Diary – 21 January 2006

I have a strange aversion to white goods and have never been able to bring myself to buy a washing machine. Once a week, therefore, I take my clothes off to the washeteria and sit in a sort of trance, watching them blur round. The other day I fell into conversation with the lady who runs the laundrette with her husband. She is small, round, and in her late fifties, I would guess. Her hair is set just so, like Elizabeth Taylor’s, and she wears a pair of spectacles on a chain around her neck. Her husband is a placid man who stares out of the window, as if to a far-off horizon. He scarcely says a word; she rarely draws breath. I’ve never been able to place her accent, and it turns out that they are both Iranian. She told me about her life in Iran, before the revolution. Raising her hands in front of her, she said passionately, ‘When I think of my life before, I want to weep … when I think of what I used to have. My father …we had a house, a big house, and flats — many flats. My husband was a university professor…’ she shrugged and smoothed her skirt over her knees, ‘…so we had to run away. My family went to America — I have 55 cousins in Los Angeles. They are all richer than me now. But what can you do?’ She shook her head at me, saying sadly, ‘You never know what is in the pocket of the man who passes you on the street.’ Indeed not, I thought, as I looked at her husband, who sat staring out of the window at the grey street.

Standing in the queue for a cashpoint last week, in a decidedly unchatty mood, my telephone rang.