A Beginner's Guide to Acting English

by Shappi Khorsandi

  Policemen? What had Baba done? What had we done?

  'Why aren't you wearing a uniform, then?' Peyvand was bolder than me. I had wondered the same thing.

  'We are plainclothes policemen, we don't wear uniform because we don't want everyone to know who we are.'

  'Ah!' Peyvand said. 'Are you working undercover?'

  The men laughed and said they were, in a way.

  Peyvand could spend his time asking stupid questions, but I couldn't stand this any longer. 'Are you taking my dad to prison?'

  They laughed again. 'Not yet!'

  Baba was laughing too, he was also flapping his hands and making a lot of noise without actually saying much. Baba always did this when he wanted to make light of something quite serious. He actually sang a bit while he told us serious-but-pretending-it's-not-that-serious news, as he was now.

  'Tadadada daaa! The policemen have just come to see us! You know, they just want to make sure we are okay! Tadadadada!'

  Make sure we were okay? Why shouldn't we be okay? What had happened?

  One of the inspectors kneeled down so he was closer to my height. He smelled nice, that milky smell that English people have. He wasn't as old as Mr McQueen but he had blue eyes like him and he seemed kind. 'Inspector MacDonald and I work at Scotland Yard, the police headquarters.'

  I loved that word 'headquarters'. It made me think of Batman and Danger Mouse.

  'We've received some information relating to your father and you have to go away for a few days. Mr Khorsandi, perhaps you can explain things a bit for your daughter.' Inspector Taylor was trying to break the news as gently as possible to us kids. He looked to Baba, thinking that he would be able to explain things to us just as gently without frightening us.

  Baba was skipping a little.

  'Children! Tadadada! Khomeini has sent his men to Ealing to shoot me!' Baba blurted out with a big grin. He raised his arms and did a funny sort of dance and sang, 'The terrorists have come to get me!'

  They had found us in Ealing and were going to burst through the doors of Madeley Road any minute. I breathed in and my chest hurt.

  Baba handed the chai to the officers and explained that zoolbia bamieh was very sweet and the best thing to have with tea.

  They all sat down and drank their tea.

  I wanted to run out of the house, run down the road and hide. We couldn't go round the front, they might be there. We'd have to go down to Mitra and Mitch's flat and get to the garden that way. We could climb the old pear tree and sneak into the next-door neighbours' garden and from there into the road without them seeing us. I wished our bomb-shelter wasn't filled with dirty water; we could have hidden down there.

  Baba, with his 'tadadada's, was trying to make the day seem normal. I wanted to scream and hide behind the policemen.

  'Don't worry about anything, Shappi Jaan! We are going to go away for a few days, a little holiday! Go and help your mother pack.'

  I didn't move, neither did Peyvand. We never helped Maman pack.

  'Are we going to Brighton?' Peyvand said.

  'We have friends in Brighton,' Baba explained to the police officers. 'They have big hotel by the seaside.'

  The taller officer put his glass back in the saucer and shook his head, looking very serious for a moment.

  'We cannot advise you to stay with people that you know, Mr Khorsandi. At this stage the operation must be kept from all of your friends and associates. No one must know you are going away and no one must know where you are going.'

  'Hadi,' Maman said. 'where is the smaller samovar Ashraf bought from Iran? Our one is too big for the suitcase.'

  Baba and Maman argued about whether or not we needed to take a samovar.

  'We don't know how long we are going to be away for Hadi, I will be the one having to put up with your moaning if we can't get a decent cup of tea.'

  In the end, the samovar was left behind but Maman took a small teapot and some loose-leaf tea. She wrapped four glass chai cups in bubble-wrap and put them all in the huge family suitcase now full to bursting with our clothes, books, dried fruit, tea-making things, loofahs, towels and flip-flops – Maman did not like us to stand barefoot in hotel showers in case we caught the germs of previous guests.

  After she finished packing our things, Maman made egg sandwiches for the journey and a big flask of tea.

  'Where are we going to go, then, how long for? What about school?'

  'The school know you will both be away until further notice.'

  If men with beards and guns went marching through Montpelier's corridors, the teachers would know it had to be something to do with my family.

  'Don't be stupid,' Peyvand scoffed. 'They're not going to go to our school.' Everything I said these days was 'stupid' to him. 'They want to kill Dad, not us.'

  He didn't need to say, 'They want to kill Dad.' He said it to make out he wasn't frightened and he said it in his 'I'm much more grown-up than you' voice and I wanted to kick him. I couldn't, not in front of the policemen.

  They were coming, they were coming to get us. I badly wanted to get out of the house but I couldn't say so, I had to wait to see what the grown-ups would do. The policemen were still drinking tea! I was glad they were here though I wished it was the army. A few tanks outside the house, that would show the terrorists that England was protecting us.

  Finally, the packed lunch was made and we were ready to go. The two policemen came down the stairs. We were going to leave in the car; it was parked out the front.

  'Nobody can kill you if there is a policeman with you,' I whispered to Peyvand.

  He rolled his eyes and said, 'You don't know anything about crime.'

  It had been decided that we were going to Windsor because it wasn't too far from London and we didn't know anyone who lived there except for the Queen. Windsor was where the Queen lived for most of the time, not Buckingham Palace, Inspector Taylor told us.

  'The Queen!' We were going to be near the Queen, so much less likely to come to harm. 'Will we see her, Baba?'

  'Perhaps, when she comes to hang her washing out on the balcony.'

  The policemen got into their own car. 'We'll escort you as far as the M4,' they told Baba.

  'They are not coming all the way with us?'

  'No, Shappi Jaan, they are just going to see us safe out of London.'

  'Yes,' Maman added, 'they want to make sure your father actually leaves town. He didn't want to leave London, he wanted us all to go to Mr Esfahani's house!'

  'There would have been nothing wrong with staying there. The terrorists don't know Mr Esfahani.'

  Maman and Baba were managing to have a row, even now. I was glad. I wanted then to act normally.

  'Hadi,' Maman said in her strictest tone, 'when terrorists come to kill you, you can't just go and stay with a friend who lives a few streets away. If it was up to you, we'd all just be hiding under the beds at home.'

  I looked out of the window as we drove past 65 Madeley Road. I didn't want the terrorists in our house and in our garden, I didn't want them to see our pear tree or the greenhouse.

  The policemen were right behind us. One of them gave me a little wave and I waved back. I looked out of the window as my London whizzed past.

  'Okay, children, we are about to hit the motorway, wave bye-bye to the policemen.'

  Why couldn't they come all the way with us? Why couldn't they stay there until the terrorists were caught? How could we be left on our own at a time like this? Peyvand was waving away to them as if we had all just been on a picnic.

  The policemen honked their horn and waved at us then drove off in another direction and we were on the motorway. It was just the four of us now, Maman, Baba, Peyvand and I, running away from the terrorists.

  'Let's sing an Indian song!' Baba was the best at making up games for long journeys. The 'Indian Song' was one of our favourites. Each of us would sing a verse of a song in Hindi then everyone would join in with the chorus. None of us spoke Hindi, we had to mak
e it up. We all knew the chorus though: 'Jingeligaheh Hey! Hey! Jingeligaheh Hey! Hey!' This wasn't Hindi either; Baba had just made it up the first time we'd played the game and it had stuck.

  If you hesitated when it was your turn to sing, it made it harder because you ended up thinking about it too much. If you are singing in a made-up language, it's best not to think about it and just do it.

  Maman sang out, 'Mehaneh ganeh, ganeh jingeli ghaheh, inderaganeh hey hey!'

  Then all of us: 'Jingeligaheh, hey hey! Jingel gaheh, hey hey!'

  If only the Ayatollah could see us now and see how much fun we were having; we were not bad people.

  Peyvand introduced us to a new motorway game. 'You look at the first three letters of other cars' number plates and make a sentence.'

  Our number plate began with RLE, Rebecca Licks Eggs. Baba called out the number plate of the nearest car and Peyvand and I shouted the first sentence we thought of. It was an exciting game, seeing who could get there first.

  'DTP!'

  'Drop The Post!'

  'Good one, HLM.'

  'Hosseini Loves Maryam.'

  The more we did, the better we got and the faster the game became.

  'MSA.'

  'Maman Sleeps A lot.'

  'PLK.'

  'Peyvand Loves Kebabs!

  'DKD!'

  'Don't Kill Dad!'

  WITH ENEMIES LIKE THESE...

  In the olden days, people under attack hid out in castles with a keep. They had cannons to blast the enemy away. They had a moat and drawbridge so their enemies would fall into the water if they tried to get at them. A bed and breakfast, with net curtains and an elderly landlady who opened the door without even looking first to see who was there, did not make me feel safe.

  Baba filled out some forms for the landlady, who seemed very curious about us. 'It's not the school holidays is it?' she inquired.

  Indeed, it was not the school holidays, it was not even the weekend. Perhaps the landlady didn't care either way and was making chit-chat, but to us, in the surreal situation we had found ourselves in, we got into a fluster explaining ourselves.

  'We are Iranian,' Baba announced with his brightest smile, which made his eyes twinkle.

  'Iranian? I see, we don't get very many Iranians in Windsor.'

  I wondered what she would have made of the fact that we were running away from terrorists.

  'Actually,' Baba told her with a big smile, 'we are running away from terrorists.'

  I got all hot with embarrassment. Why couldn't Baba just be normal? Why did he always joke with English people with his heavy Iranian accent?

  The landlady laughed.

  Her name was Margaret, and she started telling Baba and Maman all about Windsor and the Queen and how she had seen her and some of her family a few times. I felt relieved when she started chatting to Maman and Baba. For a start, it made things feel a bit more normal.

  Margaret was again surprised when Baba said we didn't know how long we were staying.

  'You have no idea at all?'

  'Not more than a few days, maximum one week.'

  I held my breath. This was typical. The rule was that you should knew how long you would be staying at a bed and breakfast. That is the way English people did things. That's the kind of thing that always made our family stand out; we never knew what time we'd be places or how long we were going to stay. But Margaret took it in her stride.

  'All right, well, it's a quiet time of year anyway, and the room is free, so we'll play it by ear.'

  We were shown up to our room. On the way Peyvand explained to Baba what 'play it by ear' meant. There was a bunk bed in our room as well as a double bed. The blankets were quite worn and yellow and the carpet was thin with a faded pattern on it.

  'If I was a politician, we would have been staying in a posh hotel, all paid for by the British Government. No one pays for poets to go and hide. Honestly, don't you think Mr Esfahani's house, would have been more comfortable than this?'

  Maman ignored him and set about making tea. There was a little kettle in the room and in no time we were sitting drinking chai from our glasses from home in Margaret's guest house.

  'Do you think the Ayatollah knows where Windsor is?'

  'No,' Baba said, 'don't worry, he couldn't even find us in London.'

  So here we were. In Windsor. We sat in the tatty room digesting our situation. We were an ordinary Iranian family running away from terrorists who had come to kill the man of the house because he couldn't just be an accountant like Rebecca Thompson's dad.

  Peyvand and I were playing Star Wars Top Trumps. Maman was disinfecting the insides of the drawers and cupboards, preparing them for our clothes.

  Baba went downstairs to use the payphone in Margaret's hallway.

  'You must call us at Special Branch when you get there and tell us where you are staying,' the taller officer had told Baba. 'After that, you must call every day at noon to check in with us and let us know you are all right or if anything suspicious has happened.'

  What, I wondered, would 'anything suspicious' be?

  Baba came up from making his call. He was bright and cheery. 'It's a lovely day. Margaret says there is a pub across the river with nice food so let's go!'

  The pub overlooked the river and Peyvand and I threw chips for the swans. Baba started talking to an old couple who asked where we were from. The old man used to work in Iran and talked about Iranian food. It was no time at all before Baba conjured up a chessboard and spent the rest of the afternoon in a tournament with the men in the pub.

  Maman, Peyvand and I went for a walk by the river. We could just see Windsor Castle where the Queen lived. 'Does she know we are here?'

  Maman laughed. 'The Queen? Why would the Queen know we are here?'

  I shrugged. I just thought she might have been informed of what was happening, that's all. 'Does Margaret Thatcher know?'

  'Yes, Margaret Thatcher will definitely have been informed,' she reassured me.

  Further up the riverbank, I saw something that made my heart skip several beats.

  My legs froze. There was a man and a woman walking along the riverbank towards us. They were strolling, like us. They were not English, they were definitely from the Middle East. The man had a neat beard. Not a goatee like Baba; his covered most of his face. Even though it was a hot day, the woman wore long trousers and a long-sleeved baggy top, the way women in Iran did instead of a chador. She was wearing a hejab, she had all her hair covered. I grabbed Maman's hand and pulled at it. 'Let's go back, Maman,' I urged her.

  'Why? What's the matter?'

  Couldn't she see them? They were getting closer, soon they would be in earshot.

  They were older than Maman and Baba and they were

  Irooni. We could tell, even though hardly any Iroonis in England wore hejabs and had mullah beards.

  'Maman!' I whispered loudly. 'They are Hezbollah!'

  'Shhh,' Maman scolded, pretending not to look at them. 'Don't stare.'

  Peyvand had been balancing on a high wall by the bank. Now he saw them too and jumped off to walk by me and Maman.

  These were the people we were running away from. They had found us and yet we carried on walking. The pavement between us shrunk.

  There was an unwritten rule that Iranians who didn't know each other never said 'hello' when they bumped into each other. You never knew who they might be or who they might know so it was best to either shut up and ignore each other or shut up and look at each other suspiciously.

  'Don't speak Farsi,' Maman would whisper if we saw Iranians on the bus or Tube. It was silly, really. It was obvious by the way we all stopped talking that we were all Iranian and pretending not to be. In fact, even if you thought another family might be Arab or Spanish, if they all stopped talking and looked away when they saw you, you knew they were definitely Irooni. If you spoke Farsi you would give yourselves away. That was another foolproof method of knowing if other people were definitely Iranian; the
y became mute around you.

  Sure enough, as we fell into silence, so did the couple as we passed them. I held my breath as we did so. I braced myself for a shot or a bomb.

  'Was that them? Was that the terrorists?' I hissed at Maman, clutching her arm.

  Maman threw her head back and laughed. 'Don't be silly, azizam, they are just out for a walk like us, though I don't know why they don't stay in Iran if they like wearing the hejab so much. They must work for the embassy.'

  They were going in the direction of the pub. Baba would be playing chess and he wouldn't notice them come in. They were going to shoot him right in front of all the English people and they would all know the trouble we had caused!

  I was crying now and begging Maman to take us back to the pub. I wanted to be there to warn Baba. Peyvand had already run back and so both of them would be there, both of them were going to be killed.

  The pub was just as we left it. Warm, smoky and peaceful. No one had been in to kill anybody.

  Maman bought Peyvand and I lemonades and we sat waiting for Baba to win the tournament. Maman put her arm around me and kissed the top of my head.

  'My poor baby was so frightened!' she told Baba as we walked back to our bed and breakfast. 'Why do they come to live in England and scare my children?'

  The next morning I woke up at the bed and breakfast to shouting in the hallway. 'Hadi! Hadi! Where are you?' It was Mr Esfahani's unmistakable accent ringing out at Mrs L's B & B.

  Baba was up already, making a pot of tea.

  'Aziz? Aziz?' he shouted in the room where we were all sleeping. 'Bah bah! How lovely! We're in here!'

  Baba opened the door and he and Mr Esfahani hugged and kissed each other's cheeks. Maman peeked out from under her blankets and sleepily salaamed Mr Esfahani, who was standing in the doorway with his hand to his chest bowing slightly, pleasantries tripping off his tongue.

  'Hadi! I came as soon as I heard! I told you this would happen, why wouldn't you listen to me, I told you they would kill you in the end!' He waggled his finger in the air and turned to my mother. 'I knew they would kill him!'