I learned about grandma’s, or Nanni, passing away whilst performing Hassan Abdulrazak’s terrific and timely play, Baghdad Wedding at Belvoir St. Theatre Company, Sydney.
My first character’s stage time had been exhausted and I was to get changed into my second character’s costume backstage.
Whenever I do a show, I make a point of letting my phone go astray, silently. I view reaching for phones on set and on stage as distracting as inviting an attractive ex to your wedding. This particular night however, and I don’t know why, I began a search for my phone. I combed my ultra-messy makeup desk like a wild hyena. I did all this for no reason other than an automatic, autonomic feeling. Without a skerrick of dramatic twists and turns, and quite anticlimactically, I found my phone next to my unwashed coffee mug. Unwashed since last week’s show maybe. Or before. Who knows. Most important was that I now only drank real coffee, without the compulsory four sugars. I’d cut down to a healthy three, losing my Arab status and peer respect in the process.
–“On in 5,” announced the assistant stage manager, as efficient as my phone rescue mission. “Don’t forget to take the gun tonight.”
I never, ever forgot my prop. Naturally, my ire was raised to an above-natural level. But she was doing her job. I pretended not to hear the second part of her command and instead stared at my phone for two whole breaths. I didn’t like that I had succumbed to my phone. I got annoyed with myself, which wasn’t anything new. Except that it got annoying consistently getting annoyed at myself. I went to put the phone back on the table, already judging myself for being so unprofessional, and had in fact sentenced myself to a form of banishment I was going to come up with after the show. How dare I break my own rules? Maybe I’ll forgo the conviviality downstairs as punishment? Maybe something more severe, like– then a missed call and voicemail from my cousin Musty widened my iris. (Those who have read my memoir will intimately know about our Iranian exploits during our ephebic years, including getting arrested and bashed up by the military police – all for trying to chat up hijab-clad girls outside the grand mosque).
Why had he called me? He and I had both been married, so it was obviously not about girls. Maybe he was coming down from Queensland to surprise me, as he often did? And as he often did, he would call in advance to announce his surprise. In fairness, this was largely because he was aware of the fickle nature of my work and that I mightn’t be in Melbourne, as was the case this time. Or the excitement got the better of him. I really don’t know. Most critically, he never left a voicemail. Ever. He either called again or waited for me to call him back within a period of two-six weeks.
I pressed play to let the voicemail play and it played.
–“You’re on in 2.” Ordered softly the ASM.
I listened to Musty’s coarse voice. He sounded like a scourer scraping a sink, only with emotion. It was the shortest of messages. Well, the shortest possible that could herald such ruinous news .
–“Os, Nanni is with dad.”
My heart sank kilometres deep. I felt it because my legs suddenly weighed a good Jupiter. I zoned out inside a halo of shock. A flock of thoughts flitted through my mind. All at once:
- Do I still know my lines for the next scene?
- I don’t think so.
- I have to be on stage really soon.
- Who gives a shit about your fucking lines?
- ‘Your’, you mean ‘my’.
- Shut the fuck up asshole.
- I just called myself an asshole.
- That, I can be.
- People have paid good money.
- Some of them come from the burbs. Think of the effort deployed: the babysitter, the taxi fare, the stress of choosing the right dress, the stress that bestows upon a partner.
- I vow to wash my coffee mug from here on, not fearing the mould, but because I want to maintain a certain image in front of my fellow cast mates.
- Woohoo! I still know my lines.
- Who cares. Grandma just died.
- Grandma died?
- Yeah, my uncle is dead and if she had joined him, then that must equal = she was dead.
- Did I just visualise the = sign as I thought of the word equal?
- Equal is also the name of a natural sweetener and an alternative to sugar. Pfftt, only if I was a sissy middle class white boy.
- Is that linoleum under my feet?
- I’ve turned into Homer Simpson.
- What’s the time?
- Why do I care about the time? Nanni’s gone.
- No. Nanni’s really gone. No one will ever call me Oocha anymore.
- I spoke to her last week. I’m so glad and sad that I did.
- I will miss her so much.
I collapsed, breaking down in tears. I told the guys what happened, in less words than Musty’s message. The poor assistant manger finally and with some trepidation whispered: “You were supposed to be on… before now.”
I disconnected myself from the situation, grabbed my weapon and galloped onto the stage, trying to cover my late arse by laughing louder than directed and improvising a dance. I must have looked like a monkey pirouetting whilst brandishing an AK-47.
I disconnected, except even when you remove a chord from the power line, electricity still runs at the port. And my mind was still running. Sometimes trotting. Sometimes stopping. But mainly running.
The scene involved my commander and a comrade (played by two great guys Robert Mammone and Tahki Saul respectively) holding the hero hostage in an Iraqi hamlet. At one stage in the scene (pun), I roughen up the wounded captive and whisper something nasty an inch away from his jaw and earlobe. Knowing the lead, Ben Winspear, was a super-solid, super-stolid actor, I would choose a different joke to murmur in his skull every night. It was a dangerous, perhaps callous exercise, but the danger rendered that stolen moment of theatre very alive. But tonight, my Nanni was no longer alive. I managed to only whisper silence into Ben’s ear. He reacted, like every night, with a straight face.
Immediately after the show, cast members, bless each and every one of their generous hearts, rallied around and comforted my melting spirit, though at one stage I heard someone say: “She was 85? That’s a decent innings.” That pissed me off.
Despite initially being dithered and dazed, I took the curtain call. I didn’t hear the applause, only Nanni’s voice. She was smiling, her false teeth on display, beckoning me with her frail, warm hands. The funny thing is, she wasn’t saying anything at all. Everything was mute. I was making up her voice in my sequestered mind, replenishing and re-replenishing her calling me Oocha.
I did the first bow. During the curt audience worship, I recollected a meadow’s worth of memories: her beyond-delicious vine-leaf dolmatis and preserved pickles; her love for my dad; her abundant love for her grandchildren; her smoking, which was on par with my rusty old Datsun; her permanently hennaed hair; her avocado-green wrist tattoo, spelling the only thing she could read: her name; her always-anchored black foota (a fabric covering the hair); her short temper, especially when we made cake and a ruckus in the kitchen; her blithe soul, especially when we made cake and a ruckus in the kitchen; her moroseness when her son, my beloved uncle, passed away in his early forties years earlier; her praying five times a day, every day, but never forcing us kids to do so.
Most of all, I remembered a strong woman who had to raise a football-squad-sized family after fleeing tyranny in her motherland Iraq to Iran, all during a merciless eight–year war, whilst her sons and son-in-laws were out in the battle field; a masthead guiding her ship through the most irate storms with fecund resourcefulness and flower-delicate care.
And as I bowed the second time, I knew I was bowing to her. My gut knew it. My being knew it. I was saluting her for raising me and helping me rise. And using my childhood photo album as conclusive evidence, I was bowing to her soul for the myriad number of nappy changes and showers and nappy changes and showers she repeated each and every night, on the true and only stage, without receiving applause or any compensation other than having me giggle at her false teeth each time they slid out of her mouth mid shouting at me: “OOCHAAAAA!”
Happy international women’s day, Nanni. Say hello to uncle and dad for me.
