Maman appeared from the side of the house in her apron and got into the car with us. 'I just fancied a bit of fresh air,' she lied. She wanted to be with us in case the car blew up.
I wanted us all to hold hands as Baba turned the key in the ignition but it would have seemed too dramatic and broken the silent pact between us not to let on how scared we were. The engine came to life. I was sure everyone could hear my heart pounding; it was almost jumping out of my chest.
Baba was 'tadadada'ing and whistling as we drove out on to the road and made the five-minute journey to Montpelier School. How did we know we were safe? Maybe bombs went off only once the engine warmed up. Baba was always going on about the engine warming up. It's what engines did before they could work properly.
We didn't blow up. Baba got us to school safely.
ROWS ABOUT CHEESE
Peyvand didn't need driving to school any more. After the summer holidays, I went to my last year at Montpelier and Peyvand went to Ealing College. It had been decided that he needed a firm hand. Even though Maman and Baba didn't have much money, they were sending Peyvand to private school. Even though Tazim went to the same school, Peyvand's behaviour did not get any better, despite Baba shouting at him all the time.
Peyvand wasn't horrible, he was just naughty. His first school report at Ealing College said, 'Peyvand seems to think that his sole purpose at school is to make his classmates laugh.' He didn't do any work. I didn't do much work either but I was quiet and never got into trouble so no one really noticed.
Baba began to fight all the time with Maman about the cheese she bought and the money she spent on things like our shoes. Baba worried about a lot of things and had problems to sort out that I never even knew about, but he never talked about them, instead he ranted about Maman's cheese and Maman's shoe-buying. 'Why do children need ten pairs of shoes?' he bellowed. 'They need two, one for school and one for playing.'
Maman bellowed back that Baba had no idea how fast children's feet grow because the care of us kids was left up to her. Baba never did the shopping. Maman bought the food and our clothes and Baba's shirts and socks. If Baba saw the price tag on any of these things his eyes would bulge and he'd shout and swear that he could have found the exact same thing somewhere for half the price. No matter how much Maman tried to explain that this was how much things cost, Baba told her that she'd been cheated and that they saw her coming. 'You should have told them you would not pay that much.'
'You cannot haggle in Marks and Spencer,' Maman shouted at him.
'Who told you to go to Marks and Spencer? Buy the clothes from the market like normal people do.'
'What normal people do you know that buy clothes from the market? I can't turn up to a party wearing clothes from the market!'
Each accused the other of being out of touch with reality and eventually Peyvand and I would get dragged into the fight.
'Kids! Get in here! Your mother is pouring what little money we have down the toilet!' His eyes bulging in rage, Baba dragged Peyvand and I to the fridge and one by one pointed out my mother's extravagances. They were almost always a type of fancy cheese. 'Even a millionaire would not spend the money your mother does on cheese!'
Baba grabbed the Brie and the feta and the Stilton and the garlicky cheese Maman liked and one by one threw them on the kitchen counter lest we hadn't yet totally got the point. 'One cheese, two, three, four. FOUR! Who has four types of cheese in their fridge in these hard times?'
Maman could very easily not have bought four different types of cheeses to sit in the fridge all at the same time. She could easily have not bought two packs of brown bread, one white, some pitta and a baguette all in the same week, but Maman didn't think about these things so the rows about the contents of the fridge continued and got worse when Peyvand got too old for Montpelier Middle School and went to a private school.
Peyvand hated Ealing College. He hated the work, he hated the teachers, but most of all he hated it because it was so expensive for Maman and Baba.
Peyvand had never even wanted to go to a posh school. I could tell he felt guilty about it. Feeling guilty did not help with his concentration and it didn't make him be good. He was naughty and was always in trouble.
The phone call came from Peyvand's school late that summer afternoon. His headmaster at Ealing College spoke to Maman first, then Baba. Were they aware that Peyvand had not been at school that day?
No, they had not, Baba told him.
Baba got off the phone as quickly as he could. Peyvand had not gone to school, he had left the house but never arrived. Panic ran back and forth on Baba's face. I looked at Maman and I knew we were all thinking the same thing. Peyvand was dead. They had got to Peyvand somehow and now he was dead. None of us ever spoke about this out loud, but ever since we went to Windsor, each of us lived every moment out of our wits with worry that something might happen to one of the others. That's why, if we were going to be late home, we called, we let each other know we were okay. Why hadn't Peyvand called?
Baba and I went driving in the car to see if we could find him. Ealing Broadway was full of kids hanging around after school. It was not a good time to be out with your dad among them. Being seen with parents was not cool. But I didn't care, not today. We stopped and asked some kids if they knew Peyvand, if they knew where he was. Quite a lot of boys knew him but no one had seen him. One boy said, 'He's a cocky little shit and needs a punch.'
Kerry Tyler was hanging out with older boys by the station. I even asked her if she'd seen Peyvand. I wasn't scared, I didn't care about Kerry Tyler, I just wanted to find my brother. She shook her head, flicked her hair and turned her back on me. She thought she was so grown-up now she smoked and talked to boys.
Back in the car, Baba burst into tears and I didn't know what to say. I'd never seen Baba cry. I had never seen anything that had made me feel so horrible and sad. My baba was always the one looking after us. There was no one to look after him while he cried. I didn't know what to do so I cried as well. If Baba was so upset, it meant that Peyvand was definitely dead.
'You've still got me,' I tried to console him. He laughed through his tears, and kissed the top of my head.
This is why you should have stopped writing Asghar Agha, I wanted to say, but I didn't because Baba was upset enough. I just wanted my brother back.
When we got home, there were policemen, in uniform, in our house. Baba went pale when he saw them, but they hadn't come to give us news, Maman had called them. We were on some kind of system with the police; if a 999 call was made from our number, they went 'on high alert' one of the policemen explained. This was because of the terrorists.
It was now 7.30. EastEnders would be starting. Peyvand and I were addicted to this new soap opera. Why wasn't he here to watch?
Ida, Mitra and Peyvand's headmaster were in our flat now, as well as the police. The doorbell rang. My heart leapt; he was here, it was him, it's all right. I ran with Maman and Baba to the hall window and looked down, praying we would see Peyvand at the door. I felt a wave of nausea when we saw it was not him. Rana, Tazim and their mum stood there, waiting to come in and go through the horrible waiting with us.
'Tazim, do you know anything? Anything at all? We don't care, you are not in trouble, please,' Baba pleaded and Tazim shook his head and said that he and Peyvand had not seen each other for days because Tazim was training for a rugby tournament.
Tea was made but no one drank it. Mitra said, 'Oh, I used to run off after school all the time and not call; he'll be back!'
She sounded so cheery, but I wasn't cheered. Every second that went by that Peyvand was not with us was torture. My head and my heart were in a thunderstorm.
Rana, who was very quiet around people she didn't know, waited until no one was talking to me and said, 'Why don't we go and feed your pigeons?'
That was a good idea. Even though it as if like my heart was being crushed and wouldn't be released until I saw Peyvand again, I suddenly really wanted to be out of the flat and
just alone with Rana. We grabbed our coats and headed for the door.
'Where are you going!' Baba suddenly barked.
'Just to the garden.'
He seemed really angry. 'You're not going anywhere. You stay here, here!'
Maman touched his arm to calm him. Rana and I sat back down on the sofa. A door slammed down in the hall. The front door. We heard footsteps walking to the flat door. My heart leapt. They were Peyvand's footsteps! I ran to the door and my brother walked in and all the fire and the fear inside me melted away to nothing.
'Hi, Shap,' he said, his eyes wide and worried, 'did Mum and Dad wonder where I was?'
Peyvand was embarrassed when I grabbed him and cried. Then Baba grabbed both of us and cried. Maman walked into the kitchen and stayed there for a while on her own before she came out, her eyes puffy, and got Peyvand to sit next to her and cuddled him.
Tazim, Rana and their mum left as soon as Peyvand got home, quietly with just a quick nod and a cool greeting of 'easy' between Peyvand and Tazim.
Baba and Maman didn't shout at Peyvand. They asked him exactly where he had been. He had skived off school to go and see Andrew and Christopher at their boarding school. They wanted to know how he got there, where he got the money for the train, why didn't he call. Peyvand was tired and glad he wasn't being shouted at but he looked really sad, as if he was about to cry.
I couldn't tell Peyvand how worried I had been and how horrible the world would be if he died, but he already knew. I would never ever make him worry about me like that, but Peyvand was a boy and boys sometimes didn't think.
SCHOLARS
The desks Baba bought Peyvand and me were identical and fitted perfectly against the windows in our bedroom. 'This is a new start, children,' he told us. 'From now on, no excuses, you work hard and study. I don't want a bad report from your school again.'
'I don't get bad reports,' I said to Peyvand when Baba left.
'He meant me,' Peyvand said.
The desks smelled of fresh wood chip and had a shelf and a drawer. Both of us spent the afternoon arranging our things on our desks as neatly as we could so Baba would not be angry. We argued over who owned what books and put the ones whose ownership was disputed in the big bookshelf in our room.
'You wouldn't drive Dad so nuts if you just pretended to work harder,' I pointed out.
Peyvand was arranging his Asterix books in alphabetical order.
'Dad would go nuts anyway, Shap,' he said simply.
Peyvand and I worried the whole time that terrorists were going to come back and kill Baba, but we couldn't ever tell anyone how scared we were. We couldn't even tell each other because that would be admitting that what happened to us was real. Baba was scared too. He was scared that they might get him and then Peyvand and I would grow up without a dad like he did. Maman was scared, she was the best at pretending she wasn't but we knew she couldn't relax until the four of us were under the same roof. Maman knew that Baba's shouting wasn't really about the things she bought so she silently ignored the horrible things he said.
All of us lived in terror of losing one another. Peyvand and I couldn't speak about it because we knew how much we loved each other, but it was embarrassing to admit it out loud. But even without that, Maman and Baba would be upset if they knew that it felt as if the terrorists had moved into our house with us. They arrived that day when we came home from school to find Maman packing and they never left. They went to Windsor with us, they came on the picnic with us and they were at all the parties we were at. In the still of the night, when Baba wrote his poems and articles as we all slept, was the only time Baba did not think about them. They didn't stop his work. They would never do that.
So Maman and Baba distracted themselves by fighting over silly things, Peyvand got naughtier at school, which made Baba angrier and Maman more worried. I began to eat. I ate in my bed and in the toilet and always in secret because as long as I was eating I didn't have to think about maths and rows and the Ayatollah and bombs under our car.
'Don't talk to any of the kids at the bus stop, Shap,' Peyvand told me one day.
I never talked to the kids at the bus stop anyway because they were the cool kids and even if I knew them, I knew not to hang around with them because I wasn't one of the cool kids.
'Why not?' I asked anyway.
'I don't want them to know you're my sister, cos you're fat.'
I knew that wasn't it. I knew it was because he got into fights with other boys and if they knew I was his sister, they would say horrid things about me to Peyv and he'd get into even more fights.
But Peyvand couldn't admit he was looking out for me these days; it was not 'cool'.
The second time Peyvand skived off from school and got caught, we weren't as worried because his headmaster rang to say he'd had an exam that day and hadn't turned up. Then Andrew and Christopher's school had phoned Peyvand's school and said that 'the little Asian boy' had come to visit again without formal permission. Peyvand had bunked off school to avoid an exam. That was the worst thing ever in the whole world he could have done. The whole point of him going to a private school was so that he would work harder.
My stomach was in knots just imagining how angry Baba would be. I tried desperately to think of a way to warn Peyvand, to tell him that we knew, because when he came home, he would pretend he'd been at school and Baba would let him pretend and ask him questions about his day and poor Peyvand was terrible at lying and he would stammer and look scared until Baba tripped him up somehow so he would be found out and caught lying to Baba's face.
I wished Baba hit us. A slap or a kick would hurt much less than when Baba shouted. Baba's rage came from a place deep inside him which had been hurt and angry a long time before Peyvand bunked off school.
When something like this happened, Baba let out all the anger from that place. Most of all, he was angry because he didn't know what to do to protect me and Peyvand.
Peyvand looked so small and shattered as Baba spat out his disappointment. I wanted to put my arms around my brother and protect him, but I was too scared to move, or breathe, I just stood and watched as Baba flung open our big bedroom window, scooped the books on Peyvand's desk in his arms and threw them out on to the drive of Madeley Road. 'If you won't study, you won't need your books,' he screamed.
Peyvand and I had two babas. The one we saw most of the time was the one who loved us more than anything and was funny and clever and who made us feel like the luckiest children in the world. The other baba, the one we saw less often, was the one who would suddenly decide that our messy bedrooms or our forgetting to give him a phone message was the most terrible crime in the world. This Baba was like a cyclone you had to sit tight through and survey the damage after it had gone. When it did go, things were so calm and peaceful that it was as though it had never happened and nobody brought it up because nobody wanted to remember it.
By the time Rana called round to see me, our house was quiet. Baba was upstairs in his office, trying to become the Baba who was nice again. Maman had taken him up a cup of sweet tea and told Peyvand and I to stay out of his way. Peyvand had gone into the garden and climbed up to a high branch of the pear tree. I could see him from Maman and Baba's bedroom window. He was sitting on the branch and staring at nothing. I was too far away to see for sure, but I think he was crying.
I ran downstairs and opened the door for Rana. She had seen the books on the drive and seemed to understand what had happened, sparing me the pain of explaining anything to her. Rebecca Thompson would have asked a million questions.
She helped me pick up Peyvand's books and cleaned the dirt off them. Asterix and Cleopatra had landed on the top of a big bush and Rana climbed up on to Baba's car to get it down.
We took the books upstairs and Rana arranged them neatly on Peyvand's desk. 'There, everything's back to normal now,' was all she said about it.
The people at the parties we still went to with Maman and Baba noticed I was getting chubby. When Ir
anian people notice you have got chubby, they don't keep it to themselves like English people do. They tell you the minute they see you.
'Vai! Shappi Jaan! You must lose weight or you'll get diabetes and go blind!' one lady told me the moment I walked into the room.
'Is that Shappi Khorsandi? I hardly recognised her, how fat she has got,' another lady whom I didn't even know remarked at once.
'I hate Iranians,' I told Maman and Baba on the way home.
'Do you?' Maman said. 'What are you then? Swedish?'
'You know what I mean, the ones who keep saying I'm fat.'
'Well, you are fat,' Peyvand said so I punched him.
Baba stuck up for me. 'She is not fat, she just needs to lose a tiny bit of weight.'
I sulked for the rest of the journey. I couldn't wait until we got home so I could dive under my covers and eat all the chocolate stuffed in my pockets that I'd sneaked out from the party.
Shamsi and Nadia had been waiting in the long queue for their bread rations for more than four hours. Several fights had broken out among the people waiting with them in the queue, which stretched all the way to the other side of the park. Nadia and Shamsi had only been involved in one of them which didn't go beyond a few cross words and mild shoving. It was hot and people were tired of the never-ending queues for basic necessities. They had saved their bread tokens. Hadi's mother, Soltan Khanoom, was visiting London again and was coming to see them to collect gifts to take for their daughter and her family. They had to get extra Barbari bread for Fatemeh's children. Mokhtar had managed to buy some Pofak Namaki, packets of cheese-flavoured puffs, on the black market. Shaparak and Peyvand had loved them when they were in Tehran.
That evening Soltan Khanoom and her daughter Ashraf came for dinner and they showered her with kisses and the gifts they had gone to great lengths to buy for their family in London.
Shamsi and Nadia and Mokhtar would visit soon too, they told her. But there was a war on, Shamsi needed to be where her sons were fighting and besides, it was a very expensive trip.
A Beginner's Guide to Acting English Page 29