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.