A Beginner's Guide to Acting English Read online

  Ali-Reza lit a cigarette for him and sat him down. Hadi was finally taking in the seriousness of his situation. 'There are thousands of people out there my friend,' said Ali-Reza. 'We have to get you out of here.'

  Their colleagues were preparing to take Hadi out of the building through a back door. Maheen pulled out a chador that she kept in the drawer of her desk.

  Even under these circumstances, Hadi was curious. Maheen, like most of the young women he knew, was very 'à. la mode', as they said, and he'd never seen her in a hejab let alone a chador.

  'Why do you keep that there?'

  She smiled and shrugged and said, 'For emergencies.'

  'Forget it, I'll go out just as I am and if they get me, they'll get me. At least I won't die dressed as a woman!'

  Hadi fought the urge to run wildly down the street screaming. It would attract too much attention. He allowed himself a brisk pace and soon reached Larezar Avenue. He thought about hailing a cab, but what if the cab driver was one of them? Every person he met along the way made him almost jump out of his skin. He expected everyone from the mother pushing a pram to the beggar sitting on the kerb to point and shout 'It's him! It's Khorsandi! I've found him! Let's kill him!'

  He was thankful at least for the crisp air clearing his head. A clear head, however, made the situation he was in even more surreal. This had been his revolution, the people's revolution. Who were these people saying he was an enemy to it? He was a revolutionary, and yet these thugs wanted him dead. They were fired up and looking to weed out everyone who didn't support the new regime. The rumours had not been exaggerated. Everything was upside down. Those young people who were chanting for his execution didn't know that he had done everything he could to fight for their freedom and now they had turned on him. As he walked along the busy avenue, he felt a pain in his chest. His heart was breaking.

  Hadi reached his flat. It felt more dangerous there than walking in the streets. It wouldn't be hard for anyone to find out where he lived. What would happen to his small children, happy and oblivious in London, if anything happened to him? The telephone rang. Hadi jumped out of his skin, then gave a little laugh of relief. It was ludicrous, to be terrified like this in his own home, in his own country. This fuss would die down, he thought as he went to the phone, he should just stay put and people will calm down and go on to the next thing and forget about him.

  It was Ali-Reza. 'You have to get out, Hadi,' he told him urgently. 'Get out of there. Go to your in-laws, I'll meet you there.'

  Paranoia and panic rose inside Hadi once more. He felt that the mob had followed him home on tiptoe and at any moment were going to burst into his home screaming 'Death to Khorsandi!' He only stopped to grab his passport and a parcel he had brought from London and went to Maman Shamsi's house. All the family had gathered to plan what to do. The news of the flash mob had reached them already.

  'Well, Hadi Jaan, they say there are three thousand people baying for your blood,' Baba Mokhtar said, patting him on the back and leading him into the spotless living room reserved for special occasions. This was indeed a special occasion; Baba's closest friends from the world of journalism came to see him. So had Madar Jaan. She was peeling oranges, dividing them into segments and passing them around. 'Is that all? Three thousand? I heard it was ten.'

  'I'm not sure,' Hadi said, sitting down and lighting his cigarette. 'I didn't have time to count, there may only have been two thousand eight hundred.'

  'You must leave Tehran, tonight,' Ali-Reza told him.

  'They are so strict at the border now, should he risk it?' Dr Lachinian was worried they would confiscate Baba's passport.

  'If they do that, he is done for.' Mr Jamshidi was a fellow poet and had had a few threats himself, though not on this scale.

  'My brother's father-in-law's cousin was a Communist and they took his passport when he tried to leave and took him straight to Evin. No one has heard from him since. His family have not even been allowed to know if he is alive or dead.'

  'It's all chaos, they won't know who you are, not yet, but you must go NOW!'

  Baba Mokhtar kept whisky locked in the cabinet of the special living room for just such an emergency. He poured a large shot for his shaken son-in-law and gratefully Hadi drank it in one go. He had sobered up from the afternoon drinking session and this was a welcome top-up.

  'No one is going to take you to Evin,' Baba Mokhtar announced. 'I will take you to the airport now and you can catch the next plane to London.'

  'Not the airport!' Mr Farmani said. 'They will arrest you for sure, or shoot you there on the spot. It's best we take you to Pakistan, cross the border there. My wife's second cousin is a shepherd around that region, he can supply you with a guide and a donkey.'

  'No donkeys!' Baba was buoyed by his father-in-law's confidence. 'I will go to my country's airport, buy a ticket and fly out on a plane. I don't need the help of barnyard animals.'

  Maman Shamsi packed him a small bag for the plane, a toothbrush, some hankies and some nuts and seeds. She packed one of Masood's shirts and socks, 'So you can be fresh when you arrive in London, and what is this parcel you have brought? It weighs a ton.'

  The parcel was for Nadia. She had sat, unnoticed on the floor in the corner of the room, quietly keeping an eye on the grown-ups. Nadia had got used to staying quiet and out of the way in a crisis. She had learned to be a mouse when Masood died, when all the adults were too busy crying and shouting to notice her.

  Baba called her to him and gave her the parcel. 'Just a little gift for my favourite sister-in-law.' It was a child's sewing machine. It was beautiful. Nadia could hardly believe her eyes and she gave a little laugh of surprise and glee. This was absolutely the best, most amazing present any little girl had ever been given and for a long time afterwards, she wished she'd managed to say more than a shy 'Thank you, Mr Khorsandi.'

  Shamsi and Mokhtar saw their son-in-law to the door with consoling words that they would see him soon, that all would be well before anyone knew it, but they knew they wouldn't see him, their eldest daughter and their little grandchildren for many years to come. They could feel that this was only the very beginning of the dark times ahead.

  I knew Baba was in trouble. I knew that Khomeini was not a goodie any more. He was like Darth Vader and Baba was Luke Skywalker.

  I spoke to Nadia on the phone.

  'Are you scared?' I asked her. I imagined the Ayatollah floating outside her house, waiting for her, waiting to 'get' her when she thought she was safe.

  'No. I love the Ayatollah, I love him very much, I kiss his feet, I'll give up my life for him, Enshallah.'

  Nadia didn't seem scared at all, she loved him. That was a relief.

  Maman got angry when Nadia said things like that though. 'Brainwashing! They're brainwashing!'

  How did someone wash someone else's brain? I wondered.

  'They make the children say that.' Mitra and my mother knew the truth. 'The teachers are all Hezbollah now, they ask the children "Do your mummy and daddy say nice things about the Ayatollah? You must tell the truth, your parents would want you to tell the truth."'

  'Next thing you know, the parents are taken in, sometimes shalagh – flogged – sometimes you just never hear from them again. Maybe they are taken to Evin, maybe ...' Mitra made a cutting motion on her neck with her finger.

  I had heard about Evin, it was a prison. The mullahs threw everyone who didn't agree with them in there. Politicians, writers, artists, actors, all sorts of different people.

  'Why don't people just not say anything bad? Then they won't be put in prison.'

  It seemed simple enough to me.

  Those who could were getting out of Iran.

  At the parties we went to there were new arrivals, each bringing with them more horror stories of what was going on in Iran.

  'The moral police spare no one,' one of these new arrivals said. 'Our neighbour was wearing the tiniest bit of lipstick to work and two female moral police came and gave
her tissues to wipe it off. She rubbed them on her face and began to scream. They'd soaked them in acid.'

  On everyone's lips were whispers of horrors they had seen and heard. Endless stories of acid and beatings. It was impossible to keep up with the list of people Baba had known of who were executed now because they'd worked for the Shah or they were against the new people. Absolutely any resistance against the new regime was met with ruthless punishment. I was very glad that we lived in Ealing.

  The mullahs, we found out very soon, were very strict. Every story that came out of Iran was of horror. 'They hung a fifteen-year-old girl for having a boyfriend,' Ida Khanoom told us over some chai. 'These people are ten times worse than the Shah! They are forcing women to wear hejab and even if the tiniest bit of hair is showing shalagh!' Ida slapped her hand on the table to simulate the noise of a flogging.

  I thought about Nina Seymour's paddling pool. Nina and her sisters paddled naked. Even though the Queen wouldn't execute me, I never paddled completely naked.

  According to who you listened to, there were between twenty and a hundred lashings for showing a strand of your hair in public. Two hundred for wearing make-up and if you were caught with a boy that wasn't a close blood relation, then 'God only knows what they will do to you,' said Ida, waggling her hands in the air.

  In Iran, according to various verbal accounts, you were not allowed to sing, dance or play music. You weren't allowed to drink alcohol, show your hair or legs or arms (if you were a woman), say anything against the government or the mullahs. What did people do then? All the Iranians we knew in London did all of these things.

  I needed to hear more about what was going on. 'Have they splashed acid in your face, Maman Shamsi?' I asked my grandmother, who occasionally wore a tiny smear of lipgloss.

  'What are you saying my child? No no no, they are very good, life is very good here. We can't wait for you to come back.'

  Maman told me I wasn't to ask questions like that again. 'You could get your grandmother in trouble, for goodness' sake.'

  'Are we going back to Iran, Maman?'

  'Not while the mullahs are there, no.'

  I wondered why the mullahs wouldn't like us. Maman had a lot of nice hats so I was sure she wouldn't mind wearing a hejab; she could take it off the minute she got into the house. Why did Baba insist on getting into trouble with the mullahs? All he had to do was stop writing jokes about them and apologise to the Ayatollah, then they would realise how nice we actually were and let us go back to Iran. Baba could be an accountant like Rebecca Thompson's dad. Baba was very good at maths although his working out was different to the way we did it at school.

  I thought about Nadia and all the other girls in Iran. I wasn't allowed to be an angel in the nativity play because Mrs Hitchcock said I was too dark, but that was nothing compared to what Nadia's life at school was like. They didn't even have nativity plays. How horrible. My cousin Bafi was a champion gymnast but now she had to stop doing that because they wouldn't let girls wear the gym kit they needed because it didn't cover up their bodies. When they went swimming in the Caspian Sea, the women had to go in the water with their clothes on and only use the special women's area that was far away from the part of the beach the men could use. I pictured the women in the sea, their chadors spreading out around them, making them look like giant black jellyfish.

  The policeman who shot Masood was brought before the court. Masood had been the first martyr in his neighbourhood. The little street he'd lived on where the women sat gossiping and sorting their herbs on their porches as their children played and fought was now renamed Delkhasteh Street. Soon, more and more street names were changed as more young men were shot.

  The off-duty policeman who had shot Masood in the back was tracked down and tried. Maman Shamsi went to the court to see her son's murderer. He had his own wife and mother there with him in court. His mother spat on the ground as Maman Shamsi took her seat. As the defence lawyers spoke, she learned that the off-duty policeman had a small son. 'Then how can you have killed my son?' She hadn't meant to say this out loud, she couldn't stop herself. She was standing up now, her heart burning as it thumped hard. 'How could you have killed my boy? How could you have looked into his beautiful eyes then killed him!'

  Baba Mokhtar rose to quieten her down. All the brothers kissed their mother and gently got her to sit again. The judge said he was sympathetic but could not have the court disrupted.

  The off-duty policeman was found guilty of first-degree murder. He faced hanging. He wept as his mother and wife screamed for mercy. His life lay in the hands of Maman Shamsi and Baba Mokhtar. Under Iranian law, if the family of a murder victim chose to declare that they forgave the murderer, he would be spared execution and serve a life sentence instead. Maman Shamsi and Baba Mokhtar were given time to decide what they wanted to do, but they did not need it. 'If I put another mother through what I am going through, I would never forgive myself. In any case, killing another woman's child will not bring my own child back.' Maman Shamsi and Baba Mokhtar forgave the policeman who killed Masood. Shamsi knew it was what her boy would have wanted.

  London seemed full of writers, actors, journalists and political activists who had run away from the Ayatollah. They were in danger like Baba had been and now they opened pizzerias and cafés in London, some drove taxis and everyone spent all their time together talking about Iran and what was happening there.

  'You must be careful, Hadi,' someone said at a party, 'they have eyes and ears everywhere. They will come for you if you show resistance, even here in London.'

  Maman often said that too, 'eyes and ears everywhere'. Could the Ayatollah hear us when Baba and his friends talked about how bad the new regime was? Did his secret people watch Peyvand and I when we wrapped our heads in towels and wrapped sheets around our bodies and pretended to be him, greeting the crowds the way we saw him do on the television. He had a very small wave, a bit like the Queen's. He raised his hand in the air and waved it very slightly. Peyvand could do it perfectly. I worried that news might reach him that we were doing this and he might come to get us. Maman assured me that he had no idea where we lived, but I still worried and told Peyvand to stop when he did his Ayatollah wave.

  Baba had become very quiet when he got back from Iran. He was sad and subdued and Maman said we were to leave him alone and not ask him any questions. So I just asked one.

  'Did they want to kill you, Baba?'

  We were alone in the living room; Maman had taken Peyvand to the dentist. Peyvand was always having to go to the dentist. His teeth were not strong like mine. Mine were like our great grandmother Aziz's teeth.

  Baba was at the dining table writing and smoking and I whispered my question so I didn't disturb him too much.

  Baba smiled in that quiet way when he was really lost in his writing but couldn't help wanting to talk to me. He took a long drag of his cigarette, held it in his lungs for ages then blew it over my head.

  'Maman was really scared,' I went on, 'and everybody kept saying that they hate you in Iran and that they are killing everyone who doesn't agree with them and you don't agree with them, do you, Baba?'

  'No, but we are in England, we are safe.'

  'But Baba, what if they come to England and find us here?'

  'Then,' Baba said, 'we'll pack some sandwiches and some drinks and we'll climb up a tree and hide until they've gone.'

  'What if they look up and see us in the trees?'

  'Stop worrying. If these people could look up, we wouldn't be in this mess. They can't see past the ends of their noses so they definitely won't see us.'

  People in Iran had wanted to hurt Baba. I didn't know why. I didn't want him to go back to Iran ever again. I didn't want any of us to go back, I wanted everyone in Iran to come to Ealing and live at Marcourt Lawns where people didn't chant in the street and threaten to kill you.

  Baba couldn't stay quiet and sad for long. There were arrangements to be made and besides, he wanted Peyvand and I to
see that everything was normal. Now, when they had dinner with friends, the talk was of Iran, the Revolution, who had heard what, and they discussed one another's status in Britain. A few, mostly those of our friends with English spouses, had British passports. The rest had resident work permits and kept businesses in Iran and still went back and forth. Some of these friends, gently, politely disengaged from Baba's circle. It would not be good for their business in Iran if they were known to socialise with such a high-profile dissident.

  Baba and Maman applied for refugee status.

  That meant that the Queen and Margaret Thatcher were going to let us stay in England and hide until things got better in Iran. We were definitely going back. Baba and everyone else was sure that the extremism of the mullahs would not last and eventually we'd all go home.

  ASGHAR AGHA

  Because the Ayatollah didn't like Baba, none of the Iranian newspapers would print his poems any more. They stayed on the dining-room table and only our friends got to hear them. Baba had written a poem about the guards who stopped people in the streets in Iran and asked them the nightly password before they let them go on their way. 'I'm just going to buy bread,' the man in the poem kept saying, but the guards wouldn't let him pass because he didn't know the new password. They bully and insult him and all he wanted was to buy his babari.

  Baba knew that Iranian people wanted to hear his poem.

  'Since I am in exile, I will publish now on my own terms. No editor will ever censor me again.'

  Baba started his own magazine in London.

  'Is that wise, Hadi? Don't you think you should wait until things calm down?'

  Baba took no notice of warnings, he covered our dining-room table with poems and articles for his magazine.

  The clock on the mantel

  Tick tick tick tick

  The baby bird in the tree

  Chick chick chick chick

  I am a poet and will not be silenced! Bring me my pen!

  Bic bic bic bic!