A Beginner's Guide to Acting English Read online

  Mr Hosseini's elaborate pleasantries and offers of service were not just because Baba was the well-known writer Hadi Khorsandi, they were the normal etiquette that trips off Iranian tongues as easily as 'sorry' tripped off English ones when Mr Hosseini knocked into them with our over-loaded trolley. He could not bestow all the flowery niceties on Maman and Baba and look where he was going.

  Mamad Hosseini was from the tourist board, from the office Baba was to work from. Pushing our precariously balanced luggage along towards the exit doors, he ushered us out of Heathrow Airport. He did not stop talking. Not once. 'So these are your children? Bah bah! Bah bah! I have two myself, Sammy and Sara. Iranian names, but easy for the English to pronounce. Mrs Khorsandi? Bah bah! Bah bah! Wonderful! Wonderful! Please, everyone this way, my car is just here.'

  He had parked his smart BMW in the 'Taxis only' lane. Mamad shooed away a traffic warden and waved pleasantly at the taxi drivers swearing at him. 'Okay, okay, one minute, my friend, one minute,' he assured them in his heavily accented English and wide smile. The urgency to get in the car and move out of this forbidden parking spot was of no concern to Baba and Mr Hosseini. They both took the time for tarof, the Iranian tradition of endlessly putting yourself out for others.

  'Leave the bags to me. You are tired, my friend, I insist.'

  Baba grabbed a bag back off Mamad. 'No, my good man, give it to me, it's heavy, I am your servant.'

  'What talk is this? I am your servant and I insist you let go. I will not accept an argument.'

  'You are being very difficult, brother. I will deal with the bags, you get in the car.'

  Tarofing is very hard to explain to people who aren't Irooni. It's a fight for the lower hand. They fought over the bags, neither backing down and each trying to lift them at the same time. Their voices were raised and urgent as they shouted politely at each other. If you didn't speak Farsi you could easily think they were two men fighting over the ownership of the bags and worry they might come to blows. Eventually, with a lot of bluster and gesticulation, the bags were in the boot, we were in the car pulling out of the space and the long line of taxi drivers glared and shouted words I did not understand.

  Peyvand, Maman and I looked out of the window as the men in the front seats talked. It wasn't raining but the air was damp. There was a lot of humidity and the car seemed to constantly turn corners and go over bumps so I turned green and made a mess of the back seat.

  'No problem! No problem!' Mamad reached into his glove compartment for wipes. When I was sick again, he stopped off at a garage and bought me some ice cream to take away the taste. They didn't have the double chocolate finger ones I liked in Iran. This one was like frozen orange ice. It was still delicious. Peyvand got an ice cream too, even though he didn't get ill.

  'Is your car a Peykan?' Peyvand asked Mamad.

  'No, my son, I'm afraid they don't have Peykans in England, this is a BMW.' In Iran everyone had a Peykan.

  Peyvand was always asking about cars. I didn't care if it was a Peykan or not. We had set off and I had to concentrate on not being sick again.

  Mamad drove us to our first home in London, found for us by Baba's new bosses. It was a leafy mews along Kensington High Street.

  Kensington seemed to be full of Iranians, and all of them knew Baba. 'Are you Hadi Khorsandi? Salaam Alaykon! Welcome to London!' they said when we bumped into them.

  Peyvand and I explored our new apartment. We were to share a room, which was fine because I had never slept on my own. The ceilings were high and the sofa and beds were very good for bouncing on. On the living-room window ledges there were pretty red and yellow flowers growing out of boxes. When I tired of bouncing, I had a look at the flowers and found a spider so tiny you could hardly see it. It was a red dot that moved. There wasn't a trace of cockroaches anywhere, not even in the bathroom. 'It's too cold and wet for them here, azizam,' Maman explained. 'Now wash your hands and face and put on your pretty red dress, we're going out to dinner.'

  With no Maman Shamsi or Madar Jaan to look after us, Maman and Baba took us to parties with them. Everyone took their children to mehmoonis. Occasionally tipsy grown-ups might accidentally sit on a child who had fallen asleep on a sofa; other than that, it was never a problem. Maman would never leave us with someone who wasn't family or at least a very close friend, Sometimes this was fun if the host or other guests had kids because after shyly sitting by our parents for a while, we would eventually make friends and join them in whichever room upstairs the children had occupied and ran wild until our parents dragged us home late at night. Other times there were no children there and the party was small and the grown-ups weren't even dancing, just sitting around talking to each other. These sorts of parties were deathly boring so we always took books with us. After saying hello politely to everyone and being kissed and told that we had grown by every single guest, we were allowed to find a corner to read our books. I nearly always woke up to find myself being put into the car and the journey home was hard because I was so sleepy I wanted to stay right there in the car until the morning but Maman and Baba never let me.

  The Iranian community in London was made up mostly of businessmen and academics. There were writers like Baba and other types of artists, actors and musicians who travelled back and forth from Iran and made London their second home.

  'Apadana is very close by,' Mamad assured us, 'and the kebabs there are very good. Hardly any fat on them at all!'

  The restaurant was filled with music. There was a man sitting on a rug on the floor, behind the singer with his tonbak resting across his knees. His fingers moved so fast I could hardly see them. If Nadia had been here, she would have danced right in the middle of the room wiggling her hips and twirling her hands delicately in the air and everyone around her would be going 'Bah bah! This little one! What a dancer!'

  The singer, a fat man in a black suit, sang Iranian pop songs.

  'It's just like we're back home!' Baba said.

  Diners left their kebabs to go cold and were dancing in the spaces made between the tables. The women wore very fancy clothes; they thrust their hips from side to side and twirled their hands in the air. The men looked less poised, their clumsy suits misshapen as they stamped their feet and clacked their fingers high above their heads, staying as close as possible to the dancing girls.

  Iranian dancing is all about hips and arms. Hips wiggled expertly from side to side and arms were gracefully raised and lowered with the wrists twirling this way and that. Keeping the wiggle in their hips and their arms in the air, the diners made a circle around one women and her dancing became more elaborate. She held her arms in the air, rolled her hands around and arched her back. She leant so far backwards that her long chestnut hair almost touched the floor. Everyone whooped and clapped, then the woman stood back to let another step in. The man on his tonbak quickened the rhythm, my heart beat in time with his drum, then he slowed right down. The woman in the circle took her cue and put her hand in her hair. She raised it up past her neck then slowly gyrated her hips to the rhythm of the drum. Everyone whistled with their fingers in their mouths and clacked their fingers the Iranian way, using both hands. The drummer quickened his rhythm so the pretty lady twirled faster, then faster still as if she were a spinning top and everyone whooped and cheered and said vai!

  People who didn't dance, clapped or clacked fingers in between mouthfuls of kebab and rice. There were some kids dancing, too. I wanted to join them, but I was new and shy. I clung to Maman's hand.

  Baba looked smart and sharp in his suit. He did not look like a film star like Maman did, but soon after we had walked in all eyes turned on him and there were cries of 'Look! It's Hadi Khorsandi!' Men got up from their seats and, with their hands to their chests, performed a brief bow. Iranian bowing is very subtle and only the men do it. They don't bend their whole upper body like the men in Bruce Lee films. They nod their head and lean forward ever so slightly putting their hand to their heart mouthing 'Ghormaneh shoma', I am y
our servant. Baba bowed and nodded back to everyone and shook hands and kissed each man who came up to greet him on both cheeks. 'Bah bah! Bah bah! Hadi Khan!' When Baba was in a room, all attention was on him.

  We were ushered to a table, the best in the house. Instantly Baba was surrounded. 'A drink, Mr Khorsandi! Vodka, on the house!'

  'Mr Khorsandi!' The twirling lady approached our table. 'I love your poems, such pathos, such talent! You are a treasure.'

  A very tall dashing man: 'Hadi! Hadi Khorsandi! What an honour to meet you! We are huge fans! My uncle knew your cousin in Tehran, Ali Ghazvini. Did he ever mention him at all?'

  The evening was a blur of people swirling around our table, laughing, clinking glasses, Baba's stories followed by gales of laughter that flowed as freely as the shots of vodka. The food came and went, the band started up again, my mother was pulled up to dance. Peyvand and I crawled under the table, curled up and fell asleep.

  'You must go to abroad Hadi! You must go and learn English!'

  Ali-Reza Taheri, a highly regarded journalist at Etela'at, was giving advice to Baba, the paper's young progeny. Ali-Reza already spoke English fluently; his father ran an English school.

  'You're already accelerating like a firework; with English, you'll be unstoppable.'

  Baba knocked back his shot of whisky and lit a cigarette, taking the compliment in his stride.

  'New York or London?'

  The Iranian Tourist Board had offices in Kensington and were delighted to give Baba a job with a substantial salary and fly Hadi and his young family to London. His columns were very popular. They had considerably increased the paper's circulation.

  His boundless ambition aside, Baba thought a spell abroad would be a great thing for his career and an adventure for his young family.

  'Landan?' Madar Jaan, Baba's mother, folded her arms over her enormous belly and frowned. She wasn't sure about her eldest son leaving them. It was bad enough that wife of his had insisted they move out of her house and get a place of their own. There was plenty of room in her house. After all, it was just her, Kamal, Ashraf and Ashraf's four children living there.

  'Not for ever, Madar, just a year or two.'

  'Okay. You are famous enough here. Go and be famous over there. Let me know when you are settled and I will come and live with you.'

  It was difficult for Maman to unpack when Baba kept filling our new flat with London's Iranian community.

  'Can't you give me some notice at least?, Maman hissed at Baba in the kitchen as she hurriedly tried to brew tea, make the guests dinner and do something with her hair all at the same time. Maman began to conjure up hors d'oeuvres for the guests and put on the rice while two journalists, a poet, a doctor, two civil engineers and one restaurant owner and all their wives sat on boxes in the living room. None of them had children, so Peyvand and I stayed in our own room to play but were soon dragged out to be kissed and fussed over by the women and have our cheeks pulled and hair ruffled by the men.

  We could never understand what the men were talking about. They drank whisky and vodka and laughed heartily at each other's stories one minute then spoke in hushed tones about the SAVAK the next, how so-and-so had got into trouble and how such-and-such ought to be careful or else he'd get into trouble too.

  The women were much more interesting. They crammed into Maman's tiny kitchen and chattered away about the best place to get your hair cut, what new furniture Harrods had brought in and what was best for the children, speaking Farsi or English at home. The women all wore rich perfumes, had long beautiful nails and never had a hair out of place.

  Very soon, we were settled. Peyvand and I had bunk beds and a heap of new toys from Harrods. Maman and Baba had furnished the whole flat in just one afternoon in that gigantic shop. They left me and Peyvand in the toy department and bought a big turquoise corner sofa, a dining table and chairs, a bed for themselves and everything else they needed from cutlery to ashtrays.

  Baba started his work at the tourist board office just down the road on Kensington High Street so when we were away from the Miss Kings' Nursery School Maman was left with me and Peyvand to explore London.

  We came across Kensington Market when we were out walking with Maman. At first it looked like the markets at home in Tehran. It had stalls full of all sorts of different things. There was music played from big tape recorders on the tables, English music, of course, and the singers sort of shouted instead of singing normally. When we got up close though, I saw it was nothing like markets in Iran. The stalls were full of black clothes and skull rings and purple and green wigs. The people on the stalls all had hair coloured pink and blue and green.

  Kensington Market was where all the funny-looking people who didn't smile went. Maman giggled and said, 'There's a man over there with earrings on! Don't look, don't stare!'

  Some of them had no hair at all; they'd shaved it all off or they had shaved off the sides and stuck the middle part up so they looked like our rooster in Maman Shamsi's yard.

  'I think they are crazy,' Maman whispered. 'Don't stare, children.'

  Some of them had holes in their noses as well as their ears. Some had several holes in their ears, with earrings all the way around.

  These were punks. Maman had heard about them in Iran and had even seen some pictures but she did not expect them to actually be here, just hanging around in shops and in the streets like normal people.

  'Vai! Don't these people have mothers?' She shuddered as one punk with a spiky dog collar and a shaved head spat on the pavement as we walked past, just missing Peyvand's shoes. The punks frightened Maman so she directed us back to the Underground station. We were going to the Natural History Museum. Peyvand couldn't stop talking about dinosaurs so Maman was taking us there because they had real dinosaurs at the museum.

  'Won't they eat us, Maman?' I asked her.

  Peyvand wasn't scared, like me.

  'No,' Maman said. 'We're going to get there after they've had lunch, we'll be okay.'

  Down in the Underground, Maman had to carry me on the wooden, moving staircases. I was afraid I would fall and slide underneath and be lost for ever. Peyvand jumped on and off them like a monkey.

  The moving wooden stairs took us deep down into the belly of London. Down where if you looked carefully, you could see little brown mice scuttling around the track and you'd feel the dusty breeze of the tunnel against your face when a train was about to come through. The mouth of the tunnel was pitch-black; we had no way of knowing what was really in there. Anything could jump out at us. The train gave warning of its arrival before it appeared. I heard a faint rumbling deep down in the blackness. It got louder. Then louder still as it approached the opening of the mouth then suddenly, it shot out of the tunnel at an impossible speed and roared through the platform.

  'ARGHGHGHGHGHGHGHG!' Peyvand shouted at the top of his voice and still I could barely hear him.

  The carriages were alternately smoking and non-smoking. With Maman, we always jumped on the non-smoking because the faintest bit of cigarette smoke in public made her go 'Peeff!' and wave her hand under her nose, even though at home Baba and all his friends smoked so much the net curtains were yellow.

  The few times we travelled with Baba we sat with the smokers and made clouds with his red Marlboro.

  There were lots of people to stare at on the Underground, like men who'd drunk too much and were talking to themselves and men who'd shaved their heads. There were scary men with tattoos who swore all the time when they talked.

  The Natural History Museum was in South Kensington. We had to change at Earl's Court from the green line to the blue line.

  The doors of the east-bound Piccadilly-line train opened just as we arrived on the platform. We had to dive on quick. Holding Maman's hand we jumped and just made it through the doors. The train was quite crowded but we found two seats free so Peyvand and I sat down in them and Maman stood over us, holding the handrail above her head. I kicked Peyvand gently with my foot; he w
as too absorbed by the train's sights and sounds to kick me back.

  I stared hard at a man who was about Dayee Masood's age. He had spots all over his cheeks. He had shaved off all his hair, except the middle, which was bright red and spiked up. Even though we had all seen him, Peyvand had to draw our attention to him anyway. 'That man looks like a rooster,' Peyvand said in Farsi but Maman said 'Shhh!' anyway. The Rooster looked up at us. Maman looked away. I carried on staring, and Peyvand went 'Cock-a-doodle-doo!'

  Maman slapped his leg. 'Shhh! Don't do that! And don't stare, they are crazy.'

  I don't think the man understood Farsi, but it was obvious that all Maman's 'shooshing' and leg slapping were to do with him. The Rooster looked angry. I looked away but I could feel him looking at us now. His mouth was in a kind of snarl. The Rooster was holding the hand of a girl next to him. She had spiky hair like a hedgehog and she had lots of black drawn around her eyes. Although she was Englisee her hair was blacker than any Irooni hair I'd seen. She had an earring through her nose and one through her lip. She whispered something into the Rooster's ear and he put his mouth on hers and kissed her for ages and ages. She kissed him too, the way I had seen in Charlie's Angels. We saw their tongues touching!

  'Ai!' Maman said. 'I feel ill!'

  Miss King had told us not to drink from each other's flasks at lunchtime because of germs. This looked much dirtier.

  The girl had her eyes shut and put her hand on his spots. She had a big spider ring on. Maman tugged my sleeve. 'Nigah nakon!' Don't look! But I couldn't help it. At the next stop they unlocked their lips, looked at Maman and laughed. The doors opened, they jumped out and as they did, the Rooster barged into Maman and made her stumble and almost fall on top of me. She grabbed the handrail in time. The Rooster burst into a raucous laugh. He stuck his middle finger up at Maman and shouted, 'Go home!' The Hedgehog opened her black-lined mouth into a kind of smile and said, 'Uptight bitch!' then she said, 'Go home' too. When the doors closed again, my heart started beating again. Other people were relieved too. They came to life once the punks were gone and tutted and muttered things like, 'Animals, aren't they!'