We could hear Kerry screaming, 'I'm gonna get you two! You're gonna die!'
She and Jake were in their garden, they scrambled up the wall so they could see us. A huge apple just missed my head. They were firing at us with windfalls. 'Run!' Peyvand shouted, giggling.
Through the brambles we could make out what had obviously been a path once upon a time and though you could just make out the flagstones, they were covered with weeds. The path led to a big greenhouse. It was covered in vines and the bits of the windows you could see were green with moss and algae. No one had grown anything or been inside this greenhouse for years. Kerry and Jake couldn't get to us in this part of the garden. The trees and shrubs that grew against the garden wall were too thick and too high. They threw apples for a while longer, but it was futile. They landed in the long grass and didn't even hit a tree.
'We won! We won! We won!' Peyvand was punching his fist in the air and I was giggling as adrenalin rushed through me. We'd got Kerry Tyler!
We had a good, proper look around our garden from where we stood. It was gigantic. Much bigger than it appeared from Maman and Baba's bedroom. You could tell it had been beautifully kept once. There were paths and borders and fruit trees. In the summer the brambly bit at the end would be purple with giant blackberries. Although the greenhouse was tall and ornate, it was rusty and wild on the inside. Peyvand and I ripped out the leaves that were jamming the door and pushed it open. We were dead silent, who knew what we would find inside? There were raised flowerbeds, long taken over by climbing plants and weeds. There were shelves right up to the roof full of ancient window boxes and plant pots. As soon as we got it wide enough to peer in, there was a flash of movement from every part of the greenhouse. Kittens! It seemed that hundreds of them ran away as soon as we went in. They scrambled out through holes in the roof and in the sides. About three of them dashed past my feet, so quick I could only just make out what they were.
Even when I wasn't playing in the garden, I spent a lot of time looking down at it from Maman and Baba's window. I could see more cats from upstairs because they felt safer and didn't run away. A black and white cat tiptoed over the flagstones. It was still only a kitten. 'Pishee!' I whispered. He froze in his tracks and looked up sharply, locking eyes with me and holding perfectly still. I smiled to show him I was friendly and stretched out my hand, even though I was far too high for the kitten to come anywhere near me. Maman wouldn't let me have a cat but maybe this kitten in the garden would be my own. I wished I was down in the garden with a bit of fish but it was too far to jump and I didn't have any food. Milk! I could get him some milk.
'Wait there,' I whispered and dashed to the kitchen. There was milk in our new fridge and I frantically hunted around for a bowl. Our ordinary cereal bowls hadn't been unpacked but among the fragile glassware I found a crystal bowl. It was quite big, but it would do.
I dashed down the two flights of brown stairs and out of the side entrance of the house.
I ran around the front and through the garage into the garden. There was my cat! He looked frightened, unsure of whether to stay or run away. I stood perfectly still. Cats always think you are going to hurt them when all you want to do is stroke them or feed them so you have to go up to them really slowly. I let him look at me for a moment, I was as still as a statue. Then, when he stopped looking as if he was going to jump out of his skin at any moment, I carefully put Maman's crystal bowl down on the ground. I took the foil off the bottle of milk and poured it in the bowl. Now the cat's eyes were wide with interest. He wanted the milk but did he want it so much that he'd overcome his fear of me? I stepped back a couple of paces and purred. I was quite good at purring. I may not have completely fooled the cat, but he definitely appreciated my effort. He bowed his head into the bowl and lapped up the milk.
'HAAAAAAYAAAAAAAA!' Peyvand swung down from the garage roof, leapt behind me and karate-chopped my backside. I screamed. The cat was gone in a flash.
'Idiot!' I smacked his shoulder hard in rage. I chased him back through the garage and round the side of the house. Sometimes Peyvand would play with me all day and be really nice and fun, but other days, like today, he just wanted to start a fight. I knew Peyvand would creep back towards the garden and that was fine, I had a plan.
Recent rain had brought out the snails. I walked to the back of the garden, to the leafiest, most unkempt part. There was a big rhubarb plant and under the big leaves sat the snails. I rolled up the sleeve on my left arm right to the top. I carefully picked up the snails and put them on my arm until they glued themselves to my skin. I covered my arms with so many snails, you could hardly see any skin. I put my arm behind my back and walked out to the front of the garden. I could see him hiding in the doorway of the garage to scare me again. This time I was ready for him. 'HAAAAYAHHHHH!' he jumped out and aimed a high kick in the air just above my head. I jumped back and held out my arm, right up to his face. Peyvand screamed and stumbled over a box. I grabbed his coat with my snail-less hand and pulled him to the floor. I sat on top of him and held the writhing, slimy creatures an inch from his face. With their eyes on stalks, all the snails peered down at my screaming brother.
'Say sorry. Say sorry,' I demanded.
He wanted to smack my arm away but was terrified of touching one. 'Gerroff! GERROFF! MAMAAAAN!' Peyv was almost crying. I plucked a snail from my arm and held it to his face. It writhed and wriggled, curling and uncurling its gooey body. Peyvand pursed his lips together tight in case I tried to drop the snail into his mouth. I would never have done it because I was scared he would actually die of fright.
'Say "mercy"!'
'Mercy!' Peyvand said, parting his lips just a fraction so it sounded muffled. He was crying now, there were proper tears and snot on his face. I jumped up and let him go.
Later, upstairs in our bedroom, Peyvand let me look through his hair to see if any of it had turned white from the fright. Every single strand was still jet-black. 'Wow,' Peyvand said, 'the torture they gave Dayee Mehrdad must have been really bad.'
Neither of us could think of a single thing worse than having snails shoved in your face when you really hated snails.
MADAR JAAN
Madar Jaan waddled out of the arrivals gate looking just like Mrs Pepperpot from our books at school. An airport man was pulling her suitcase behind her and Madar Jaan was chatting to him in Farsi, even though he was English and it was very likely he didn't understand her. Peyvand and I ran under the barriers and cuddled up to her enormous belly. With a big chuckle she gave us each a squeeze and kissed our faces again and again. She had fat tears running down her face but was smiling widely and giggling.
Madar Jaan was very different to Maman Shamsi. She was older, a proper old lady with white hair. She didn't wear a chador, she wore a long shapeless dress that she made herself, which came down to her ankles. All the dresses were exactly the same only she used different fabric. She had plain cotton ones for wearing around the house, she had ones made from prettily patterned material for when we had visitors or for when she went down to the shops to buy vegetables, and she had a few for 'best'. They were made from very fancy, shiny material from Dubai. She had a roosari, headscarf, to match each one. Madar Jaan always wore a headscarf, except in the bath.
'My baby! My baby!' she told the airport man, who looked keen now to get away. Baba had come to take the bag but couldn't yet because Madar Jaan was cuddling him and patting him on his chest, once again explaining to the airport man with pride, 'My baby.'
Her bearded baby untangled himself from his mother and pushed a pound note into the porter's hand.
He picked up Madar Jaan's suitcase and we made our way to the car.
'Madar Jaan, you smell of mint!'
'It's been in my suitcase, I've bought you mint, coriander, parsley, barberries, mulberries, pumpkin seeds, bakhlava, dried limes. I was going to bring you fish I'd smoked myself but your Auntie Ashraf wouldn't let me, curse her! She said you'd have smoked fish in London. I told h
er, they may have smoked fish in London but it won't be fish that I had smoked and who knows what kind of smoked fish London would have. In any case, your Auntie Ashraf said, there's no more room in your suitcase. That, I told her, is a different story. If you don't let me take the fish because there is no room, I can accept that, I can say "Ashraf is right" but if you say I can't take the fish because they already have plenty of nice smoked fish the way I make it in London, well, I can't accept that. Ashraf was right though, I had no more room in my suitcase. I had to take out two of my dresses and wear them to make room for the limes. I am very hot.'
We held Madar Jaan's hands as she chattered. I kept nuzzling my face against her. She smelled and sounded like Iran.
'Where does your grandmother sleep?' Rebecca Thompson asked.
Her grandmother lived in Devon. Rebecca said her grandma had two cats and a dog. Rebecca was always boasting about things like that. She moved out of London, Rebecca explained, 'because it didn't feel like England any more'. Rebecca's grandma only came to stay for three days at Christmas and had a room of her own because Rebecca's house was like ours but not made into flats. Her grandma had a whole room to herself.
'She sleeps in our room,' I told Rebecca.
'I know, but where?'
'On the floor, next to my bed.'
Rebecca looked very surprised that Madar Jaan slept on the floor. I don't think Rebecca had ever known people who slept on floors before.
Every night Madar Jaan rolled out her little camping mattress and made up a cosy nest for herself by my bunk with lots of blankets and sheets. I had offered her my bed, and Maman had wanted to get a proper bed for her and put it in our big room, but Madar Jaan wouldn't hear of it. 'I'm used to sleeping on the floor. I'm more comfortable there and I know I definitely won't fall off in the night.'
The room that Peyvand and I shared was huge with three windows that slid up high so you could dangle right out and touch the branches of the big bush growing at the side of the house.
Peyvand and I had a bunk bed. Madar Jaan, on her first night with us, put a stop to my tormenting Peyvand from the superior position on the bottom bunk. It was our nightly battle until Madar Jaan intervened. Just as Peyvand was settling to sleep, I pushed the springs of his bed up with my feet and buckarooed him. The more irritated he got the more I did it. Madar Jaan liked little boys much more than she liked little girls and was not going to tolerate any buckerooing of her eldest grandson, born of her eldest son.
She sat up from her little nest. Her face was like a cartoon when she was cross so you never felt scared. 'Shaparak, come here with me and leave your brother alone.' She lifted her blankets so I could snuggle up to her belly and sleep with her there on the floor. She was right. It was much nicer than sleeping on a bed.
'You two are very messy!' Madar Jaan was very tidy. Her suitcase was immaculate. Her five dresses with the matching headscarves were neatly folded and her underwear tucked in the side pocket. She couldn't read so she had none of the books that cluttered every corner of our bedroom. She just had a little address book where she was just about able to write down names and numbers. 'Ah well,' she sighed and shook her head. 'I suppose you both take after your mother and father. They are messy too.'
Madar Jaan tidied up our books and toys and said that while she was staying we had to put everything back where we found it. Peyvand said he didn't know how to tidy up. 'You cheeky monkey!' Madar Jaan scolded. But he wasn't being a cheeky monkey, Peyvand really didn't know how to tidy up, I had seen him try and he got all confused. He'd pick something up from the floor, wander around with it, then put it back down on another part of the floor and pick something else up.
'You're not tidying,' Madar Jaan told him, 'you are just moving things around.' Madar Jaan decided it was time Peyvand and I had a firm hand in the organisation of our room. She shut the door on us and said, 'I do not want either of you to come out until this room is spotless.'
We looked around at the toys, books, clothes, pens and paper strewn around the floor. We'd be in here for ever.
The good thing about having a big brother is that they always take charge when things get difficult. 'There is only one thing for it,' Peyvand announced, 'we'll have to play "Hoover" and you are the hoover.'
He got me in a headlock and guided me around the room as I picked things off the floor and threw them under the beds. A big grey carpet covered most of the floor and we shoved the thinnest books under that. On inspection, Madar Jaan waddled around the room and said that although it was not ideal, it was much more bearable than before.
Madar Jaan divided her time between us, Auntie Ashraf in Iran and Amoo Mansoor in Dubai. When she came to stay, Maman and Baba could leave Peyvand and I at home when they went to parties. I preferred to go with them; I liked being at home with Madar Jaan but I was scared Maman and Baba would never come back. What if they just disappeared?
The first time they had left us with Madar Jaan, Maman had tucked me up in bed, all dressed up and beautiful for her evening out and smelling of the perfume she never ever let me touch. When Baba got ready for an evening out, I sat on the edge of the bathtub and watched him shave at the cracked bathroom mirror. Baba listened to my chatter as he wet his brush, rubbed it over his shaving soap and covered his face in lather. He laughed at my stories as he ran the razor blade over his face, revealing strips of smooth cocoa skin, shaving most carefully around his neat goatee. Baba rewarded me for my excellent company by smearing a lick of his Aramis aftershave on my upper lip, right under my nose where I could smell it for ages after they had left.
I followed my Baba and Maman on their going out rituals and kissed them again and again as they left the front door. Maman never complained about us crumpling her clothes as we hugged her goodbye. I felt a lump in my throat as I heard them shut the car doors and drive off in the Ford Cortina. I didn't know where they would be or when they were coming home and losing a Maman and Baba as lovely as mine would be every bit as sad as when in James and the Giant Peach James's mum and dad got eaten by a rhinoceros.
To help me forget about parents being eaten by a hippopotamus, Madar Jaan tucked me up in bed and told me a story about a girl whose mummy and daddy were carried away by a giant eagle and never came back. I eventually fell asleep.
I woke up with a start in the middle of the night. Maman and Baba must be home by now. I had to go and check. I crept out of bed and carefully avoided tripping over Madar Jaan's feet as I clutched Felfelli and headed to my parents' bedroom. They were still not in their bed. They had not come home. Panic rose in my chest. It was the middle of the night! They should have been home by now! Maman had promised that when I woke up, they would be there!
A long whine escaped from my chest and I was crying, patting their bedclothes to check they definitely weren't there.
'Shaparak! What are you doing?' Madar Jaan, in her nightie, had come to find me. 'Come back to bed, it's late!'
'Where are they, Madar Jaan? I don't know where they are!'
Madar Jaan fussed and kissed my head and told me not to worry.
'You are too big for this silliness,' she gently told me.
Madar Jaan helped me back into bed and tucked me in nice and snug. She stroked my hair and my crying subsided to almost nothing at all. I began to feel safe again. Madar Jaan sat beside me and made up a lullaby. 'Sleep sleep sleep lalalalala, your mother and father have left you all alone, lalalalala. They have left you all alone on the dark dark night, little one and who knows if they are ever coming back. Lalalala.'
I didn't like this song. 'Tell me a story, Madar Jaan.'
Madar Jaan was good at telling stories. She just made them up. You could ask for anything you wanted, a story about a horse or a cat or ten red balloons and she would tell you a good story about it right there and then.
'Okay, do you want a real one or a made-up one?'
'A real one!'
'What do you want it to be about?'
'Me. Can you make it about me,
Madar Jaan? About when I was a baby?'
I cuddled up to her and nestled my head into the crook of her arm, my own arm resting on her big belly.
Then stroking my hair, my grandmother told me a story.
'Once upon a time, under the great dome of the sky, there was a baby called Shaparak who was very nearly not born.'
'Why was I very nearly not born?'
'When you were in your mummy's belly, growing all big and strong, getting ready to come out, your mummy decided she didn't want you and went to the doctors to cut you out early.'
'Why?' I asked her.
'So you couldn't grow any more, so they could throw you away and just have one child. Peyvand was only a baby himself still, so your mummy didn't want another baby.'
'What happened then?' I whispered. This was exactly why I loved Madar Jaan so much, she told us kids stuff that other adults would never do.
'Well, they went into the hospital to get rid of you, but, khdashokr! – Thank God! – your father managed to get your mother to change her mind. And she decided to keep you after all.'
'What would have happened if I hadn't been born?'
'Well, nothing, you just wouldn't be here, that's all.'
'Where would I have been?'
'Nowhere.'
'Where's that?'
'Nowhere is nowhere and nowhere is everywhere,' said Madar Jaan. 'You would have gone back up to God, I suppose, and he would have had to look after you, if no one else wanted you, now go to sleep my angel. Lalalalala, you are all alone, lalalala, Maman and Baba didn't want you ...'
Fatemeh picked up her seven-month-old little boy. He was howling. 'Put him back down,' Madar Jaan snapped. 'You young women spoil babies, picking them up every time they make a sound.'
'But he never usually cries like this.' Why did her voice always sound so feeble when she spoke to her mother-in-law?
'Rub a little opium on his gums, I keep telling you, it's the only way and it won't harm him at all.'
A Beginner's Guide to Acting English Page 20