Baba ushered Aziz Esfahani in and forced a glass of tea upon him.
'Nobody has killed anyone. Sit down, Aziz, it's good to see you.'
Margaret appeared at the door. 'Is everything okay? The gentleman insisted on coming upstairs, he said he was your bodyguard.'
Mrs L looked around the room and saw the teapot Maman had brought with us. 'Tea- and coffee-making facilities are provided, you know,' she sniffed.
Baba did not use a kettle and teabags like normal people and wouldn't drink tea from a mug. 'You must see the colour of the tea. If you drink mud like English people then you can use a mug but for proper chai, you need to see the colour.'
Margaret took the glass of chai Baba offered her and sniffed it suspiciously.
'Only guests are allowed in the rooms,' she said sternly.
'Yes, yes! Mrs Margaret, this is my guest, Mr Aziz Esfahani.'
Mr Esfahani put his hand to his chest and bowed towards Mrs L, who had never been bowed to before so she wasn't quite sure what to do. She put down the cup of tea, smiled awkwardly and left the room backwards.
After having some tea, Baba took Mr Esfahani downstairs so Maman, Peyvand and I could get dressed. Breakfast was served until 9.30 a.m. It was 9.15. Maman was taking her time blow-drying her hair and doing some stretches. Peyvand and I went downstairs so everyone could see that we, at least, obeyed the rules. Baba would turn up at 9.40 and make a fuss about breakfast not being served any more.
I think it was because of the bowing and because Mr Esfahani was so well dressed and polite that Margaret took a shine to him and at almost ten o'clock, he was sitting in her breakfast room with a full English breakfast before him, telling our landlady in very broken English that he had once played football with the Shah of Iran.
'Did he really play football with the Shah?' I asked Baba in Farsi.
'Yes,' Baba said, 'everyone in Iran played football with the Shah at one point or other. Who is to say they did not?'
We all ordered a full English and I ate it all up except for the sausage because it had bits in it and the black pudding because Baba said it was made from blood. I didn't believe him, of course, but I left it just to be safe.
The radio was on in the kitchen. We heard on the news that Diana Dors had died. Died! Maman put her hand to her mouth in shock. 'Poor woman! A heart attack! I told you Hadi, I told you what she was doing was dangerous. You should lose weight gradually, not all at once.'
Maman had been watching how Diana Dors's diet had been going on Good Morning Britain and couldn't finish the rest of her full English. Peyvand took her bacon and I had her fried bread.
'What are we going to do today?' I asked
'Today?' Baba replied. 'Whatever you want.'
We went to see the castle where the Queen stayed. It was nice. It was a proper castle, not like Buckingham Palace, which was new and looked like a very big house, and you could go inside Windsor Castle.
'Can we go in?' I was beside myself with excitement, 'can we go and see the Queen's bedroom?'
I actually wanted to see the Queen's toilet. I imagined it would be made of gold.
It turned out that you couldn't actually go to the bits the Queen lived in, only a few rooms were open and you walked around those and looked at some old stuff. It was nice though; just one of the rooms was ten times bigger than our whole flat in Madeley Road. I mentally arranged the room to how I'd have it if we were to live there.
Baba made his call to Scotland Yard from a payphone in the street.
'Any news?' Maman asked when he came back. Peyvand and Mr Esfahani were eating ice creams by the castle wall.
'No, nothing, we just have to wait.'
So they hadn't been caught. They could be anywhere. As I licked my double chocolate-chip ice cream I scanned the high street.
'What do you say when you phone Scotland Yard?' Peyvand asked Baba.
He shrugged. 'They ask if I am okay. I say yes, they say good, call back tomorrow and then I say "goodbye" but they have usually put the phone down by then.'
Back at the B & B, Maman and Baba had a nap while Peyvand and I played Top Trumps. Mr Esfahani had booked himself in and had his own room down the hall from our own.
Later that day, we had more visitors from London. Ida, Mitra, Mitch, Mamad Hosseini, Hosseini's new girlfriend Stella and her teenage daughter Lucy were all in Margaret's front room, all laughing and talking at once. Our friends in London had come to see us. They were a buffer of warmth and normality against the unreal situation we were in. It was difficult to think of terrorists when Ida and Mitra were giggling and laughing and kissing us. They were young and pretty and happy and a million miles away from the stern bearded men who didn't like Baba.
Margaret checked everybody in. Her house was now full. 'I'd never met an Iranian before in my life and now I seem to have met dozens all at once!' she remarked to Mr Esfahani, who nodded and bowed and didn't understand a word.
More arrived the next day, a Sunday. Hosseini's sister and her husband, Simin and Banou and Shireen.
They would not stay the night, Baba assured Margaret, who kept saying 'No room at the inn!'
'We are going on a picnic.'
Iranian people always have picnics; it doesn't have to be a hot day and you don't have to even be near a park or a beach. At the drop of a hat, everyone gathered food to eat outside together.
Simin and Banou had bought a carload of food from London. Big pots of rice and salad olovieh. They bought big round Iranian barbari bread from the Iranian shop in High Street Kensington with plenty of goats' cheese and pickles and fresh herbs. They had bought a giant watermelon to cut up for afterwards and a battery-operated samovar.
'What about the lamb? Did you bring meat?'
'The freshest mince from the best cut. The butcher is an old neighbour of ours. He was a surgeon back in Iran. Not an ounce of fat on this meat. Hadi Jaan, go and ask the landlady if she has metal skewers, I left mine at home.'
'No need!' Mr Esfahani leapt to the rescue. 'I always keep skewers in the back of the car, I'll go and get them.'
'Aziz, why do you have skewers in your car?' Baba asked him.
'For emergencies. This is the first one!'
Everyone was bustling about folding rugs and getting ready to go.
Margaret gave us coal for the barbecue. 'I'm not sure if you're allowed to start a fire by the riverside, but I don't suppose anyone will mind.' Margaret was quickly learning that with Iroonis you had to just go with the flow.
Her hallway was full of very loud people chattering in a foreign language. There was a time where it would have horrified her to hear guests talking about taking a barbecue to the river and lighting it, but so many things were out of the ordinary at the moment in her little B & B that she didn't bat an eyelash.
The skewers were retrieved from Mr Esfahani's car. Baba waved them in the air as he herded the group towards the door. Gathering all the pots and pans and rugs and plates, last-minute dashes to the toilet were made and finally we were all set to go.
Officers Taylor and MacDonald stood on the front step as Baba opened the door to leave. They had been about to ring the doorbell. 'Hello there, Mr Khorsandi!' They looked at Baba, who was still holding around ten long, metal skewers in his hand.
'Hello, officers! How are you? What are you doing here?'
Our comrades made their way out into the street, nodding and smiling 'hellos' to the policemen.
'We've come to see you, can we have a word, Mr Khorsandi?'
Baba was in trouble, and I knew why. We weren't supposed to have told anybody where we were and now here we were with half of London's Iranian community staying with us in Windsor. Baba took them into the front room of the B & B and introduced them to Margaret. 'These gentleman are from Scotland Yard,' Baba told her with some pride.
She brought out a tray of tea and biscuits for her guests. She had debated with herself about the biscuits before she brought them out. She had a strict policy of one miniature p
acket of custard creams per room, per day and the Iranians had had theirs for the day, but then it wasn't very often she had police officers in her front room and it would seem bad manners to make them drink their tea without a biscuit.
'Mr Khorsandi, who are all the people here with you?'
'Is okay,' Baba told them, 'they are my friends from London, they have come to see us.'
Officer Taylor set his teacup in the saucer and added two more spoons of sugar from the bowl Mrs L had left on the table.
'You are supposed to be in hiding, you are on the run from terrorists. No one was meant to know of your whereabouts.'
'No, is okay, sir,' Baba reassured them. 'It is just Mr Esfahani, Shireen, Simin and a few others, they have all promised not to kill me at all.'
'That's hardly the point now, is it,' Detective Inspector Taylor said over officer MacDonald's choking cough. 'Well, I suppose there is no harm done. We've come to tell you that we believe it is safe for you to come home now.'
'You have caught the terrorists?'
'I'm afraid we can't give any more information to you other than we no longer believe you are in immediate danger.'
'What about danger later on, danger that is not immediate?' Baba asked.
DI Taylor smiled and said, 'To be honest with you, Mr Khorsandi, I don't know any more than you do. These matters are dealt with by my seniors, and information is on a need-to-know basis.'
'I see,' Baba said. 'But I need to know.'
'All we can tell you is that they would not have given the all clear if they were not as sure as they could be about your and your family's safety.'
Baba talked with the policemen for a while. They talked about Asghar Agha and whether Baba was going to carry on writing it.
I prayed he wouldn't. If Baba kept writing all his jokes and poems and drawing his caricatures, then he was going to upset the mullahs again, and next time we might not have any warning.
'Baba, can't you just stop writing?' I said. I felt that this was what the policemen wanted Baba to do and they would know best about what was safe and what was not.
'Boro, boro' go, go, Baba told me. He wasn't going to talk about it.
'Well.' DI Taylor stood up and so did Officer MacDonald. 'We'll escort you back to London.'
Baba shook his head. 'We can't go back yet, our friends have booked rooms for tonight and now we are going on picnic. I make kebabs. You must join us. Do you play chess?'
DI Taylor and Officer MacDonald helped us find a secluded spot by the river and helped carry our rugs, balls, pots and plates and everything else we had brought.
'Fire up the mangal!' Mr Esfahani shouted, and soon we were eating delicious hot kebabs with Simin's rice. We even had grilled tomatoes and little pots of somagh to sprinkle on our meat. As everyone chattered and ate and cackled heartily, I looked at Baba, cigarette dangling from his mouth as he furiously fanned the flames over the grill, concentrating but still managing to tease Mr Esfahani and keep everyone laughing.
The sun shone bright for us on the river's edge. I wondered what the terrorists would say if they saw us now. Could they know how much fun we were having because of them? We were in the sunshine eating kebabs with British police officers and all of our friends. Everyone was on our side, everyone wanted to help us, be with us because they loved Baba. I wondered if this many people loved the terrorists who had wanted to kill Baba. I wondered if they had ever been on a picnic that was this much fun. Had their fathers ever made them laugh and laugh until they thought they would wet themselves? If the Ayatollah were here, he'd want to join in. He would see that this is what life could be like for people if you just let them be.
SAFE AT HOME
Our flat was just as we'd left it. We all walked back in slightly cautiously. I don't know what we expected: the door to be broken down, the place in a mess as the terrorists ransacked it looking for us. No one had been here.
'How did they catch them?'
'I said I don't know,' Baba snapped. 'That's enough questions, I don't want you to talk about this again.'
Peyvand and I went to our room and played Astro Wars. We didn't ask any more questions.
It was not the end of the matter. Baba had not been assassinated, but who was to say that they wouldn't try again? They knew where we lived, they'd had our address; how were we meant to go about the way we did before? I jumped out of my skin every time we saw someone with a hejab, or when I heard the bang of an old car exhaust. I grew suspicious of every person who walked past our house on busy Madeley Road. The girls from Ellen Wilkinson School still whooped and hollered down our street each morning and afternoon. Kerry Tyler still made nasty remarks about us whenever she saw us, but we didn't care any more. These things were normal.
Baba ignored all the security precautions the police told him to take. We did not go ex-directory, our name, address and phone number remained in the Ealing phonebook.
I argued with Baba, I tried to make him do it, but he didn't listen. He just made jokes.
'Do you think assassins will cover their faces up and go into telephone boxes with their guns and bombs and look up our address? Do you think, if they can't find it, they will go, "Ah! He's ex-directory! We'll have to kill another writer who is listed!"'
Baba did not remove the piece of paper with KHORSANDI neatly written out and slotted next to the correct bell for our flat, as the policemen had suggested. 'It will confuse Mr Esfahani, he'll think we have moved.'
And, of course, Baba began writing through the night again for the next edition of Asghar Agha.
'You must check under your car from now on every time you use it,' DI Taylor had said.
Car bombs. I knew about these, they happened in Northern Ireland, you were always hearing about car bombs in Northern Ireland. I thought about our white Ford Cortina. If Baba got into it on his own, it wouldn't be as bad as if we were all in it and it blew up. Did terrorists check things like that? Did they check if he was on his own or with us? Baba wrote Asghar Agha, not Peyvand, not Maman, and not me. I had never written anything bad about the Ayatollah, I had never drawn any cartoons of him or even really knew very much about him. I played French Elastic and read Enid Blyton books. I was sure that the Ayatollah would approve of the Famous Five books I read because they were all about catching baddies. Julian, Dick, Ann and George were all good children. He might not like the fact that Ann and George (who was really called Georgina) hung around with boys, though.
I was most terrified that Peyvand might be killed in a car bomb. I loved Maman and Baba, but I would be most upset if Peyvand were blown up. When the thought came into my head, I felt like screaming.
'You are not to tell anyone what really happened, not your teachers, not your friends, nobody. Absolutely no one must know where we have been.'
It was the day after we had got back from Windsor. Maman was making our packed lunches. I was dreading getting into the car but I didn't want to tell my family how scared I was. We were all doing our best to act normal.
'But people already know,' I told her. 'Mr Esfahani, Simin, everyone.'
'They are our friends and they are not to tell anyone either. Just forget about all of it, take your Isle of Wight project and from now on, just concentrate on your school work.'
This talk, I knew, was for my benefit, not Peyvand's. He could keep a secret but I couldn't. I told Shadi Kardan that Keyvan wasn't her real brother. For once I made her cry, instead of the other way round. It was me who got a big kick out of telling people things to surprise and shock.
This, however, was one secret I would definitely be able to keep. Where would I even start telling Rebecca about Baba's poems and Iran and terrorists? Kerry Tyler called me Ayatollah already. I didn't need her and her friends to know about all of this. The teachers, everybody, all saw Iranian people on TV and thought we were all like that, that we all covered ourselves up and manically beat our breasts. I didn't want to tell anyone that some of this had spilled into our life in London. There was a re
ally big chance that they wouldn't believe me anyway.
We went downstairs. Our faithful, white Ford Cortina sat patiently for us on the drive. Who would want to hurt this car? Baba held his Marlboro in his mouth and held my and Peyvand's hand in each of his.
'Now then,' he said, keeping the cigarette in with his teeth. 'Get down.'
The three of us crouched down on the ground, way low so we could see right under the car. Maman watched from the kitchen window. We peered at the underside of the car. Baba was concentrating hard. I had never looked at the underneath of a car before. It was black and unfamiliar with lots of shapes and bulging bits of machinery that meant nothing to me. Peyvand was looking as though he knew what he was looking for.
Baba raised an eyebrow. 'Now, does either of you know what a bomb looks like?'
'Nope,' we both said.
'Right,' said Baba confidently, peering closer. 'I don't know either. There could be ten bombs under there, I have no idea.'
We were on our bellies now, all staring and wondering if it was all supposed to look like that under there. We'd been told to check for anything that looked 'out of the ordinary' but Baba wasn't the sort of dad who spent his Sunday tinkering under his car. He didn't know what 'ordinary' was under there, let alone anything out of the ordinary.
I had seen bombs in cartoons; on Road Runner the bombs were black and round like a ball with a big wick with sparks coming off it and usually the word 'BOMB' written clearly across it. There was nothing like that under here, not that I could see anyway.
'Okay, up we get,' Baba said.
The three of us scrambled back up. Baba took a long drag from his cigarette. Peyvand scratched his head and I wished we were more like English people who never lay on their bellies in the morning looking for bombs under the car.
After a moment Baba shrugged and said, 'Come on, get in, we'll see what happens.'
A Beginner's Guide to Acting English Page 28