A Beginner's Guide to Acting English Page 19

  Stories of bombings circulated continually among the Iranians in London. A friend of a friend was buying last-minute supplies for her son's seventh birthday. While she was out, a bomb hit her house and her son, her daughter, her husband, her mother and father, two brothers and her sister were wiped out. Her entire family gone.

  Every day young boys and men died at the front. Everyone was losing someone. We were at the home of a young Iranian friend, Arianne, who was studying in Britain when she got a call to say her father had been hit by shrapnel and had died instantly.

  Those who could afford it got their sons out to Europe and America to avoid the army. London seemed to become full of young men and boys sent over to live with friends and relatives or boarding school if their parents were rich.

  Maman Shamsi's voice was strained when we talked to her on the telephone. She had already lost one boy. Now she lived in daily terror of losing the others. They were all sent to the front.

  On the news, we saw the war every day. I spoke to Nadia on the phone. 'What's the war like?'

  'They drop bombs and we go into the shelters,' she'd tell me.

  'Is it scary?'

  'Only when they hit something nearby. Our neighbours in the next street got hit the other day.'

  'What are you eating?' I could hear her chewing.

  'Poffak namaki! A whole bag! Baba queued for three hours for it.' I loved poffak namaki – they had cheesy puff crisps in London, but they weren't quite the same.

  These phone calls home to the family were a big deal. If Maman got through, there would be shouting for the next ten or fifteen minutes. 'ALLO? ALLO? MAMAN? IT'S FATI!' The line was so bad it felt as if you had to shout to Tehran itself. Once they had established that both could hear each other, the roll call began: 'How is Baba? Mehrdad? Taghi? Essi? Mehdi? Nadia?' Each niece and nephew and brother and sister-in-law was asked after. Some were often there when we called and would come to the phone for a few seconds, everyone desperate to hear one another's voice but also desperately aware of what the call was costing. 'WE ARE FINE!' Maman shouted. 'Peyvand is fine, Shaparak is fine, Hadi is fine, ghorboonet beram.'

  Once Maman had established that everyone our end was fine and that she would die for all of them, she'd call to me and Peyvand: 'BACHEHA! IRAN! MAMAN SHAMSI IS ON THE PHONE!'

  Peyvand and I would drop everything and run to the phone. Our excitement in speaking to our relatives did not improve our telecommunication skills. We were very chatty children, sometimes you couldn't shut me up. But being faced with the plastic mouthpiece of a telephone to talk to a disembodied voice, even that of our beloved grandparents, left us struggling to find anything at all to say.

  'What is the time in Iran?' This was usually the first thing Peyvand asked, which was annoying because it narrowed down what I could ask. We were very impressed that different time zones existed. Peyvand of course, being older, understood how it all worked, but although Baba tried to explain how it all worked to me, I didn't understand and knew that I never would. There were some things that just happened by magic and it was best to just leave them be instead of trying to explain and understand things the whole time.

  Talking to my grandmothers was always the same: Maman Shamsi told us again and again that she loved us, Madar Jaan told us again and again to be good. Peyvand and I found out what the time was there and what the weather was like and what they were having for dinner. They sounded so far away.

  Not long into the Iran-Iraq war, I was telling Maman Shamsi about our school rabbit, Peter, when I heard a very loud, high-pitched sound, like a fire-engine siren but louder, much louder. 'What's that noise, Maman Shamsi?' I shouted.

  'Nothing, azizam, it's just an air-raid siren.'

  'Are they bombing you, Maman Shamsi?' My mother was trying to wrench the phone off me, but I wouldn't let her. 'Maman Shamsi?' I shouted down the phone.

  Maman Shamsi shouted, 'I have to go. Hang up the phone, tell your mother not to worry, this happens all the time, it's nothing, it's nothing.'

  Then the phone went dead. Maman couldn't get in touch again for three days. 'The phones are down in the whole neighbourhood. It's nothing, it happens, they'll be up again soon.'

  When the phone lines were down like this, Maman and Baba were very quiet. They didn't really go out, except perhaps to have a cup of tea with a friend. They didn't fight with each other; they were really nice and patient and didn't snap at each other. They cuddled and spoke in whispers. It was very peaceful in our flat when Tehran was being bombed.

  Then the phones came back on. Maman Shamsi's district had been hit. Saddam's bombs had destroyed half the street. The house with big orange gates, though, was untouched. Amin's house was hit before they had made it to a shelter. Amin – the big boy in the street who had made fun of my shoes – and his whole family were gone. I didn't know that children died in wars. It was the first time I realised that children were dying there while Peyvand and I played with our friends in London.

  Soon after this bombing, we heard that Dayee Mehrdad had been captured at the front by Saddam Hussein's army.

  'What will Saddam do to him?' I asked Maman.

  Saddam Hussein wasn't a mullah, but he was still very scary and had a moustache.

  'Nothing, he won't do anything to Mehrdad, they'll just keep him for a while then let him go.' Maman was trying to make out everything was all right, but if it was, then why was she always on the phone to Maman Shamsi, telling her to be strong and why did she get off the phone pale and distant? She went into the bathroom after the calls to Iran and always came out with red eyes and a red nose, but never admitted she'd been crying.

  Baba put his arms around Maman and kissed her and stroked her hair and told her not to think bad things.

  'Who is dying more? Iranians or Iraqis?' I asked Baba.

  'Does it make a difference?' Baba said.

  'Well, we are on Iran's side, I want more Iraqis to die than us.'

  'Did you know,' Baba told me, in his very nice voice, in the voice he used when he wanted me to listen very carefully to what he was saying and talking to me almost as if I was a grown-up, 'did you know that in Iraq, there is a little girl about your age, with an older brother who she plays with. She has a baba who is ugly like me,' he pulled a face and made me giggle, then continued, 'and she has a maman who is a great cook and looks after them all. She loves to tell jokes and act out stories. You don't want that little girl hurt, do you?'

  I didn't think of Iraqis as little girls. I thought of them as bearded men who sat in planes and bombed Iran. Of course I didn't want the little girl hurt.

  There was no word from Dayee Mehrdad for days, and then weeks, and then months. 'He's just a boy, he's just a child,' Maman kept saying when she thought about it, which was all of the time.

  I spoke to Maman Shamsi. 'Where are Uncle Mahmood and Uncle Mehdi, can I talk to them?' I had so many uncles that Mehrdad's disappearance didn't give me a shortage of them to sing songs to down the phone.

  'They're not here, azizam, they're at the front, they'll be home soon, though.'

  'What are they doing at the front?'

  'Tap dancing,' Peyvand said, rolling his eyes and shaking his head in disappointment. If I were a brother not a sister, if I weren't a stupid girl, I'd know all about war.

  Mehrdad was not the youngest of the prisoners. Some were fourteen and looked even younger. He could hear his captors as he sat in the army truck going along the bumpy road, but he couldn't see them. He was bound and blindfolded.

  Mehrdad thought of his mother the most, then the rest of the family all at once. Mehdi and Mahmood had been at the front. Had they been captured too? Some of the Iraqis spoke a little Farsi but not many and not much.

  He was taken to a small room, a cell, and the only place to sit was on the floor. They didn't always bring food and they didn't always think of his toiletry requirements so the stench in the room became unbearable.

  Once every couple of weeks or so, they stripped the pri
soners naked, hosed them down and gave them clean clothes to wear afterwards.

  'I need to namaz,' one young soldier told the guards.

  'Do it in your head,' came the gruff reply.

  They were beaten, often. Unable to see, Mehrdad just felt the boots in his ribs, his back and his face. He was hauled up, and his face put in a bowl of water to drink like a dog but all he could taste was blood. As his head swam, he heard his brothers' voices. They were strong and consoled him. 'Baradar, ghavee bash' – be strong, brother. The voices soothed him at first them drove him mad when the reality that they were not here with him slapped him in his face. Dehydration and hunger were driving him insane. If only he could sleep. They would not let him sleep. Just as the comfort of sleep was about to absorb him, water was poured on his head, or a heavy boot hit his shoulder or a voice screamed in his ear.

  Mehrdad lost count of the days, the weeks and the months. Three times they told him he was going to die by firing squad. Three times they dragged him and the other boys to the yard, lined them up against the wall and they heard the captain shout 'Aim!' There was a clunk of at least ten big guns then a warm stream of liquid ran down Mehrdad's leg. 'Fire!' Mehrdad flinched. In that split second he saw his brother Masood's face, Masood who was taken from them in the Revolution. Masood was telling him to be brave as the bullets flew towards his chest.

  He was on the ground. Was he dead? Was this death? Here where he could taste dirt and blood in his mouth? He heard laughter. His palms were flat on the ground and his sweat left handprints as they dragged him back to the cells. They had fired the guns in the air. This wasn't death, they were still in hell.

  After six months, the Iraqi army released Mehrdad and sent him back to Maman Shamsi.

  'I didn't recognise him at the hospital,' she whispered to Maman on the phone, her voice hoarse from crying. 'He looked like a skeleton.'

  Maman recounted the conversation to Baba. 'A child, Hadi, he's just a child and my mother said he looked like a skeleton.'

  'Who looked like a skeleton?' I asked

  'Nobody, azizam,' Baba said and put his arm around Maman, who sat at the living-room table. She was crying but trying to pretend she wasn't. She clutched a handkerchief in her hand and kept dabbing at her nose even though there was nothing on it. 'She said they tortured him and now his hair is all white, completely white, like my father's ...' Now she started sobbing; she put her head on her arms down on the table and sobbed.

  Baba sat next to her and put his arm around her and put his head near hers and they sat like that for ages. I left the room. I never knew what to do when Maman was crying.

  Peyvand and I went into our room. 'Why has Dayee Mehrdad's hair gone white?' I asked Peyvand.

  Peyvand shut the door of our room and said, 'Because they tortured him.'

  'But you torture me and my hair's not white.'

  'He had proper torture, not just Chinese burns and stuff.'

  Peyvand knew lots of things that I didn't know. I didn't even know how grown-ups tortured one another.

  'What did they do to him?'

  Peyvand shrugged and started practising 'London's Burning' on his recorder. I got out my recorder too and we did 'London's Burning' in rounds and I went through the song three times without making a single mistake.

  MADELEY ROAD

  The Ayatollah took Baba's job away and all the money Baba had in Tehran. The Ayatollah did not like Baba. I knew that if he just came to Ealing and spoke to Baba, he would like him. Everyone loved Baba! He made everyone laugh and all the Iranians we knew talked about how good his poems were.

  When he was at home, Baba sat at the living-room table, writing and smoking. He jiggled his foot up and down under the table. This is what he did when he was thinking. I very quietly went over to the table and sat beside him. I couldn't just go up to Baba when he was writing, I had to approach him slowly, just like when there was a cat in the garden. I would have to call it very softly and tiptoe very carefully up to it so I would have a chance of stroking it before it ran away. Baba breathed his cigarette smoke in very deeply. He kept it in his chest before he blew it out. I watched and waited for the smoke to come out. Sometimes he kept it in there for so long that it didn't come out at all.

  I often stood in front of the television and watched the Ayatollah on the news. He never smiled. He might not always have been so stern, but his eyebrows were thick and bushy so he always looked angry. He got what he wanted, he got to be the leader of Iran, why had that not made him happy?

  Baba had to sell our flat in Marcourt Lawns. We had to move to a rented flat. Madeley Road was just off the bottom of Hanger Lane, really near Ealing Broadway. The road was a long row of Victorian houses. Our house, number 65, was divided into six flats.

  Mr Canning drove all our things from Marcourt Lawns for us in his van. Betty had cried as she hugged Peyvand and me goodbye. 'Don't be strangers, darlings, your Auntie Betty will be missing you.'

  I wasn't going to be a stranger, we were always being told never to speak to strangers, that they were dangerous, so I didn't know why Betty was worried that we'd suddenly become strangers ourselves.

  There were only two bedrooms so Peyvand and I had to share again but I didn't care, I had always shared with Peyvand and ghosts meant that it was best I didn't sleep on my own.

  The new house had brown carpets all the way up the hall and through our flat. I was the first to notice that if you walked barefoot on them, after a while your feet would go black.

  'Is this what it has come to, Hadi? Look at the children's feet! We might as well be living in a stable!'

  Maman filled a bucket of water up with hot soapy water and spent several days scrubbing at the carpet.

  Some people didn't believe me when I told them the house talked to me. So I stopped telling them. The house knew us, the house knew that the Ayatollah had taken Baba's job away so he couldn't make money any more, the house understood that we needed looking after and that it was not to let any harm come to us.

  The house loved us more than any of the other tenants. Our landlord was Iranian, Mr Yousefian. Whenever he came round to collect the rent he had chai with Baba and they talked about Iran and poetry and politics. They never spoke about the carpets.

  As Maman and Baba unpacked on our first day there, Peyvand and I went to explore. 'Everyone can use the garden,' Mr Yousefian told us so that's where Peyvand and I went first. You had to go around the front of the house then through the garage. The wooden black garage doors were kept shut by a piece of concrete pushed against them.

  'Look! It's the tramps that have moved in next door!'

  That was the first thing Kerry Tyler ever said to us. She didn't know me, but I knew her. She was older than us, about ten years old. She was skinny and tall and had dead straight dark brown hair. Her face was much meaner than Rebecca Thompson's. It was all pointy like a triangle, her lips were thin and straight. She stood with her arms crossed smiling a horrible smile. She had her Montpelier School uniform on. She was one of the fourth-year girls who prowled the school looking for one of the little ones who had strayed from the pack. It was rumoured that her gang had popped a third-year girl's bag of tadpoles open once as she took them home from school. Kerry Tyler showed no mercy to any child or tadpole and she was living next door.

  The wall separating our house from Kerry's was low but got higher as it reached the garage. Peyvand ignored Kerry and climbed on to the wall. 'C'mon, Shap.' He jerked his head so I got on the wall too. We climbed up to the higher parts towards the garage roof. Kerry Tyler picked up some stones and threw them at us. A small one hit my leg. In a second though, Peyvand and I were on the garage roof. Peyvand put his fingers to his lips and motioned for me to move across the roof to the wall of our house. Kerry couldn't see us there.

  'Hey tramps! Or are you monkeys? Jake, Jake! Come and see the monkeys next door.'

  Jake was Kerry's little brother. He was very small and sweet and in the class below me at school. Jake joined
his sister outside. 'Where? Where are the monkeys?'

  'They're not real monkeys, you idiot,' we heard Kerry say. 'It's two Paki kids from school, they're hiding on their roof cos they're CHICKENS! CHICK CHICK CHICK CHICK CHICKENS!'

  Kerry and Jake both started to make chicken noises.

  I stayed still with my back to the wall.

  'Look for missiles,' Peyvand whispered.

  We picked up bits of moss that had grown on the roof and threw them in the direction of the chicken noises. They were light; mine didn't even make it off the roof. Kerry and Jake had found their own missiles; a great big rotten apple hit my head, it hurt and I threw it back but missed. On the edge of the roof there was an old bucket. It must've been there for ages, it was full of murky water and long dead autumn leaves. I recoiled in horror when a slug that had been inching up the inside fell back into the water with a 'plop' and Peyvand poked it with a twig. Slugs were disgusting because they didn't have nice shells like snails did, they were just sticky lumps of goo. Peyvand picked up the bucket and carried it to the edge where Kerry and Jake were still finding missiles and throwing them at us. We peered over the edge. My head spun for a moment, we were very high up. Kerry was bending over, picking up a stone. Peyvand tipped the bucket out. She got up just in time for the filthy water to get her all over her head. She screamed.

  Peyvand and I had to run; we went to the garden end of the roof and climbed down a drainpipe to the ground. We ran to the end of the garden through long grass up to our waists until we reached another section of the garden thick with brambles.

  We stopped for a moment catching our breath. My heart was pounding from the run and the excitement. 'Did the slug hit her? Did it? Did it?' I whispered.