When I was in the third year and Peyvand was in the fourth, Mr McQueen decided that for our school play that year we would put on a proper old-fashioned Music Hall. We had auditions and, to everyone's surprise, Peyvand was given the part of the Chairman, the main person who introduced all the acts.
Peyvand was easily the best thing about the whole Music Hall. He didn't just introduce the acts, he added his own lines in like, 'On the piano we have your own, your very own, Madame Megan Miles!' and made the parents laugh. 'No laughing, please, don't you know there's a war on, sir?' Peyvand said to David Black's dad in the front row, which made everyone laugh even more.
At the end of the play, all the mums and dads stood up and clapped loudly and shouted 'Bravo! Bravo!' when Peyvand took his bow. He had been brilliant, the best thing in the whole show. I was only in the stupid chorus with everyone else in my year so nobody even noticed me really. But my brother was the star, everyone said so. Jody Belson, the prettiest girl in my class, stood up at the end, when all the parents went out of the hall and shouted, 'Three cheers for Peyvand, hip hip hooray!' and we all did three cheers and I knew Peyvand was blushing even though no one else could tell because he was so brown. Peyvand was really quite shy.
All the other times in school, though, Peyvand was in trouble. 'He is a remarkably bright boy,' Mr McQueen had told Maman and Baba at parents' evening, 'but he is disruptive. He needs a careful eye over him and I'm afraid if he doesn't, all will not go well at secondary school.'
And so it was decided, however much it cost, and however hard it was going to be to pay, Peyvand would have to go to a private school.
'Otherwise,' his teachers at Montpelier said, 'it is very likely he'll fall in with a bad lot and all will be lost.'
He jumped on tables and made monkey noises all the time. I could hear him from my classroom. You couldn't do that in private school; the teachers were much stricter.
I thought Peyvand didn't even need to go to school. He was so funny that I knew he'd be a really famous comedian one day and be rich and I could go around saying 'I'm Peyvand Khorsandi's sister' and people would go 'wow!'
We were getting older. Peyvand and I still played together, but Peyvand found a lot of our normal games babyish. He preferred to do stuff that would get us into trouble like playing 'Knock Down Ginger'. I made up an especially brave way of playing it. You knocked on someone's door but instead of running away you ran just a few steps back and walked normally past the door just as they opened it and looked around to see who knocked. People didn't think it was us because we just looked like we happened to be passing. I thought I would explode with the giggles but we couldn't laugh until the people had shut the door and gone back into their house.
It was the Easter holidays and we were excited because a new family was moving into the garden flat and Baba said they had a kid. The Rezai family came from Iran. They hadn't come for medical treatment, though. 'They are refugees, like us,' Baba said.
Refugees were people who had to hide in another country because their own was too dangerous. All the Iranians in London we knew were refugees.
Mr Rezai had got into trouble with the Ayatollah, like Baba, but Mr Rezai had stayed in Iran and he was put in prison and tortured. Maman wouldn't tell me how they tortured him, but Mr Rezai walked with a limp and you couldn't really understand what he said when he talked. You had to listen very carefully because he slurred his words and couldn't always swallow his spit properly. Maman made me promise never to ask him about it, which was a hard promise for me to keep, but I managed.
They did have a kid, but he was really little. His name was Kian and he was only five. He couldn't speak English. 'You have to learn,' I told him, 'because if you don't you'll go to school and no one will know what you are talking about. That happened to me and it was horrible.'
Kian was starting Montpelier First School after the holidays.
I told Mrs Rezai that packed lunches had to be sandwiches, not rice, and they had to be made with square bread and not pitta bread. 'You have to make them with slices of ham or yellow English cheese. You can't give him kotlet or halva or anything weird like that.'
I didn't want little Kian to go through what I went through. It was bad enough for him having a dad who couldn't walk or talk properly. Kids like Grace McAvoy would shout, 'Your dad's a pirate or what?' and think she's really funny because her group will laugh just because they are relieved Grace isn't picking on them.
Kian was lucky in other ways, though. He had sandy brown hair, fair skin and green eyes, so he would never be called Paki like me and Peyvand.
Mr Yousefian let the garden flat at the side of 65 Madeley Road out to Kian and his family. 'How can they afford rent if they have just escaped Iran?'
Baba frowned and tutted. 'That's nobody's business but theirs. Never nose into other people's financial affairs.'
Other people always stuck their nose into our financial affairs. People at Iranian school were always asking what car each other's babas drove and whether or not so-and-so's family got Social Security. Some kids there were so rich that they never wore the same outfit two Saturdays in a row and laughed at kids who did. No one really made fun of Peyvand and I at Iranian school though, because even though we wore the same clothes two, sometimes three Saturdays in a row, they knew our dad was Hadi Khorsandi.
Even the grown-ups asked me nosy questions even though they tried to pretend they didn't. 'Your baba's Asghar Agha is so funny! We all read it! He makes a lot of money from it, doesn't he?'
I never answered, I said I didn't know. I knew Baba didn't make a lot of money because we didn't have a BMW like Hannah's family and we didn't live in a big posh house; 65 Madeley Road was the best place in the world, but it definitely wasn't posh with its brown carpets and peeling wallpaper. In any case, it was only rented.
Peyvand and I hadn't meant to make Kian ill. It was the summer holidays and we were bored. One morning, before we had even got dressed, Peyvand saw Kian playing in the garden by himself. I can't remember whose idea it was, but I found a black robe and helped Peyvand wrap it around himself and then he put on the Ayatollah mask. I crouched down giggling as Peyvand went to the window. He just stood still there at the window until Kian looked up and saw him.
The little boy had been crouching down picking daisies and trying to make them into a chain like I'd shown him. He was struggling to make a hole with his fingernails, his little fingers were clumsy with the delicate stem. Part of me wanted to run down and help him, but I didn't. He looked up and saw the Ayatollah Khomeini at our window. He froze. He dropped the daisy and his eyes filled with terror. Peyvand raised his fist and shook it at Kian. Kian managed to get up and stumble back into his flat to his mother.
We didn't see Kian for a while. A week at least. Eventually Maman went down to see the family. It was unusual for Mrs Rezai not to pop in and see Maman for a whole week.
Maman came back after a short while and summoned me and Peyvand.
'Kian is ill. He is wetting his bed, he screams at night and won't leave the house in the day. He is terrified by something. His mother called the doctor. He told the doctor that he can't go out because the Ayatollah has come to catch them. He says he saw the Ayatollah in our flat.'
Peyvand and I looked at each other. We were in trouble. Really big trouble.
'Do either of you,' Maman continued, 'know how Kian came to think such a thing?'
Peyvand and I took the mask downstairs. At first Kian screamed and wouldn't come near it, but after we spent ages showing him it was just plastic, hiccupping in the aftermath of his tears, he allowed his mother to place his hand on the rubber mask. The next day we came down with it again and this time he didn't cry and the day after that he put the mask on his own head. Only for a second and then he tore it off.
BRAINWASHING
Nadia sounded very grown-up on the phone now. Sometimes I couldn't be sure if I was talking to her or Essi. She was quite formal, in that Iranian way where everything is ul
tra polite and you can only really just ask how everyone is. She said things to Peyvand and I that only grown-ups usually say like 'I'll die for you, Enshallah!' and 'Bless that sweet voice of yours', which was a bit weird because she was only a year and a half older than me and only ten days older than Peyvand.
Nadia was a lady now and we were still kids.
'Salaam, Nadia!' I shouted.
'Fadatshamen Enshallah! What a beautiful voice you have! May I die for your voice!'
'How's Khomeini?'
'He is wonderful, God keep him. Bless you, Shappi Jaan, bless you a hundred thousand times, mashallah!'
I remembered Nadia as a little girl like me who loved her dolls and got piggybacks from her brothers. Now though, I couldn't talk to her. We seemed much younger than her because she was living in a war and had a dead older brother. Peyvand and I couldn't even imagine what her life was like. Nadia wasn't real any more. She was a voice at the end of the telephone. She didn't exist for us anywhere else. I didn't know what her school was like or what her friends were like and whether she was even allowed to know about the things we did in England. Nadia was a cartoon. But we loved her.
'Nadia still loves the Ayatollah, her brain has been washed again,' I told Maman when I got off the phone and repeated what she had said.
Maman shook her head and shuddered.
'Do they take brains out and scrub them?' Peyvand said and I giggled though I wasn't sure if he was joking. Was that what they were doing to kids in Iran?
Nadia wrote us letters in squiggly Persian. Her letters were very formal like her conversation. She began all her letters 'in the name of God almighty'.
'Why does she write that?'
'Because she has to, that's what they have taught her.'
Friends came to visit from Iran, each bringing suitcases full of Iranian food, and told us horror stories as they unpacked their tanoor breads, dried mulberries and dates. 'They asked our neighbour's children "Do mummy and daddy pray every day" and "Does daddy drink alcohol? Does he love to drink whisky or beer the most?" Kids are so innocent, they don't know why they are being asked. "Does your mother wear the hejab in the house? Or does she prefer to keep cool and leave it off in front of your guests?" Poor things told their teacher everything, now they are staying with their aunt. Both parents are in prison.'
'Good job we don't live in Iran, then,' I told Maman, 'you and Baba would go straight to prison, especially Baba.'
My baba drank whisky and beer and said bad things about the regime. I think they were okay with smoking though, I don't think they minded cigarettes.
I couldn't really tell any of my friends in school about Iran, about Nadia and my grandparents and how much I missed them and worried about them. Most of their grandparents lived outside of London, in places like Devon or Cornwall, and never worried about mullahs. Besides, I didn't want them to know how strict the mullahs were because they would think that all Iranian people were like that, and we weren't, it was just the ones ruling the country.
RANA DEAN
The Nelson Twins went to boarding school because their mum and dad got divorced, so Peyvand got a new best friend.
Tazim Dean was a boy from Kenya who was in my class when he first arrived at school but he was so clever that after a few days they moved him up to Peyvand's class. Tazim was very tall and good at sport as well. He was the cleverest in the class in all the normal classes too.
Maman was very happy when Peyvand became best friends with Tazim. 'Perhaps you'll finally start to do some work too,' she told him.
Peyvand said, 'Or perhaps Tazim will finally have some fun' and Maman smacked him gently on the bum with the fish-slice she was holding.
He threw himself across the kitchen and on to the floor clutching his backside going, 'Oooh! It's broken, Maman, you've broken my bum and I think you have to call an ambulance.'
Maman turned away so he wouldn't see her smiling. Maman could never hold her smiles in, even when she was annoyed at us.
Tazim lived only five doors down from us in Madeley Road.
'Tazim's got a real sister too, Rana,' Peyvand said. 'You should come with me to Tazim's house and meet her, she's your age.'
Peyvand never ever mentioned girls or said I should meet them unless he had a crush on them.
'You fancy Rana! It's so obvious!' Peyvand punched me hard on my arm but I just laughed and sang 'Peyvand's got a girlfriend! Peyvand likes Rana,' waggling my finger at him.
'I do not! She's ugly!' he snarled, which meant he did and she wasn't. He twisted my arm behind my back. I was still giggling but my arm really hurt so I said 'mercy'. He let me go and we went five doors down to Tazim's house.
Rana Dean, Tazim's sister, was dark and pretty and had a really gentle voice. Something about her made me feel calm and not want to show off or be loud or anything. She invited me into her room.
I heard the tweet tweet of birds the moment I stepped into her room then a beautiful green budgie swooped down from on top of her cupboard to nestle on her shoulder.
'Oh wow! You've got a budgie!'
Rana had two budgies, and a cockatiel. Her bedroom window was really small so she just put a cloth over it so they wouldn't crash into the glass and let them fly around the room.
The boys went off to play Astro Wars. Boys only ever wanted to play with computer games. How could you want to play Astro Wars when there were two budgies and a cockatiel flying around the room?
Kerry Tyler shouted at me and Peyvand, Rana and Tazim from behind our garden wall: 'Oi! Ayatollah! Ayatollahs!'
I had brought Rana to our garden to show her my pigeon coop.
'What's the matter with your neighbour?' Rana asked, surprised that someone should be throwing apples and shouting at us. 'What is she calling you?'
Ayatollah was not Khomeini's first name as I thought at first. It was his 'title', Maman explained. I watched him closely on the television. He never smiled. Maman said it was because he was a religious man and very religious men were serious all the time. Mr McQueen, our headmaster at school, was a religious man. He was always telling us about God and the Bible and how we should all be Good Samaritans, but he smiled a lot. He even dressed up at Hallowe'en and joined in with the apple bobbing. I couldn't imagine the Ayatollah doing that.
'Oh, she's an idiot,' I said to Rana. 'Come and see the bomb-shelter.'
At 65 Madeley Road we had a bomb-shelter in our garden. A proper one, though no one used it and it was all filled up with dirty water. We dropped broken bricks into it.
Peyvand and Tazim were throwing apples back into Kerry's garden and I took Rana to the old pear tree. 'We can see what's going on from up here,' I told her.
I didn't think Rana had climbed a tree before. She wasn't the sort of girl you'd imagine would get leaves in her hair and dirt on her clothes. She was so neat and pretty. I was about to show her how easy it was to climb the Y-shaped tree when she scrambled up it like a monkey and sat on a branch much higher than any of the ones I'd ever managed. She didn't get a single leaf in her hair or a mark on her crisp white dress.
Kerry had climbed up a tree too. She was making faces at us and calling for her brother: 'Jake! JAKE! Come and see this! The Ayatollahs have got some monkey friends with them!'
Rana reached and picked up an old rotting pear sitting on the wall. She didn't take ages to aim or anything, she just raised her hand up in the air and threw it. Hard. It hit Kerry on the side of her head. It exploded into mush in her hair. Kerry got down from her tree and ran indoors crying. We didn't see her in the garden for ages after that.
Rana didn't show off or say anything really about being able to throw a pear from the other side of the garden and hit the exact right spot. Peyvand kept whooping and jumping up and down around her and being totally in love with her.
Rana smiled and looked shy and said, 'Tazim's a much better thrower than me.'
Peyvand and I started to spend quite a lot of time with Tazim and Rana. Peyvand was careful not to hang a
round us girls too much in case I told Rana he fancied her. It was nice to hang around with another brother and sister, it was as if we'd all known each other for ages.
Rana wasn't like any of the other friends I had. She was much browner than me. I could talk to Rana about coming from Iran and she was really interested and understood the things I said about missing my grandmothers and how different my mum and dad were to everybody else's.
'It's not easy being an outsider is it? You're never exactly English and you're never exactly like where your family is from. We're sort of stuck in the middle, aren't we?'
That was exactly right. I had never been able to talk to another kid like this before.
Rana went to a private school and got home about half an hour before I did. I went straight round to her house after school on most days with Peyvand. Maman didn't mind because Tazim and Rana were such good children. We sat in her room and we played with the birds and talked. Rana never laughed at anyone to be funny like a lot of us at school did, she was just very calm and very nice. She never showed off her prettiness either.
'When I'm eighteen, I'm going to move back to Kenya to be with my dad.'
Rana's mum and dad were divorced.
'Why?'
She shrugged. 'I'm just not happy here. I'm not happy at all.'
That afternoon I walked home with Peyvand in silence, wondering what I could do to make Rana happy so she wouldn't go to Kenya, so she would stay in London and be my friend.
THE PHONE CALL
The phone on the little table in the hallway was always ringing and was always for Baba. On the little telephone table were Baba's essentials: an ashtray and pad and paper to doodle on as he talked. When Baba wasn't writing or shouting, he was drawing. He drew little caricatures of all of us and of mullahs and Margaret Thatcher.
A Beginner's Guide to Acting English Page 25