A Beginner's Guide to Acting English Page 7

  'Can't we at least go to the shops?' Peyvand whined. Peyvand was good at whining.

  'No, we cannot,' Maman told him firmly. 'I have no time to nurse you through pneumonia.'

  Maman lived in terror of us catching pneumonia. If we sneezed she conjured up all kinds of putrid potions for us to drink, inhale or have rubbed on our chests. The slightest gust of wind or drop of rain had her fussing with the zips on our coats and wrapping scarves so tight around our necks that strangulation became a more serious threat than pneumonia.

  Even when Maman was satisfied that pneumonia had not got us this time, she fretted about ringworm, whooping cough and rabies, all of which, she was convinced, we were permanently exposed to.

  Maman examined Peyvand and me for irregularities very frequently; a cough, a cold, an unexplained blotch was all it took for her to march us, wrapped in several layers of clothing in the middle of a hot summer, to the doctor's two minutes down the street.

  Dr Fuller was a stern old lady. She had grey hair piled up high on her head and she was tall and skinny, not short and round like Irooni old ladies. I loved going to see her because the surgery had a fish tank in the waiting room and I liked to watch them open and close their mouths under the water. The lady at the reception desk didn't really like me near the fish and told me off when I tapped on the glass. I only did it to make them move around more, I wasn't trying to hurt them.

  Dr Fuller lost her patience with Maman after she took us in twice in the same week. I don't know what the ailment was, it could have been Peyvand's flat foot or my cough or Maman's own sneezing. Whatever it was, Dr Fuller, after listening for only a moment to Maman's account of whatever grave malady she happened to be concerned about that day, strode over to the door and said in a very loud voice, 'Mrs Khorsandi, you're fine, your children are fine, now please stop wasting my time!'

  That evening, Maman took her frustration out on some lean lamb which she brutally tenderised with a wooden mallet. 'Really, in this country you have to be at death's door before they look after you!' She angrily recounted to Baba her outrage at the unfeeling attitude of this vile doctor who did not consider that even though a cough had cleared up, the patient may still be dangerously ill. 'They don't care, they just don't care. I'm going to have to find an Iranian doctor, one who does his job properly.'

  Dr Lachinian, a regular whisky drinker and storyteller at Baba and Maman's dinner parties, was unofficially appointed as Maman's personal physician. He patiently explained to Maman that the winged ants she found in my undergarments were most probably a result of my afternoon playing in long grass at the park, rather than some tropical disease. Coughs and colds, he assured her, were all part of helping a child build up a strong immune system and wrapping us up in several layers when it was twenty-two degrees outside would do little to bring down a fever.

  'Are you sure he's a doctor?' Maman demanded after Dr Lachinian assured her that the patch of dry skin on Peyvand's arm was nothing more sinister than eczema.

  'Yes,' Baba replied. 'He has a PhD in civil engineering.' He dodged the cushion Maman threw at him and called out to me and Peyvand, 'You see how angry you have made your mother being so healthy? One of you catch pneumonia, quick! Before she kills me!'

  Peyvand and I joined in the cushion fight until the doorbell rang and one of Baba's friends arrived to sit with him at the dining-room table, drink and talk as Maman bought them tea and food.

  There were no cushion fights on this Saturday afternoon because Baba was asleep and Maman was busy preparing dinner for this evening's dinner guests.

  Peyvand was pretending to strangle me on the kitchen floor, except when he pretended, he did it for real and I couldn't breathe so I had to punch him. Then he ran off and got his silver gun. He shot me at point-blank range and I died right there on the spot on the black-and-white tiled floor. Maman stepped over me and prised Peyvand off the doors. 'Look after your sister for a minute. I have to go and see Mrs Rahmani, I've run out of onions.'

  Maman could not cope for a moment without onions, turmeric or coriander.

  Mrs Rahmani lived with her husband in the flat above ours. She was older than Maman but very glamorous. Even when she came for a chai with Maman in the morning, she dressed the way Maman did in the evening. Peyvand and I were excited when we first met her because she said she had a boy and girl too, but when we asked to play with them she laughed and said they were at the Sorbonne in Paris.

  'I'll be back in a minute,' Maman called out.

  Peyvand looked at me, his eyes shining with excitement. He was trying to look normal so Maman wouldn't suspect mischief. I held my hand over my mouth to suppress a giggle because although I didn't know what my brother had in store, I know he had been agitated and bored enough up until now to do something really fun.

  Maman was never 'back in a minute' when she went to see Mrs Rahmani. Even though Mrs Rahmani was practically an old lady, they had lots to talk about, mostly about who had got fat and who hadn't, who looked really old and who had aged well. Mrs Rahmani had blonde hair. Maman said it didn't suit her at all because her eyebrows were so dark.

  'Let's play firemen!' Peyvand said when Maman was safely out of the door. 'Let's play firemen and start a real fire!'

  I didn't know the first thing about starting a fire so I looked at my brother, excitedly awaiting my orders.

  'Go into the kitchen and find a match, or a lighter, and some paper.'

  I leapt to the kitchen and pulled out all the drawers I could reach. I couldn't find them!

  I ran back to the living room to get a chair so I could climb up and look in the higher cupboards. Peyvand was at the dinner table, looking under Baba's papers. He was touching them! We were not allowed to touch Baba's papers. No one was, ever. Even Maman was forbidden to lay a finger on them. If they were scattered like this when she was serving dinner, she had to lay the table around them and wait for Baba to move them himself. But here was Peyvand, his creamy forehead was creased with concentration and he was lifting them up and looking underneath. The papers were in a messy pile and they were covered in Baba's tiny squiggles. I held my breath as he touched Baba's papers! It was more risky than setting fire to the carpet. He carefully put each one down so no one could tell they'd been disturbed. 'What are you looking for?' I whispered.

  There, suddenly, was my answer. A fandak, a lighter, sitting under a page of Baba's poetry.

  Ever so carefully, Peyvand picked it up and dropped the papers back down on the table. I heaved a sigh of relief as we turned to start a fire. We went over to the turquoise corner sofa and I helped Peyvand pull it away from the wall. 'We should make the fire behind it,' Peyvand explained, 'then afterwards we'll push it back so no one will know.'

  We crouched down behind the sofa. Peyvand pressed his thumb down and rolled the little silver wheel hard and fast. Sparks. After a few more tries, a flame! We crouched lower, our noses practically touching the carpet. Peyvand held the lighter down on to some carpet fibres. They turned red then burned out. He tried again with the lighter. I held my breath as my brother held it down on the carpet. They burned for longer this time, staying red. He kept his thumb on the lighter switch and held it down. Little flames danced on the carpet. 'Now?' I whispered. 'Shall we go now?'

  'No!' Peyvand was concentrating hard on the flames and stretched his arm out to stop me getting up. 'We need more fire.'

  We watched as the little flames ignited more fibres and gained strength.

  'Now!' Peyvand giggled, getting up. We ran to the kitchen. 'Quick! Quick! Get water!'

  We could only just reach the little chai glasses Maman kept by the samovar on the kitchen counter. Peyvand got on all fours and I stood on his back to reach the sink. I filled two of the glasses up with water. Holding a glass each we leapt into action. 'NEE NAR NEE NAR NEE NAR'; we were very good fire engines. The fire had got bigger; smoke was rising up behind the sofa. We threw our water on the fire. Mine missed. 'NEE NAR NEE NAR NEE NAR' back to the kitchen. 'NEE NAR NEE
NAR NEE NAR' back to the fire. Phew! It was really big now. The back of the sofa was on fire too and the smoke was thick and black. It made us cough.

  'C'mon, Inspector Shap, let's get a move on.' Peyvand got the 'inspector' bit from Starsky and Hutch.

  We ran back into the kitchen, neenar-ing for all we were worth. We heard a scream then 'PEYVAAAND! SHAPARAK!' It was only Maman. We ran into the room, grinning. 'We are fire engines, Maman!'

  Maman grabbed us both by our arms, dragged us out to the hallway and screamed, 'ATEEESH! ATEEESH!'

  Mrs Rahmani ran down to our flat. 'Fire? Where?' She and Maman grabbed our thick heavy Persian carpet, a gift from Baba's employers, and threw it over the flames. They stamped on it and patted wildly with their hands. Peyvand could have put it out by himself, I thought.

  Once they were sure the fire was out, Maman sat on the blackened turquoise sofa from Harrods. Mrs Rahmani got her a glass of water and made her drink all of it. Maman's hands were shaking as she took the glass. She drank the water and put her head in her hands.

  'You dropped your onions, Maman,' I told her, tentatively holding them out to her. A peace offering. She grabbed my arms and pulled me to her. She buried her face in my neck and held me there for ages. Peyvand came over and put his arm around Maman because she was crying. She kissed our faces again and again. Mrs Rahmani was examining the carpet and tutting, 'What a shame, what a shame, handmade!' then she trotted off to our kitchen to make chai, the only thing to do in a crisis when a carpet had been ruined.

  Baba slept soundly on.

  When he woke up, he was solemnly told about what had happened. The smell of smoke and burned carpet and sofa meant he would find out even if Maman had decided to keep it quiet.

  'Are you both all right now?' Baba asked, his eyes bulging with sleep and the party he was at the night before. Peyvand and I nodded. 'Good,' said Baba, 'don't set fire to anything again. Fati, bring me a chai please.'

  If Maman expected him to make more of the incident, she didn't let it show. Baba went to the dining table and looked at his papers. A dark shadow grew over his face and he turned to us and growled in a voice so low and angry that it made us both jump. 'Who,' he began, 'who has been touching my papers?'

  The row about that went on for days. Baba held me and Peyvand and Maman equally responsible.

  Father Christmas was an old English man who lived in Harrods and in the winter, kids queued up for ages to see him and he gave them presents. Peyvand and I didn't know who he was at first. We knew he had to be someone special because he was dressed in funny red robes and kept shouting 'HO HO HO' as kids tried to speak to him.

  'Maman! Who is that man?' Peyvand pointed to the man with a long white beard. The man was surrounded by children and had a little bell he kept ringing as he walked around the shop floor.

  'It's Baba Noël! The English call him Father Christmas, I think,' Maman said.

  'Come and see me in my grotto, tell your mummies it's on the fourth floor.'

  'Mummy, Mummy, let's go to the grotto!'

  I didn't know what a grotto was or why Father Christmas wanted to see us there but we were desperate to go anyway. We tugged at Maman's sleeve.

  We hadn't known Baba Noël would be in Harrods. We were going back to Iran for a holiday and were buying little gifts for everyone. Maman took us up to the fourth floor and found the grotto. Santa was already up there. How had he got there before us? He was magic, Peyvand told me. He could get anywhere he wanted in no time at all. There were elves at the grotto, wearing green outfits and with rosy red cheeks.

  'Have you been good? Santa only gives presents to good children,' he told us.

  I had been good; burning the carpet had all been Peyvand's idea. Would Santa know about that? Peyvand said he couldn't know about it because he only watched Englisee children all year, not us, we'd got away with it.

  There was a little girl on Santa's knee and she was chattering away to him. A long line of children stood outside with their parents waiting for an audience with Santa.

  Maman took us to the grotto entrance to see how much it was to get in.

  'Excuse me!' a haughty voice rose up. It was a tall blonde lady in an expensive coat with two little girls who looked like the princesses in my storybooks. 'In this country we queue!'

  One of Santa's elves came forward. He was short and stout like the teapot in the song. He stood at the front of the queue and raised his bushy eyebrows at the haughty woman.

  'Actually, they are next,' the elf said. 'We serve nice people first.'

  He quickly led Maman, Peyvand and me into the grotto. The haughty lady had never been told off by an elf before. She didn't know what to say so she kept saying 'Cheek of it! The cheek of it!' I didn't know what our cheeks had to do with anything.

  Santa hauled me and Peyvand on to his lap.

  'Are you looking forward to Christmas?'

  I was so close to his face I could smell his breath. He smelled of cigarettes but not in the nice way Baba did. Peyvand and I had names for smells. Baba had pots of ink he filled his fountain pen from and the jet-black liquid inside smelled of the letter 'J'. Father Christmas's smell was yellowy. It smelled like the colour yellow but not a nice bright yellow that was nice to colour with a felt-tip pen, it was more of a dirty mustard. Mr Kardan, one of Baba's friends, had a car that colour. The second I got into that car I got carsick. We didn't even have to be moving; the colour made me ill.

  'So, what would you two like for Christmas?' Santa asked us in a booming voice.

  Peyvand said, 'We don't have Christmas, we're from Iran.'

  Santa said 'Ho ho ho' and reached into his sack and gave me and Peyvand a miniature pot of Play Doh each. Peyvand's was red and mine was purple. That was it. That was all Santa gave us. With another yellow-smelling 'Ho ho ho' he lowered us back down to the ground and the friendly elf led us back to Maman.

  Maman examined my purple lump of goo. 'All that entrance money,' she said, 'and this is all you get? I thought he'd at least give you one of his reindeer.'

  Holding our hands Maman marched us off to continue our souvenir shopping. I turned around to wave at Santa. He didn't see me. He was coughing violently into his hand.

  BACK IN IRAN

  'Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool? Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full.' I stood on the thick Persian carpet in Maman Shamsi and Baba Mokhtar's sitting room. The family sat around on lesser gilim rugs and huge cushions on the floor. 'Bravo! Afareen!' they called out, clapping. 'She's an English girl now! So clever! Afareen!' They loved me, they called out for more. I gave them my greatest hits: 'Jack and Jill', 'Humpty Dumpty', 'Polly Put the Kettle On'. I stood amid the praise and sang and sang and sang.

  After a while Maman Shamsi said, 'Now sing something in Farsi, enough English. Sing in Farsi.'

  But I couldn't sing in Farsi, I had forgotten all the songs so my cousin Bafi who'd sat scowling at me in her sparkling dancing outfit, waiting for her turn to perform, leapt up and performed 'Khaleh Sooskeh', a song about a pretty little beetle who interviews prospective suitors by asking them what they will beat her with when they row. The butcher tells her he'll beat her with his meat cleaver. Horrified, Khaleh Sooskeh sings, 'I cannot marry you for I will surely die!' Then the iron monger asks for her hand and tells her he will beat her with his soldering iron. 'Nah nah nah!' she sings again. 'If I marry you, I will surely die!' In the end, she marries Mr Mouse who says he would never beat her, he would only stroke her very gently with the tip of his soft tail, should they ever row. It was a relief to know she had found a husband who wouldn't beat her. How the others thought they had a chance with their meat cleavers and soldering irons, I had no idea. Why would they want to beat her at all? I asked Maman Shamsi. 'Well, they're men aren't they? Men hit.' She shrugged.

  Even English nursery rhymes sometimes had horrible people in them. I hated the farmer's wife who cuts off the mice's tails with a carving knife. Especially, as Maman pointed out, since she would be using the same k
nife to cut up meat that humans would be eating and it would have mice germs on it.

  I went outside to find Peyvand and Nadia, who were never as keen as Bafi and I to entertain the grown-ups.

  We sat in the shade of the vine tree Baba Mokhtar had planted when he first built the house way back in the olden days. The huge leaves of the vine fanned us as a gentle breeze wafted past, bringing with it the sweet scent of jasmine. Tahereh, Maman Shamsi's maid, was picking some of the leaves. She was the only Irooni I had seen with blue eyes. Not green like my cousin Delaram's, but blue like the Miss Kings'. She squinted against the sun as she inspected each one and picked the biggest and healthiest to make her dolmas.

  Peyvand and Nadia were playing with the marbles we had brought back from Hamleys in London. Nadia loved them because they were all different colours and not the ordinary green tiger's eyes you got in Tehran. I was no good at playing marbles though I did like to look at them. I turned my attention to the cat sat on the wall of the garden. 'Peeshi Peeshi! Here, pussy cat!' I held up a sweet I had in my pocket. Fish worked better, but if you held a sweet up, they usually came to you if they were hungry enough, if only just to smell it and double check it wasn't fish. Sure enough, the skinny tabby jumped down and ran to me. Tahereh rushed over from the opposite side of the courtyard. 'Pishteh! Pishteh! Shoo! Shoo!' she hissed, waving her broom in front of her. The cat scarpered. Cats like him had been on the receiving end of many brooms and didn't stick around.

  'Hey girl!' she scolded, 'don't feed the cats, they'll tell all their friends then the whole place will be full of cats!'

  Really? Can cats do that? I swore that from now I'd save some of my dinner and give it to the cats. I dreamed of hundreds of cats jumping over Maman Shamsi's wall and living with us.

  'Please don't make him go!' I pleaded. 'He's hungry!'