A Beginner's Guide to Acting English

by Shappi Khorsandi

  We went home in the afternoon to prepare for the evening. My costume was 'Exquisite! Quite exquisite!' according to Mrs Davenport. Mrs Gadd said I could keep it afterwards. It was made of a very pretty flowery dress Mrs Gadd had found in the jumble pile and had altered especially to fit me. She'd attached lots of crepe paper to look like foliage. I had a hat too, a really pretty blue one. I sat a green, see-through floaty scarf on my head and wore the hat on top. I was meant to be part of the forest so the floaty scarf was my leaf.

  I paced impatiently waiting for us to leave. Maman was taking me back to the school and wasn't making the slightest signs of leaving the house. 'Maman! Hurry up!' I pleaded with her.

  'Okay, azizam, I just have to put the rice on then we can go.'

  She sang softly to herself as she drained the rice then prepared the pan for the rice to go back in. She poured a little oil in the pan and neatly arranged sliced potato at the bottom, then gently put the par-boiled rice back in, adding a cup of water, a smidge of oil and set it at a very low heat. Then I watched her wrap a tea towel round the lid of the pan and press the lid down tight on the pan, the tea towel preventing any of the steam escaping. My mother made the most perfect rice. The potato at the bottom would go perfectly crispy and the rice light and fluffy with no bits sticking together. Later she would add saffron and melted butter before it was served.

  The clock ticked dangerously close to show time. I pleaded with Maman. 'Pleeeease! Let's go!' I was panicking.

  'One second, aziz.'

  Maman wasn't panicking at all. She shouted up instructions to Baba. 'Turn the rice off in forty minutes! I'm just taking Shaparak to her school show.'

  Baba shouted back 'What school show?' He never knew what was going on at school.

  Maman would tell him but he'd always forget. Another shout up the stairs: 'She's playing Sleeping Beauty.'

  'No I am not! I am the narrator, the child of the forest. Can we please go?'

  Baba was coming downstairs now. 'What does "narrator" mean?'

  'The storyteller,' I explained.

  'But you look like a plant.'

  'I'm a child of the forest, Baba, I see all, hear all, but no one sees me.'

  'But I can see you.'

  I sighed.

  Maman was looking for her shoes. 'I can't find them anywhere.'

  'Your mother can never find her shoes,' Baba said, coming to the door to see us off. 'Or her keys. Have you looked in the fridge?'

  Maman tutted crossly. 'I would find things a lot easier if you didn't make such a mess.'

  She eventually found her shoes, in the shoe cupboard. I was practically clawing at the door. Finally we were out of the door and walking the ten-minute walk to the school. I was rushing ahead, my crepe foliage flapping in the wind. I sang my songs out loud as we walked and couldn't wait for my moment onstage. We got to the school and went in through the playground entrance. No one else was around. The lights of the big school hall were on. Through the window we could see everyone already seated. I felt sick. The show had started. I could see my classmates all in their costumes performing the first scene when the princess goes into the tower and falls asleep. We were late. They had started without me. We slipped in the back of the hall. My crepe paper rustled and I hiccupped, trying to keep down my sobs of disappointment.

  Maman was trying to make me feel better. She took my green floaty scarf and tied it in a big bow around my head. 'There,' she whispered, 'now everyone can see you even though you're not onstage.'

  Quietly growling in misery, I craned my neck to see Susie Hampton, my last-minute stand-in, singing my songs in a hastily put-together costume from odds and ends found in the jumble pile.

  Susie Hampton looked nothing like a child of the forest. She looked as if she should be doing percussion. 'Get back to your triangle, Susie!' I wanted to shout. I wanted to leap across the hall, yank her off the stage and take my rightful place. But I did not. I didn't shout. I didn't fuss. I just stood at the back of the hall in my stupid hat and the stupid floaty scarf and let the big fat tears stream down my face.

  Everyone knew Susie was a stand-in. There had been an announcement before the play started so it wouldn't look so strange that Mrs Gadd sat at the front with a script whispering the words to her. 'She did a sterling job!' a parent near us exclaimed as everyone applauded like chimps at the end.

  My applause. It was my applause that was being used for someone else and it was all my mother's fault. Everybody else had been there on time. Maman, with her bloody rice and her bloody shoes and her bloody foreignness ruined everything. I was never ever going to be happy again.

  MAHSA

  During the first part of the war, the Iranian borders were closed. They reopened in 1983 and people who could, got out, or they got their children out, especially the boys who would be forced into the army.

  My Uncle Mahmood had served at the front during his national service but he didn't want to be a soldier any more, he wanted to be a sociologist, so he came to London to live with us. Our Dayee Abbas, who lived in America and promised he would take me to Disneyland one day, flew over to see us when Mahmood came over. When they saw each other, Maman, Mahmood and Abbas all cuddled for ages and cried. When you saw relatives you hadn't seen for a long time, you had to stand and cuddle and cry, even if you didn't really remember them.

  Dayee Mahmood was not very good at English so he went to a language school and after his English got better, he got a place at university. In the evenings, he taught Peyvand and I to wrestle. In Maman's family, wrestling was considered a very important skill and Peyvand and I became very good at it.

  Dayee Mahmood stayed at our flat in Madeley Road for quite a long time, then eventually rented a room in a house nearby, which made room for more visitors. Peyvand and I were used to sharing our big bedroom with the circus of relatives and friends and friends of friends of friends who came to stay from Iran over the years.

  Peyvand and I were so used to visitors, it never occurred to us to mind. We had no choice in it anyway. With Baba, you had to accept that he liked lots of people around all the time. Even if there hadn't been a war going on in Iran, Baba would have found a way to fill the house with strangers and treat them like family.

  People who knew us, or knew someone who knew us, sent their sons to stay and Maman and Baba looked after them until they went to boarding school, or university, or found a job.

  Most of the people who came to stay, though, were families who came to London to get private medical treatment.

  'Why can't they get treated in Iran?' I asked Maman.

  'Because of the war, it's very difficult and besides, some treatments are better in England.'

  Getting treatment in England was very expensive so families like ours who lived here had the patient and their whole family stay so they didn't have to pay for hotels.

  Baba kept promising Peyvand he could eventually have a room of his own, the bedroom in Baba's office, but with all the visitors, it was impossible. Sharing a room with Peyvand was getting hard. He was fun to chat to at night and to play with, but he was a boy and older than me so was starting to get annoyed with me being around. He never let me play when Andrew and Christopher came round and I had to take in glasses of squash and biscuits just to be let in the room. 'Thanks for the drinks. You are dismissed now,' he would say and Andrew and Christopher would giggle and copy him. 'You are dismissed,' they'd say and wave their hands and carry on with their game.

  I would stamp out of the room with tears in my eyes and vow that I'd never ever play with Peyvand again, however much he begged me or how good the game was. But I always did. I could never stay angry at Peyvand for long.

  'Mr Toofan is here for a heart by-pass operation.' Mr Toofan came with his wife, who was very beautiful but fat, and Peyvand and I watched as she loaded her plate at the dinner table.

  'No wonder he is ill,' Peyvand whispered, 'his wife eats all his food!'

  They had a little boy called Aydin who was two
and very sweet. But he always smelled of poo. 'His mum is too busy eating to change him,' Peyvand said, but Maman said that was rude and told him off. It was true though.

  'Who are all the people at your house?' Rebecca Thompson said when her dad dropped her off to play one Sunday.

  I shrugged. 'I'm not sure,' I'd tell her, 'they're just people'.

  The visitors, especially the men, and especially if they didn't have children, all blurred into one sometimes.

  When Mahsa and her family came to stay, we knew the situation would be a little different. Mahsa was only five and she came from Iran with her mum and dad who were healthy, but Mahsa herself had cancer and only had a few months to live. That's what the doctors had said at the Royal Marsden Hospital. 'With the correct treatment,' they told Mahsa's parents gravely, 'she will have five months at the most.'

  Maman had to translate for the family what the doctors said because their English was not very good. Mahsa was five and I was almost eleven, old enough to find a five-year-old cute. Mahsa was a very sweet child. She had huge brown eyes and a big cheeky grin. Auntie Ashraf and our cousins were staying with us too at the time. With them and Mahsa's family in the upstairs flat, we had a houseful, with at least ten people sitting down to breakfast in the morning.

  I let Mahsa play with my old Sindy and Barbie dolls and helped her climb my pear tree in the garden. I took her into the greenhouse to see the kitten colony. 'We've got loads of kittens in our garden in Iran too,' she said, apologetic that she wasn't bowled over by the sight.

  Mahsa's cancer treatment was going to make her go bald. Her family needed to be in London so they could get radiotherapy at the children's ward at the Royal Marsden Hospital. Her parents had sold their house to raise the funds to bring their child to London for private health treatment. Cancer was serious, I knew that.

  'I am very ill,' Mahsa boasted, 'I may even die, though don't tell my mother that I know.'

  'How do you know?' I asked her

  'I know because Maman keeps crying. She doesn't cry in front of me, she cries in the shower because she thinks I won't hear her over the water. But I do. She has about five showers a day.'

  I asked Maman about Mahsa. She was honest with me. 'The doctors have said Mahsa has only got about four months to live, but with treatment here in England, they are going to see if they can get her better so she lives longer.'

  Mahsa began chemotherapy. All her silky hair fell out.

  'You can wear a cap for now,' her mother told her, giving her a Daffy Duck cap we bought from Ealing Broadway on our most recent trip there. 'But then we'll go to a proper wig shop and get you a wig so nobody can tell you have no hair.'

  Baba raised an eyebrow. 'Why? Mahsa looks as beautiful without her hair as she did with it. You don't need a cap or a wig!'

  Mahsa giggled and took her cap off. She went to the mirror. 'But I look like a boy!'

  'Tsk,' Baba told her. 'What boy has eyes as lovely as yours? I never noticed what gems they were with all that horrible hair covering them up.'

  Mahsa laughed and looked at her mother. Hadi Jaan always made her laugh when everyone else was busy being serious.

  Baba pulled Mahsa on to his knees and said, 'If you ask me, once the treatments are over, and your hair grows back, you should shave it, really. You looked terrible with hair.'

  He tickled her and Mahsa giggled and giggled until she was nearly crying and Mahsa's mum watched. She looked as if she was close to tears herself, but she also looked happier, happier than she did when she was talking about wigs.

  Mahsa was very ill during her treatment, so ill that she couldn't play in the garden or anything. I read her stories as she lay in bed. She was a bit too young for the Secret Seven and other Enid Blyton books that I loved, but I read her The Twits by Roald Dahl and she really loved it. Mahsa didn't know much English beyond 'hello', 'goodbye', 'how are you' and 'freckle', so I translated the story into Farsi as I went along. Some bits were hard so I just made it up; it didn't make a difference to Mahsa. She usually fell asleep and quietly woke up again several times as I read to her, but it didn't matter, I liked reading out loud and she liked to listen wherever we were in the story.

  Maman went to the hospital with Mahsa's mother and father to translate for them and sometimes took me with them. The Royal Marsden Hospital had a special children's ward. I hung around in the games room while the others were with the doctor. A boy about Peyvand's age was in there, reading a comic. He was really nice-looking, a bit like Lee Windsor. He had a cap on and I could tell he had no hair underneath it.

  'Hello,' he said cheerily.

  I always felt awkward talking to boys, especially older ones, like this one.

  'I've got a brain tumour, what have you got?'

  I felt bad that I didn't have anything. This boy was being friendly to me because he thought I was ill like him. I didn't want to tell him I was healthy. I wished I'd had something so he would carry on talking to me. But if I said 'cancer' then I'd have to pretend I was dying and although I was good at lying, that wasn't a very nice lie, especially when Mahsa had it for real. I did lie in the end, but only a little. 'My little sister is here. She has cancer.'

  'How is she doing?' The boy was so nice, I bet Rebecca Thompson would have fancied him. I bet Rebecca Thompson would have said she had cancer just to make him like her.

  'She's okay, she's lost all her hair.'

  'Me too.' He took his cap off so I could see.

  I didn't know what to say. There was a gigantic scar across his head. The stitches were big, like Frankenstein's Monster's.

  'Did they take your tumour out, then?'

  'Most of it.'

  'So are you well now?'

  'I'm having chemo, then, hopefully, I'll go into remission.'

  Remission was when the cancer went away. I knew that from the conversations Maman had with Mahsa's mother and father.

  I volunteered to go to the hospital after that, hoping to see the boy again, but I never did. 'He's in remission', I thought, 'he doesn't need to stay here.'

  Mahsa stayed the night at the hospital sometimes. Sometimes she'd stay a few nights. The nights she was away, her mother didn't bother with showering when she wanted to cry. Peyvand and I heard her howling from our flat, which was a whole floor down. 'Bacham! Bacham!' she sobbed. 'My child! My child!' She cried so much that sometimes it sounded as if she was being sick, 'Oh, please, Allah! Save my child! Save my child!'

  Peyvand and I sometimes sat on the stairs in the hallway listening to her quietly. Maman had told us to let her cry, not to disturb her. 'We have to let her cry so she can be strong and hold it in when she is with Mahsa.'

  In the months that Mahsa and her family stayed with us, Mahsa was like a little sister to me and Peyvand. She wasn't annoying like a lot of little kids. She always had funny stuff to say and, like me, she loved animals. One of Baba's friends bought me some pigeons and built a loft for them in our garage. Mahsa helped me clean it out every day and scattered seed for them to eat. The pigeons were very tame. They were two pretty doves and four plump brown ones and one freckly one that Mahsa and I called 'Freckle'. Mahsa loved to learn English and 'Freckle' was the most unusual word she'd learned. She was very proud to know what it meant.

  Sometimes Mahsa was very weak and then other times she was better. Mahsa's 'five months left to live' came and went. They were with us for more than seven months. I went with them on their last trip to the Royal Marsden Hospital. Mahsa's hair was short and fine, but it was growing back. Her mother held one of her hands, her father held the other as we all walked into the doctor's room. For some reason, Mahsa's maman held my hand too, very tightly. The doctor came in and told us all to sit down. Mahsa's mum and dad stared at the doctor's face, as if they were trying to read what was about to come out of his mouth before he said it. Mahsa sat on her mother's lap and played with the buttons on her coat; they were round like Maltesers.

  The doctor had Mahsa's notes in his hand but he didn't open them
before he spoke as he had all the other times, he just sat down and the words 'she's all clear' tumbled out of his smile like confetti all over us.

  I didn't need to translate, but I did anyway because it felt so good. The doctor beamed and Mahsa went to him for a cuddle. Mahsa's mum and dad cried and cried and said, 'tank you, tank you'. Her mum grabbed the doctor's hand and kissed it. I looked at Mahsa and she looked at me and we raised our eyebrows and smiled at each other in understanding. Mums were so embarrassing.

  Just a few weeks later, Mahsa and her family flew back to Iran and before she left, my little friend told me she loved me, in English.

  PART 3

  GETTING OLDER

  After the fourth year at Montpelier First School, you went to the first year at Montpelier Middle School. The middle school was just the upstairs building, but it may as well have been a million miles away. Everything was different. We had a different hall, playground, different teachers who were a lot sterner than the ones downstairs, and instead of a headmistress, we had a headmaster. Peyvand had already been there a whole year before me and said Mr McQueen was really nice and stopped teachers using the slipper to punish naughty kids.

  Mr Vincent McQueen was the headmaster at Montpelier Middle School. He was tall, posh and old and handsome at the same time. Mr McQueen had fought in the war. He had been a pilot, just like Roald Dahl, and he was an actor outside school.

  My first-year teacher was called Mrs Manley. She was very strict and everyone was scared of her, but she was very nice, and when she realised I didn't know the difference between 'b' and 'd' she never shouted at me when I got them wrong.

  In the second year, I was in Miss Hill's class. She was funny and put on all different voices when she read to us.

  Peyvand was quite famous at Montpelier Middle School, as he was best friends with the Nelson Twins and everybody fancied them. The main reason everyone knew Peyvand, though, was because he was naughty. 'If only your brother was more like you,' all my teachers told me. I wished I was more like Peyvand. All the kids thought he was really funny and he would do the most daring 'dares' but I was always too chicken.