A Beginner's Guide to Acting English Read online

Page 4


  Mokhtar and his father moved from Russia back to Iran. Taghi got a job on a cargo ship that travelled back and forth from Russia. Mokhtar went with his father on the ships. The crew were mostly burly Russian men who wrestled with the boy to toughen him up. For a long time Mokhtar spoke Russian better than Persian. When they weren't on a ship, when Taghi was between jobs, they rented a little room and Taghi did whatever odd jobs he could find and kept the money in a large glass jar by their bed.

  When he could not rouse his father one morning, Mokhtar did not suspect his father had died. Mokhtar was only thirteen years old and so his father could not be dead. Taghi lay cold on the bedding they shared in the little room they rented. That night, Mokhtar cuddled up to his father, hoping that once the night passed and the morning came, he would wake up and together they would go in search of work. But he could not, and they did not. For two more days and nights he lay next to his father, stroking his hair and wetting his brow, talking to him, trying to persuade him to come back.

  Mokhtar did not tell any of the neighbours what had happened. They would say, 'Well, he's only a boy,' and steal his money. So on the third day he bought bread as usual then packed a small bag, kissed his father's hand, took the jar of money and left the little room. His plan was simple. He would find his mother, who would be delighted as he now had a jar full of money to look after her. For ten days he travelled by himself and eventually found the village he was from. He found his mother. Mahpareh had married again and had other children now. Mokhtar lived with them for a very short time. He hated seeing his mother with a man who wasn't his father, a man who had children with her, children who had taken his place in her affection. She tried to be a mother again to him, but it was too difficult. She did not protest or try and change his mind when he left to stay with his father's relatives in the village. He gave them his jar of money and they let him live with them until the day he was old enough to join the army.

  The Kurds in Sanandaj had waged a long, bitter war to get independence from Iran. Mokhtar was a fearless soldier. He fought the Kurds and his instinct was to put himself in the firing line to protect fellow soldiers. For this he was the most respected member of his battalion. When Morteza, his closest friend, was badly injured in enemy fire, it was Mokhtar who risked his own life to retrieve his friend's bloody body from the battlefield and deliver him to the army doctors.

  Baba Mokhtar personally saw Morteza back to his mother in Tehran. The family were so grateful to Mokhtar for the safe return of their boy that they offered one of their women to him. Baba Mokhtar had a choice of women of marrying age and all the sisters and cousins they showed him were beautiful and sweet. Mokhtar made his mind up as soon as he saw Shamsi. 'She is the one I want,' he declared, 'the pretty chubby one.' Shamsi was not yet thirteen.

  When she was grown, Shamsi refused to see any suitors for her daughters until they themselves wanted to get married. When the baker and his son came to the door to ask for Fatemeh's hand when she was only thirteen, Shamsi chased them away with her broom.

  She told her neighbours, 'Both my daughters are as pretty as I was when I was young; I won't let it be a curse for them as it was for me.'

  After breakfast, I left the grown-ups to conversations I didn't understand and went off to tell the cockerel living in our yard that we were going to London. He let me stroke his rubbery crown as he ate the bits of bread I'd brought him. 'Don't touch the chicken, child! It's dirty!' Tahereh, the housemaid, was stacking the breakfast things up in the kitchen ready to wash.

  Tahereh lived with her baby daughter in the two rooms next to the kitchen across Maman Shamsi's yard. Her husband had been a windscreen washer, working on the busy streets in Tehran. He was killed by a van at work one morning so Tahereh found domestic work that also gave a roof over her and the baby's head. In Iran, you don't have to be rich to have a maid. Everyone has one; even some maids have maids, though Tahereh didn't. Her baby, tied in a sling across her back, began to fuss so Tahereh took her away into their room to feed her. Sometimes she let me help her with the baby, but she was in a bad mood today.

  The cockerel, full from my crumbs and bored with my chatter, settled down in the sun for a nap. I wandered into the kitchen. It was rare to be in there by myself. I flinched as a cockroach scuttled past my feet. It ran under a cabinet and I stood still for a moment to see if it would come out again. If it did, I was going to run. I would never ever get used to cockroaches the way Nadia had. She trod on them with her bare feet and used a tissue to wipe away the crushed shell.

  On the highest shelf in kitchen was a row of Coca-Cola bottles. Coca-Cola was from America which was so far away I was sure it was made up but Baba had been there so it had to be real.

  Now here I was, alone, with a whole row of Coca-Cola bottles. Maman Shamsi was still at the sofra and the baby would keep Tahereh busy for a while. I pulled a stool to the counter and climbed up. On my tiptoes I stretched and yes! I was touching a bottle! I would have to sneak it into the house and get Peyvand to help me open it. He would know how. First I had to get it down. Reaching as high as I could I managed to pull it towards the edge of the shelf and wrap my fingers around it. A big fat black cockroach fell from the ceiling and on to my face. I screamed and flapped my arms then fell from the stool and on to the floor. The bottled smashed and glass split open my wrist.

  At the hospital, I told the doctor all about our trip to London as he stitched me up. They had pushed my mother out of the room because she was crying so much that it was distracting the surgeon. 'It's a good thing you are going,' he told me. 'I hear they have Coke in plastic bottles there.'

  Maman Shamsi was packing and organising my bags. With my good hand, I licked the double chocolate lollipop Dayee Masood bought me.

  'I miss you already, will you miss me?'

  I was packing my dolls neatly into the red suitcase that I had all to myself.

  'Nope,' I replied without looking up at my grandmother. I was throwing my favourite toys in my suitcase. 'I'll miss Tara.'

  Tara sat on the floor against the wall, watching me pack. Tara had blonde hair, pink cheeks and blue eyes that closed when you lay her down. I had wanted Tara to come, but she was the biggest. I had tried to squeeze her in but it was no good. The tatty bears and the chubby brown-haired doll with big brown freckles and all the others had insisted on coming and lay defiantly in my suitcase refusing to budge and make room.

  I picked Tara up and gave her to Maman Shamsi. 'You can look after her until I get back. Don't let Nadia touch her.'

  My Auntie Nadia was a year and a half older than me and ten days older than Peyvand. Nadia insisted that dolls' hair grew back but even though I was the baby and everyone thought they knew more than me, I knew that dolls' hair did not grow back. Nadia's bed was covered with poor dolls who were practically bald or who were unevenly shorn and would remain for ever disfigured. Even though Nadia cried and cried when she saw how ugly her dolls were with short hair, she didn't learn her lesson and kept on cutting.

  'Come! Come quick Peyvand! Tayareh!' Peyvand skidded into Maman Shamsi and Baba Mokhtar's front yard at top speed; we watched the plane fly over our heads leaving its long, thin trail of cloud. We would be in that plane soon, going off to Landan.

  'What colour is London?' I asked Dayee Masood.

  'London is red, white and blue,' he told me, 'but you are from Iran, your colours will always be green, white and red.'

  He picked me up and squeezed me really tight. I could feel his eyelashes against my neck as he blinked. They were wet. I coughed and couldn't breathe and Maman Shamsi shouted at him to put me down and stop killing me.

  Maman had done her hair so it was chic and glossy. She wore a smart top with a matching miniskirt and her velvet black coat with mink collars. Madar Jaan waddled alongside her. 'That skirt is too short! What will they think of you in England? Foreign men are different you know, you'll give them the wrong message.'

  'I think Englishmen will be used to miniskirts,' Ba
ba reassured her. 'Fatemeh will be safe.'

  Madar Jaan tutted and said, 'Well, in my day women didn't display so much flesh for men to enjoy. Phew! I wish I'd worn a lighter chador, it's too hot for this dark one.' She fanned and flapped the material to cool herself as we wandered to our check-in desk.

  The airport was crowded. My hand was held tight. 'Oh, for goodness' sake!' Maman complained as she tripped over a lady sitting on a rug on the floor unpacking sandwiches for her family sitting around her 'Must people bring their entire ancestry to see them off?'

  We had not brought our entire ancestry, just two grandmas, one granddad, six uncles, three aunts and two baby cousins. Our next-door neighbours didn't count as they weren't family and had only come because we needed an extra car to fit everybody in.

  We had not, as some had, brought second or third cousins, great aunts and uncles by marriage or kids belonging to friends and neighbours who had come along for a day out.

  Maman accidentally walked into another colony of well-wishers. They glided around her like a school of fish and she was spat out at the other end. She spun around and found us again. 'Dahaatis! Anyone would think they had never been abroad before!'

  'You've never abroad before,' said Baba through his cigarette.

  Baba was wearing a cream suit with his shirt buttons undone at the top so you could see a bit of his chest. He had a neat moustache and a beard that covered just his chin, not his whole face, which was nice and chocolate-coloured, like Peyvand's. Baba had big brown eyes with long lashes and a nose like Madar Jaan's only smaller. His lips were just like mine, full, with the top one sticking a little bit further out than the bottom. Baba was short, but he seemed a lot bigger than he was. He had a suitcase full of Maman's dried herbs in one hand and my dolls, minus Tara, in the other.

  Maman held her head high. She was not like these other people at all. She said huffily, 'What do you mean I haven't been abroad? My husband has been to America, and Paris. Twice!'

  Our plane was delayed by an hour. Ajeel materialised from someone's pocket. Iranians always have nuts, seeds and dried fruit about them for these sorts of emergencies. If you take most Iranian people, tip them upside down and shake them, it is more than likely that a few pistachio nuts, pumpkin seeds and dried mulberries will tip out on to the ground. We take bags of ajeel into the cinema, on car trips, on buses, we eat them at weddings, in front of the TV, at dinner parties. As soon as they grow milk teeth, Iranian children learn to shell seeds in their mouths without breaking them.

  'Will the passengers of flight 204 to London Heathrow please go to gate number three.'

  'Vai!' Maman Shamsi said. 'What airs and graces! The announcement is in English. How on earth are we meant to know what they said?'

  The tannoy came on again and repeated the same thing in Farsi.

  'Gate number three! Quick now, you'll be late! It'll fly without you!'

  Several chadors swooped down on me. My grandmothers kissed and stroked my face, big fat tears running down their own. My uncles all in turn held their big sister in their arms, giving her kisses and whispers of undying sibling devotion. Essi told Maman to send her the latest fashions from London as soon as she got there, 'And don't get your own size, remember I'm at least two sizes smaller than you!'

  Baba screwed his cigarette tight in his lips after managing to disentangle himself from relatives he was not sure were his own. Emotions ran high at the airport; you could never be sure whose aunt was kissing you.

  'Hadi Jaan, call the minute you get there.' My Uncle Kamal wiped his eyes as he pulled away from my father's embrace. Peyvand ran around, his arms stretched out from his sides. He was always being an aeroplane when he was supposed to be being kissed.

  'Shaparak Jaan,' Maman pushed me towards her little sister, 'kiss Nadia.'

  Nadia was sobbing. I couldn't get to her face. She had buried it in Baba Mokhtar's shoulder so I kissed her elbow instead.

  'I want to go to Landan too,' Nadia wailed.

  But just Maman and Baba, Peyvand and I were going. We were leaving everyone behind. We turned, finally, towards the gate. Baba lifted Peyvand up so he could give the serious-looking man at the desk our passports. I turned back for another look. Everyone was still standing there, waving, teary. Peyvand grinned and waved wildly back.

  Just as we were about to enter the gate, I broke free from Maman's hand and ran to Maman Shamsi. I pulled her coat, making her bend down to me. 'You can let Nadia play with Tara, but only sometimes,' I whispered in her ear then ran back to my mother and through gate three for the London-bound passengers.

  The Iran Air flight 204 in September 1976 was full of well-to-do Iranians going kharej.

  A lady in the row across with a perfect beehive and very long, thick and gloopy eyelashes was going to visit her son at university. 'He's going to be a doctor,' she leaned across and informed my mother, loud enough for everyone else in the aisle to hear. People were already tucking into the ajeel their relatives had insisted they take onboard with them. They expertly split pumpkin seeds between their teeth.

  I couldn't do it. I always ended up biting them in half, sucking off the salt then swallowing them. Maman Shamsi had warned me not to do that. Not only would it give me a stomach ache, but there was a risk that the seeds would grow in my stomach and a tree would sprout out. Maman Shamsi had told me about all manner of horrors that can happen if you eat the wrong part of a fruit. She was the one who told me about watermelons. When you finish the pink part, you mustn't bite down to where it goes white or you will go bald.

  'That's how Hassan Kachal lost his hair,' she'd explained the first time she saw me nibbling at the watermelon long after I'd eaten all the pink parts. 'He didn't listen to his grandma and ate the white part of a melon.'

  I went to Dayee Taghi who was bald at the top of his head to ask if the story was true. Yes, he told me with a sad shake of his head. He regularly ate the white part of the watermelon as a child. I was more careful with watermelons after that and for a while, regularly checked my scalp.

  The cracking sound of pistachios and seeds being opened was finally drowned out by the roar of the engine as the plane gathered speed on the runway and started to move forward.

  Maman checked my buckle and gave me a sweet. 'Put this in your mouth and suck it as the plane goes up in the air.'

  I put it in my mouth and crunched it up straight away. There was no time to concentrate on sucking a sweet when I was staring outside at the men with the carts loading all the suitcases on to the plane. I couldn't see my own suitcase with all my dolls in it. Peyvand had wanted the window seat too, but I refused to even discuss it. 'Na! Na! Na!' I'd screeched. Peyvand had sighed and climbed into the seat between Maman and Baba. It was no use arguing with me when I was being like that.

  'Never mind, son,' Baba told him. 'You can sit next to me and light my cigarettes for me.'

  I didn't mind; sitting next to the window was still better.

  'Hadi,' Maman scolded, 'I don't think you should encourage him, he'll think smoking is normal.'

  'You're right.' Baba looked at Peyvand, holding the lighter, and solemnly said, 'Son, smoking cigarettes is not normal. Lighting them is though. Always light cigarettes, never smoke them.'

  Maman tutted and rolled her eyes.

  Peyvand could strike matches first time. Lighters were harder. The little silver cylinder you had to roll back hard to ignite the flame was tricky and stiff. My fingers always got too clammy. I was hopeless at it; the best I could do was roll it along a carpet and get a few sparks. On the plane, Baba helped Peyvand with the lighter. He got him to hold it in the right way, with his little thumb on the silver dial. Then Baba put his own thumb over Peyvand's, pushed it and rolled it back fast. There it was! That flicker of red and blue. Peyvand held it perfectly steady as Baba, with the Marlboro between his lips, brought the tip down into the flame. Baba sucked the cigarette just as the flame licked the tip and there was a split second before my favourite part: the warm crackle of
burning paper and the smoke rising through the tobacco as Baba breathed in the lovely smoke. He held it in his chest for a moment then exhaled slowly, blowing the smoke out so it made little rings in the air. Magic. I couldn't wait until I was old enough to smoke.

  The plane roared across the runway. Maman popped another sweet in my mouth. 'Suck it this time, azizam, so your ears don't block.' Suddenly, the ground began to fall away. We were floating above it. Peyvand was excitedly saying something to me. I don't know what it was; my ears had blocked.

  The plane went very very slowly, though Baba insisted it was going faster than a car.

  I glued myself to the window and watched Tehran shrink and all the cars turn into ants. I wondered if my family could see us flying over their heads. I waved hard at the disappearing earth below in case they could.

  LONDON

  London was not red, white and blue. It was grey, except for the buses, post boxes and telephone boxes, which were all red.

  At Heathrow Airport we saw English passengers being greeted at the arrivals gate with kisses on the cheek from wives and mothers and firm handshakes and pats on the shoulder between fathers and sons.

  English people all looked like Forough Khanoom, Amoo Kamal's wife, who was the fairest woman in the family and everyone said she looked khareji.

  'Aghayeh Khorsandi! Aghayeh Hadi-yeh Khorsandi!'

  Mamad Hosseini was a short, plump man with a thick black moustache, thick bushy eyebrows and, despite being very old, at least forty, he had a full head of shiny jet-black hair.

  He waved frantically, a broad smile on his face as he ran over to us. Our trolley was piled up high with our bags and suitcases, heaving with as much of our lives in Iran as we could carry. Mamad Hosseini wrestled Baba's hands off the trolley and insisted on pushing it himself.

  'Mr Hadi Khorsandi! What an honour it is to pick you up from the airport, welcome, welcome to London! I am your humble servant, whatever you need, whatever you want, I am at your service and will be most offended if you do not call upon me. Mrs Khorsandi! Your beauty and grace have been the talk of the town and now I see that reports were not exaggerated! I hope you had a comfortable journey?'