Life Goes On. Hadi Khojinian

Hammering woke me—then the whine of a saw cutting through plaster. For one panicked heartbeat, I thought it was gunfire. My pulse thumped in my throat, skin prickling with the old terror. Then memory settled like dust: this wasn’t there. This was the island—my stubborn patch of quiet green wedged between council estates and the Thames estuary, where I’d promised myself a second go.

I lay still, breath ragged, staring at the ceiling crack that mapped the shape of Iran. Twenty-one years since I’d left. The prison gates had spat me out onto a Tehran pavement long ago, half-dead. The dreams still came—less often now, but sharp as broken glass when they did.

I sat up, rubbed my face. Salt air mingled with yesterday’s coffee grounds, the faint musk of Miss Michigan the cat asleep on the armchair. Light leaked round the thin curtains—soft, forgiving morning light that belonged to nobody’s war.

Window open, a breeze slipped in, carrying the tang of wet grass and diesel. Across the road, on the lamppost opposite, perched a small Persian bird—bronze feathers catching the low sun like a struck match. I knew him from yesterday. He’d been dazed then, wing drooping, after flying into my pane. I’d coaxed him round with water and seed. Now he looked steadier. I waved. He cocked his head, then fluttered over—light as a whisper on my shoulder.

“Glad to see you,” I murmured. “You’re looking better.”

He turned, beak glinting. “Better, yes—though last night…” His voice was half-song, half-sigh, the words forming clear in the air between us. “I dreamt I was trapped in a body bag. No air, nothing but pressure closing in. I pecked and pecked till the plastic tore—only to find a man standing outside, gun raised for the kill shot. Cold barrel against my head. I woke shrieking. Miss Michigan the cat sat beside me on the sill. He opened the window, let fresh air flood in. I felt my wings ache for flight. Flew out. Perched here. It was only a dream—but can you ever shake them off?”

I took a slow breath, tasting salt and memory. “No,” I said quietly. “Not fully. Twenty-one years since Iran, and I still taste the walls some nights—the damp rot, the screams echoing off concrete. You don’t erase it. You learn to live alongside. Mornings like this. Small things. Coffee. Bread. A name called softly. It keeps you afloat.”

He tilted his head, black eyes weighing my words like stones in a sling. I could see the questions forming—prison? what kind?—but he let them hang. Instead, he rustled his feathers and hopped onto the table.

I followed him through to the kitchen. Miss Michigan stirred—a grey ghost uncoiling from his armchair, tail pluming like cigarette smoke. He padded ahead, knowing the ritual: two coffees black, croissants from the bakery on the high street. The ones with flakes that stuck to your fingers.

We sat by the window as he worked. Outside, the building site thrummed—men shouting over drills, the skeletal frame of a new block going up next door. Progress, they called it. To me it just sounded like the world refusing to stay quiet.

My mind drifted. Prison wasn’t one place but many—first Evin, with its numbered cells and blindfolds. Then the transit camps. Then the black hole they called solitary when they wanted to sound civilised. Sixty-three days once. No light. No names. Just the drip of water somewhere, and my own voice cracking as I recited Hafez to stay sane. The rose blooms behind a hundred veils… I’d got the lines wrong half the time, but it was better than silence.

Release came sudden—a guard shoving papers at me, a door clanging open to grey sky. No apology. No explanation. Just Tehran sprawling hungry around me, and a one-way ticket to nowhere. I washed up here eventually—Eastleigh first, then this rented end-terrace on the island. Mehri Publications started as a kitchen table dream: Persian stories in English, for people like me who lived split between worlds. Now we had three titles out, Waterstones stocking us, even a table at the London Book Fair last autumn. Small victories. Enough to pay the rent.

The bird pecked at a croissant crumb. “What was it like?” he asked suddenly. “The prison.”

I paused, cup halfway to my lips. “Cold,” I said at last. “And endless. But you find ways. You count cracks in the wall. You trade jokes with the man next door through the pipe. You dream of ordinary things—bread fresh from the oven, a hand that doesn’t flinch when it touches you. And when you get out, those dreams turn real. Slowly.”

Miss Michigan slid the coffees across—steam curling like genie smoke. He sat between us, purring as I scratched his ear. The bird sipped at a saucer of water I’d poured. No one spoke. The building sounds softened into rhythm—steady, human, alive.

Sunlight crept across the table, gilding the flakes of pastry. The bird stretched his wings, bronze catching fire. I lifted my cup, felt its warmth seep into my palms, and let the silence ripen.

Outside, a workman shouted something about level, and laughter followed. I smiled. The bird met my eyes. We both knew: some scars stay. But mornings like this? They stitch you back

enough to keep going.

Life goes on. It always does.