They exchanged words one at a time with Val. The doctor wrote numbers in the dirt.
“If they can’t have the taxi, they want one thousand rials.”
“A thousand! It was only a little goat. ”
“Yes, but it had the potential to be five times bigger,” Val said. “And it was a female. It could have given milk for many years.”
“Whose side are you on?”
Val took out his wallet and opened it to show them how poor he was. He had one hundred rials.
“Come on, think. What else have we got to offer them?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all! Jackie, I have to get the taxi to the border, even if I have to push it.”
I could see he was frightened. I wondered what had happened between Val and his father back in Tehran.
“I don’t suppose...”
“No! I’ve only got thirteen pounds to get me back to London.”
“I’m stuffed.”
“Don’t be so negative. We must have something they need.”
I’d seen the bus driver fingering Gertrude’s leather upholstery.
“Perhaps we could split the taxi with them,” I said.
Val looked at me like I was crazy.
“How can you share a car? That doesn’t make sense.”
“I stopped being sensible back in Istanbul,” I said. “We can offer them bits of it. They won’t take any notice of me, so you’ll have to do it. Show them the driver’s seat.”
Val was about to say something.
“Smile. Give them a sales pitch.”
Val looked at me like I was asking him to clean a toilet.
“Okay. Make it look like you’re ordering me to do the bartering.”
Val stood with his hands on his hips. “This is really stupid,” he said in a stern voice. He pointed to Gertrude. “Go and do the impossible, woman,” he said.
I went over and opened the driver’s side door. I pointed to the driver’s seat and ran my hands over the shiny brown leather. The goat herder made another incomprehensible hand gesture.
“I think I’ve got him interested,” I said.
Val laughed, but I wasn’t joking.
I opened one of the back doors and demonstrated how the two fold-down seats worked. I stroked the matching-leather door panels while Val told the doctor what excellent quality it was.
“Come on,” I said. “There’s five times more leather there than in one puny little goat!”
“We need something else to offer,” Val said. “They can’t accept the first price. It’s against their religion.”
I tried to pull the mattress out of the back. My chest hurt.
“Don’t just stand there, Val,” I said. “Give me a hand.”
He helped me pull the mattress out and I made him bounce on it to demonstrate its comfort.
“I don’t know what Iranian goat herders sleep on,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure it doesn’t have inner springs.”
I flapped the patchwork quilt in the air and lay it with a flourish on the mattress.
“You’re a natural at this,” Val said with a smile.
“I’ve just spent nine months selling clothes to women who already have more clothes than they know what to do with. I can sell thin, sleeveless dresses in the middle of an English winter.”
All the men had gathered around. They shook their heads, but I could tell they were enjoying the process.
I found some items that Dieter had left behind. I held up a jumper, some jeans, and a towel. The goat herders shook their heads.
“Whose are those?” Val asked.
“Long story. I’ll tell you later.”
“Do you know what these are?” I pulled out some spiky metal objects.
“Crampons,” Val said. “You strap them over your shoes and they stop you from slipping when you walk on ice.”
We were surrounded by a dusty landscape with the sun beating down on us.
“Okay, not a lot of use for them out here.”
I got out my suitcase. The men stared at it as if it was something someone had brought back from Mars. It did look weird. Those oversized orange and pink poppies looked bizarre in a world that was dull and drab and faded. When I was fifteen, I’d thought it was the most beautiful suitcase I’d ever seen. Now, it looked ridiculous, but at least I had their attention. I unzipped it and theatrically threw back the lid. Everyone gathered around to stare at its contents as if it contained treasures from a far off land. I suppose it did.
The women had come out to watch the bargaining. They were my last hope. There were my platform-soled shoes, my hotpants, my knitted hat, my hair dryer, my folding travel iron. It was like my life was laid bare before them. All my stupid, childish dreams lying out there in the glaring Iranian sun. My belongings had become redundant. Everything I had was completely useless to me, let alone a family of goat herders in the wilds of Iran.
The goat herder held up my grey hotpants. He muttered something.
“What’s he saying?” I asked Val. “That I’m an immoral infidel who’ll go straight to hell?”
“Something like that.”
The goat herder picked up the hair dryer, turned it around. He held it as if it was a gun and pressed the switch a few times. He let it dangle from its cord. The men discussed what such a thing might be used for, but came up with nothing. They had a look at the travel iron. I showed them how it unfolded. It was still a foreign object to them.
One of the women edged towards the suitcase. I could only see her eyes and her nose, but I think she was about sixteen. A small boy was grabbing onto her leg.
“Is that the goat herder’s wife?”
Val nodded.
She was looking at my make-up case. I undid the zip and opened it up. She took out the mascara. She had no use for that as her eyelashes were thick, black and about an inch long. I took out my perfume and showed her how to squirt it on her wrist. She didn’t like the smell. Then she picked up one of my lipsticks, took off the lid and wound it up and down. I don’t know how she knew to do that. It must be an instinct all girls are born with. The goat herde
r said something sharp and she put it back.
There was a piece of floral material poking out of the knot of clothes. The girl tugged at it like a magician pulling a coloured hankie from a hat. It was my Marks & Spencer’s nightie. She held it up. It was the most ordinary nightie you could imagine—pink nylon patterned with little blue flowers, lace around the neck and sleeves, a bit of thin pink ribbon tied in a bow at the neckline. I recognised the look in her eyes. I’d seen that look in girls’ eyes in Alice’s In-gear in Adelaide, in Konundrum in London. She was no different. She was looking at it like it was the most gorgeous piece of clothing in the world. She had to have it. I’m sure that’s what she said to her husband. He muttered something as he fingered the nylon fabric. I think he quite liked it himself. He nodded. He shook Val’s hand to seal the deal. In recompense for one dead goat—three leather car seats with matching door panels, one inner spring mattress (slightly used), one patchwork quilt and one Marks & Spencer’s nightgown. Done.
Twenty-six
Reverse
The goat herders were trying to rip out Gertrude’s seats using brute force, but it wasn’t working, so one of them was about to attack her with an axe.
“Hang on a minute!” I shouted. I opened the boot and found a tool kit. I took out a couple of screwdrivers and handed one to Val. “Make yourself useful,” I said.
We unscrewed the driver’s seat and then the two folding seats.
“Look I don’t want to be negative,” Val said. “You did an excellent job of bartering. But I now have a car with no driver’s seat that won’t go anyway. There is no possible way I can get my money back.”
“There might be.”
One side of the food box was smashed, but it could still serve as a seat. I positioned it in front of the steering wheel, climbed in and turned the key. Gertrude coughed. I pulled out the choke and turned the key again. The unmistakable sound of an engine turning over got everyone’s attention.