My Iranian Friend

I
The Shah, Americans and journalists,
like the Communists, feared or bet on
old-fashioned Marxist revolution;
only the post-modern Ayatollahs
knew what was coming; they were.
The world would never be the same.

He’d been lucky not to be busted.
Militant comrades never left clink,
tortured for several hours, every day.
After a week or so they’d be dead;
not a lot to look forward to.

If you have a Communist family,
it’s best they’re flush; he survived.
His comrades’ weren’t; and they died.

II
How very embarrassing to say goodbye
to mum and dad who are shelling out
on long-odds bets to save your life.

The people smuggler professes altruism,
but comes on like an ogre ‘cos he’s scared.
He crams four lads behind the driver
of each MZ heavy-metal Valkyrie,
for a bum-thudding, dust-raising ride.

A noisy, smelly moto is no flying carpet
to Baluchistan’s pristine middle-ages;
a hippie trail with no hippies.

A luminous landscape is not enough.
Despair can blossom under angry sun.
At last, a draft arrives over overheated wires
and hope can fold into his wallet as cash.

III
His eager English twangs American.
He laughs about his Armenian conk
when students ask “are you Jewish?”
Considers Mosaddegh with respect
and BP’s stinking oil with loathing.
The fatwa doesn’t surprise him;
blasphemy is better than a poke in the eye.
He roots for chador-chucking women
and wishes them luck. They need it.
New films and music rile learned clerics
while petrol pays for Tehran’s holy louts.
Riding a bike in LA gives him cold sweats.

IV
Forty years on, he’s looking after
his mum and dad in Glenville,
Los Angeles. They feel more at home
than he does in teeming, glitzy diaspora.
Exiles still jabber in Yanky Farsi. Nostalgia
is rampant for Mohammed Reza Shah.
Communism is dead but anti-communism
needs it as capitalism’s fall-back bogey man.
He loves ancient Persian poems but so do
Qom’s hanging Ayatollahs, muttering
favourite verses while caressing
pampered Persian pussies’ luxuriant fur.