 
Not Without My Sense Of Humour

by

Dotty Nott-Moody

Table of Contents

In loving memory of my father

Welcome To The East

Learn Our Language

Wear Our Clothes

Follow Our Customs

Get A Job

Start A Family

Raise Your Children

Drive A Car

Make Some Friends

Share Some Grief

Let Off Steam

And You Will Fit In Just Fine

In loving memory of my father

This book spans several decades of Persian history starting a few years after the glorious triumph of the Islamic Revolution, when Mohammad decided that it was time to return to the bosom of his family deep in the heart of his treasured fatherland. He brought with him his vigour, his passion, his wealth of engineering knowledge and me, his personal English tutor – it would have been a total travesty, having had to endure nine years of continuous linguistic study in a totally alien culture merely then to permit a loss of fluency, or a depletion of vocabulary, to arise from a simple lack of usage – and wife. I trust that this book will bring a smile to the faces of all the women that I have had the pleasure to count as friends; women who, like myself, many years ago left their homes, families and friends to start new lives with their Iranian husbands in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Not those with the 'moody' attitude, but those who were ready to accept the things that they liked and learn to laugh at the things that they did not. By now, most have returned, singularly or otherwise, from whence they came and much has changed since we gathered together in the dark, war torn days of an isolated, misunderstood Iran. However, even in these glorious, sun filled days their long shadows still haunt my memory; many of the words that I use will be theirs and I hope that should they ever stumble upon my incoherent ramblings that they will agree that I have, at least in part, have succeeded in expressing all our long past feelings through this work. I would like to thank them all for being there when I needed them most and commend them on their strength of character for these are the women who have truly had the courage to discover new lands, to learn new languages, to adopt new customs and to create new versions of the old mother-in-law jokes.

Welcome To The East

My first real inkling of the meaning of culture shock was to step off the aeroplane and to be greeted by half a dozen short, fat ladies all draped in black. (Iranian national dress for women – particularly those of a certain age – is the 'chador', which literally translates as tent. This comprises a vast mass of, usually black, material, cunningly cut and sewn to resemble a vast mass of material. It is then draped over the head and wrapped around the body in an effort to conceal the natural shape of the wearer.) In the company of these rotund matrons there were also seven or so skinny girls dressed in long, light-weight coats and headscarves, all in fashionable shades of charcoal grey, midnight blue and nearly black, an assortment of men and young boys, most of whom looked as if they had spent more time in front of the mirror than an a-list celebrity preparing to attend a major award ceremony, and a large convention of bluebottles. I smiled sheepishly and scanned their faces for a glimmer of hospitality as they each ran a critical eye over my short, cream jacket and garish, techni-coloured headscarf; all in all the bluebottles appeared to be the most welcoming.

To be perfectly honest, firstly it had been extremely generous of my new in-laws to agree to open their doors to someone, such as myself, to whom they had never even spoken let alone had the pleasure of meeting and secondly the time lag between me stepping off the aeroplane and finally fighting my way through a densely packed arrivals terminal out into the bright, stifling, early morning heat of a Tehran summer was actually five hours. The aeroplane tyres had barely touched the tarmac when the first passengers began to leave their seats and frantically scramble around trying to locate all of their hand luggage. They dexterously avoided the, now black and slimy, banana skins littered at intervals throughout the cabin whilst crunching piles of empty pistachio shells and discarded, incomplete, model planes under their feet. The latter had been handed out by the airhostesses for the amusement of younger fliers but had frustrated most of the fathers on the plane who were totally incapable of slotting the two inch wide protrusion 'c' into the substantially shorter but requisite slot 'd'. After having ferried my own children back and forth to England a couple of times there continuous whinging at my inability to finish the task led me to such a fit of pique that I actually took one home and laboriously filed out the slots. This allowed me to complete the construction process and on subsequent trips I would bring it out halfway through the flight, pretending that I had just finished it and could captive the whole of rows E through to J with my presumed talents. Even to this day the same models are being handed out on Iranair but unfortunately as my children are now grown I no longer have any excuse to produce my masterpiece. However, I digress and by now, the feelings of exuberance created by the receipt of free bananas had faded and, bets were being laid as to which of the doors would open to reveal the roll-to stairway.

As an aside, I specifically mentioned the bananas because it is as well to remember that Iran is a vast country stretching from the frozen north, where it borders the old Russian states of Azerbaijan and Armenia, to the blistering heat and oppressive humidity of the bustling little southern ports clustered around the Gulf of Persia. (If twenty years of life in Iran has taught me anything it is never to refer to it as the Arabian Gulf, at least not if you value your continued existence.) Equally it links the smaller but wealthier Arab States to its west with the less prosperous but larger Indian subcontinent to the east. It possesses a whole gamut of geographical regions and ranges of climate which means that a vast selection of crops can be farmed and a whole variety of produce grown. Even during the height of the war it was possible to obtain most types of unprocessed food including unlimited quantities of fresh fruit and vegetables but not for some reason bananas. It seems that this is the only every day agricultural product that does not thrive anywhere within this diverse geographical conglomerate. There was once a concerted attempt to grow them but the results were far from spectacular. Although the first delivery to the market stalls looked anything but appetising Iranians are never ones to refuse a challenge and the small, hard, mottled surface fruits were bought and eaten; however consumer reaction was far from favourable, with subsequent deliveries remaining unsold, and it was not long before they had once again disappeared completely from the retail arena. Therefore, to be presented with long, yellow versions of the fruit as part of the in-flight hospitality was quite a treat and the less selfish passengers, of whom I am afraid I cannot count myself, actually kept them to take back to their friends and families, but again I digress.

My husband was the proverbial tallish, dark, handsome stranger with the silver tongue whom I had married in secret after he had declared his undying love for me in a fit of unrequited passion (or was it that he declared his desperate need for a visa in a fit of unrepressed petulance - I'm not sure that after all this time I can really recall). Now once again he chose his words carefully as he yelled at me to grab my share of our sixteen pieces of hand baggage, whoever said that women's liberation hadn't reached the Middle East had never flown into Iran on the national airline, and queue at the front cabin door. How I pulled two straps over each shoulder and picked up the other four bags without dislodging my headscarf or taking out anyone's eye still mystifies me but I did as commanded whilst still keeping my sights on Mohammad who had positioned himself to the rear of the aeroplane. In a brief moment of nostalgia I remembered our first meeting,

"Mohammad," I said, on being introduced. "The most common name in the world."

"No," he replied. "The most popular."

In that instant I thought that I had met my match, but as I stood in that stuffy, crowded aisle wedged between two elderly ladies and a huge, pot-bellied mullah I knew that I had; and so we waited.

Fifteen minutes dragged by, and then just as I was having trouble keeping hold of my load, my fingers numb from lack of oxygen, all of a sudden – the seatbelt light was extinguished. Another twenty-five minutes passed and by this time I had lost all sensation from the elbows down but was unable to drop anything as the bag handles had welded themselves into the underside of my knuckles. Then at last the front exit finally swung open and with one violent surge I was swept along in a fast moving torrent of luggage, loose clothing and whining children. Out of the corner of my eye I could see my husband and other disgruntled members of the rear queue scrambling over the backs of the seats and attempting to merge wherever possible into our undisciplined on rush. Somewhere amid all this caous I was swept down the steps and jammed into the first of the three waiting buses, which after an interval of only ten minutes whisked us all off in the direction of the airport terminal.

As the doors opened again I stood for a microsecond before, still in a state of total bewilderment, the sheer weight and number of passengers behind me forcibly expelled me from the bus and across the threshold of the arrivals lounge. Amid a swarm of fellow travelers I found myself in a huge, high ceilinged cavern with marble cladding on every surface. It was totally bare save two wooden slat benches, one either side of the large doors through which we had all just entered and three glass fronted immigration booths, situated at the far end of the room. Both the benches were occupied by dozing security guards who cradled their fearful looking machine guns like sleeping babies. Still what I found even more amazing was, even though ours was the only aeroplane due in on that day, a whole bus load of passengers were already forming semi-orderly queues under the passport control signs which hung from long chains fixed somewhere in the lofty void above. I can only surmise that on leaving the aeroplane they must have sprinted across the tarmac thereby alleviating the need to use the transport provided.

As the three more or less organised queues grew a sense of tranquility descended on the amassed hoard. Mohammad and I were finally reunited and took our place in the middle of one of them. More seasoned travelers began to spread blankets on the floor, unpack picnic stoves and brew tea for their breakfasts and so we waited.

Approximately forty minutes later the immigration officers arrived for work; they changed into their uniforms and began their breakfasts and still we waited.

Twenty more minutes elapsed before they finished eating and moved to the booths to begin processing the arrivals. The queues moved slowly forward as all the passports and landing cards were checked and re-checked, firstly by the officials sitting in the booths and then by two other more senior officers lurking ominously in the shadows behind them. However, we were eventually given leave to ascend the stationary escalator, situated behind the booths and we clambered enthusiastically out of the metaphorical depths and up into the next level of our fantastic journey. This turned out to be set in a much larger but not quite so lofty, marbled cavern. Here we moved quickly towards the only carousel in operation and attempted to collect our luggage. I watched the hand baggage and jealously guarded the dilapidated trolley that Mohammad had managed, by way of a quick dash across the baggage-reclaim hall, to snatch out from under the noses of the two old ladies that I'd been wedged next to in the aeroplane aisle. He elbowed his way through the four man deep cordon that had convened around the conveyor belt and finally returned on all fours from between their legs dragging all our bags behind him. We congratulated ourselves on only losing two handles and a wheel from all our suitcases whilst commiserating with the dozen or so travelers, the contents of whose luggage was spilled all over the carousel.

There were no screens to hide the customs checkpoints - which merely consisted of large wooden counters and a far-reaching, tunneled view through the high glass panels which separated the public section of the arrivals terminal from its inner sanctums. Whenever there was an incoming flight this outer sector was filled with throngs of expectant relatives and friends, many carrying large sprays of brightly coloured blooms, who could be seen bobbing around in the distance trying to catch a quick glimpse of their loved ones. Views either way were obscured only by the mass of bodies trying to pass the last hurdle before their exuberant reunions.

Nowadays, there is a far larger and more modern terminal to the south of Tehran which accommodates all international flights and Mehrabad is reserved for internal flights only. There are no buses between the aeroplane and the buildings at Imam Khomeini, just walkways, and the new terminal also boasts a wide plate glass window which stretches the whole length of the baggage reclaim section. This allows families the pleasure of a virtual reunion before they have even set eyes on their luggage. However, I still get a feeling of nostalgia when I remember the sense of anticipation associated with arriving from abroad into the smaller more personal surroundings of the original airport.

As we return back there now the customs officers had just decided to retire for brunch and so again we found ourselves in the middle of a non-moving queue and once more we waited. With hindsight I realised that all this queuing and waiting, and waiting and queuing, was actually to accustom us to the conditions under which we would find ourselves living inside a country at war; a country in which any queue lengthened in direct proportion to the essentialness of the item for which it had formed. I've lost count of the times, in the old days, that I queued for milk for one or other of my babies only to be told upon reaching the front that the supply had run out but if I could see that queue further up the road . . .?

"Crossing three minor roads and then disappearing behind the bank?"

Oh yes, I could see it and, however reluctantly, I would join it.

At that time the customs officers, when they could drag themselves away from their meal breaks, had a foolproof method of finding any form of contraband. It was called the 'spot search' method and involved searching every spot of every piece of luggage that ever passed through the airport. Those familiar with this little technique stuffed spare bags into the corners of their suitcases so that after their personal effects had be strewn hither and thither they could redistribute and repack with ease. They were not subject to the embarrassment of having to climb up onto the counter to sit on each suitcase in turn, bouncing up and down as required, in order that their travelling companions could zip them up or fasten the requisite buckles. (I presume that, at that point in the proceedings, only my status as eccentric foreigner saved me from being forcibly restrained or even arrested.)

To be fair, in more recent years substantial changes have taken place throughout all sectors of Iranian society and Mehrabad airport eventually introduced the familiar red and green channels which are still in operation at Imam Khomeini. I would even hazard a guess that Heathrow has only introduced a blue channel to keep it one step ahead of the third world nations!

I remember in graphic detail the first time I noticed the new layout; to the left of the inevitable non-moving queues there was a totally clear view to the outside world. Small coloured discs had been hung from the ceiling; above each of the predictable non-moving queues there was a little green plaque but all alone, seemingly afloat on the current of warm air drifting in from outside, was a solitary red circle. It was one of those moments in life when joy runs through one's body like a current of electricity. Not only was the view clear but behind that single counter were four customs officers with nothing better to do than enjoy a quiet cigarette. All I needed was something to declare.

"Come on, kids!" I yelled. "What have we got that we shouldn't have. There must be something and this really is important."

I could almost feel the bright early morning sunshine on my face already especially as my elder son in a characteristic show of brotherly love decided to grass up his younger brother. So to the strains of

"Please mum, no, please! I don't want to go to prison. I won't do it again, honest. Pleeeease!"

I wrestled the dog-eared pack of Old Maid playing cards out of his chubby little hands.

"No-one's going to prison. For once we're actually going to get out of here without having to join another seemingly endless queue," I replied smugly.

I knew that all forms of gambling are (and quite rightly so) outlawed in Iran and consequently any paraphernalia associated with such activities cannot be legally brought into the country. This ban not only covers items such as playing cards, dice and roulette wheels but also other things like ludo boards, conkers and, to my good fortune, packs of Old Maid. Of course wherever there is a restriction there will be people willing to risk everything to break it; in this case to quite literally take a gamble! Although it is not really necessary to break the law to indulge in these activities because all the major financial institutions offer a wide range of super, up-to-the-minute, prize draw bank accounts. Some offer monetary incentives, whilst others will pay out in household items or even motor vehicles. They really are fantastic, it's all the fun of the lottery without having to pay for a ticket – in fact the less one spends (i.e. the more one saves) the higher ones chances of actually winning a top prize. Even so in less salubrious circles, fortunes are still won and lost on simple games of whist or, more usually, backgammon and I have seen grown men crying because of their inability to attain Master Bun the Baker's Son.

So with both my children, the younger one still whimpering significantly, in tow I marched towards the red channel. I was confident that I could now be out of the terminal in a matter of minutes. I began to mentally congratulate myself and wonder if two hours and fifty-five minutes was actually a record time for traversing touchdown to external car park. Ten minutes later, shoulders hunched and minus the children's cards I was at the back of the green channel. I had been thanked for my honesty and told that now that I had nothing more to declare I could leave via the green channel where, of course, the infamous 'spot search' method was still being deployed. To compound matters I was also being shunned by my fellow travelers who seemed to sense that the further slowing of the queue's movement, caused by the sudden disappearance of a number of the customs officers, had more to do with my declared contraband than merely being another one of their frequent meal breaks.

However, on my first journey through this fantastical system we had finally reached the front of the queue and now had only one last hiccough to face. A particularly eagle-eyed official had noticed that two of the thirty-six pairs of men's shoes that we had brought with us as presents for great uncle somebody, his daughter-in-law's brother and the rest of my husband's extended family were actually the same size. Mohammad explained that he had returned from England, with his new bride, to settle permanently in the land of his fathers. Consequently, he had brought with him, not only a great wealth of engineering expertise to help rebuild his war torn country, but, also, all his worldly possessions including these two pairs of shoes. This lengthy and eloquent explanation did little to appease the officer who quite astutely pointed out that, unless my husband was travelling bare foot, this meant that he actually owned three pairs of shoes and proceeded to curse the western world for their decadence. He insisted that there was no justification for owning more than two pairs of shoes, one for work and the other for attending mosque-related functions and family gatherings – although he did concede that wealthy gentlemen were also entitled to purchase a pair of plastic flip flops, a real must in the fashion stakes, in addition to their other footwear allowance to accessorise their leisure clothing. I assumed from the volume and pitch of his voice that he hoped that the decadent western world would hear his tirade and be shamed into repentance. The situation was finally resolved when my husband slipped him a number of decadent western bank notes, approximately equivalent to the cost of three new pairs of shoes. Welcome to the east.

Learn Our Language

On arriving at the family villa, a three up, three down and three in the middle nestling, in the centre of a semi-imposing terrace, in a no through alley somewhere in the heart of Tehran, I extracted myself from one of the two rusty Renaults communally owned by, and now holding a good proportion of, my new extended family. To one side of the alley ran a high concrete wall separating back gardens from the street. Some sections were faced with marble cladding and every so often the concrete and stonework run was broken by a pair of large, metal gates generally decorated with intricate wrought ironwork designs and peeling paint. On the other side was the red brick facade of a tall terrace which fronted straight onto the alley. It was dominated by similarly styled but slightly smaller metal front doors and high, deep set windows. At ground floor level every pane of glass was protected by more intricate wrought ironwork designs. Stylish? Maybe? Safe? Probably? A bugger to clean? Most definitely! I sniffed the air (mainly gasoline fumes with just a hint of rotting vegetables) and tried to gain my bearings.

After leaving the airport we had joined a long, straight urban motorway; a pair of three-lane carriageways sandwiched between two generous frontage roads and then almost immediately we had traversed an enormous circulatory system, which surrounded one of the most beautiful and exotic pieces of modern architecture that I have been fortunate enough to witness. Surrounded by a confusion of earthen verges, sporadically sprouting sun burnt patches of grass and traversed by a multitude of tarmac pathways, a pale turquoise and, predominately, white structure, clad entirely in marble, arched towards the cloudless, blue sky. I was later told that it was built to house an expensive, underground shopping centre along with an exclusive restaurant. The latter was situated on the top floor and offered a unique dining experience combined with far reaching views across the city. However, when power had changed hands and the war with Iraq had begun, it had been effectively sealed off and the insides were being allowed to fall into a state of dusty disrepair. In spite of this the grandeur of Liberty Square obviously still had the power to attract visitors from near and far and on high days and holidays families would often come to picnic around its base. Even on work days off duty soldiers and unemployed labourers could be found dozing in its shade. Nowadays, it contains a museum celebrating Iran's cultural contributions to the world and, despite the new buildings that are springing up all over the city, it is still venerated as one of the greatest symbolic structures in the whole of Iran.

We continued on into the city watching the building density increase and passing through several sets of traffic lights. On a weekday these junctions function as normal signalised interchanges but on Fridays or other holidays they are all set in flashing mode. The major road has signals set to flashing amber to tell drivers that they have priority but must beware of vehicles approaching from other arms of the junction. The minor roads have signals set to flashing red to indicate that drivers should give way to oncoming traffic and only proceed when their way ahead is clear. In actuality, of course, the most aggressive and confident drivers take the initiative and right of way but eventually everyone gets their turn and so, in rote, we continued on through the flashing ambers until we had almost reached a second large, multi-armed roundabout. It was not possible to travel this far on a Friday for the area that on other days is filled with buses, taxis and cars is always closed to traffic for the weekly Friday prayers.

After subsequent visits I realised that Revolution Square was one of the central hubs of Tehran encompassed by two cinemas, three banks and a dozen or so small ground floor shops groaning under the weight of several stories of consulting rooms and miscellaneous office space. Between some of the retail outlets there could be found a small door leading into a narrow arcade. These arcades, constructed behind the outer facades, consisted of sets of even smaller shops crowding around the edge of a grubby, tiled empty space that reached all the way up to the high sky lighted roof and by searching out the furthest, dingiest corner a steep winding stairway up to the next level could be located. Each new level held another floor of shops edged by a narrow pedestrian walkway. The shopper was then separated from oblivion only by the lowest, frailest and most badly maintained handrail that one could ever envisage and I can assure you that the only time that I ever took my boisterous twosome there in their younger years was in my deepest, darkest nightmares.

However, to return to the sunlight outside, right in the centre of the roundabout was a huge, central plinth painted in camouflage green but supporting no more than a single, life-sized image of a waving hand. This, so I was assured, had once held a majestic statue of the Shah, astride a massive steed, but as he was driven into exile it was pulled down and replaced with a symbol of the all-conquering Ayatollah Khomeini. Islam discourages art that mirrors life, hence the predominance of geometric patterns in Middle Eastern architecture, which is to reduce the likelihood of idolatry. Consequently, the construction of a complete statue of the Ayatollah would have been considered totally inappropriate. Anyhow, in this case and at that time, it was totally unnecessary to manufacture a graven idol as we still had the actual living, breathing icon right within our midst.

New York is supposed to be the city that never sleeps but I guarantee that no matter what the hour, day or night, working week or public holiday a small hoard of personages will be found in this central location eating, sleeping, undertaking one of a whole range of business transactions, many legal but a few not quite so legitimate or merely passing through on their way to another destination. However, on this day we were obliged to leave the main road before reaching Revolution Square. Having entered the secondary road network we turned seemingly randomly left or right into increasingly smaller and smaller thoroughfares until finally, by travelling the wrong way up a one-way street, we passed two meatless butcher's shops and weaved our way through a queue of rusty, box shaped mini-buses into the maze of narrow alleyways that was to become my new home.

Here I feel that I should qualify the meatless butcher's shops. Like many countries, after the onset of war, the Iranian government had been forced to introduce rationing – a system that remained in place, as is often the case, long after the hostilities had ceased – based on a series of numbered coupons which were periodically issued to anyone who could present themselves, with the requisite amount of punctuality, at the local mosque, and prove that they were in possession of a valid birth certificate. Even though whenever a coupon was announced, be it meat, oil, cheese, sugar, rice or any other staple requirement, the government sent out shipments to all licensed traders, it was still very rare to find these supplies on any of the shop shelves (save at the few major establishments under direct governmental control). In spite of this dearth of tangible commodities nothing ever actually appeared to be in short supply. There was enough meat being sold by each of the aforementioned shops to provide a handsome income for their owners and feed the whole locality – probably twice over. The prices were not even extortionate but because rationing had been introduced this trade, which worked to everyone's satisfaction, was still illegal. To avoid being prosecuted the butchers did not store their wares on their shelves or even under their counters but tightly wrapped in plastic sheets and wedged into the large, open gutter that ran along the end of our alley. At least that was until my little niece, who in the course of her play, alighted upon their covert hoard and reported her exciting discovery to her mother. Parisa in turn passed this information onto my mother-in-law, who, with characteristic revolutionary zeal, duly told all her friends and neighbours. Towards the end it became a major social event, characterised by recipe sharing and neighbourhood gossip, as each day all the local housewives waited patiently for their turn to pilfer a leg of lamb or a few fillet steaks to feed to their families for dinner. While council health officials started another of their inept investigations, this time into the sudden increase in the number of cases of high cholesterol reported around Revolution Square, our friendly, neighbourhood butchers were beginning to notice a dramatic drop in their profits. It did not take them long to put two and two together and they soon began to secrete their merchandise in someone else's sewer.

The fifteen minute drive from the airport had taken us forty minutes in a car, laden so low, that it could hardly labour along in first gear with my mother-in-law continually berating my father-in-law as to his speed. Finally, I had pleaded with Mohammad to explain to her that such an old car, under such extreme loading, could not realistically be expected to travel faster than the twenty kilometres an hour at which we were chugging along. With a look of scorn he informed me that she was telling him not to drive so quickly.

As I stated previously my in-laws had been generous enough to take us in and they had provided us with a reasonably sized room all of our own – a real luxury in Iran where many families are obliged to live, eat and sleep in a single space. Wealthy homes, of course, have many rooms and a great deal of grand furniture but for the working class masses the floor is used for everything. It is well swept for sitting upon, spread with a large plastic cloth at mealtimes and covered with bedrolls when night time falls. However, having finally reached the end of such an arduous journey I was not in any fit state to express my gratitude. In fact, all I really wanted was a quick, hot shower and a long, restful sleep. Unfortunately, until the rest of our luggage arrived by freight we had no towels or bed linen. It seemed impossible, either because of the language barrier or simply due to the fact that there were none available, for me to obtain any of these items at that particular time. Consequently, it was decided that until the freight arrived I should do something useful. Luckily it only took three days for the rest of our luggage to touch down in Tehran or else I would have driven everyone from the house with my unpleasant body odour or simply collapsed from complete and utter exhaustion.

My having been raised in the west made it immediately obvious to every other female member of the household that I was totally ignorant of even the most basic of cooking techniques. Incidentally, as I have been known to burn boiling water this was not an injudicious observation on their part. All was not lost, however, because it was also universally accepted that that if I washed every spoon, dish and pot for the next three years that I would probably then be eligible to learn how to chop the vegetables for the salad, a regular accompaniment to every meal, if not to mix the sauce. Unfortunately for my culinary skills, I appeared to acquire new sister-in-laws at regular intervals, all of whom were better qualified than me to slice cucumber, and so I still have to drink cold, partially diffused tea for the want of knowing exactly when to remove the kettle from the stove and empty its contents into the waiting teapot.

At this moment, though, the rice was still being soaked in preparation for cooking lunch (how my stomach envied those custom officials) and the washing up was as yet a good few hours away so it was agreed that now was a good time for me to make a start on learning their language. No one was especially inspired to volunteer to take me on as a pupil; everyone being far more interested in the games console that my husband was now removing from his flight bag. As is usual in these situations the task was delegated down as far as it would go and the youngest semi-literate member of the family was conscripted.

My nine-year-old brother-in-law, Ideen, still had little use except for that of queuing for bread and having already completed that task earlier in the morning was readily dispensable. Lessons were hampered by the fact that his knowledge of my mother tongue was as incomplete as mine of his and neither of us could claim to be the most intelligent individuals to have clambered out of our own particular gene pools. He was already falling behind at school and had the unusual habit of collecting seemingly worthless trinkets and storing them away like the proverbial magpie. Small plastic figurines, dog-eared stickers and loose change could often be found wedged behind the cushions or under the corners of the carpet along with his never to be completed homework assignments. Yet, in spite of this, behind his regimental crew cut and imp like grin he was an imaginative little chap and decided that he could at least begin by teaching me a few basic nouns.

First I learnt the names of every family member by the good old 'repeat it until you get it right' method accompanied by much pointing and gesticulating. My pronunciation of Hossein, Parisa, Hassan, Farideh, Nasser, Fozieh, Amir, Afgham etc. caused much hilarity among those who could tear themselves away from watching my husband pilot a jumbo jet, guide a formula one racing car round the Monte Carlo circuit and fight off a battalion of alien invaders all in rapid succession. This mountain of proper nouns having now been semi-successfully scaled we found our progress hampered by a lack of subject matter. In stark contrast to the wealth of persons in the large sitting room, which we now occupied, the inanimate objects were decidedly few. The room was dominated by a vast, brightly coloured and intricately patterned Persian carpet which almost completely covered the whole of the floor leaving only a few inches of the cracked stone tiles below protruding from around the edges. The only remaining furniture consisted of several large, hard cushions, faced with similar but smaller, less expensive looking carpets and an oversized television. The cushions, which were used for reclining against, were propped against the walls, between several large, locked doors, and the antiquated wood paneled television stood grandly in the far corner of the room. It was now showing in muted technicolour a frantic struggle for supremacy between two super bike riders on a computer generated motorcycle track. Apart from this there were only a couple of handmade tapestries and a mirrored picture hung a long way up the high walls. These items generated approximately half a dozen new words (adjectives were no doubt considered, probably quite correctly, to be too advanced for this introductory lesson) and afterwards my teacher scurried away. I guessed that he had had enough and, knowing that I most certainly had, I settled back against one on the sawdust filled cushions, which proved to be marginally more comfortable than leaning against the bare plastered walls, along with the others, to watch Mohammad continue with his Herculean quests and listen to my mother-in-law berating him to fly, race or shoot more slowly. In my heart I marveled at their ability to live so spartanly and felt a few small pangs of guilt when I remembered how despondent I had become when, on packing for the journey, I found that all our worldly goods would fit into so few boxes. I wondered how my in-laws would feel when they realised that the freight, that we were expecting to arrive any day now, probably contained more items than they had managed to gather in a whole lifetime's worth of toil.

If I had not been so tired perhaps I would have taken more time to ponder the regular spacing of the cushions on which I leant but within minutes Ideen had returned and here I learnt a lesson other than linguistics; never underestimate the resourcefulness of the Iranians. He had returned clutching a hammer and chisel. Apparently, as luck would have it, there was a building site just along the alley. It was closed for the weekly Friday holiday and he had had no trouble breaking in and borrowing a few items to continue with his tutelage. The class progressed with hod loads of bricks and sacks of cement being hauled into the house and dragged back out again after I had managed a reasonable stab at enunciating their names. It was fortunate for me that Mohammad had read civil engineering at university because, as he waited for a new game to load, he was able to help out with some of the more difficult items. I guess that it was also fortunate for the owner of the building site that all the tools and materials stored there were too large to fit under the corner of the carpet. I will admit though the memory of Ideen along with a couple of his little friends attempting to lug a cement mixer up two flights of stairs just to continue with the class can still bring a smile to my face although I must also concede that he had only managed to acquired their assistance by promising them the entertaining spectacle of a strange foreign lady making even more strange utterances; and he must have sold it fairly well, too, because one of the boys' mothers even put in an appearance and by her half suppressed chuckles I can only guess that she had not been disappointed. Still, to this day that knowledge, especially the word for cement mixer, remains with me and if I ever manage to produce a daughter to wash dishes in my stead I may take some time out to write an English-Persian technical dictionary.

Lunch, when it finally arrived was an appetising, if somewhat oily, concoction of chicken, potatoes and rice and it was much appreciated by everyone except my father-in-law. He was not keen on the plain, white rice, boiled chicken and fried potatoes that he guessed that my mother-in-law would show the foresight to cook, especially for me, just in case I did not like some of the other herbs and spices that they often used. He had, however, taken precautions of his own to ensure that he would enjoy his meal as much as I would mine. This involved getting up early and visiting the local fish market. Neither of these actions imposed any great hardship on him as he always woke before dawn to rise and perform his morning prayers and he much preferred to be out of the house anyway whenever my mother-in-law was cleaning more thoroughly than she usually did (which is very thoroughly indeed). He knew that with the imminent arrival of her eldest, and consequently most loved, son everyone would be rounded up to help but that did not stop him from procuring the largest, freshest fish that he could hope to carry home and bringing it back to present to Fozieh. Furthermore it did not matter that she was already overburdened with having to wash the net curtains, wipe down the skirting boards and polish the smears from the windows that Afgham had so badly neglected during her round of chores for he knew that she would still manage to have it descaled, gutted, cleaned and cooked in time to be served to him in addition to the plain, white rice, chicken and potatoes that he also managed to sample. I later discovered that should he at any time chance upon a bargain of the Piscean variety he was liable to purchase two or three of them and bring them home to have them suitably prepared and frozen for cooking and eating at a later date. It was during such moments that I really appreciated the fact that I was considered incapable of nothing more than my job as bottle washer in chief.

With time everything settled, my father-in-law's fish dinner, us into our new kibbutzim lifestyle, the dust on my half unpacked suitcases, the look of disapproval on my mother-in-law's face and then our freight arrived. The sound of me pulling the parcel tape from our first box immediately summoned all the female members of the household, along with Ideen, who always managed to appear when something unusual was afoot. Each towel, sheet or toiletry, that that emerged from the depths of the packaging, appeared to be just the size, colour or smell that one or other of them had searched for in every shop and market stall in Tehran but had been unable to locate and my husband, who was ordinarily possessed of a generous spirit suddenly turned into a benefactor extraordinaire and, allowed them to take whatever they wanted. I was becoming more and more worried as each new box was opened, appraised and subsequently emptied. How in a country where the shop shelves were obviously devoid of consumer commodities, and in which, so far, we had still not secured ourselves a regular and reliable source of income, were we to replace the little that we had once had? Mohammad, however, appeared deaf to my supplications and this little demonstration eventually eclipsed even his computer dexterity in terms of success. As everyone left in good spirits, arms piled high, I noted, much to my dismay, that the only one of our wedding presents left for us was a toasted sandwich maker and we were once again devoid of towels and bed linen.

The toasted sandwich maker had actually been given to us by a friend and fellow countryman of my husband, who was at the time of our wedding residing in England. When I first realised that he knew of our plans to return to Iran I took him to be a fool. After all who would be daft enough to buy a toasted sandwich maker for a couple going to live in a country with no loaves, sliced or unsliced, where the only bread produced and sold was of the flat, unleavened variety which is, of course, completely useless for making toasted sandwiches. However, the sheer uselessness of this gift was its brilliance; of all the wedding presents that we received his, and his alone, is the only one that we still have left to love and cherish. I now understand that he must have put a great deal of time and effort into choosing just the right present for the circumstances in which we were to find ourselves and, in truth, I was the fool to question his judgment whilst not in full possession of all the facts.

This realisation did, nonetheless, not go any way to solving our immediate problem, that of still having no towels or sheets. Fortune, however, smiles on the generous as Mohammad took great delight in explaining to me later. It seems that after retreating with all their newly acquired goodies surreptitiously hidden keys to the previously mentioned locked doors and a number of other similar cupboards were produced. One by one in turn the doors swung open to reveal a series of vast cavernous spaces, each one a minor Aladdin's cave stuffed full of a whole range of fantastic treasures and I was surprised to learn that Ideen was not the only magpie in the family. True, they swung open with ease to swallow up all our new toweling and linen but then were too full to close again and so we became the beneficiaries and acquired all the excess. Once more, we were again in possession of worldly wealth. This being the case I was finally able to shower and sleep and upon waking refreshed I decide it was about time for me to build upon my newly acquired linguistic skills. Now was the moment to move on to adjectives and possibly even some verbs. Our own home did not have a telephone so to this end I bribed our next-door-neighbour into letting me use hers, with the one bottle of perfume that I had had the fortune to have, at the last moment, dropped into my hand luggage. As I put my call through to the British Embassy I congratulated myself on having the ability to decipher my own requirements and the intelligence to determine the best way in which to satisfy them. In my sleep-fuelled state of euphoria I almost forgot the relish with which, in my youth, I had devoured the novels of Evelyn Waugh. I doubt, however, if this memory would have done me any good for once again I had, without being in possession of the full facts, made a judgment which would later turn out to be completely unfounded. How I had laughed at his exaggerated descriptions of British outposts on foreign soil, but I would not be laughing for long.

"Good morning," I began. "I have recently arrived in Tehran with my Iranian husband and unfortunately don't speak any Farsi . . . yes, yes, if you'll just let me finish. I do accept that it probably was rather stupid of me but I just thought that you may be able to put me in touch with someone who could help me – say a personal tutor or something?"

"Terrific, you have three language teachers registered with you. If you could . . . sorry . . . oh yes, I see, although they are still registered with you at this moment they are all on indefinite leave back in England. Of course, because of the war, the state of the economy and other miscellaneous reasons. No, that's fine but there must be more than three people in a city the size of Tehran that are capable of teaching me some elementary linguistics?"

"So what you're saying is; yes, there are a number of people who would be capable of such an undertaking but no, you can't – was that can't or won't? – actually put me in touch with them. Well how exactly can you help me?"

"Now let me check that I have understood you correctly; you haven't got time to talk to me today as you are about to set off on a shopping spree to spend part of your disgustingly large salary but if I call back at the end of next week you may be able to tell me exactly what you can do for me. Is that . . . no please don't hang up. I. . . "

As luck would have it Mohammad had shared out all my other perfumes (excluding the one which he had for some inexplicable reason given to Amir) between Farideh, Fozieh, Afgham and my mother-in-law and I was therefore spared the final indignity of finding out exactly what the British Embassy staff were prepared to do for me.

Wear Our Clothes

If you ever see a Muslim woman gliding along looking cool, calm and collected you can stake money on the fact that she is either pokiothermic, on permanent vacation in Northern Alaska or that the Japanese have invented a microchip sized air conditioning system that fits behind the left ear. I say left ear because if there were to be any form of malfunction within the unit, resulting in bodily damage, it would be far less disabilitating for the wearer to lose her left ear rather than her right. I am not entirely sure why the right side of the body should be more revered than the left side but I do know for a fact that under Iranian law any person depriving a man of the use of his right testicle, be it accidentally or out of malice, must pay his victim double the amount of compensation that would have been due had it only been his left testicle that had been incapacitated. However, setting aside for one moment this interesting snippet of information the truth is that in a country where temperatures in certain regions can reach forty degrees centigrade in the shade, and remain that way for six months of the year, most women find venturing out into the heat of the day an experience similar to entering a sauna without remembering to disrobe first.

I have not yet been seduced into wrapping the previously described 'chador' around myself although I am assured that it is the cooler alternative especially in direct sunlight. It must also be said that I am rapidly reaching the age where not donning one could find me in the 'mutton dressed as lamb' camp. Bearing this in mind I have lobbied that a white 'chador' might be even more comfortable than the black variety but was reliably informed that such a move would be a major faux pas in the fashion stakes. White 'chadors' have their place; the most pristine and expensive versions are often worn by brides or by those undertaking their daily prayers and when they have lost their initial freshness they may be hung in the hallway to be used when answering the door, dropping round to the neighbours to deliver some traditional home cooking or simply to pop out to return the dishes belonging to some kind soul that has previously brought one of their own home cooked delicacies round for you. As an aside Iranian society still act as a coherent set of communities; on a regular basis Iranian housewives will produce large batches of 'osh' (a heavy, vegetable based broth), 'shoal-e-zard' (a sweet, saffron flavoured rice dish) or 'halva' (an unusual combination of flour, sugar and oil) and distribute it amongst their neighbours. This may be to mark an anniversary, to celebrate a momentous event or merely as part of the process of trying to ensure that their most heartfelt prayers are answered but whatever the reason these delicious hand baked offerings are always gratefully received. To return to my original dilemma though, it is really quite simple, if seduced by a 'chador' one must accept that for everyday outdoor use it should be black but, when contemplating a visit to the rooftop restaurant at the Hilton Hotel, for a three course dining experience, which is the more chic, to struggle to deal elegantly with cutlery and glasses whilst steaming away in an overcoat and scarf or to sit refined and demure with the equivalent of a black sheet on one's head?

Talking of seduction, this is a topic very close to the hearts of most full-blooded Iranian men. They pursue it with a dedication that can only be rivaled in the west by the Italians or Latin Americans. To give them their due many of them have distilled it to a fine art form but along with the realisation that they have refined their techniques to near perfection comes a swelling of the ego and, my guess is, of other parts of the anatomy, too. I firmly (and how else?) believe that this has been proven to cause an acute blood rush away from the brain that it leaves them incapable of understanding even the simplest of sentences, particularly ones that contain difficult words such as 'no'. The most obvious of rebuffs can be regularly mistaken for 'can you repeat your romantic proposal again please', 'give me a moment to formulate my considered reply' or even 'take me I'm yours!'

The major difficulty in a country completely devoid of nightclubs, discotheques, wine bars, public houses or even bingo halls is where can a potential Romeo go to find his Juliet? Obviously, he has no choice but to use the thoroughfare as his theatre and a streetlight as his backdrop but here his efforts are frustrated still further by the strict dress code and high standards of morality expected from the whole female population. The law prohibits women from exposing any part of their body, save face and hands, in public, all but the most minimal of make-up can lead to arrest whilst fraternisation with members of the other sex, save close relatives, is expressly forbidden. Conversations, aside from haggling over the price of a metre of material or a kilo of onions, must be restricted to the minimum of politeness and preferably with no visible eye contact. All things considered the selection of a leading lady can become a bit of a lottery, things very rarely run to plan and in certain circumstances the results can be little short of ridiculous.

A case in point was the gangly, spotty-faced, obviously myopic youth who, in the first flush of manhood was less than astute in his pursuit of courtship and had decided that I may very well turn out to be his Juliet. Whenever I left the house on one of my daily shopping trips to purchase bread or milk, or simply to endure the pleasures of queuing in the vain attempt of acquiring them, he would join me somewhere along my route. Then he would proceed to follow me wherever I went, up and down the street and in and out of shops, hurrying whenever I hurried, stopping whenever I stopped and always two steps behind me. Each day he would try to act as a translator, attempt to carry my bags or endeavour to manoeuvre me further along a given queue whilst all the time professing what I assumed to be his undying love for me in a guttural whisper somewhere behind my left ear. I may even have been slightly flattered by his puppy dog attentions if he had actually been able to understand any English, shoulder large loads, ensure that I always made it to the front of the queue before the desired commodity had sold out, or even perhaps have chosen to make his preposterous propositions in my right ear. However, as it was he could manage none of these and was nothing short of an embarrassing appendage.

As time progressed I graduated from showing a total lack of interest, through telling him to get lost, to calling him, his mother, his father and the rest of his family a herd of young donkeys (unfortunately it loses a little in translation). Either he was in a permanent state of glandular swelling or my pronunciation was not all that I thought it was because nothing I said seemed to dampen his ardour.

I tried to do my shopping early in the morning and would sometimes even rise with my father-in-law so that I could head out before the shops had opened. I assumed that this would have the two fold advantage of allowing me not only to the be first in the queue but also to avoid the unwanted attentions of Romeo. Unfortunately, I was wrong on both counts. Even when I managed to be the first person in the queue it seemed that I was already several places back being piped to the post by a clutch of empty milk bottles, a pair of flip flops and an empty cardboard box. It appeared that these inanimate objects ventured out at the dead of night to take their places and then closer to opening time were relieved by their human counterparts. It also proved to be a fact that these inert articles could in some way communicate with their owners because the latter always managed to know that my milk bottles had not sometime that same night joined the queue before the ones belonging to them. However, although on these occasions I may not have been first in line I did usually manage to at least secure some milk, or whatever else it was that I required.

Unfortunately, although starting my shopping early meant I finished early it was never early enough to avoid Romeo who would still catch up with me just as I was returning home and eventually it all had to come to head. The earliness of the hour meant that as he once again followed me into my alley he found that for once the place was totally deserted, no old women standing gossiping on their doorsteps, no kids running in and out of parked vehicles, not even a stray cat looking for a secret stash of lamb chops. Praising Allah he suddenly took a giant leap and crushed me against the wall in a bear like embrace. His impulsive attack took me completely by surprise; in the initial moment of shock my grip loosened on the two plastic bags that I was carrying and, as they fell to the floor, my groceries spilled out across the tarmac forming a bizarre culinary collage that may have even momentarily been of interest to Jackson Pollack. So there we stood, him two inches shorter and twenty pounds lighter, with his stale breath steaming up my bifocals and me pressed up against the rough concrete wall looking down at my perishables and wondering if, after all the time that I'd spent queuing for them, they would still actually be edible. At this point time stood still for a second or so with neither of us quite knowing what to do next.

During this pause I'd like to try to appraise the situation objectively. In spite of the fact that a lunatic with an erection had me cornered in a blind alley I must admit that I felt no fear whatsoever and I can state that, even today, I would far rather walk home alone at four o'clock in the morning in Tehran than I would in any western metropolis. I remember that once, long after this incident, a few of us foreign wives had gathered together for afternoon tea. We liked to assemble sporadically to practise our English and exchange notes on the less comprehensible customs that appeared to assail us on a daily basis. On this occasion we were having a light-hearted discussion as to why many elderly gentlemen insisted on breakfasting on fried eggs and honey washed down with copious quantities of garlic yoghurt. Brandy said that she wouldn't care but it was always her that ended up squashed in the back of a taxi with one of them, on a scorching hot day, when she considered the indescribable odours oozing out of their every pore were potent enough to be canned and used for chemical warfare. All of the rest of us fell about laughing as she started to narrate her last nauseating experience, all except Linda that is.

"I don't know how you can all laugh about such things," she whined losing little of her obvious Midwest American accent in the process. "Last time I was in the back of a taxi the man next to me started to touch my knee. I kept trying to edge away from him but there was nowhere to move to and he just continued to squeeze it and leer at me in a most disconcerting fashion. In the end I had to ask the driver to pull over so that I could get out. Even as the taxi pulled away he just sat there staring at me as I stood on the sidewalk. I was trembling with pure fear and by the time that I had walked the rest of the way home I couldn't stop crying. Even now I wake up at night shaking and sobbing. I have started to have panic attacks and I can't go out without my husband because I am just too scared of the possible consequences. I just keep thinking about what could have occurred if I hadn't escaped from the taxi. What would have happened? Where would it have ended? It's just so terrible – this sort of thing would never have happened back home."

"You're so right," came the reply in an even stronger American drawl. "I mean, God forbid but, he might have poked your breast with his elbow or something. Now where I come from, down town New York, the guy would have pulled out a knife, dragged you into the nearest doorway, ripped your knickers to shreds, screwed your arse off and left you for dead. Yep, you'd have sure known how it was going to end with a good old U S of A rapist; much better than this damn Iranian harassment!"

It may sound heartless but most of us felt that way. Situations could be embarrassing, annoying or even totally frustrating but they were never really life threatening.

By now back in the alley my assailant had decided that what he'd really like was to see me disrobed. Yes, he was going to leave all my undergarments fully intact but try to remove my techni-coloured scarf. I, however, was aware that I had not washed my hair that morning and was determined to save what little dignity I felt that I still had left. In the same instant that he made a grab for my head covering I too raised my hands to hold it in place and in the process managed to scratch his face badly enough to draw blood. The sight of his injuries spurred me on and I started to shout at him to back off before I did him any further damage. The noise I was making seemed to cause him more concern than his wounds and he immediately released his hold on me and started to slowly edge away before beginning to repack my shopping. All the while he was trying to calm me down and get me to lower my voice by a few decibels. As I angrily snatched my things away from him and briskly headed for home I heard him call after me something along the lines of how glad he was that this little incident had managed to forge our firm friendship still further.

Behind my hastily slammed door I gradually regained my temper and was tempted to forget the whole incident, after all he was only a stupid but harmless, if somewhat sexually frustrated adolescent and it was likely that after today he would transfer his affections elsewhere. However, on coming to put away my shopping I found that two of my three milk bottles had been smashed to pieces; not only had I spent half the morning in line for them I had no idea how I was going to replace them. During all my time in Iran I have never yet seen a new milk bottle - and certainly during the war years no empty milk bottle to exchange meant no full milk bottle in return. No matter how long one queued or how many coupons one had an empty milk bottle was still an integral part of the whole painstaking process. Back then the mere thought of being without milk bottles could make me wake up at night shaking and sobbing. What if I started to have panic attacks or I could not go out without milk bottles because I was too scared of the possible consequences. I just kept thinking about what could have occurred if all the bottles had got broken. What would have happened? Where would it have ended? It was just so terrible – this sort of thing would never have happened back home. Needless to say all my feelings of pity evaporated along with my spilt milk and I decided that Mohammad must be informed. He took this infringement of his personal property (both me and the bottles) very seriously, and on an even more important level how on earth was his mother supposed to produce her mouth-watering yoghurt if there was no milk? This would mean that my father-in-law would have nothing with which to consume his early morning garlic. All these far reaching consequences made it imperative that some form of action was taken and taken quickly.

So the next day my husband took leave from his work and crept outside at the crack of dawn to lie in wait. He partially concealed himself behind a concrete telegraph pole which was, as is usual before the early morning visit from the local street cleaner, surrounded by a pile of yesterday's rotting rubbish. Clutching his weapon of choice discreetly behind his back he stood almost motionless, only breaking his adopted pose on occasion to quickly crane his neck forward and furtively glance up and down the alley in search of a spotty, scar-faced youth. His manner was similar to that of a chicken on the lookout for a fox, although in this situation he was, of course, the potential predator rather than the possible prey.

I was under strict instructions as to the time I should leave the house and which route I should take although I was adamant that after the preceding day's altercation my young admirer would certainly not show his face in this area for a good few weeks to come. However, as usual, my convoluted western thought processes were shown to be inferior to my husband's grasp of middle eastern culture and my surprise at seeing Romeo that morning was only surpassed by his at seeing Mohammad leap from his hiding place brandishing a long length of lead piping. He was whooping like a Red Indian and yelling perfectly pronounced obscenities that made the term 'young donkey' appear quite complementary. Initially the poor lad looked just like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming juggernaut but he quickly recovered his composure and set off along the alley like a hare out of a trap. However, he was no match for my greyhound of a husband who ran him down in a matter of metres. After a couple of blows to the body and some more verbal abuse Mohammad easily extracted a confession from him and, in addition, ascertained that he worked as an errand boy for the local confectioner. By now the commotion had attracted a number of onlookers, the local populace is never averse to any incident that can help to alleviate the monotony of regular queuing, and much to their delight my husband proceeded to take Romeo by the scruff of the neck and begin to march him up the road in the direction of the aforementioned cake shop.

Most of the cake shops in Tehran are of a similar design. Generally, they are painted white with a open vista through the wide shop frontage to the delights within. Both the shop design and the selection of consumables on offer are intended to tempt customers inside. Upon entering one is struck by the coolness of the stone clad interior and the sheer size of the chiller cabinets that physically dominate the whole retail space. They are generally full of dozens of large metal trays containing a whole range of products from fresh cream cakes through sugary biscuits to plain or apple muffins. Also scattered around are packets of mass produced boiled sweets, semi-shelled nuts and dark chocolate shapes. Everything that is not already packaged seems to be sold by the kilogram or a part of the same. Upon being purchased the more expensive varieties of cake are carefully laid out in neat rows within square white boxes constructed from thin stapled card. Their lids, constructed in the same way, will bear the name and address of the shop printed in a large font right across the top. Less costly items, however, are unceremoniously shoveled into cheap plastic bags. The local populace tend only to buy the delicacies offered at these emporiums for special occasions whereas we foreign wives seemed always to be popping in to buy a little comfort food. At this point in the story I could probably have done with one such quick fix of sugar but by now things were already spiraling way out of my control. This had the makings of a situation that was unlikely to be solved by the intake of a large number of fat laden calories.

By the time that they reached their destination a small crowd were following in hushed anticipation and Mohammad, never one to disappoint an audience, began to tell his story of woe. He was entirely honest, inventing details only when his knowledge of the facts was incomplete and never exaggerating unless it was entirely appropriate. Having finished his narrative he went on to explain to the contrite confectioner that although he did not know the offender personally he trusted that his employer would be responsible enough to ensure that there would be no repetition of the boy's actions. In fact, he said that the only thing that he did know about Romeo was that he worked in a cake shop which was fronted by a very large plate glass window which could be easily smashed to smithereens by a carelessly handled length of lead piping. This last remark was greeted with shouts and cheers, from the gathered throng, and I believe that several of the onlookers, in the months that followed, actually made regular excursions to check the shop frontage in the hope that my husband had actually had cause to make good his threats. Having vented his spleen and restored his honour Mohammad calmed a little and listened as the shopkeeper told him that the boy was actually from a good home, that his parents were close personal friends of his and this was the first time he had ever been in trouble. He promised to keep a watchful eye on him in the future to ensure that he would never again behave in such an inappropriate way. He added that if my husband was prepared to refrain from taking it further on this occasion he would show his eternal gratitude by continuing to provide Mohammad with all the free cakes that he and his esteemed family could eat. This final statement appeared to clinch the deal and they agreed that the incident, although extremely serious, was actually a relatively minor matter (a state of affairs only possible in Iran I presume) and that there would certainly be no need for police involvement. It was decided after a little debate that the latter would definitely require some form of financial reimbursement, from all parties, to merely draw the same conclusions. As things had obviously already been settled in a perfectly amicable manner, there seemed no reason to take matters to this next level. After a little deliberation the gathered crowd concurred with this and Mohammad eventually dropped Romeo to the floor to turn his attention to the waiting selection of confectionary.

I am sure that no-one believes that the judicial system in Iran is intrinsically corrupt but in a society that is truly family orientated and functions on every level within a framework of personal favours and backhanders why should those entrusted with the upkeep of law and order act any differently. My sister-in-law's mother was at some point, between being wed to Parisa's father and taking up with her current husband, married to a police officer. During this time she wrote several cheques without sufficient funds in her account to cover them with very little in the way of consequences. However, when one of her victims tried to redress the balance by passing some of the same onto her he ended up spending two years in jail and finally had to reimburse her double the original sum to secure his freedom. Mohammad always said that it was a shame that we hadn't got to know him better because when his father lent our local butcher a nominal sum which he was eventually unable to pay back we eventually had to settle the matter by accepting a large quantity of sirloins and mince in lieu of hard cash. (Although I am still inclined to believe that this may have had less to do with the state of his financial affairs and more to do with my mother-in-law's disclosure of his previous stock storage facilities than Mohammad would care to admit.) Unfortunately, however, there is a limit to the amount of meat a family can eat, even a large extended one such as ours, without some unpleasant side effects – Mohammad claimed that his stomach was baa-baaing for weeks after the transaction - but he still says that we should count ourselves lucky that his father had not undertaken the same transaction with the owner of the local 'lavashak' shop or else the whole family's stomachs would have been wishing that they were only baa-baaing! 'Lavashak', for those who have not had the pleasure is a sweet and sour snack, which on the way in, consists of a flat sheet of dried, pressed fruit. However, if eaten in excess, on the way out, does not appear dried and certainly should never be pressed.

I was later informed by my husband, the new local have-a-go hero and provider of free confectionary, that I had probably exacerbated the situation by dressing too provocatively. It is, after all, a universally accepted fact that western women are totally lacking in moral fibre (I think that means 'easy' to you and me) and therefore who could really blame the lad for trying his luck. His discussions had already established that the boy was from a good home and had never been in trouble before and consequently it would seem logical that if I been more modest in my attitude and attire the whole incident could probably have been avoided. Just how many extra layers are involved in more modest dressing is the one question that I have still to ask but I surmise that there is a scenario that poses a much greater risk to my well being than that of being attacked by a juvenile delinquent and ineffectual, potential rapist. One of my worst nightmares is the prospect of leaving the house unaccompanied, in the middle of the day, only to find myself alone in a deserted alley where I subsequently keel over suffering from a severe case of heat stroke. I am certain that in such a situation I would die from dehydration long before my lifeless body was ever reported missing, let alone discovered and allowed any opportunity of being hauled back from the brink of oblivion.

Follow Our Customs

Life for the fairer sex, except for the very rich or the even luckier, in every country involves a certain amount of drudgery. For women in Iran, where vacuum cleaners and washing machines are still considered by many to be a luxury, life involves a great deal of drudgery. Fortunately, at that time the shops were stocked with all kinds of convenience foods, tinned peas and tinned baked beans to name them all, and these were eaten and whole-heartedly approved of by most under sixes. Unfortunately, the rest of the population preferred, and still prefers today, all of their food to be traditionally cooked from first principles and that includes peas and baked beans. As if this is not enough, they also like their home cooked food to be accompanied by a selection of raw herbs and vegetables including parsley, tarragon, mint, coriander, radishes, spring onions and baby leeks. These can be bought in ten kilogram bundles, containing all the essential ingredients for the perfect side dish, along with half the field in which they were grown. After the newspaper wrapped bundle is lugged back from the greengrocers all the eligible females of the household spread out a large plastic sheet and sit around it picking out the edible shoots from the inedible weeds and waste material. There are only two good reasons for being excused from this activity; firstly being a mother-in-law with at least two daughters-in-law sitting in on the proceedings or secondly being dead. Actually, the experience, as a communal activity, does have its merits and I do not really relish my star status as being the only woman in the whole of Mohammad's illustrious family history to be excused for being a potential mother-in-law with at least two potential providers of daughters-in-law present at the proceedings. This unprecedented exception was initiated after three people had to be rushed to casualty with suspected food poisoning after eating a selection of my inexpertly sorted herbs and vegetables. Although they were all fortunate enough to recover my reputation sadly did not fair so favourably.

I am still permitted to take part in the initial experience of lugging the bundle back from the greengrocers particularly when I am on my way to the shops for other assorted items of interest such as tomato puree, washing powder and dead chickens. It may seem odd to talk of dead chickens in respect to grocery shopping as it is generally acknowledged that any form of poultry bought from a high street retail outlet should be in a condition other than racing around the shop, full of life, trying to avoid its seemingly inevitable destiny. However, I can assure you that the cleanly dissected, skinless chicken breasts found in a western style supermarket bear very little resemblance to the long legged, semi-plucked specimens that I have the joy of carrying home. Every time that I am compelled to queue up outside the foul (should that be fowl?) smelling shop I start to feel the onset of a panic attack. I know that as soon as I am handed my small plastic bag with the two glassy eyed chicken heads hanging limply out I will begin to feel the enormous burden of my own guilt weighing down upon me once more. As I make my return to the house watching their heads bob up and down on their half severed necks I will feel their blindly accusing stares. It always seems as if they are subjecting me some form of 'silent treatment' and by the time that I reach the smaller back alleys it will all have become too much. I will be overwhelmed by the need to vindicate my own actions and will begin a mindless self-justifying monologue,

"It wasn't me that killed you. Honest. Well you know that, don't you, because you were there, weren't you? Even if I hadn't have bought you someone else would have done. Anyway, if you hadn't have been bought it would have been worse; I mean you would have been killed in vain. At least this way you know that in death you will be providing others with life. After all, I always carry a kidney donor card, it's really the same thing – well, yes I do realise that it is unlikely that I'll actually be specifically killed for my kidneys, and of course, in this country where it is considered quite important to actually be buried with all your vital organs in place, it is also unlikely that anyone will decide to make use of my kidneys anyway – however that's not the point. Well, perhaps it is, but maybe you can feel luckier than me, luckier in that at least you will be of some use after death. I mean I know that if you were alive you could produce eggs and that we really don't need to eat poultry but even you have to see that..."

and so it continues until by the time that I have reached my own doorstep I have almost convinced myself of the need to become a vegetarian.

Perhaps this is the reason why when there is chicken on the menu I always try to volunteer for one of the other available household chores. There are plenty of them, all involving a certain amount of drudgery and many incorporating a plastic sheet similar to the one used in the sorting of the herbs and vegetables. Sugar cubes, for instance, come in a huge twenty-five kilogram lump resembling a phallic appendage worthy of Apollo himself. This is then laboriously broken down into one-centimetre cubes using a metal block and a well-honed hammer. During the process the air becomes full of a heady mix of powdered sugar and human sweat. On very hot days as I sit cross legged on the floor before the metal block with my ever growing pile of little cubes I feel as if this is as close as I will ever get to working in an underground crack cocaine packaging factory. Actually, for less happily married women the intoxicating glucose induced stupor combined with the obvious imagery means that the drudgery of this task can at least be offset by a certain degree of satisfaction. However, all things considered it is hardly surprising that something as innocuous as a wedding invitation is such a marvelous occurrence. It provides an opportunity for the recipient to dress up and go out and eat a meal that has taken someone else at least four hours to prepare. It allows the prospect of sampling chicken without requiring therapy, drinking copious cups of tea without wondering who will be refilling the sugar bowls and, in the case of my in-laws, enjoying a sumptuous side dish of raw herbs and vegetables without having to take the precaution of first reserving a bed in the local hospital.

Not even on these occasions is fraternisation between unrelated members of the opposite sex exactly encouraged but opportunities may, of course, arise. Not that there are no other means of socialising with individuals, male or female, outside of one's direct family. For example, once a week the streets around the main university campus, including Revolution Square, are cordoned off for Friday prayers. Friday being the day of rest, and many Iranians being very devout, this event is always well attended especially during the months of Spring, with their conducive climate and seasonal connotations. At these times the weekly event takes on an almost carnival atmosphere with spontaneous street traders and purveyors of consumables clamouring to service all the needs of the numerous attendees. On special occasions, such as the commemoration of the death of the prophet Ali or the anniversary of the victory of the Islamic revolution, there may also be an organised march. This allows members of the populace to come together as a group and express their strength and solidarity. They show a united front against the background of slipping moral standards in the west and vocalise their disgust at the low ethical standards that are tolerated there. Along the way the crowds have time to extol the virtues of a truly Islamic society and to praise its glorious leaders. In addition, they can denounce the United States of America and express their view that it is the 'Great Satan' sitting proud amongst a host of smaller, less potent demons. Amir never fails to attend these marches, as he feels strongly that they represent his best chance of mingling with unattached and unrelated members of the opposite sex. On several occasions I have pointed out to him the irony of wearing his 'Baseball Rules' sweatshirt to these rallies but, as he considers that it shows his physique off to its best advantage and far more effectively than any of his other tops, he steadfastly refuses to enter into any form of dialogue with respect to this issue.

Nevertheless, wedding celebrations still give many women their most gratifying sense of anticipation and certainly without women most wedding celebrations would never take place. It is women who encourage offers of marriage for their daughters, it is women who choose brides for their sons, it is women who pressurise their husbands into booking halls and hiring caterers, it is women who spend months planning all the details from the most major items right down to the colour of the buttons on their dresses and it is women who dance and sing and generally bring a spirit of light and gaiety to the whole occasion. Probably the only woman not to enjoy a wedding, excluding one unfortunate enough not be invited, of course, will be the bride herself. She will be the centre of all the female attention and most of it, regrettably, will be unwelcome. The family of the groom will be sitting around extolling his virtues and ruminating to themselves that he could have done so much better for himself (by this point it will have slipped from their collectively memory that it was probably they themselves that chose her for him). Her family, and you must remember that it will be a vastly extended one, on the other hand, will be listing her faults and wondering how she could have been lucky enough to have made such a desirable match when, after all, each one of them has at least one much more eligible, but as yet unmarried, sister or daughter.

The whole process is set in motion when a mother decides that her daughter has reached an age where not entering into a matrimonial arrangement could possibly see her left on the shelf for good. With this in mind she spreads the word of her daughter's availability amongst all her family and friends knowing that it will be carried down the female grapevine to all those other women who have finally resolved that they have a son who is in the words of Jane Austen 'in need of a wife'. These mothers-in-law in waiting, on hearing the news, will gather together all the other female members of their extended family and set off to inspect the potential merchandise. Before they descend upon her household the young debutant will have spent a great deal of time choosing her outfit and refining her appearance in an attempt to impress those who have come to view her. There is always a fine line between looking demure and seeming dowdy and it is never easy to decide the exact moment when enhanced attractiveness turns into tartiness. After appraising the girl, and her home, with a critical eye and engaging in a minor amount of small talk, they will leave. However, should they be impressed by what they have seen they will once again be in touch and if both parties are agreeable a second visit to her home will be arranged. This time the potential groom will be allowed to accompany his female relatives and so his potential wife will need to remain covered. This time, after the formalities have been dealt with, however, it will be straight down to business. Her family will attempt to discover the finer details of all his financial assets and to calculate the level of salary that he is likely to attract in later years with a view to assessing his ability to provide for her. In contrast his family will try to ascertain whether she has the necessary skills to cook, clean and generally care for him and any future offspring that the two of them may generate. If this meeting is also a success, and once more both sides are amenable, then it is to be expected that all her family, both male and female, will be invited to his house. During the course of this meeting the most serious discussions will take place – a decision will need to be made as to the amount of her potential dowry and also it will have to be determined how much that he will concede in the divorce settlement when (and, of course, if) it takes place.

As an aside, the question of the ex-wife's entitlement in the case of marital breakdown is a very interesting one. The exact amount that she is due and any other qualifications and conditions applying to either party are actually written into the initial marriage contract and failure to fulfill that which has been agreed upon in the first few hours of debilitating infatuation can result in the negligent party finding themselves behind bars. This is why it is so important that those who are older and wiser than, or at least less prone to act with the spontaneity of youth possessed by, the actual bride and groom debate the major contract details. Iranian families, haggling on behalf of their loved ones, can often extract commitments for potential settlements that run into tens of thousands of pounds and the main advantage for Iranian men taking on western wives seems to be our complete ignorance of the intricacies contained within this particular custom. We are brought up to imagine that if the worst happens that our divorce settlements, including any alimony and child support, will be worked out by the courts and amount to out to at least half of everything that has been accumulated during the course of our marriage. If we are really lucky additional payments will also be granted and these may continue for a good few years after the dissolution too. Iranian women, and those of us that chose to marry into their culture, however, can expect no more than that which has already been written.

Having taken a straw poll amongst my fellow ex-patriots it appears that not one of us has more than a nominal sum written into our Iranian marriage contract. Most have settled for a combination of a Koran and their wedding ring, others have token amounts of money, none in excess of two thousand, and some as low as ten, dollars, and one woman even had to admit that if the worst happened that her entitlement was actually no more than a single chicken! Mohammad argued vigorously with the cleric that officiated at our marriage ceremony that the settlement section of our certificate should be left blank. However, after a considerable amount of heated debate he eventually grudgingly agreed that if we were to divorce he would bestow upon me a relatively expensive gold necklace. During our twenty or so years of marriage he has bought me several such items of jewellery and he never fails to remind me that should we go our separate ways that I am only entitled to keep one of them. I recently asked him why he had been so loathed to credit me with a more substantial sum at the outset of our new life together and he replied that he considered me to be so priceless that the idea of cheapening me with a paltry figure made him feel truly nauseous. At the time I did try to explain that if he had been willing to write in an excessively large amount of money then I could not have been cheapened by a paltry figure but next time I may go one stage further and try to initiate a discussion with him regarding the exact difference between priceless and worthless.

Anyhow, as I can never envisage Mohammad and myself ever being set asunder, so to speak, it seems safe to return, with my jewellery box still bulging, to the saga of our two hypothetical sweethearts. Should it be possible for an agreement to be, more or less amicably, reached with regards to the two major issues, those of dowry and settlement, it would seem obvious to all concerned that the couple must be a match made in heaven and that they should waste no time in settling down and beginning to raise a family of their own (any inability to conceive on her wedding night will leave doubts in everyone's minds as to the fertility of the bride). The wedding date will then be set to allow just enough time for the women to make all the necessary arrangements including the choice of their outfits and for the groom's father to raise enough money, by fair means or foul, to cover the cost of the whole affair.

Of course, today there are times that the happy couple may first meet at college, work or a rally or even across a crowded street and then he may ask his family to specifically target her home. However, when they eventually do decide to become legally wed and to invite their family and friends to a celebration of the joyous event there are a few guidelines to which everyone must always adhere. The main one is that there will be no indiscriminate mingling of the sexes at any time (the single exception to this is that there are still a few venues that will provide the two mandatory distinct and separate halls but will only be able to offer one unisex toilet facility). This segregation means that only the female guests will actually get to see the uncovered version of the bride. The newlyweds may make a flying visit to each hall as a couple but will often then spend the rest of the evening apart not setting eyes upon each other until the festivities are concluded (unless, of course, they turn out to be so compatible that they actually visit the lavatory in unison). This is because the female guests, and the bride herself, will have invested too much energy in the preparation of their finery to spend the evening bundled up in coats and scarves or huddled beneath their 'chadors'. In poorer areas especially, the need for the bride to be able to feel unfettered by excess clothing for one last time is a real necessity. It is entirely possible that the next day she will be moving into her newly acquired in-laws already overcrowded single roomed accommodation and will then need to keep her scarf permanently Velcroed to her head at all times. The only exception to this state of affairs may be if all her male in-laws are for some reason absent or she is on a semi-clandestine trip of pseudo-liberation to the perfectly ethical public showers.

This segregation can hardly be unexpected though, after all, when the governing body in any country feels the need to prevent men and women from travelling together on the bus to and from work there must be a problem. Especially in Iran, when at six o'clock in the morning, as the majority of the working population head out it is too dark to distinguish individual features and many of them are not even awake enough to alight at their correct destination. Then again at six o'clock in the evening as they head home their clothes are dirty, soiled and reeking with the odour of honest, industrious sweat and many are once again too wearied and worn from a hard day's labour to remember where they actually boarded that morning. If the fear exists that under these inauspicious circumstances the populace may be inclined to indulge in a spot of illicit romance there must be a conviction that if they were permitted to socialise together when rested and relaxed and dressed up to the nines that the whole affair would no doubt degenerate into an out and out orgy – or perhaps something even worse!

In reality, using buses is not too problematic for a single person engaged on a purely work-based trip. Tickets are bought in advance of any given journey from one or other of the numerous booths located at strategic locations around the city. Men enter the bus through the front door handing the driver their tickets as they pass and at terminal locations a second official will have the task of collecting the women's tickets before they board through the rear door. At stops on route the driver will still collect the men's tickets whilst keeping a watchful eye on the goings on at the rear of the bus using his mirror. He will attempt to assess how many women have boarded from behind and after their tickets have been gathered together and passed down the bus to him he will try to ascertain that he has collected the correct number before he finally pulls away. In all cases a metal bar is welded somewhere across the aisle to ensure that front door boarders are unable to mix with their back door compatriots.

It sounds simple enough but I have lost count of the number of times that I have po-goed around at the back of a bus trying to keep an eye on one or other of my sons whilst they have stood forlornly at the front and then been classed as a certifiable lunatic as I have yelled at them to start pushing their way, along the crowded aisle, towards their exit in preparation for disembarking at the next stop whilst refusing to alight myself until I have ensured that they are already outside on the footway waiting for me. Another point worth remembering is that this is a male orientated world, where the word of a man is considered equivalent to that of two women. Although I have never found myself standing in the dock giving evidence whilst trying to suppress outraged suffragette tendencies, it appears to me that this notion must translate into other sectors of the community - notably public transport. It must be assumed by senior officials in the Ministry of Transport that as a man's word is worth twice that of a woman's that his persona must also be double that of his female counterpart. Consequently the aforementioned metal bar is always positioned so that the women's section only ever constitutes a third of the total available space on any given vehicle. It is really no wonder that whilst travelling around Tehran like an olive in a press that many single women will dream of meeting and marrying their Mr Right; and all things considered this Mr Right is likely to be anyone with enough spare cash to be able to afford to buy them a second hand run around. However, I continue to digress when we should be making a hasty return to the wedding breakfast.

One point certainly worth bearing in mind, particularly if you are ever invited to a nuptial celebration in Iran, is that Iranian punctuality requires that for any given social occasion the guests arrive precisely three to four hours after the time stated on the invitation. In fact the printed start time generally lets you know the exact moment at which the venue proprietor will unlock the door to his establishment to allow the cleaners access so that they can begin their preliminary preparations. On his initial return from spending nine years living abroad, and still being accompanied by a neurotic, clock-watching Brit, this section of the rules of etiquette had acquired a slightly hazy nature in Mohammad's consciousness. Consequently, for a short period of time we were always the first to arrive at any given celebration, sometimes even before the caterers and, twice being obliged to assist the hired help in the setting out the tables and chairs.

Finally, I do not feel that I can conclude this section of my narrative without returning, at least metaphorically, to the unisex toilets. In some more expensive establishments there may be western style lavatories but in most venues the facilities provided will consist solely of Iranian latrines. This will mean dealing with a simple hole in the ground, a jug of water or, if you are lucky, a hosepipe and definitely no toilet tissue. This makes it very difficult for women, at least for western women, such as myself, who are not well versed in the finer arts of using such facilities, to remain chic, suave or even dry. Not having the aim of an anglerfish I quickly learnt that whenever I was invited to a wedding celebration as well as spending time and money on my outfit it was also expedient for me to invest in some pocket sized paper tissues, a large perfume stick and a couple of spare pairs of stockings for my handbag. However, in this respect I was probably more fortunate than most. In spite of my meticulous preparations, or perhaps because of them, it was still blindingly obvious that I was not entirely comfortable on these occasions and so one of my husband's well meaning aunts having caught on to my dilemma bought me what I can only describe as a replica birthing stool. It appeared to consist of a second hand black plastic toilet seat ingeniously welded to the hollow metal legs of a dismembered school assembly type chair that somewhere along the line had lost its polyurethane bucket seat. These contraptions exist to be used by the elderly or the infirm (or, in my case, the incompetent) and are placed over the offending toilet hole, thus precluding the need to squat. Unfortunately, the legs are not boxed in, so it does not entirely eliminate the need to be a sure shot. However, by raising my legs above the level of the seat and adopting a curious lotus style pose I could regularly preclude the need to make use of my second set of excess hosiery.

My in-laws had actually had the foresight to have a western style toilet installed in their house, purely out of concern for my welfare I believe, and so the device was redundant when I was at home. However, as Mohammad's aunt carefully pointed out it had the potential to save me a lot of embarrassment particularly when out and about or simply visiting family or friends. I must admit that it is not the easiest of items to manoeuvre onto the women's third of the bus, I always have to ask for an extra space at the table in restaurants so that I have somewhere to stand it and I do remember one curious incident when a particular hostess seemed rather loathed to take it from me when I offered it to her along with my outer garments. I distinctly remember the occasion because after recovering from her initial shock she scuttled quickly away. When she finally reappeared she was wearing a large pair of rubber gloves and carrying several sheets of newspaper. Having relieved me of my burden she proceeded to spread out the newspaper in the farthest, darkest corner that she could possibly find before leaving my contraption on top of it. She then spent the rest of the evening with a really strange look on her face and despite the pleasantries for some reason that I find impossible to comprehend we have never been invited back there again. However, I guess that these minor inconveniences truly are a small price to pay for the large amount of embarrassment from which I must have ultimately been saved.

Get A Job

At that time one of the advantages of setting up home in Iran was that your horizons immediately become infinitely broader. It allowed you to pursue, with a realistic chance of success, any dreams that you may have previously felt were totally unobtainable. You may not actually have been able to achieve all your heart's true desires but you at least had a greater probability of attaining them and all without the fear of undesirable consequences. It is not that the pursuit of excellence and paper qualifications did not have their place, for they most certainly did, and a lot of Iranians work very hard to achieve them both. However, determination and perseverance in other directions must never be underrated and in many cases appearance and a confident demeanour can be as important as actual experience. Even now, you must never lose sight of the fact that no matter what your goal, in Iran, what you know will never, ever be as important as who you know.

Previous experience had finally led Mohammad to the conclusion that I was not attending enough wedding celebrations to prevent me wandering aimlessly through the alleyways, at inappropriate hours, and seducing trainee bakers. To rectify this situation he made a unilateral decision that it was about time that I set my sights on attaining some form of gainful employment. At this time he was still fully occupied with his National Service, which netted him the handsome sum of £2.60 per month. Even bearing in mind that the cost of living in Iran was, at that time, far lower than most places in the west this was still not much of a contribution to the family coffers and so it was hardly surprising that although the initial motivation may have been employment the emphasis was most certainly on gainful.

It was unfortunate that the military forces did not award bonuses, in addition to salary, for Mohammad had sailed through his basic training with flying colours. He had even managed to achieve a special commendation for the extraordinary amount of national pride that he possessed. It transpired that every morning all the recruits had been obliged to salute the flag, sing the national anthem and then enounce a number of platitudes similar to those chanted by the general populace on their occasional marches. It had been noted, by his superiors, that Mohammad had managed to shout phrases such as

"Down with the great Satan, America, and the smaller Satan, Britain!"

and

"Death to the western infidels!"

with exceptional gusto. A few of his friends, who were party to his domestic situation, enquired of him how it was that he had managed to do this. His considered response was that living with me had allowed him to put the type of real emotion that was lacked by others into all of his chanting and gesticulation. I suppose that I should be grateful, however, that at least even when I am out of his sight I am still in his thoughts.

Anyhow, having married young and willingly sacrificed my scholastic education for the pursuit of worldly wisdom, but not as yet even managed to master the basics of constructing a full Iranian sentence, I was certain that, even if fortune smiled upon me, the best that I could hope for in the way of the employment stakes was scrubbing other people's floors. However, my mother-in-law was not prepared to see her first born son demeaned by being seen to be married to a mere charwoman and thus took it upon herself to find a satisfactory solution to this potentially embarrassing problem. To her credit, when she felt that the occasion merited it, the extraordinary skills that she could draw upon would have enabled her to run, single handed, a major Government Ministry or at the very least take overall charge of a National Newspaper. I have never before witnessed such foresight and her incredible imagination, powers of persuasion and ability to organise would have made even the most successful of international ambassadors green with envy. Firstly, she extracted, from Mohammad, a potted history of my life and seized upon the fact that, during my teenage years, I had voluntarily taught classes at the local Sunday School. In fact, it had probably been no more than a logical progression, thrust upon me by my parents. After years of sending my brother and me to Sunday School my mum and dad were unprepared to relinquish their peaceful Sunday afternoon interlude and so, when I became too old to be a pupil, I became a teacher. This brought with it the additional benefit that if I was deemed responsible enough to be in charge of a Sunday School class then I was also deemed responsible enough to walk my younger brother there and back too, thus increasing their child free time by a factor of two. However, in the eyes of my mother-in-law, one hour a week relating the story of Noah and his Ark to a small and uninterested group of under fives and a fairly comprehensive grasp of the English language made me, with the correct packaging of course, a fully qualified professor of linguistics.

She then called upon my sister-in-law, Farideh, who, as luck would have it, already worked in the field of education to instruct us on the appropriate attire for a person in my position. The truth is that although I actually have enough sisters-in-law to cover a whole farm full of fields I was still not quite sure actually what was my position.

Nonetheless, after a long and animated discussion, it appeared that my makeover was going to be relatively expensive (I guess wherever you live you have to speculate to accumulate) and so I was delivered into the capable hands of Fozieh. She is Farideh's younger sister, and her field of expertise is shopping. In Iran whilst shopping at small shops and market stalls if you want the best price you still have to haggle and that is where Fozieh's greatest talent lies - she can haggle with the best of them. Family lore has it that even since taking her turn, as the youngest child, to queue each morning for the daily bread she has never paid full price for anything.

Her reputation obviously preceded her for as we descended upon the bazaar runners were sent from stall to stall to bring advanced warning of her impending arrival. On entering the maze of small shops and stalls I could not help but be impressed by the seemingly endless passageways with their domed brick roofs that had obviously been witness to hundreds of years of barter and trade. Although they were poorly lit this only added to their mystique and my sense of awe was further enhanced when it really began to dawn on me just how difficult they must have been to construct, especially all those years ago. I also could not help but be awestruck by the fact that grown men were literally quaking in their plastic flip-flops as Fozieh's diminutive figure appraised their wares. She moved from vendor to vendor and finally having looked, felt, pried, poked, compared and considered at length she settled on one particular set of clothing and as I tried on my new uniform she began to haggle.

Two long hours later she finally flung a small wad of notes onto the table and signaled to me to beat a hasty retreat. As we made our speedy departure, clutching the new additions to my wardrobe, I happened to glance back and, to my horror, I saw the irate stall keeper following in hot pursuit. As we deftly wove our way through the crowded narrow passages he continued to call after us, shouting for us to stop and informing any interested bystanders along the way in a loud voice that he had just been robbed. By the time we had reached the main road I was frantically scanning our immediate surroundings for the forces of law and order. I was genuinely expecting us to be seized, at any moment, from all sides by members of the local constabulary or at the very least by a posse of zealous vigilantes; fear was making me sick to my stomach and I was starting to jabber and dribble from every orifice but Fozieh was still a picture of calm and serenity. As we quickly filled the last two seats in a waiting taxi there was just the hint of a smug smile of satisfaction playing on her lips. The driver pulled out into the traffic and I felt the tension flow from my body as an enormous feeling of relief washed over me. However, seeing our adversary left standing on the edge of the pavement, alone amid the vast throng of shoppers, with a look of total despondency on his face I also felt a small twinge of pity. This emotion was obviously not shared by my sister-in-law for as we swept past him, Fozieh stuck her head out of the window and laughingly yelled

"We paid too much, just remember that... next time I want a proper discount!"

Next time? Of course, as soon as we had arrived home she spent the rest of the afternoon regaling everyone with what she considered to be the more humorous aspects of our trip and boasting about the good deal she had managed to negotiate. Farideh, of course, insisted that we all went back together the following week to get her a set of clothing similar to mine. Fozieh said that she would be delighted to accompany her but I declined their kind invitation to tag along with the excuse of having to practise standing professionally, as if at the front of a class, in my new outfit. Not that I actually had much time for my imaginary rehearsals because only the next day we were off to secure me a position worthy of my new clothing. Armed with my previous work experience, and clutching a copy of The New Version of the Children's Illustrated Prayer Book for good measure, I was, with a little help from Fozieh's genetically inherited powers of persuasion, all ready to find myself a job at the local foreign language institute.

After several hours of heated discussion, in which I took almost no part except to sit in the corner and try to look professorial as I browsed knowingly through my tiny, pale yellow prayer book nodding sagely to myself whenever I encountered a word of more than two syllables, I was granted the right to apply for a teaching post. Initially, all the applicants had to sit a written examination and anyone scoring fifty percent or more would then be permitted to proceed to the next stage. This would involve a short presentation and an interview with one of the directors who could then decide whether or not any of them were to be offered a permanent position. As luck would have it this week's application process was just about to begin and so having completed her part of the agreement Fozieh wished me luck and left. Finally, it was up to me, and my prayer book, to attempt to successfully complete the mission.

The written examination took place in quite a large room where, along with the six other hopeful applicants, I had to answer a series of badly constructed multiple choice questions posed by a woman with an extremely exaggerated American accent whose voice was emanating from a barely audible tape recorder, situated at the back of the room. One of the other candidates quickly seated herself strategically behind one of the two rectangular columns in the centre of the room and immediately produced several sheets of crumpled paper from under her chador. As the examination progressed she began, without even listening to the tape, to check her crib notes and hurriedly ring letters on the answer sheet. The adjudicator, apparently engrossed in a book of Latin grammar, appeared not to notice this barefaced cheating and did not even bat an eyelid when this less than honest candidate handed in her completed paper twenty minutes before the tape finished.

After the examination was over and we were all seated out in the hall waiting for our results the perpetrator of the well-planned fraud explained to me how she had come to be so well prepared. Sonya, as she called herself, said that she was so eager to get this job that she had sent her sister here, one week previously, on the pretence of applying for work. She had then done her best to make a transcript of the tape and returned home with a rough draft and an unsubmitted answer sheet. They had spent the next seven days together studying the handwritten notes and poring over dictionaries trying to decipher the required responses. Her only regret was that she had not known that I would be here this week. If she had realised that there was going to be someone from whom she could be sure of copying the correct answers she could have saved her sister and herself a whole week's worth of work. I did wonder to myself if she had put as much effort into learning the language, as she had into devising devious ways of being able to circumnavigate the need to pass the examination honestly, whether or not we would now be conversing in English instead of having to struggle along in Farsi. Despite our communication difficulties Sonya seemed very eager to cultivate my friendship. She said that I was sure to have done exceptionally well in the written section and was certain to be offered a position here. She even suggested that we should put in a request to be interviewed together so that she could assist me with the filling out of any forms that required information to be submitted in Farsi. I was not totally convinced that the directors would be amenable to this, or even if it was necessary as we had already provided all our contact details in English on the first sheet of the multiple choice paper, but I was too busy, inwardly congratulating myself on finding my first potential companion who was not in some way intent on seducing me or directly related to Mohammad, to argue. This would mean that I could begin to have a social life that was not wholly centred on wedding celebrations, funerals and visiting in-laws. My imagination had gone into overdrive, and my mind was still assessing the endless possibilities for afternoon tea, early evening soirées and even being introduced to her equally devious sister, when the results were posted on the notice board. It became immediately apparent that my score was marginally lower than that of Miss Deghani. As we all congratulated her on obtaining full marks in the examination she explained that she had recently returned from India, where her father had been working as a diplomatic official in the embassy. At this point I noticed that the budding friendship that I had so longed for had already begun to dissolve. Sonya had suddenly lost all interest in our joint interview but had just as quickly discovered a burning desire to ascertain the differences between the Iranian education system and its Indian counterpart.

The good news was, however, that it appeared that the institute was at present extremely short of staff and consequently, all seven of us were to be interviewed – including the young lady who had lost marks for filling in her home address as '17 years of old'.

One by one we were called into a small windowless office to be interviewed by the head of the institute himself. He was an extremely short man, with dark shoulder length hair, bushy eyebrows and a slight squint. His voice appeared to attempt to atone for, in volume, that which he lacked in stature. Needless to say he was totally uninterested in my eloquent and pious prayer recital and began to describe to me, in great detail, the three months of his life that he had actually spent in an English speaking country. He said that he was very proud to have visited the United States of America and for a few seconds he actually dropped his voice by several decibels to inform me that, because of my special overseas status, he would be happy forego the interview and instead use the time to show me some of the more exotic practices that he had learnt on his visit abroad, provided, of course, that we lock his office door first. Upon declining his more than generous offer I was informed that I did not really possess the skills required by his institute but he would be willing, as a special favour, to allow me to teach a couple of classes on a purely trial basis. My initial enthusiasm for finding employment had, by this time, dwindled somewhat and so I explained that, in my opinion, if he considered that my abilities were not of a sufficient calibre to allow me to carry out the required tasks in an acceptable manner then, rather than compromise both our integrities, I would prefer to seek some form of alternative employment or at least, as I suddenly remembered my mother-in-law's initial investment, apply for a similar post at a different establishment.

The glazed expression in his eyes suggested a certain lack of comprehension and so when my husband arrived to collect me I asked him to reiterate my sentiments in his mother tongue. Even after all that it seemed that I was still to be employed there, if only in a probationary capacity, and as we left the building I noticed them erecting a huge new sign which, Mohammad informed me, read

Learn English Here – We now employ more native speakers than any other Institute

I have worked in several other establishments since and according to each and every one of my prospective employers I was not well qualified enough or lacked sufficient experience to undertake the job that he was about to offer me. I can only presume that it is a subtle method engaged to deter any potential employee from insisting that they be paid the salary which they truly merit (or possibly in many cases insisting upon being paid a salary higher than they truly merit).

Unsurprisingly none of us were considered properly qualified for the positions on offer and so before we took up our probationary teaching posts we were sent on an intensive two week training course. This actually consisted of four hour-long sessions, spread over a fortnight and, carried out in the same large all purpose room in which we had undertaken our initial examination. Our training officer, when he finally arrived twenty minutes after our first session had been due to start, showed us how to work the tape recorder, listened to each of us read aloud for two minutes and lectured us upon the importance of, at all times, arriving early for classes. I chose to read a few extracts from The New Version of the Children's Illustrated Prayer Book but was informed that I would need far more practice, particularly when it came to choosing the appropriate subject matter for my lessons, before I could possibly be considered for employment in their establishment. He then handed around copies of a timetable detailing the times and dates of the classes that we had been allocated and continued to inform us that, due to circumstances beyond his control, the next three sessions would have to be cancelled.

My failure to impress on the intensive training course meant that the head of the institute now deemed it necessary to sit in on my debut lesson to ensure that my teaching skills, and more importantly my linguistic abilities, were up to standard. I was stood by the blackboard five minutes before the class was due to start and for the next fifteen minutes watched my students drift in separately or in groups of two and three. I was not sure if I should actually begin unsupervised so I delayed procedures for another ten minutes before deciding that if the whole hour was not to be wasted I should at least begin some form of dialogue with my students. I had just finished my introduction when he crept in bellowing greetings to those students that he recognised from the previous year and introducing himself to those that he did not, paying particular attention, I noticed, to the younger or more attractive pupils. After taking his seat he spent the next fifteen minutes yawning continuously before quietly taking his leave, although not without bumping into a desk and making a joke at my expense on the way out.

Once the class had finished I was summoned to his office and told that it was of vital importance that I started my classes on time and learnt to project my voice in a more professional manner. He also suggested that I leave The New Version of the Children's Illustrated Prayer Book at home and informed me that he would be sitting in on my next class, too. I could see that it was likely to be a long time before I lost my probationary status, and, in fact, he sat in on so many of my classes that had he ever arrived on time I would have added his name to the register.

The teaching method adopted by this particular institute decreed that within the classroom situation English language was the only permissible form of communication. It did not take me long to realise though that, much to the disappointment of my pupils, I was probably the only teacher there that actually did not have a sufficient grasp of Farsi to be able to break this rule. However, particularly when I was unsupervised, sign language and gesticulation were used on a regular basis - often even as an alternative form of communication. As this was not enough of a grievance I was also informed by my students that I did not possess an English accent. It transpired that all their previous teachers along with all the accompanying tapes had had American accents and so my pure British accent was considered by them to be not only totally inappropriate for the purposes of teaching but possibly even a sign that I was a total fraud who, besides being unable to communicate in Farsi also, had no basic grounding in English.

Although textbooks of a sort were produced by the institute, apparently by photocopying several sheets of previously photocopied material if their appearance was anything to go by, and issued to all the students they were generally only to be used outside of the lessons in connection with homework assignments. My main role appeared to be to switch on a taped recording of a piece of dialogue to which the students would listen and then to switch the tape recorder off again when it was finished. I was supposed to then re-enact the same scenario, alternating my role, with each of the pupils in turn until the mind numbing repetition ensured that the lesson was learnt. I was not surprised that many of my students found the whole process rather tedious and often seemed to be paying very little attention to anything that I actually said. My other task was to assign the homework detailed in the textbooks and each week to correct any completed submissions and return them to the pupils. However, when I finally realised exactly how much money each of them had paid to the institute to be enrolled on the course I found it incredible that most of them could not actually be bothered to even attempt their homework assignments. I would estimate that on a regular basis approximately three-quarters of the class failed to even submit the most perfunctory of endeavours.

However, with the first semester drawing to a close the unhappy face of the head of the institute was still appearing amongst those of my pupils and I decided that the only hope that I had of ever ensuring that my mother-in-laws efforts had not been in vain and actually passing myself off as a fully fledged professor of linguistics was to ensure that the pass rate for my students was higher than that of any other class. As it was my job to mark their test papers I felt that the fickle hand of fate might for once be on my side. For three days and nights I laboured ceaselessly, marking and remarking, finally thankful that the ability to go without sleep that I had gained during my initial days without bed linen had ultimately proved to be of some use. In all cases I attempted to be firm, fair and yet generous with the marks, in fact I was not really too bothered about firm or fair as long as I appeared to be generous but was rewarded to see that, in the final analysis, all my students passed, many with very high, if not wholly deserved, grades.

As I returned my student's papers on the last day of term, trying to keep my radiant countenance under control, there was a riot. As luck would have it the head of the institute was already sitting in on my class so there was no need to send anyone to fetch him. He proceeded to fuss and fawn and sympathise whole-heartedly with the disgruntled gaggle of linguistically challenged meal tickets that now whinged and whined before him. Finally, having completely appeased each and every one of them, he drew me to one side and informed me, in a hushed yell, that the mere fact that these students, or in some cases their parents, were willing to pay so much to gain admission to the classes guaranteed the fact that every single one of them was motivated, hard working and intelligent and would in due course all progress to become totally accomplished and fully fluent in all aspects of the English language. Their knowledge would unquestionably one day outstrip mine and to this end there was absolutely no justification for me to have downgraded so many of their papers, To deduct even half a mark from anyone spelling 'says' s-e-z was simply unnecessary. Giving no marks at all for unanswered questions was also totally unacceptable, after all any student who had made the effort to turn up to the examination had obviously read the paper, and as reading was undoubtedly one of the skills that we were attempting to teach, there should be no reason why they should not obtain at least half the marks available for being able to do that. It should have been patently obvious to me that at the end of the course every student would be rewarded with the highest possible grade. The only possible exception to this was where that mark was to be temporarily deferred until after the student had successfully attended some extra classes, provided by the institute, for a nominal fee of course, but eventually leading to the award of the same top grade certification but at a slightly later date. It was at this point that I think that the first glimmer of some form of comprehension formed within my addled mind. I suddenly realised that 'successfully attended' must mean that at the end of it all their cheque had not bounced. However, by now it was far too late in the day for any new dawns or apocalyptic revelations and I crumbled; my recent lack of sleep had obviously left me dim-witted and unreceptive, for in spite of this small flash of enlightenment I knew that I would never be able to view things from his vaulted status. I declined his offer to spend another term on probation and left, my confidence, unlike that of my students, in tatters. As I tucked my tiny yellow prayer book into my bag for the last time, even the tears in his eyes as he sadly commissioned the removal of the new sign that had been so proudly erected just three months earlier, could not dissuade me. After all I had now been married for nearly a year and it really was high time that I quashed the rapidly spreading rumour of my inability to conceive and started a family.

Start A Family

The ultimate sign of manhood in Iran appears to be to father a child, preferably a male child. Amongst the less well educated the continuing urge to affirm and re-affirm masculinity can become an all-consuming obsession. Mohammad regularly reminded us of the parable of the two site labourers, which was actually a factual account of the exploits of two men whom he had employed to work on one of his building sites. These two labourers were siblings. The younger brother and his wife, who happened to be a mere twenty nine years of age, had fourteen children whilst the older brother and his wife had, certainly so far, only been blessed with thirteen; however, the latter's wife was once again with child. He confided in my husband that he was actually hoping for twins because he felt that he needed to consolidate his position as elder brother by producing more offspring than his younger sibling. He added that at one time he had even considered taking a second wife to help him achieve his goal but on his meagre income was unable to afford it. How he intended to feed and clothe child number fourteen and eventually, I presume, number fifteen was left unsaid. Although he probably chose not to worry about this as there is actually a saying, in Iran, which states that a child brings with it its own wealth. However, I still presume that this is only meant in a metaphorical sense, as I have certainly yet to see it. If it is true, in my case, I have no option but to assume that the purses of gold that my sons brought with them must have been hastily swept away and disposed of along with the afterbirth.

As an addendum to the above parable, shortly after the first telling I heard, from my husband, that the younger brother had borrowed a sum of money from his most recent employer in order for his wife to be sterilised. Assuming, most probably incorrectly, that there are no even younger brothers ready to take up the challenge it must be hoped that the sum total of the prodigy of the two site labourers will eventually hold stable at twenty-nine.

Fortunately, having finally decided to start a family it was not long before even the most staunch of rumours was scorched as nature took its natural course. From the moment that she found out that I had become pregnant my mother-in-law, who is, not only, an Iranian woman possessed by the belief that the best way to please one's spouse is to provide him with a male heir, but also, a Turkish Iranian woman who would rather die during childbirth than have to explain to her husband, or more specifically, her Turkish Iranian in-laws, how she had been remiss enough to produce a girl child instead of a son, began a discourse with God. It ran along the lines of a respectful discussion with regards to how many extra prayers she would need to recite for her eldest child to be blessed with a son rather than cursed with a daughter. As my pregnancy progressed I began to realise that my mother-in-law believed that, aside from God, the major determining factor as to the gender of our forthcoming child was what I chose to eat during the course of my pregnancy. To this end I found myself in something of a quandary. As things stood my mother-in-law had four granddaughters who, in spite of her firmly held beliefs, she absolutely doted upon but as yet not a single grandson; if I kept quiet, gambling on my husband possessing copious quantities of male sperm, I had every chance of elevating myself from my current standing, which if equated to the relevant position on a temperature scale, was somewhere around absolute zero to a point, on the same scale, approaching that of the melting point of ice (a considerable climb). On the other hand if I were to give birth to a daughter, without at least having tried to explain a little of the basic theory of genetics to her, I was doomed to be relegated to a position as yet undiscovered in the field of thermo physics. After much soul searching I finally decided that my mastery of Farsi was nowhere near advanced enough to communicate the complexities of x- and y-chromosomes and so I kept quiet - kept quiet publicly that is. In private, however, I began my own fervent discourse with God running on somewhat parallel lines to that of my mother-in-law.

Having taken up the gauntlet I then had to begin to gorge myself on the 'male child' foods. Luckily for me, the main one of these was a confirmed favourite of mine and the younger children were forever being sent out to scour the shops so that I could guzzle bottle after bottle of fizzy drink. It also helped me to wash down the copious quantities of raw tomatoes that, despite detesting intensely, I was also obliged to consume. Obviously Francis Crick and James Watson are a pair of charlatans or piety and devotion really do bring their own rewards (I know that I, myself, at this moment am still sending five sets of daily thanksgiving prayers even though my first born has already discovered a mass of pubic hair – and I am not sure that all of it is his own!) because in due course I gave birth to a bonny, bouncing baby boy. My position, after a minor blip, was then further elevated, as Roghieh gave birth to a daughter and I consumed another sea of soda and farm load of tomatoes before giving birth to my second child who became grandson number two.

I must admit that on re-reading the previous paragraph the consumption of unpalatable salad vegetables seems to rate higher on a scale of difficulty than bringing a child into the world and I would like to take this opportunity to state categorically that this is by no means the case. When my initial labour pains started I was bundled into the family Renault, along with a selection of sisters-in-law, and rushed off, at a sedate speed of course, to the hospital. Upon arriving at the maternity unit I was examined, stripped, shaved and marched into the delivery room, that I was to share with four other mums to be, wearing little more than a grubby white smock. I remember thinking, at the time, that if this is hospital I hope that I never have to see prison. By now my husband had disappeared to pay the medical expenses that we were about to incur and my sisters-in-law had settled themselves for the long wait on the hard metal benches in the wide bare corridor outside the maternity suite – which was itself no more than a wide bare room containing an equal number of hard metal beds.

Looking around the room I began to feel unsure whether this actually was hospital or prison. The room was fairly spartanly furnished with only a single table, holding a selection of surgical instruments, a couple of metal chairs and the aforementioned metal beds - all five of which were bolted to the ground. Although the room had obviously been thoroughly cleaned it still had that dingy, uncared for look of the type of public place which has not quite received enough government funding. However, the final and most worrying feature was that as we were at ground floor level there were bars on all the windows. Still I did not have too long to ponder these facts as the external circumstances were soon eclipsed by my own internal ones and as the pains grew stronger I began to scream for someone to administer some pain relieving medication or at the very least to give me some gas and air. The midwives smiled indulgently but shock their heads. They told me that they were not sure what I was expecting (other than a baby) but I was not living in a decedent western state anymore; here, I had let nature take its course unaided to conceive the child and would have to let nature take its course unaided to deliver it, too. At this point I stopped screaming for medication and joined with the other four women in indiscriminate meaningless screaming. At least, to an outsider, it may have seemed meaningless. However, at least the pain it caused my throat detracted a little from the pain I was feeling in other areas. In addition, it gave me a chance to vent all my pent up worldly frustrations and by the sounds of things I was not the only one who felt that they had just cause to be disgruntled. One woman, like me having her first child, was loudly cursing the day she met her husband and swearing that she would never let him touch her again as long as she lived, whilst another, not so new to this, was shrieking, sobbing and begging her unborn baby to get a move on. Amongst all this pandemonium there was, suddenly heard, another type of wailing – that of the air raid siren. Upon hearing this, the two midwives present began to remove their rubber gloves and, escorting the lady that had developed the sudden phobia for her husband but now did not seem to be in as much pain as she had been recently professing, disappeared off to the air raid shelter. Two of the other pregnant ladies also managed to unhook their legs from their stirrups and, still weeping and cursing, shuffled off in the same direction.

At this point in the proceedings I considered myself to be in so much pain that I could not even consider the prospect of leaving my bed let alone achieving it, and so I was left alone with an older lady whose baby's head could now clearly be seen protruding from between her splayed legs. She continued to wail and moan but now in more hushed tones and by levering herself up on to one elbow she set about guiding her baby out with her other hand. With a final push she managed to deliver her son. Once the baby was finally out she gave him a sharp slap to make him cry and having checked his breathing she put him on the bed beside her. After a few minutes she slowly unhooked her legs from her stirrups and then proceeded to deliver the afterbirth. When this was successfully achieved she left her son, still attached to his placenta, alone in the centre of the bed and carefully climbed down. She took the pillow from the next bed, wedged it between her thighs to help stem the bleeding, and waddled off in search of some surgical instruments. On her return she cut her babies cord and wrapped him in a fresh, clean sheet that she had also found and brought back with her. Finally she quietened his cries by holding him to her breast and giving him a quick feed before settling him back on the bed and turning her attention to me.

By this time not even my natural curiosity or my admiration for her actions could divert my mind from the fact that I was sure that I was about to die. This had nothing to do with the external air raid for the possibility of being bombed could not have been further from my mind. Instead, my contractions had reached the stage where I could mentally endure them no longer. I was seeing the world in short flashes interspaced by bouts of delirium and felt as if my innards were being ripped piece by piece from my stomach and replaced with burning hot coals. It was as if there were wide metal bands encasing my lower torso and little by little they were being tightened until it seemed that none of my vital organs would ever function properly again. Through the pain I heard only half her words of encouragement and understood even less but in retrospect they must have been along the lines of

"Breathe, push, breathe, breathe. You're doing really well. Alright don't push, breathe. Don't worry, one more push..."

and so to the backdrop of burning night skies I finally became a mother. Afterwards, as we cuddled our still slimy and blood streaked newborns, each wrapped in a crisp cotton sheet, and waited for the all clear to sound she told me how after many years of waiting to be blessed with a child Allah had finally smiled upon her. At this time last year she had gone into labour and then been in a similar situation to myself. At that time another lady had assisted her with the delivery of her child in the same manner that she had just assisted me. Having now come to my aid in my hour of need she also had her own unique take on the situation.

"All three of us had boys," she said proudly. "We are all very lucky women who have certainly been blessed by God. Next time you will have another son and be able to help someone else, too."

I nodded sagely and thanked her, as best I could, for all her assistance and her wonderful words of wisdom but as the all clear was sounded and the midwives returned I had already selfishly decided that next time the only person I was going to help was myself. There would be no more children until after the war and then I would be going back to England, back to what my imagination had construed to be a comfortable bed, pain relieving medication and copious quantities of gas and air. Unfortunately, by the time that I had reached the point of producing a second child, although the war had finished, immigration laws and National Health Service rules being what they are I found myself still having to settle for a medication free Iranian hospital. However, at least the medical staff were all present for the delivery on that occasion and at least there was no necessity for me to act as an amateur Florence Nightingale. I also managed to ensure that I kept all of my promise to myself that time; a promise which was, of course, that this time there would be no next time!

On their return the midwives once again took charge - they scolded my helper for having left her bed and parceled up our children and whisked them off to the nursery. In truth during my three day stay in hospital except for when he needed to be fed my son always seemed to be in the nursery and I was upset by the fact that I was allowed so little contact with him. I had plenty of other company, my in-laws visited me whenever they could, bringing me the inevitable gifts of flowers and fresh fruit that seem to be a worldwide form of hospitable etiquette, and the other mothers were always happy to chat with me. These were the usual maternity ward discussions such as the best methods of settling young ones, dealing with the onset of colic or the naming of a new arrival. In fact, I was surprised by the number of mothers who were happy to allow their in-laws to take a major role in this procedure, whilst I was happy to receive suggestions I was not sure if I could simply turn the whole process over to them lock, stock and barrel. While all of this was fairly interesting and even quite educating my major concern was my child and he seemed to be forever locked in the nursery. It felt to me as if I had been classed as an unfit mother. Had I maybe behaved inappropriately during the birth? After all my recollections were fairly sketchy. Could it be that I should have kept my legs together until the midwives had returned? After all I was still not really up to speed on all forms of Iranian etiquette. Finally, I decided that it was probably that my language skills were so lacking that I was considered incapable of caring for my child. However, if I had been a little less paranoid and a little more focused I would probably have noticed that all the other newborns spent most of their time away from their mothers too and on returning home I realised that the nursery isolation really was no reflection on my ability as a mother but actually for my child's own good. We had hardly descended from the car when relative after relative arrived, each one puckering up and clamping their mouths over his little face with the intensity of an industrial suction pump. Older children poked him and threw him into the air, younger children tried to force-feed him pistachio nuts and everyone wanted to hold him, put him to sleep, wake him up and generally make a fuss of him. There were times when I felt more like an unpaid bodyguard than a proud new mother.

I had barely had three months to get used to my new role when it came to pass that once again I found myself pregnant. It did not take Mohammad or me long to realise that we had neither the time, money or inclination to raise another child, son or no son, at that point in time and I had certainly not reached the point where I was prepared to fulfill my destiny as a makeshift midwife. After many heart-searching hours we decided jointly that the pregnancy should be terminated. My mother-in-law, believing, however, that I had the ability to eat my way to another grandson, was none too impressed by my rash decision and told me so in no uncertain terms. Fortunately, at that time, I had yet to become acquainted with some of the more unsavoury 'uncertain terms' that she used and thus believed that she was expressing her sympathy for the dreadful situation in which I now found myself!

Unfortunately, in a country where participating in an abortion in any way, shape or form is illegal, under pain of death, terminating a pregnancy is a lot more difficult than merely salving a guilty conscience or even coming to terms with some 'uncertain terms'. Iran is a country where even the most simple of legitimate tasks seem to take forever. For example, Mohammad's grandmother applied and paid for a telephone line by attending appointments at four different offices, visiting three separate banks and filling in nearly twenty forms. However, she still then had to wait almost fifteen years before eventually being connected and is now, I believe, still waiting for her handset to be delivered. Therefore, the trials and tribulations involved in finding anyone willing to perform an abortion, before a given pregnancy has progressed beyond the point where such a procedure is no longer viable, are enough to cause a miscarriage. I had, of course, tried all the usual methods of self-termination from lifting heavy weights through sitting in lukewarm bowls of concentrated potassium permanganate (which I must say left my bum stained a violent shade of lilac for several weeks to follow) to allowing other people to take turns at pushing me down stairs without success. Then, finally, a distant relative of Mohammad put us in touch with a friend of a friend. We were assured that she was well qualified and totally reliable although to be honest by that time we had reached such a stage of desperation that had we been told that her nickname was The Ripper we would probably still have engaged her, or at least Mohammad would have.

Anyhow, three days after the arranged appointment date she eventually turned up at our door, along with her assistant, and ordered us to spread a plastic sheet on the bed. Mohammad refused to let me use the one that was reserved for mealtimes and so I had to settle for the sugar cube-breaking version. Despite its itchy texture, probably caused by the year upon year's worth of ingrained sucrose granules, I still removed my underwear and lay down as instructed. I guess that the vivid colour of my nether regions acted as confirmation that I really did wish to proceed with a termination so she proceeded to give me two injections. She said that they were painkillers but, to be honest, for all the good they did they may as well have been tap water. In fact, as she only left five seconds for them to work before inserting a long unsterilised knitting needle straight into my vagina I can only suppose that they were no more than a placebo or that this initial pain, caused by their administration, was in some way supposed to help distract me from the events still to come. Either way I can honestly say that there was no part of the procedure that could be described as painless but after warning me that if I screamed again she would be forced to order her nurse, it was at least good to know that the acne ridden, chain smoking adolescent that was now in the process of rifling her way through my dressing table drawers was actually a qualified nurse, to sit on my face she proceeded to jab the knitting needle into me several more times. I would say that the pain was on a par with my labour pains but knowing that they were being inflicted from an outside source, albeit with my consent, seemed to make them even less bearable. Having already practically bitten off my tongue I now proceeded to gnaw on my fists as she replaced the needle with a plastic tube attached to a small pair of bellows. All the while she and my 'never paid full price for anything' sister-in-law continued a heated discussion as to the cost of this sophisticated surgery. Even today I cannot decide if Fozieh would have driven quite so hard a bargain had she been the one with the knitting needle between her legs.

After about twenty minutes on the clock, going on twenty hours in my head, of excruciating pain the doctor waved a plastic bag half filled with deep red blood in front of my face and said laughingly to me in broken English,

"Your baby. See? Your baby. I no know why they call me Ripper!"

I was left with stomach cramps, a packet of B-complex tablets and a bad taste in what remained of my mouth.

Obviously Fozieh had once again haggled successfully for fifteen minutes later Mohammad, having finished the afternoon tea that he was sharing with the doctor, and her assistant, entered the room smiling. I was still spread eagled on the bed in a state of shock not knowing if I could, should or would even ever want to move again but with an embarrassingly large show of sympathy for my predicament he said,

"Nothing to it, eh?"

Twenty minutes of silent screaming had momentarily left me without a voice but I made another of my mental promises to myself that once our family was finally complete that I would have Fozieh contact the doctor again to see if she also did a line in home vasectomies.

However, in spite of all this self-induced trauma I am still around to tell the tale and in fairly reasonable health, too. Looking back it appears to me that the only other creature in Iran, which can come close to man in its ability to breed and survive, is the cockroach. Any patriotic Iranian will categorically deny that these creatures are actually native to their homeland. They insist that they originally came from Germany and up to fifty years ago were unheard of in the kitchens of Tehran. This may well be the case but, if so, one can only presume that the warmer climate and more amenable living conditions must have agreed with them for they have not only arrived but have stayed on, settled in and generally thrived. If the local assertions are to be believed in a mere matter of half a century they have evolved from annoying little pests into the stuff about which horror stories are written. They have developed into large, ugly, armour plated beasts with the ability to run like Usain Bolt, climb like Sherpa Tensing and fly like Superman. As dusk draws near they emerge from every possible nook and cranny, safe in the knowledge that their formidable exoskeletons render them practically invincible. If you are rash enough to try to maim one by striking it with a blunt object you risk a severely strained wrist; if you have the audacity to try to kill another by stamping on it you may need to deal with the possibility of finding yourself carried off on its back; in fact the only way to control them effectively is to spray them with a concentrated solution of sulphuric acid or liquid cyanide and even then to be sure of their demise you have to be able to flip them onto their backs first so that you can reach their less well protected underbellies.

You should remember that my husband is of Turkish Iranian extraction. This ethnic group, besides having the aforementioned slight preference for male offspring also, strongly believes that bigger is better. This rule governs each of its members whole way of life from business, never spend two million on a given project when you have the ability, or at least appear to have the ability - for in Iran appearance is everything - to invest three million, through leisure pursuits, do not drive a sports car if you can handle a four-wheel drive, to relationships, why indulge your fantasies with a slender lass when you can woo and wed a buxom maiden. Consequently, I am no lightweight but there have been times when I have been doing battle with one of the killer cockroaches, trying to wrestle it into submission, when it has managed to pin me down and place me into a deadly arm or headlock. At this point Mohammad has had to jump in to save me by squirting it with a lethal dose of triple strength insecticide.

In instances such as these if you can actually reach their more vulnerable underbellies with a potentially fatal infusion they then proceed to launch themselves into a death scene worthy of the late Peter Sellers. They run in ever decreasing circles, turn somersaults off walls and let out an ear piercing death rattle before finally falling to the ground and wriggling all six of their legs in the air in the manner of an over sexed porn star.

All this having been said I still feel slightly more than a sneaking admiration for this most worthy of adversaries. I can only hope that life in Iran will, in time, endow this particular European emigrant, and her offspring, with the same powers of survival, if not reproductively, as it has the once humble beetle.

Raise Your Children

You may consider that you have fully immersed yourself in a given culture and presume that you have found your niche within the country of your choice but it is not until you have children and begin to raise them that you even start to comprehend certain aspects that are an intrinsic part of that particular society. In no time at all your children start to understand issues that you had not ever considered, converse more fluently than you and by attending institutions outside of your field of interest, that not only teach them to read and write, but also things that you cannot even visualise. They will truly grasp things for which your childhood had left you completely unprepared – or certainly that was my experience.

It took no time at all for my elder son to fit in better than I ever could. He also began to seek to obtain the same things that his peer group sought rather than things similar to that which my friends and I had sought. Of course, when he was young he spent a lot of his time with me and I suppose that I had always expected him to at least adopt a little of my outlook on life but it was only after spending hours each day saying to him 'hello little one' then to hear his first words back to me as 'I want a brother' and not even in English but in Farsi that I realised exactly how much of an influence his extended family, and my mother-in-law in particular, were actually having and obviously going to continue to have upon him; and once he had learnt 'I want' there was no stopping him. 'I want fish', 'I want pigeons', 'I want chickens', 'I want ducks' and even 'I want a sheep'. Of course, my mother-in-law was always prepared to indulge her first-born grandson and so he had more than luck on his side. It was not long before the reasonable sized garden to the rear of our communal house, with its conveniently high concrete walls, had become a menagerie to a whole range of animals, and yes, at one point this even included a sheep.

The saga of the sheep, however, is not a particularly long one. At first it was a cute little lamb that leapt and gamboled throughout the day and could be chased and cuddled for hours. However, in only a season it had grown into a larger and much less cute animal whose favourite game was head butting humans and although I do not believe that this was in any way malicious its sheer size meant that it was certainly no longer possible to leave younger children unsupervised in the garden. Also, the more it grew the more it ate and as soon as the first few euphoric months had passed everyone got a little disenchanted with the continual scavenging for fresh grass and greenery that was required to keep it full. These plants are far from easy to find in the baked earth of a Tehran summer and to keep it well fed and healthy it was necessary to provide far more than our mere garden plot would allow us to grow. There was also the problem of having to clear up the resulting mess which, all this eating generated and, it seemed to delight in spreading its excretions throughout the whole garden. My son having the attention span of any normal, young child had lost interest in the sheep fairly soon after its arrival and so finally when everyone had reached that state too, the local butcher was invited to visit and for the price of its fleece and innards happily cut its throat and chopped it into freezer size portions.

The fish on the other hand proved to be, if not individually but as a race, creatures of a much longer duration. Historically, the long, hot, dry summers experienced in the capital have had an enormous influence on the design of the private secluded spaces found behind many of the older residential properties. Modern properties for the more affluent are now designed with swimming pools in their back gardens but in bygone days the emphasis was much more on serenity than sport and outside areas were intended to be restful rather than entertaining. Our house having been constructed approximately half a century ago still possessed a rear garden of traditional proportions with a paved stone surface containing six evenly spaced fruit trees around a central marble clad pool. This pool was quite large and relatively deep with an outer step leading down to the more profound central portion. There was a tap to one side of it and even the luxury of a small fountain in the very middle. Before my son's assertions, during the summer months, this had always been filled with crystal clear, icy cold water. Then the fish arrived and for a while there was the spectacular sight of the golden bullets cutting their way through the shimmering glass but as time progressed the glass got dirtier and dirtier and then the autumn leaves began to fall into the water. Before the presence of the fish the pool would have been emptied before this could happen and left to lie dormant all through the winter. Now we were obliged to endure this abomination with its silty, murky depths which were being continually camouflaged and recamouflaged by each new layer of filth and rotting debris. This was almost tolerable during the cold winter months when the only outside activity was to make the most of a few rays of frosty sunshine to dry another load of freshly washed laundry or to sweep up those leaves that had not already floated into the watery abyss. However, as spring approached this dirty smudge became less and less acceptable until, with temperatures rising, its stagnant waters and associated odour became totally intolerable.

Despite the fact that Iran is now an Islamic Republic the start of spring is still for many people the most important celebration in the entire calendar. Iranian New Year, falling as it does on the spring solstice, dates back to before the founding of Islam, back even to the heady days of the Persian Empire. It is a special time for everyone with all the schools and government offices closed for two weeks and most workers receiving a substantial bonus generally equivalent to a whole month's wages to help them accommodate all the extra expenditure that this joyous time will impose upon them.

However, before any form of celebration can take place there is generally a lot of hard work involved and Iranian New Year is no exception for ahead of the festivities comes the spring cleaning and this is spring cleaning on a grand scale. It can involve anything from the redecorating of single rooms to the remodeling of entire stories, and is certainly far more than a wipe over with a damp cloth. Since my son's fine idea of assembling his very own pet's corner, in our back garden, was actuated the pool now had to be included in this annual blitz on grime.

By early March each year it had become reminiscent of a stagnant waterhole, in fact all that was missing were the mosquitoes, and so Mohammad, Hossein, Hassan, Amir, Ideen and I would be obliged to roll up our sleeves and trousers and quite literally wade in. You may wonder why I was the only female recruited to this task. Was it because I was larger in stature than my sisters-in-law? Was it because they did not want to be seen in the garden without their socks? Actually, the answer is far more obvious - as it was my son that had indirectly caused all this extra work there seemed no good reason why I should not participate in it!

Every year there would be at least one broken bone, split skull or case of severe concussion as one or other of us slipped on the treacherous green algae which coated all the marble surfaces. However, if we all pulled together, starting at dawn and finishing some time after sunset, after a full days labour we would have managed to catch the larger fish, sieve the smaller fish out of the leafy soup, bail out the rest of the filthy water and remove every inch of the algae. This was done with a combination of scrubbing brushes, washing powder and plenty of elbow grease. We could also have rinsed out the whole area, rescrubbed all the marble just for good measure and re-rinsed for a final time. By now as it would be late in the evening the fish would be stored, until morning, still in the assorted bowls and pans to which they had been assigned much earlier in the day. Whilst they were left in our outhouse, away from the prying eyes of the local cats, we went off to scrub, rinse and rescrub any parts of our bodies not covered by plasters, bandages or plaster casts. The next day the whole family would gather for the annual official filling of the pool. Before it filled up completely and the fish were returned the adults would sit around the outer ledge with their feet soaking in the icy water whilst the younger children paddled or shrieked with delight as they learned to swim. Well, they certainly shrieked with some form of emotion as Mohammad, joking that it was probably so cold that they were likely to develop pneumonia, still tossed them in, one by one, regardless. This always felt like a good time of the year with the sun's therapeutic waves warming our aching limbs and heroic injuries and the prospect of only another week or two of sustained cleaning before the fun filled New Year celebrations would begin in earnest.

Traditionally, for New Year everything that can be has to be new. In keeping with this everyone who can afford it has a whole new outfit of clothes which they wear continuously for the next two weeks as they spend each day visiting family and friends in a strict hierarchical order. Actually, in the case of children it is more a matter of wear to every given front door for they are then quickly changed out of their finery so as not to allow it to get dirty before the next planned visit. However much fun it may seem to be, it is as well to plan these visits judiciously for a person could be ostracised for the rest of the year for missing out any particular relative or even for visiting them out of turn and woe betide any visitee whose dwelling place is not in pristine condition. At each stop the home owner is obliged to furnish everyone with tea and a choice of confectionary and any person younger than themselves with a monetary gift in the form of bank notes - new, of course (for those on a low income this becomes a recycling exercise with the added complication of trying to ensure that not only do their outgoings not exceed their incomings but that they do not offend anyone in the process).

Every family will also have the Iranian New Year equivalent of the Christmas tree only in this case, as it is with the design of mosques and churches, it will be a more horizontal rather than vertical decoration. A small table or a version of the omnipresent plastic sheet will be set up in one corner of the room. On it will be placed a variety of traditional objects but it will always include a tray, a mirror, a goldfish in a bowl and, as Brandy took to calling them, the 'seven sins'. These are seven items all beginning with the Farsi letter 'seen' (s). They include the tray and often a selection of items from an apple, a garlic bulb, some coins, some vinegar, a specific type of jungle fruit, an acidic tasting spice and a plate of germinating grain. Although other items are permitted if these are for some reason unobtainable it is very unusual not to include germinating grain. The cultivation and nurturing of this grain to peak precisely on New Year's Day and not to die before the thirteenth day thereafter is an art as calculated and exacting as providing the required planting for a garden plot at the Royal Chelsea Flower Show. Other items that may be included in the display are a Koran, painted eggs, sweets or photographs of absent relatives. The utmost care is always taken to ensure that the whole effect is as decorative and festive as possible.

The precise moment that marks the end of the old year and the start of the new is not fixed, as is New Year in the west, but actually occurs in real time. This means that some years it is at a convenient eight or nine o'clock in the evening or even a pleasant lunchtime affair but alternatively it may fall at a mind bending three or four o'clock in the morning. When this happens bleary eyed, fractious children are raised from their silent slumbers by their crotchety, sleep deprived parents to be shoehorned into their new clothes and forced to sit in yawning anticipation by the 'seven sins'. Legend states that precisely as the old year turns to the new the goldfish will also stop and turn and children often enjoy trying to ascertain if this is fact or fiction. However, when this occurs at some unreasonable hour of the night even this little treat does little to make for a harmonious start to the year.

For most of the next two weeks the holiday atmosphere prevails culminating on the thirteenth day. Traditionally this is marked by a family outing to the countryside where the tops of the germinated grain are knotted together and the whole lot thrown into the trees for good luck. In our case it generally meant lunch in the back garden followed by the unceremonious dumping of the germinated grain in the nearest rubbish bin. However, after the thirteenth day, and since my son initiated his pet's corner, another custom has been initiated, at least within our own little circle. Many of our relatives and neighbours now bring their redundant goldfish around to tip into the sanctity of our pool. I dread to think where the other, less fortunate, of these traditional decorations end up although I have noticed that even many of those brought to the relative safety of our pool are wont to be dead within a few days. Maybe it is national policy to breed an inferior species of goldfish with a limited life span so that their immense numbers do not become a drain on resources after the festivities have ceased. More probably though they are just terribly stressed from being crowded into plastic bowls to be sold by the roadside and then manhandled into plastic bags before being unceremoniously tipped into the isolation of a small glass bowl. To then be subjected to such an excessive amount of poking and prodding by the sugary, sticky, chubby fingers of over-excited toddlers means that they are so traumatised that they lose any will that they once had to live long and fruitful lives. In any case this recently initiated ritual of the dumping of unwanted fish into our pool has at least left us assured of one fact and that is that we can look forward to one full day's worth of slime scrubbing every year for the foreseeable future.

Of course, there are other annual celebrations that everyone has such as birthdays and these are generally well celebrated by young and old alike. However, there seems to be only one difference between children's and adult's parties, in Iran, and that is with respect to the birthday cake. The young may have cakes that take the form of a cartoon character or a mode of transport; Mickey Mouse, Red Hat (a local favourite when my children were young), cars and rockets are all quite common (read popular) choices. Apart from this the party will be, like any adult party, an evening affair generally starting at the child's bedtime with other children only arriving if brought along by their parents. Often the formalities of polite conversation and serving dinner will take so long that even the most excited of children will have fallen asleep long before the cake is cut and the gifts presented. It is, however, probably just as well because there always appears to be a well-meaning aunt on hand to cut the cake and open the presents on behalf of the beneficiary anyway. What can be said though is that the presents will always be of a very high quality ranging from whole ensembles of clothing through large sums of money to extremely expensive gifts of gold coins and valuable jewellery.

Whilst my children were too young to remember all this troubled me little, especially when I gazed upon the expensive presents that they received, but as they grew I could not help but wonder if they would enjoy the traditional birthday parties that I remembered as a child with finger sized food, party games, sweet sensations and brightly coloured balloons. My memories were happy little girls, all dressed in pink, sipping fizzy drinks through curly straws and giggling with glee as they passed an exotically coloured parcel around an excited circle of friends and classmates. Consequently, as soon as my elder son started school I decided that we should start to celebrate his birthday twice, once in the traditional Iranian style and once as I had remembered it.

As the time drew close and my son and I sat together laboriously writing out the invitations, neither of us being particularly proficient at forming the letters or sure that the sentiments were quite correct, I could sense that he was losing interest in the project already. However, I was sure that once the formalities were over he and his friends would really enjoy it all. In fact, no sooner had we finished them and he had distributed them around his classmates the first squeals of anticipation were heard.

"In the garden?" shrieked Mohammad incredulously.

"At siesta time?" squawked my mother-in-law despairingly.

"It'll be fun." I countered knowingly.

As the day dawned bright and sunny, you can always rely on the weather in Tehran I thought smugly, I spread out a couple of old carpets and set up a portable cassette player in the garden, collected the football pitch shaped cake, filled the fridge with soft drinks and ice cream, prepared sandwiches, blew up balloons and constructed an enormous parcel from expensive sheets of wrapping paper and the whole of the previous week's worth of newspapers. Having successfully completed all the initial preparations with time to spare I was smiling conceitedly to myself as the three o'clock start time drew near.

At precisely fifteen minutes past three the guests began to arrive, perhaps the uniqueness of the event had prompted this unusual punctuality, many in their best clothes and a good number with equally finely dressed parents in tow. This was not something I had counted upon and I could in no way expect these well dressed adults to sit cross-legged on threadbare carpets in the garden. Fortunately, my mother-in-law surrendered her siesta and took them into the guest room to serve them tea and fruit. So having been rescued, once again by Mohammad's family, from this initial setback I was sure that I could still make a success of things. At the same time there were other children turning up in their plastic flip flops and house clothes having travelled across Tehran from who-knows-where totally unescorted. Again I set aside my reservations, in spite of the risks that they must have faced, not least from fast moving vehicles, and although I could not be entirely sure that their parents now knew where exactly they were, they had arrived safely and things could get under way. Within the first fifteen minutes most of the sandwiches, ice cream and cake had been finished, all the balloons along with half of Mohammad's pigeons had been released skywards, the pass-the-parcel parcel lay ripped to shreds without a single note of music having been played, one child had been sick and the rest of the boys were either play fighting or wading into the pool in the hope of catching the terrified fish. The ones in the most expensive clothes appeared to be getting the most wet and dirty and the noise sounded horrendous even to me, who was prepared for it, let alone to any of the unsuspecting neighbours trying to take an afternoon nap anywhere within the surrounding two streets.

Three to five it had said on the invitation but it was half past seven before Mohammad had ferried the last of the six year olds, who had insisted that their parents would be happy for them to find their own way home but whom we felt were far too young to be released from our care except into the hands of a responsible adult, back to their places of residence. By this time I was a gibbering wreck cowering in the corner of the garden trying to figure out how things, in such a short space of time, had managed to go so badly wrong and thinking, not so smugly, that at least the weather had been reliable. Was it my lack of language skills that had prevented me from taking control, was it truly a cultural barrier that could not be traversed without a little pre-programming or was it simply that the parties I remembered had been attended by little girls rather than little boys? It did not really matter anyhow, all I was left with was my sons plaintive protestations that the assorted pencils and erasers that he had received were not as good as the substantial sums of money to which he had become accustomed and the 'I told you so' look in Mohammad's eyes. Even though my mother-in-law refused to add any further to my torment and assured me that everyone had had a lovely time I dropped my inner promise, that I would never knowingly differentiate between my two sons, to vow that this was an experience that I would never ever repeat for my younger one when he attended his first year at school even if he begged me until he was blue in the face.

Now, school – that is where I could have done with a little pre-programming. Having spent the best part of three years in nursery school my elder son had learnt little more than to pronounce the English words 'strawberry' and 'school' as 'eh-strawberry' and 'eh-school', having the cheek to tell me in no uncertain terms that not only was my Farsi pronunciation rubbish but that he now knew that I could not even speak my own mother tongue properly either. He had also perfected the ability to pretend to be asleep during the enforced silence of the obligatory afternoon nap period, even though he would have much rather been running around, although unlike his English pronunciation it was not a skill that he was prepared to transfer back into his home environment.

Then he stared school and it was not so much a process of stepping up a gear as transferring from a pedal cycle to a motor cross racing bike. Within days there was homework and from what I could gather it was of the parental participation variety. We, that is to say I, for even though at this juncture the only Farsi letter that I could recognise was 'seen' appeared to have to take part in every stage of the learning process. It has to be remembered that the primary school hours are from half past seven in the morning until one o'clock in the afternoon, after this it is lunch and then everyone, save those who are obliged to mind children that refuse to sleep or at least pretend to sleep, take their afternoon siesta. So, by the time that my in-laws had all woken up and Mohammad had returned from one or other of his building sites there was only time for tea and then any self respecting six year old, who had refused an afternoon nap, needed to retire to bed so as to be able to rise in time to make the seven thirty school deadline. Therefore, after lunch I was left in charge of co-ordinating my son's homework and supporting him in any way that I could. Noticing that Ideen seemed not to always sleep during this period I did my best to try to coerce him into helping but it seemed that he was now turning into a burgeoning adolescent and was far more interested in exchanging tips on top totty with Amir and the local confectionary shop errand boy than in assisting me with my scholastic dilemmas.

I decided that I may as well make the best of it and hoped that this might eventually turn out to be the much sought after opportunity for which I had been looking to finally master the local language. Perhaps we could both become literate together. This hope, of course, helps to illustrate my real dilemma in that as things stood at this moment in time we were still both totally illiterate. This being the case I reasoned that it would not matter if to start with I wrote out mathematics questions such as 'colour five of the circles blue' in English so long as I read them out to my son in Farsi and then as we progressed together I could start to write them out in Farsi too. Unfortunately, although I seemed to spend ages on his homework he did not have the same commitment. I was not sure if he was a little stupid or just plain lazy for he scribbled over shapes in blue rather than colouring them in, often told me that he only needed to do one page of lettering for me then to find out that the rest of his classmates had done two or three and steadfastly refused to practise science or religion even when he had topics that he needed to learn for the next day. Of course, within weeks it had all come to a head and I was summoned to see his teacher. On the way to school I chided him that this could be embarrassing for us both and told him that I hoped that he was prepared to devote a little more time to his studies in future. However, it transpired that it was me that was required to hang my head in shame as I was given a verbal dressing down. She asked me how I ever expected my son to progress when I was either too stupid or simply too lazy to write out his questions properly. Did I really think that I was impressing anyone by scrawling all over his books in a foreign language? She just hoped that I was prepared to devote a little more time to assisting my son with his studies otherwise I would be severely damaging his prospects of progressing satisfactorily to the second grade next year.

Leaving the school red faced and severely chastised it appeared that I was going to have to learn to read and write Farsi, if only to a preliminary level, much faster than I had first anticipated. I could only hope that the acute headaches, that this imposed task was going to give me, would be offset by fewer pains in my limbs when I was excused pool scrubbing duty on the account that I had homework to do. Even if this particular fantasy was not to come to fruition, and I had a feeling that it would not, at least I would appreciate the two weeks New Year holiday far more now that I was once again relegated to the position of a primary school student.

Drive A Car

After a decade of travelling around on public transport and competing for space in a rusty Renault we finally managed to save enough to buy ourselves a small, second hand, bottom of the range Citroen - probably the cheapest vehicle that can be found on the road in Tehran. When I say probably it is because I am not certain of the worth of the large, hand pushed carts used by those who, come round door to door to, buy stale bread or sell quasi-useful, plastic kitchen utensils; the latter generally in a fetching shade of mottled scarlet designed to clash with any other kitchen appliance not purchased from the same, or at least related, entrepreneur. These carts seem to be constructed from the off cuts from a variety of sheet metal working process and held together by the sheer optimism of their owners. Those in charge of the stale bread buying, or more technically trading - as they often offer salt rather than money as an exchange, tend to be the most unkempt and unwashed of their ilk, with their tattered, dirt-incrusted clothes seemingly tied to their bodies by odd combinations of string or twine. In fact, their appearance is so off putting that harassed mothers use them as the perennial bogeyman with many kids cowering in fear as the cries of 'namaki' (the salty one) 'namaki' ring through the alleys. However, this having been said their carts are substantial creations with a monumental moment of inertia. They often have a small ledge on which the pilot can stand whilst freewheeling downhill and a large, leather shoe which acts as a brake to stop him wiping out several generations of locals or demolishing an ancient landmark upon reaching the bottom.

Nevertheless, let us return to our new car which, immediately it was purchased, became the shared property of our extended family, although Mohammad at least had first shout on its usage closely followed by his father with my brothers-in-law hot on both their heels. In spite of this pecking order, however, the little Citroen and I shared a special secret that meant we were to be allowed to spend a lot more time together than anyone first envisaged; that is we were both extremely slow! The total lack of acceleration possessed by our new acquisition meant that no self-respecting male would consider, except in the direst of emergencies, driving it. Mohammad, having invested his own hard earned money in its purchase, did make an effort but after travelling along the Chamran urban motorway and being passed on the inside by the second namaki cart in rapid succession he relinquished all rights and began to save for something that could actually make it into third gear. I tried to change his mind by pointing out that they were travelling downhill with the wind behind them but he was adamant – after all he said we were also travelling downhill with the wind behind us and he just could not bear to see another childhood nightmare looking at him with such an appalling amount of pity in his eyes. It was only my mother-in-law's persistent proclamations that it was the most magnificent vehicle that she had ever had the joy in which to ride that saved it from a hastily executed resale. Consequently, whilst the rest of the family still tried in vain to persuade her that just because it never travelled faster than a pedestrian in a hurry did not make it a magnificent vehicle, Mohammad decided that I may as well make use of it and I was permitted to undergo a series of driving lessons in preparation for applying for my driving license.

Unbeknown to my in-laws I had actually had numerous driving lessons whilst still living in England but had never managed to make any progress. I often wondered if the reason that I had never got above 25mph was because all of my instructors appeared to me to be inept or if it actually had anything to do with my own inability to distinguish between the gear stick and the handbrake. It had all ended completely when, having been through all the local driving schools without success, I was forced to rely on my own family for tuition. Once again I managed to stall the car by applying the handbrake instead of changing up into third gear only this time I was on the opposite side of the road, in the face of on-coming traffic, whilst unsuccessfully attempting to overtake a stationary, double-decker bus. My father leapt from the car, like a man possessed, yelling,

"I don't know if I'm sweating excessively or if I've wet myself, don't ever set foot in my car again!"

His anxiety had left him temporarily incapable of reasoned argument and so in desperation I called out the AA. Eventually, two of their representatives arrived at the scene and finally managed to calm him down. After a time, he was reluctantly persuaded to consent to allow me to ride home in the boot of the car. They were a little disgruntled, though, when they realised that he would not be attending their fortnightly meetings as his state of great agitation had been brought on by offspring induced trauma rather than an excess of alcohol. Although the younger one was finally forced to admit that they probably had been under a moral obligation to attend the incident as my driving skills, or lack of them, had considerably swelled their membership numbers in recent months. Having spent the subsequent few weeks wondering when would be a good time to ask my father to consider trading in his four door car for a hatchback his parental instinct finally kicked in and I was once again permitted to ride in the backseat though up to this day I have still never been permitted to sit in the front – even on the passenger side. However, now I was being offered a fresh start, another chance to take to the streets and prove that I really could learn how to control a motor vehicle and I was not going to spoil it by reveling this darkly kept secret.

My new driving instructor was actually more inept than any of those that I had engaged in England but he was certainly did not suffer from any of the same stresses. Each lesson started with him giving me directions to a specific shopping location somewhere within the city. I then did my best to drive there whilst he sat with his feet on the dashboard reading his newspaper or turned around to converse with whichever of my in-laws I had managed to cajole into coming along with me that week. In Iran it appears that there are only two rules for professional driving instructors. Firstly, the car that they use must have dual controls and secondly when giving instruction to members of the opposite sex a chaperone must be present. Often times I would take one or both of my boys along and we would spend the best part of the hour peeling them off our heads or shoulders as they bounced happily around, totally unrestrained, in the back of the car. Once we had arrived I would practise reversing round corners, parallel parking or three point turns depending upon the locality whilst he went about buying his groceries, toiletries or whatever else it was that he was short of that week. I would then drive back home whilst he checked his purchases and calculated how much he would have to charge me to cover the cost of making them. I would then hand the steering wheel back over to him along with the majority of my week's wages.

It did not take long for Mohammad to realise that, if things continued in this vein, we were actually going to have to sell the car to cover the cost of my lessons so, showing his usual flair for practical solutions, he offered to help out with my tuition. He was also far calmer than anyone that had taken me out in England, possibly because half of those who had passed their tests in Iran drove almost as badly as me and at least two percent of them admitted that they had never heard of a handbrake. Anyway, by simply lowering his window and repeatedly shouting,

"Don't mind her, she's foreign!"

wherever we went he effectively managed to clear the carriageway in front of us quite nicely, too.

With Mohammad's interest in my progress and my driving instructor's interest in the sport's page along with the fact that the handbrake on his car had never worked anyway it seemed no time at all before I was ready to take my test. Yes, after all these years someone considered me ready to have my suitability to be left in sole charge of a motor vehicle assessed – even if it was only to be one that needed to pushed up any hill with a gradient steeper than 1 in 12. I paid the requisite fee, passed my eye test and had my card stamped. I paid the requisite fee and proceeded to fail my written test. This was a major blow especially as they had actually allowed me to sit the examination in English. However, there was nothing to stop me, providing my purse was full, from returning the next day to have another attempt. My examiner was kind enough to go through my paper with me and she said that I had done well on the multiple-choice section but that my knowledge of road signs was abysmal. Under the 'direction of circle' sign I had inscribed 'mini-roundabout', the answer required where I had written 'sharp left hand bend' was obviously 'danger in turning left' (although, for this answer I would have considered that more appropriate had the sign actually shown the road bending to the right!) and so it went on. She was quite happy for me to jot down the correct answers and I went home wondering how many times I would have to repeat the procedure before I had all the signs in their equivalent of the Highway Code covered. I need not have worried though for the next day, upon paying the requisite fee I found myself sitting exactly the same paper. Surprisingly enough this time I scored full marks and, with my card suitably stamped and the hearty congratulations of my examiner still ringing in my ears, I headed off to face the final challenge.

Having paid the requisite fee I was herded along with thirty or so other hopefuls to Test City. This is a complete road network with signs, road markings and parked vehicles trafficked only by potential drivers under the watchful eyes of their examiners. We huddled together at a request bus stop and waited. Three vehicles drew up together (is that not always the case at bus stops?) and out of each car stepped an examiner. Each called out four names and the examinees crowded into their appointed car, one in the driving seat and three in the back. As the one driving finished her examination she was duly evicted and one from the back took her place. This went on until the car was emptied and then the examiner returned to the request bus stop for her next four candidates. It was an effective system which, not only processed the greatest number of candidates in the shortest period of time but also, provided unwitting pedestrians for the otherwise empty streets.

As I settled myself into the driving seat and started to adjust my mirror the examiner checked my card.

"First time in Test City?" she asked.

"Yes," I replied.

"Never mind," she said. "Pull away."

I began to let the clutch out . . .

"Too slow," she said. "Failed; better luck next time."

I was unceremoniously ejected to be replaced by the next candidate. It all happened so quickly that it felt almost unreal so I returned again the next day and paid the requisite fee.

"Second time in Test City?"

"Yes."

"Never mind. Pull away."

I shot off like a bullet out of a gun.

"Too fast," she said. "Failed; better luck next time."

I consoled myself with the fact that at least I had actually set the vehicle in motion that time. The rumour circulating amongst the failed candidates was that the driving test centre had lobbied the government to be allowed to double their charges but their proposals had been rejected. Unperturbed, they had shrugged their corporate shoulders and disseminated an internal policy memorandum informing all the examiners that no candidate would be permitted to pass on any of their first three attempts. I have no proof to verify or disprove the story but it gave me the incentive that I needed to keep on trying and also salved my ego during the ensuing fiasco.

I took two weeks leave from work and assaulted the centre on a daily basis. I paid, I failed; I paid, I failed - so much for the first three attempts. I paid, I failed; I paid, I failed – I was reaching the end of my vacation. I paid, I failed – I was on first name terms with all the examiners when suddenly I saw a small chink of light. For the first time I was the last one left in the back seat when candidate number three put the car into reverse on two consecutive occasions during her three point turn and narrowly missed hitting a parked minibus. The examiner rechecked her card,

"Fifty-third time in Test City?" she asked acidly.

"Yes," sniffed the young lady.

She glanced over her shoulder at me and then smiled sympathetically at her,

"Okay, passed."

Even though I saw the whole thing and understood exactly what she had said I could hardly believe it. Either the examiner though I was too foreign to grasp what had just happened or else this had to be my last hope; after all I was there and I had been there on at least three previous occasions and the examiner was obviously in a generous mood. That aside, having seen what we both just saw, surely even I would look competent after that. We set off and it all appeared to be going well when she told me to pull over. I noticed the double yellow lines at the edge of the carriageway and remembered the other rumour circulating (Tehran may sporadically be without electricity or water or even fresh air but it is never without rumours) that often the examiners will try to catch candidates out by asking them to make illegal manoeuvres and then fail them. Consequently, I told her that I could not do that because of the road markings. She smiled and told me to pull over anyway but by now I was on a roll and again I refused. The argument continued growing ever more heated until she told me in no uncertain terms that if I did not pull over she would fail me anyway. At this point I did pull over and despite my momentary loss of composure I had still managed to pass. I could not hide my jubilation as I queued at the bank to pay the requisite fee for the license – even the hideous photograph that they took of me to put on the front of it made me feel like a star - and when we were told that the six hour delay in processing meant that we could come back to pick up our documentation the next day, I waited anyway.

Now that I was officially authorised I could obviously drive anywhere at any time with complete confidence. Of course, such real life fairy stories do not always have happy endings. Tales of such blatant incompetence, mine behind the wheel and theirs in legalising it, must surely have a moral woven into them somewhere, perhaps even a sting in the tail, and this one most certainly does.

It was only my second time out on my own and I was on my way to pick up my elder son from school when a 1000cc motorcycle shot out from a concealed alley somewhere in the heart of suburbia and there I was, cellophane flapping, travelling at my top speed of 10mph to knock him into the nearest open gutter. There was blood, his; there was shit, mine; and three passer-bys fainted at the sight of it all. Somehow I manage to revive the most masculine looking of the three and whilst he was still in a confused state talked him into helping me to transport my victim to the nearest casualty department in my miraculously, undamaged Citroen.

As we reached the hospital the true seriousness of the situation began to dawn on my press-ganged volunteer. The first thing I should have done was to call the police. It would not have mattered that it would have probably have taken them over an hour to actually reach the scene. It would not have mattered if all the traffic in the surrounding area had reached a standstill during this time. It would not even have mattered if the motorcyclist had died. If I had called the police and left all the vehicles in their correct positions then the officers would have been able to determine who was at fault and that was all that really mattered. Now that I had disturbed the scene I was automatically at fault and the motorcyclist would be in a position to prosecute me presuming, of course, that he actually survived and if he did not I could find found myself facing a murder charge – in the worst case scenario punishable by death. Understandably, having played no part in the accident, aside from being tricked into assisting me whilst in a dazed state, my co-helper had no desire to become a co-defendant or an accessory after the fact so as soon as he managed to commandeer a hospital trolley for me he was gone.

Left on my own I somehow managed to manoeuvre the unconscious patient out of my car onto the trolley and wheel him into a large ward filled with semi-conscious, groaning people being nursed attentively, mainly by their own tearstained relatives. I received immediate attention as a gentleman in a white coat rushed over to inform me that I had failed to tender the requisite consultation fee and I was obliged to wheel the injured party back out again and join a queue of people waiting to pay for a visit. I silently prayed that he would not die whilst I was queuing and luckily my prayers were answered; clutching a pale orange visitation slip I wheeled him back into the ward. A cursory, initial examination revealed that he was in need of a serum and he was wheeled to the corner of the room to wait whilst I trotted off to purchase a pale pink prescription slip. Fortunately, for him and me, not long after being connected to the drip, my subsequent prayers were answered and, he began to respond to the treatment by regaining consciousness. I then rushed off to purchase several white slips, to allow him to be x-rayed and scanned, and another pale pink slip for painkillers. After pushing him half way around the hospital to all the various departments, queuing for several more coloured slips and suffering a long agonising wait for the results I discovered from the doctors that provided I kept paying for his medical expenses he should eventually make a full recovery.

At this point I began another silent monologue with God thanking him for his mercy and pledging to donate an amount of money, equal to that which I had just spent in the hospitable, to the local mosque should his condition continue to improve. The relief that I felt at that moment cannot be described and I truly believed that I had discovered a new depth to my budding Islamic faith. Unfortunately, although he now appeared to be out of danger, I was still under hospital arrest just in case he, or my pocket suffered a relapse. Eventually, however, justice prevailed and I was entitled to a single telephone call. Of course, I phoned Mohammad. He happened to be out of the office and so I left a message with his office clerk stating that I had had a minor collision with a motorcycle and had taken the rider to Imam Khomeini Hospital. I added that he should please tell Mohammad to pick up our son from school and come to my assistance as quickly as possible as I was not sure what to do next.

As the sun was beginning to set he finally arrived at the hospital and to say that he was furious would be understatement of the same proportions as saying that George W Bush would never be anything more than an honoury member of Mensa. It transpired that the message he had received was that I had written off the car seriously disabling his eldest son who had been taken to an unknown location. He had scoured every clinic and hospital in a ten mile radius before finding me, still under arrest, and less the next three months housekeeping. I finally managed to calm him down (where are the AA when you really need them?) and with his second telephone call he arranged to have Ideen pick up our poor son from where he was still sitting on the school step. His first call was used to sack the office clerk. Amidst all the turmoil I silently resolved that I would not only learn to drive a car but also to speak Farsi properly in the very near future.

Having set his own house in order Mohammad then turned his attention to the motorcyclist who was now propped up in bed, having been pummeled, poked and prodded, looking very battered and quite sorry for himself. He had a badly bruised eye, a split lip and several nasty looking lumps on his head and after his wife turned up to see how he was I looked fairly much the same.

The next few months were spent ferrying the motorcyclist backwards and forwards from the hospital, buying him flowers, grapes and tins of fruit compote and fixing his motorcycle along with all three of the watches that he claimed had been damaged in the collision. We never questioned a single expense because he had been kind enough not to pursue a prosecution against us (well, me of course) for moving him from the scene of the accident. Even though my only concern had been to try to ensure that he received prompt medical attention I had, of course, flagrantly violated the law. Finally, in spite of his protestations, the doctors declared that he was fully fit and we parted as amicably as a couple can when one has almost prematurely terminated the other's life.

I could have reasonably hoped that that was the end of it but strangely enough three weeks later my father-in-law received an official telegram stating that a high-ranking government official would be visiting his place of residence within the next two days. At once the whole family was thrown into a state of high excitement. My mother-in-law began to preen herself. With delight she proclaimed that she was sure that the last of her regular prayer meetings must have been such a success that the Ministry of Islamic Affairs had decided to send out an envoy to congratulate her on her piety and services to religion. Mohammad was also delighted and began to preen himself. He confided in me that he was convinced that the Minister for Commerce and Industry had been informed of how he had single handedly rescued two workers from an overturned cement mixer, and also managed to have the resulting mess cleared up before it caused a five mile rush hour tailback, and had decided to make a personal visit to congratulate him on his efficiency and services to road users everywhere. Farideh could not hide her delight and preened herself, too. She was swift in making known her certainty that having not had a pupil drop a single mark in their final examinations for the last five years that the Ministry of Education, who were never very swift in updating staff addresses, must wish to see her congratulated on her competence and services to the state. Amir also preened himself, but as usual he did not require a reason.

Unable to contain their curiosity any further, and not wishing to be kept in the dark as to whom it was that had brought such prestige to their family, my in-laws made several surreptitious visits to various friends and acquaintances. Finally to everyone's surprise it turned out that I was the one who had drawn a high-ranking government official's attention to our humble abode. Indeed, I was about to be 'congratulated' on my utter stupidity and services to international espionage. It transpired that the gentleman whom I had so unceremoniously unseated from his motorcycle actually worked, albeit in a lowly position, for the Ministry of Defence. It had only taken five months for their intelligence services to deduce that his long absence from work had been caused by a foreign infidel. They then surmised that I must have deliberately lain in wait for him, half killed him and then invested a fortune to have him nursed back to health in order to gain his trust, friendship and numerous top secret documents. If I really had had half a mind to hatch such a devious plot I am sure that I could have found an easier and less uncertain method of attracting his attention. Quite obviously, however, the mess in which I had landed myself showed that I lacked even that amount of grey cells. In fact, now, I had graduated from possibly facing execution to possibly facing execution preceded by months of indescribably appalling torture. It seemed at that point that this book too, if I managed to actually survive long enough to set pen to paper, would end with an ill informed western woman risking life and limb, whilst dressed as a Kurdish peasant and braving the harsh mountain terrain, to escape from Iran into Turkey. My only real fear was that on reaching Turkey my nationality would not put me in a position to be embraced by the concerned and helpful members of the American Consulate instead it would be the British Embassy and its unctuous officials with which I would have to deal. In fact, my mind began to compare the prospect of an unknown dank, dark cell somewhere in the depths of an Iranian correctional facility with the inside of the institutionalised 'home away from home' with which I had become so familiar over recent years and I realised that I had the most dreadful of choices to make.

There had been the time when my grandmother had died and I had called the British Embassy desperate to see if they knew of the name of a florist that could dispatch flowers internationally so that if I could not be present at her funeral I could at least send a wreath. They told me that there was most certainly one such shop somewhere in Tehran that offered this exact service but they unfortunately were not in possession of its telephone number or address. Having spent the next three weeks tramping the streets of the city, visiting florist after florist, in an unsuccessful search for the aforementioned one shop I distinctly remember thinking that a simple 'no' would have probably have been far less traumatic.

On another occasion I had talked Mohammad into taking a fortnight off work to visit my family in Britain but such an excursion first required him to obtain a visa from you know where. I called on his behalf and we were given an appointment for nine-thirty on the Thursday – the Thursday that fell immediately thirteen weeks after my telephone call. When the day of the appointment finally arrived we reached the embassy early and were obliged to queue outside until it opened. When the doors were finally unbolted we entered through a narrow corridor, closely scrutinised by a number of security guards, and were given several forms which we duly filled out before taking our place amongst the twenty or so other applicants. Conversation was kept to a minimum as each of us listened carefully for our names amongst the list that was being called out, over the sophisticated tannoy system, at a rate of one applicant every forty minutes. By twelve-thirty Mohammad was beginning to get restless. Finally, full of self-righteous indignation he went to complain and found himself in a queue behind three other unhappy people also with appointments scheduled for nine-thirty. At this point restlessness turned to anger.

"Why had we not been informed that the doors opened at nine-thirty on a purely 'first come, first served' basis? We had been told that we had an appointment. Surely the colonial kings of the world should be better organised than this. Yes, if he had been visiting an Iranian institution he would have expected such treatment, but he wasn't. Weren't first world countries always looking down on third world countries for their lack of organisational skills? Did they not feel that they should be setting an example to others rather than merely falling into the mire of disarray that surrounded them? Was this really the best that they could offer?"

Exhausted by his tirade he stormed back to his seat to a small ripple of applause from the rest of the room. Everyone was nervous; they wanted to demonstrate to him that they agreed with his sentiments, yet they had no wish to prejudice their applications by being seen to participate in a show of outright support.

Within minutes we ushered into a nearby annex. Our side of the room was tiny furnished only with a couple of plastic seats whilst on the other much larger side of the bullet proof partition was a seemingly comfortable chair and various pieces of costly looking office equipment. Mohammad and the interviewer glared stonily at each other through the thick glass plate. I tried to diffuse the situation a little by explaining that the misunderstanding was probably my fault as I had assumed that appointments would be issued using local time not in Greenwich Mean Time. Mohammad, at least, smiled but I am not sure if the highly intelligent and superior looking gentleman who obviously made a good living by representing the summit of British officialdom in foreign climes actually understood the joke.

Unperturbed by our obvious vulgarity he asked my husband why it was that he wanted a visa. Mohammad replied quite simply that he did not. He stated that he had no wish to visit the decadent, unpunctual west and was only here because he had grown weary of listening to my nagging. The conversation continued in a similar vein with Mohammad answering each stilted question with some reference or another to poor time keeping. As the subject of tardiness was raised for the seventeenth time the interviewer countered by saying that all the delays were out of his perfectly manicured British hands and actually the fault of Iranian bureaucracy. He said that they were severely understaffed due to the government of Iran taking an inordinate amount of time to issue visas to their employees. (Now taking an inordinate amount of time to issue visas, surely that was a thing that we all knew about!) All I could say was that if the rest of the potential members of staff were of the same calibre as himself I could only conclude that the Iranian government had every right to be cautious as to how many of them it wished to see within its borders. Mohammad, though, was always eager to find a solution to a given problem and quickly suggested that they could employ me. I was, after all a British citizen, nosey enough to ask a whole range of personal questions, capable of writing down the answers in English and in possession of the obviously requisite sour face. He added that I would be quite happy to be paid a large wage in either currency and what was more I was here, requiring no visa, and ready to cancel my holiday to begin work tomorrow. In fact, the only problem that he could see was my tendency to be too punctual. Of all the twenty hopefuls he was the only one to be granted a visa but strangely enough I was not offered a job. When I collected his visa from the barred window outside the embassy the following week I noticed two spelling mistakes in his first name alone. I attempted to enter the building to query them only to be told by an Iranian doorman in no uncertain terms that I was not permitted to enter the visa section of my own embassy without first obtaining an appointment. I doubted that I would really be able to survive three months sleeping rough on the streets of Ankara and so it looked likely that I would be forced to plump for the cheaper, less stressful option of torture and execution.

Fortunately, my in-laws were far more helpful and astute than a whole handful of British ambassadors. As the Iranian official arrived, I sat trembling in the corner swathed in my mother-in-laws' second best chador under strict instructions that I was not to open my mouth under any circumstances. My father-in-law gave him several thousand rials and shock his head sadly as he explained how difficult it had been for his eldest son being alone in a foreign country and how out of desperation he had married for companionship only to find that his new bride was a few weaves short of a carpet. Fouzia plied him with platefuls of fruit and never ending cups of tea but stoutly refused to let him know where the bathroom was situated. Eventually he left, pockets and bladder bulging, convinced that I was of no danger to anyone but myself. On that score he was probably not far from the truth. As I surveyed the damage I had done and counted the cost to my in-laws, both emotionally and financially, I could not help but agree with them when they decided that for everyone's sakes it would be far better if in future I refrained from both speaking Farsi and driving.

Make Some Friends

As I was no longer now in a position to learn Farsi I guessed that I had better initiate contact with some fellow English speakers. It is always as well to remember that no matter how alone you may feel, even when you are sure that no-one else has ever had to endure the exact same circumstances that you are now facing, the chances are that you are not alone and that someone somewhere is probably having to undergo a very similar set of experiences to yourself. However, after a year of scanning faces in the street desperately looking for blue eyes, pale complexions and Arian features and still not managing to locate a single native English speaker I was beginning to conclude that there may well be someone undergoing exactly the same experiences as me but their whereabouts was most definitely somewhere else. I had heard rumours of a Foreign Wives Club at the British Embassy but even if I had known where and when they met I was not sure that, if they really did not mind associating themselves with the British Embassy, they would be my kind of people anyway. Eventually I decided that I would have to be proactive and so I rang the Tehran Times, a local newspaper published in English, and asked if I could take out a personal advertisement along the lines of

'Lonely woman seeks similar for fun and afternoons in.'

I presume that the breakdown of Iranian society has not reached the state that it has in the west because the editor, or possibly the editor's assistant, told me that they did not have a personal column, and even if they had it would not be suitable for such a ribald sentiment. However, she was obviously intrigued to know what type of sad character would even attempt to place such an advertisement and consequently put me through to their proof reader who just happened to hail from Sheffield. As a respected part of the editorial team and Foreign Wives Club committee member, she obviously could not risk direct contact with me herself but, she did give me the telephone number for another lady who had tried a similar stunt eighteen months earlier. As I said there is always someone somewhere. Once I called her, this gregarious American immediately invited me around to meet some of the friends that she had somehow managed to make since her abortive attempt to place a personal advertisement and a hectic new social life opened up for me, or at least it could have done if our current financial situation had not meant that I was still obliged to go out to work to contribute to the family income.

Most of their gatherings took the form of power breakfasts. As soon as their children had boarded their service buses for school and their husbands had left for work they would gather together for scrambled eggs, coffee and gossip. Unfortunately for me it was generally at this time that I would be switching on my computer and beginning to answer the telephone in whichever office setting I was then working. In Tehran small businesses are forever opening up and then closing down six months later and many of them like the dubious prestige of having a foreign receptionist. Once your name is known, it is easy to move from office to office riding the crest of a bizarre Mexican wave, like the proverbial albatross, as each new business swiftly establishes itself and then just as quickly folds again. There is no job security but I still found it far less traumatic than my experiences in academia. In addition, I had been able to make use of the same set of clothing, thus ensuring that its purchase was not entirely wasted, although I had still found no practical use for my Book of Children's Prayers. However, the precarious job market did mean that I was sometimes between employment and there were others that also worked often in nursery schools or as private language tutors who were happy to meet up during the quiet siesta period of the day. I can honestly say that the friends that I made, at least from my perspective, were probably some of the best friends that I have ever had. Maybe it was only the 'friend in need' syndrome but we all had a common outlook. We not only shared the one pioneer spirit but also had the same problems. We all understood how it felt to have slipped into the crevice between two continents, totally unable to climb out and desperately trying to construct our own mini-worlds in the blinding darkness of the unknown. We knew that we loved our husbands but failed to understand them, as completely as they failed to understand us, and all that was left to us was to try to raise our children to be happy and healthy although we knew in our hearts that they would almost certainly be fated to remain in the deep cavern in which we had given birth to them. However, whilst we could get together and laugh at how our own upbringings, so totally steeped in western culture, had set us up to be total outcasts in the country of our residence and how our present experiences were precluding us from fitting back into our own homelands again things were not so bad. The fact that our in-laws were as wary and suspicious of us as we were of them could be partially forgotten and almost forgiven as we gathered together, like an illicit, outlawed sect, understanding completely, if not exactly from where each other had come but at least, from where each other was coming.

Sometimes we would go out shopping, generally from convenience, especially if we had young children with us too, in pairs. Unfortunately, our lack of language skills would often get us into trouble like getting on buses which were actually travelling in totally the wrong direction or offending shop keepers by using unsavoury terms when we intended to express sympathy. Sometimes our unchaperoned foreignness would make us the centre of unwanted attention but Brandy, in particular, was always there with a suitable put down. I remember one time when a especially irritating character kept following us around the shops taking any opportunity to make unwanted small talk. Eventually just as the call to prayer was sounding he approached again and on this occasion asked us the time. Brandy's reply was possibly not phrased entirely correctly but its meaning was nonetheless patently obvious and it was made in a voice that could be heard all the way to the other side of Returning Prophet Square,

"What sort of Muslim do you call yourself? First you spend all afternoon stalking two married women and then pick this precise moment to ask us the time. Just listen the call to evening prayer is sounding and you are telling us that you don't even know what hour it is!"

Needless to say he disappeared fairly quickly after that and it was the last that we ever saw of him.

When Brandy was not out terrorising the natives other afternoons could be pleasantly spent, sipping tea and, asking ourselves why it was that our in-laws treasured anything western apart from daughters-in-law. They loved American clothes, adored French perfumes and craved English chocolate but none of this enthusiasm spilled over into their relationships with us. After months of discussion the reality began to dawn – we were not inanimate. If these others items could talk back, as we were unfortunately prone to do, they, too, would quickly lose their appeal. We could imagine our collective mothers-in-law reaching for another Milk Tray only for the orange cream to shout out

"You know you really shouldn't be eating me. You're too fat already you obese pig!"

No, foreign chocolate would be as popular as foreign daughters-in-law were then.

Yes, we passed time happily together celebrating each passing season in our own unique manner. For example, Christmas, which in our homelands was probably the largest celebration of all, still continued to have meaning for us even in Iran. Although many of us had converted to Islam and now embraced it as a far more sensible and logical religion than Christianity, in keeping with our new found faith, we still saw Jesus as a great prophet and wanted to celebrate his birthday. We also wanted our children to understand our own cultural backgrounds as well as that of their fathers. Each year we had a huge party for mothers and children only. It could be held in someone's large guestroom, a hired hall or even an empty garage but the format was generally fairly similar. There was always a large Christmas tree under which presents were put for the children. Along with this went plenty of food and soft drinks and sometimes there would even be games although more often entertainment. Mothers sang their own National Anthems, children sang the Iranian National Anthem (at one time a taxing task as, for a while, it involved the learning of a new set of lyrics every other year) and each separate ethic group was expected to entertain the others with a performance of something typical from their cultural background. The far eastern ladies donned ornate costumes and danced gracefully, the southern American ladies produced exotic instruments and played beautiful music and the British contingent . . . well what could we do? Having rejected Morris dancing our only option seemed to be a pantomime. Only it is not that easy to put on worthwhile pantomime with a cast of five. We managed to draft a script but after that enthusiasm waned and then the first wave of school examinations kicked in leaving little time for rehearsals. Although we brought it out and dusted it off for several years in succession it never actually reached the stage of a full dress rehearsal let alone an opening night performance. Every year we resorted to a quick rendition of Jerusalem (hardly British), with two ladies miming rather than singing (ostensibly British) and one getting the words totally and utterly incorrect (definitely British). Even with the passing years it did not improve and each time we grew closer to being booed off the stage, which tended to suggest that the audience may have been more in tune (certainly more in tune than we were) with a pantomime. However, I have included the script, in its original form, into this narrative just for the sake of continuity and perhaps out of a certain wistfulness for what might have been.

Snow White and the Dwarf

Players:

Narrator

Queen (paper crown)

Mirror/Dwarf

Huntsman/Prince (weapon as available/paper crown and pebble glasses)

Snow White (paper crown)

Scene One

(stage set with chair covered with a sheet)

NARRATOR: Due to the prevailing economic conditions the British section would like to present a five minute pantomime entitled 'Snow White and the Dwarf'.

(enter Queen)

NARRATOR: Our story begins in a far off, Middle Eastern land full of magic, mystery and enchantment. An evil queen is conversing with her magic mirror.

QUEEN: Mirror, mirror on the wall

Who's the fairest one of all?

(mirror reflection appears from behind chair)

MIRROR: Well, that Kim Basinger is quite a looker.

QUEEN: Mirror, mirror on the wall

Excluding film stars who's the fairest one of all?

MIRROR: Janet Jackson's not half bad.

QUEEN: Excluding film stars and pop stars who's the fairest one of all?

MIRROR: Well, Jerry Hall's got a nice pair of legs.

QUEEN: Look, let's forget all about film stars, pop stars, models and their ilk. Just try taking a look around here.

MIRROR: You mean that you want to know who's the best looking bird in the royal palace, sort of thing.

QUEEN: Exactly.

MIRROR: Well why didn't you say so. The fairest one of all is Snow White.

NARRATOR: At the sound of these words the queen became furious . . .

QUEEN: Oh rats. Now what can I do? I could decree that all women named Snow White must not be seen without a chador . . . no, perhaps it would be simpler just to kill her.

NARRATOR: Having made her decision, the queen summoned her huntsman.

QUEEN: Oi, huntsman, shake a leg and get in here now.

(enter Huntsman)

QUEEN: I have decided that you must take Snow White deep into the forest and kill her.

HUNTSMAN: Of course, but it's going to cost you.

NARRATOR: So, as was the custom in that country they haggled and bartered until a price acceptable to both parties was agreed upon.

HUNTSMAN: 'Mobarak'.

(exit Queen and Huntsman)

Scene Two

NARRATOR: Then, as was also the custom in that country, the huntsman having received his payment and having given his word to take Snow White out to the forest at first light the very next morning and dispense with her . . .

(enter Huntsman and Snow White)

NARRATOR: waited another six weeks before finally taking her there and allowing her to go free.

(exit Huntsman with a wave)

NARRATOR: Poor Snow White wandered lost and alone through the forest. She was cold, tired and hungry . . .

S. WHITE: Huh, it looks as if I'd have more chance of getting a Big Mac and large fries in Tehran than here.

NARRATOR: but fate smiled kindly upon her and she chanced upon a tiny cottage.

S. WHITE: Just my luck, a filthy hovel.

NARRATOR: The tiny cottage was very dirty but Snow White did her very best to make herself feel at home . . .

(Snow White dusts seat, sits down and falls asleep)

NARRATOR: but Snow White was in for a surprise for that night the owner of the cottage returned from work.

(enter dwarf on knees)

DWARF: Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my house?

S. WHITE: I am Snow White, a beautiful princess, and I am hiding from my evil stepmother who, jealous of my fine looks, wishes to kill me.

DWARF: (standing up) Hell, you could make a good living begging on the streets, better than I do. I always tell people that I'm a crippled old dwarf with four starving children but yours is a much more original story.

S. WHITE: No way, I'm not a beggar and anyway I am hiding from my evil stepmother, who jealous of my fine looks, wishes to kill me, but perhaps I could stay here and cook and clean for you.

DWARF: Well, how much is it going to cost me?

NARRATOR: So, as was the custom in that country they haggled and bartered until a price acceptable to both parties was agreed upon.

S. WHITE: 'Mobarak'.

NARRATOR: Then, as was also the custom in that country, they settled down to live in relative disharmony.

(exit Snow White and the Dwarf)

Scene Three

(enter Queen)

NARRATOR: Meanwhile, back in the palace the queen once again consulted with her magic mirror.

QUEEN: Mirror, mirror on the wall

Who's the fairest one of all?

(mirror reflection appears from behind chair)

MIRROR: Well, that Kim Basinger is quite a looker.

QUEEN: Do we really have to go through all this again?

MIRROR: Not really, because Snow White is still the fairest one of all.

NARRATOR: This time the queen's ferocity knew no bounds.

QUEEN: Oh double rats. It seems that I'll have to dispense with her myself.

NARRATOR: So the queen disguised herself as an ugly old peddler . . .

(Queen takes a chador from under chair and puts it on)

NARRATOR: picked up a poisoned apple . . .

QUEEN: (taking an apple from under chair) Luckily I just had one of these lying around the palace.

NARRATOR: and set off in search of Snow White.

(exit Queen)

Scene Three

(enter Snow White)

S. WHITE: What a life, lousy food, no nice new clothes. I haven't been to a party since I got here and all this washing up is ruining my nails. I wish that I were dead.

(sound of knocking)

QUEEN: Here, lovely maid, try one of my apples.

S. WHITE: But it's your last one.

QUEEN: See how good it must be that I've already managed to sell all the others.

S. WHITE: No really, I couldn't possibly take your last one.

QUEEN: But I want you to.

S. WHITE: Absolutely not, you may need it.

QUEEN: Honestly, I've got some more at home.

S. WHITE: No really, it wouldn't be right.

QUEEN: 'Chegadr taroffy'. For heaven's sake just eat it.

S. WHITE: Oh well, if you insist.

(Snow White bites into the apple and dies dramatically)

NARRATOR: So it seemed that the evil queen had finally succeeded in ridding herself of Snow White but as she turned to leave . . .

(enter Dwarf with Prince)

PRINCE: So where is this princess who is beautiful enough to marry a handsome devil like myself. It is truly magnificent to possess these fine looks and have the satisfaction of knowing that my word is equal to that of two women.

(Prince sees Queen)

PRINCE: Ah yes, here she is, we must be married at once.

QUEEN: He seems to be wealthy enough to buy me lots more gold. Yes, we'll be married at once.

DWARF: Hold on, first there's the small – or not so small – matter of . . . my fee! Perhaps, I should give up begging and go into the private sector.

NARRATOR: And so, as it is with all good fairy stories, a happy ending ensues. The queen and prince get married and live happily until the time of their divorce, the dwarf opens Dateline Iran Ltd. and makes a killing of his own and Snow White, as of course she must, finds out that wishes really do come true.

The End

As I said we marked each passing season and every notable occasion. Baby showers were thrown, Halloween parties were attended and leaving dos were arranged. As was the tradition in Iran all this was carried out without the involvement of a single male personage over the age of fifteen. We laughed together and cried together. We danced together in celebration and consoled each other in times of crisis. Yes, the happy family lives that we shared in Iran were certainly far from bad and we augmented this considerable happiness with additional parties and celebrations of our own. We may have fallen into a crevice but we were not desolate and in fact we actually had twice as much to feel glad about compared to those with only one cultural background on which to draw. Even so, in spite of all this wealth of goodness, there were still times when consolation was necessary and others when it was necessary in abundance.

Share Some Grief

However naturally cheerful a person's nature and no matter how hard they try to keep happy or to deal with their problems through laughter there will inevitably be times when they will find themselves in situations where hilarity is just not possible. The death of my father-in-law must be classed as one such situation. As he neared his century he began to crave more and more of those things which he had missed out upon during his poverty stricken childhood. When the mood took him he would hobble off out and visit the local ice-cream parlour, devouring bowlfuls of both ice cream and 'folludeh' alike. ('Folludeh' consists of snow-white threads of minced starch frozen in an icy clear sugar solution which can be liberally doused with lemon or lime juice and, believe me, the exquisiteness of its taste far exceeds the expectation delivered by this description.) Then he would return home only stopping to purchase and eat some unwashed nuts or berries being sold from one the hand pushed carts, previously described and, possibly previously used to collect stale bread, situated on the street corner. My mother-in-law did her best to prevent him from undertaking these excursions. In a country not generally known for its sweet tooth she kept cupboards filled with cakes, biscuits and other sugary delicacies. She bought pasteurised ice cream, ensured that there was always a steady supply of washed fruit in the fridge and even went to the trouble of cooking some of her own desserts but in spite of all her efforts as soon as she nodded off for her afternoon siesta he would sneak out of the house like a naughty school boy playing truant from the classroom. She continually complained that the food that he was buying from outside was unhygienic and tried to impress upon him that at his age he should be a little more careful with regards to his diet. She was right, the food that he was buying from outside was unhygienic but at his age he simply did not seem to care.

Finally, the inevitable happened and he was struck down with a severe case of gastro enteritis. Mohammad ferried him backwards and forwards from the hospitable. It was however, a pointless exercise as he was unhappy about staying there and did not want to be an inpatient. He wanted to remain at home but as an outpatient he was not getting any better. At first there were heated discussions, everyone yelling and shouting and trying to persuade him that he had to return to the hospitable for as long as it took for him to regain his former health, but he refused. As he became progressively more unwell the attempts grew less volatile, bullying gave way to cajoling and threats to pleas, but still to no avail. No matter how weak his body grew his determination stayed as strong as ever and we were all reduced to tiptoeing around him and, in hushed whispers, wishing him well again until one night he passed peacefully away in his sleep. Once the worst had happened the whole house erupted in a huge outpouring of pent up grief and emotion. It was bedlam, his wife and daughters were crying and wailing and hitting their heads whilst his sons were beating their chests and cursing the day.

Islam decrees that a body should be interned as quickly as possible after its owner's demise. My father-in-law died in the night and was buried immediately the next morning. The same afternoon busloads of mourners descended upon our heartbroken home and we had no more time for private grief. Our time was filled with directing women upstairs and men to the top floor whilst politely accepting their kind condolences. We were brewing tea, serving guests, washing up and taking turns to rush off to the shops to replenish our ever-dwindling supplies of fruit. By the time that everyone had left and we had cleared up we were so physically and emotionally worn out that all we could do was fall into our beds and be overtaken by deep but restless sleeps.

In my dreams I would see visions of my father-in-law. He had never been anything but kind and considerate towards me. For example, when we first arrived in Iran and the war with Iraq was still ongoing he knew that I was a little unnerved by the missiles that would periodically hit the city. So whenever an air raid was sounded and everyone else was cowering beside the battered paraffin tank under the stairs – yes, a stairwell does offer more protection than a ceiling, but being huddled up next to a hundred litres of inflammable liquid is not necessarily the best place to be found as the fires start jumping from dwelling to dwelling - he would lead me into the garden and whilst sitting calmly on the plain concrete steps would try to show me how insignificant the danger really was.

"Come my daughter," he would say, as if he did not have enough daughters of his own. "Everything is the will of Allah."

We would stare up into the clear blue sky and watch as the small, dark aberrations appeared from behind the adjacent buildings, and then I would gasp as in a sudden burst of flame they would drop their empty fuel tank and shoot off towards their final destination.

"That one's headed for the army base to the east," he would chuckle having many years previously retired from there himself. "That'll give them something to think about."

Sure enough it would head off to our left.

"And that one's heading towards Karaj."

It would, of course, shoot off to our right.

"Oh, and that one must be heading for the city probably somewhere to the north of us . . . "

But his words of wisdom were lost on me for as soon as one of them seemed to be landing too close for comfort, and even missiles falling several miles away could appear to be heading straight for one's own position, I was already scampering off back into the house where I could be found cowering in the dim recesses of the stairwell, inhaling the intoxicating fumes of liquid paraffin along with the rest of my in-laws. Even in my dreams I never remember him following me or sheltering alongside us so I have to conclude that, as well as being kind and considerate, he was also quite brave.

Once the actual funeral has taken place, along with all the other hospitality that spontaneously erupts on the same day, custom dictates that separate ceremonial rites are also held on the following third, seventh and fortieth days. On these occasions many of the mourners rise early to visit the graveside and then join others wishing to pay their respects in some form of refreshment that the next of kin are obliged to provide for them all. This is generally in the form of a catered gathering at the local mosque or a lavish lunch at an expensive kebab house.

The graveyard itself is a huge barren area to the south of the city. It is so large that it possesses a desert climate all of its own; in winter it is cold and inhospitable and in summer it is a vast expanse of shimmering baked earth. The whole area is overlaid with a large grid of wide tarmac covered roads bordered, except in the most established of areas, only by the occasional emaciated tree, clinging fragilely to its own existence in this otherwise dead land, or communal tap from which water can be drawn to wash the gravestones. Mourners will wash the gravestone of their loved one along with all the other gravestones in the vicinity in the belief that it will bring good fortune to the dead. It is also traditional to walk on the actual grave stones rather than round them for the same reason.

The sheer size of this final resting places means that for mourners to be able to locate their loved ones with any certainty each grave requires its own unique address. This is provided in the form of a three part reference number. The first part states the section of the graveyard where it is located, the second part denotes in which row the grave resides and the final digits its position within that row. The final two parts of the address are inscribed onto each gravestone leaving the whole place truly feeling like a virtual ghost town. At one side of the cemetery there is a terrace of private crypts where several generations of richer families can be laid in peace together. On a bright summer's day when their doors are open and the mourners are sheltering inside, away from the sun, they resemble a row of expensive but ghoulish beach huts. The less well off are buried, in their masses, in the sectors of parched earth between the roads. Each one is filled with row upon row of stone covered graves etched with the names and dates of the deceased. Some of the tombstones carry heart-rending poems and a few have a picture of the face of the departed carved upon them. There is one section devoted to those who lost their lives in the appalling war with Iraq which is filled with flags, foliage, photographs and military paraphernalia and another set aside for babies and young children where many of the headstones incorporate small cabinets containing soft toys and other small trinkets. These two sections containing the graves of those who have died in their first flushes of youth are probably the most heart rending areas of the whole cemetery.

Next to the main graveyard but accessed from the main road by a separate entrance stands the golden dome of the tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini. It is a magnificent structure and many pilgrims from all over the world travel there each year to pay their last respects. It is also one of the few destinations that also attracts trips from all the local schools. On any particular day in the academic calendar it is possible to see awestruck teenage girls respectfully bowed in silent prayer before his final resting place and groups of eight year old boys, who having had been made to remove their shoes as a sign of respect, are shrieking in delight as they take it in turns to slide dexterously across the extensive polished marble floor in front of his sepulchre.

After a bereavement the grief of those close to the departed will stay raw for a long period but with the passing of each commemorative date that of those less strongly connected will begin to wane. This, of course, does not preclude a good show of self-flagellation and copious tears at the graveside but does ensure that the same type of behaviour may reoccur at the meal afterwards especially if there is a belief that someone else has been served a more succulent kebab, a larger portion of rice or an extra carbonated beverage.

Although the pain caused by the passing of a loved one can never be eradicated with time it will eventually ease, however, the death of my father-in-law brought far more pain than just the emotional loss of a much cherished family member. Whilst he had been alive his quiet, in effacing manner had still commanded an enormous amount of respect. In spite of the fact that he and his wife had all five of their sons, three of them married with children of their own, and two daughters living with them in his dated, three storey, mid-terrace property there was no dispute too protracted or complex that it could not be settled with a word or three from him. Generally followed by a dozen or so more from my mother-in-law. Now though he was gone and she withdrew into the furthest corner, both of the house and herself. All of her self-possession and drive seemed to have been buried alongside her beloved husband. Without his quiet confident presence she seemed unable to exert any of her once dominant personality and it was not long before she lost all control of her, fast becoming, unruly brood. His death had changed them, too. It was as if his passing had severed all their self imposed shackles and they now sought to fly solo, soaring up into the azure firmament and off into the golden sunset. Unfortunately, these lofty aspirations were not backed up with sky high savings or executive salaries. In fact, with only Mohammed, Parisa and myself still working the contributions to the communal purse were meagre to say the least. Disillusionment and dissention grew both among the idle and the partially employed. Hossein was older than Hassan and would therefore not contribute any more than his younger brother whilst Hassan refused to contribute anything until Hossein had done so first. Parisa declined to cook and clean until Roghieh got a job which Roghieh would not even consider until Fouzieh had taken up paid employment. Fouzieh for her part was far too busy looking for a suitable husband to be concerned with the meltdown of the family structure that was occurring all around her. Within the resulting volcanic mix subgroups continued to evolve, each convinced of the correctness of their own stance, and continually vied with one another for superiority. Allegiances were formed, then suddenly erupted only to be reformed again at a later date but it was obvious that without the presence of my father-in-law, as the paternal head of the family, communal life had become totally unworkable.

Mohammed sought to take control, and as the eldest brother still commanded a certain amount of respect, but it was becoming all too clear that he was the only one of brothers to inherit his father's work ethic, and the prevailing economic climate meant that to continue to support the remainder of such a shiftless household he was obliged to work longer and longer hours. With his absences growing more numerous and prolonged it was impossible for him to assert any real degree of authority and the once tightly run ship was obviously beginning to take on a serious amount of water.

For example, two years previously the whole population of Tehran had endured the inconvenience of months of un-notified road closures and the horror of deep, unshored trenches immediately adjacent to their front doors, not to mention all the dust and disturbance that accompanies such works. All this turbulence was just to ensure that every dwelling had access to a convenient, clean supply of natural gas. However, our home, along with most of our neighbours, still used liquid paraffin for all its heating needs. There were those who did not trust that the supply was safe or thought that it was likely to be intermittent in its arrival but for the most part the residents in and around Revolution Square simply could not afford to pay for the internal pipe work required to allow them to be connected to the network. So, each Sunday, not the day of rest in a Muslim state, a large lorry would arrive at the end of the alley and all the residents, not yet connected to the mains gas supply, would hurry out, clutching their money and coupons, to seek to replenish their fuel supplies with their weekly ration. Having parked up the driver was immediately ready to do business. His assistant would begin to unload twenty litre cans from the back of the lorry and under his watchful eye potential purchasers would start to grab the them and stagger back to their homes to tip the contents into their waiting storage tanks. Paraffin cans, like milk bottles, are non-disposable items and have to be returned immediately after being emptied. The driver was always eager to be on his way to the next alley, and the next set of paying customers, so a certain amount of teamwork was required to acquire the maximum amount of paraffin in the time allocated. As all but one of our tanks were stored in a small room on the roof staggering back to the house was only part of the problem, hauling them up five flights of stairs was the real chore. When Mohammad was home all the male members of the household were rallied to the cause but more often than not he was absent and then they feigned sickness or sleep meaning that less and less paraffin was purchased and accordingly our supplies began to dwindle. It was possible to pay a little extra to the lorry driver and his subordinate and have them carry the cans to the door but no amount of money seemed to tempt them up even one flight of stairs and the rest of us, as women, were physically incapable of carrying out the task quickly enough to satisfy the vendor. Consequently, it was only the single tank by the door that was ever filled on a regular basis.

The irritating nature of this laziness was compounded each week when the local Armenian Christian arrived on our doorstep. He was a short man and all of his body except his wide, bulbous nose appeared to be hidden behind his large, square framed, heavy glasses and the even larger twenty litre plastic container, full of highly inflammable, illegally distilled vodka that he carried. Suddenly, there appeared to be no shortage of volunteers to carry this up to the top floor. A vicious circle was initiated for the more Hossein and Hassan drank the less inclined they were to leave the house and try to earn any money. They stated that they did not want to venture out with alcohol in their bloodstream for fear of being picked up by the revolutionary guards. This was an altogether real fear for anyone caught in the street under the influence of alcohol and without the wherewithal to offer an influential sponsor or a substantial bribe was likely to be sentenced to seventy slashes. They were also less inclined to carry out simple household chores, although I heard no meaningful excuse for this omission aside from some unintelligible mutterings along the lines of women's work. Though obviously the less time they spent contributing to the running of the house the more time they had to drink. The more time in which they had to drink meant, of course, that the more they drank and so it went on. It was a situation that my father-in-law, so religious that he had never even let one drop of alcohol touch his lips, would have refused to tolerate but now there was no-one at home capable of curbing their excesses.

Each day was the same Hassan would send out Roghieh to buy a couple of servings of 'calleh pahcheh'. Literally meaning head and legs this is an ostensibly high-energy dish often eaten for breakfast by soldiers, labourers or other workers needing to carry out a long, hard day's toil. It is produced by simmering lambs' heads and hooves, for a long period, in a bath sized pan until the odour can be detected from three streets away. This rank smelling broth is then liberally dosed with lime juice and desired by many. They would then spend the rest of the day eating, drinking and generally growing less and less industrious by the hour. Consequently, our fuel levels mirrored their enthusiasm for hard work and also grew lower and lower by the hour. There were murmurs of discontent yet no definite action was taken to remedy the situation and finally, just as winter really began to bite, we ran out completely. Everyone was outraged and accusations and aspersions as to who was to blame for this procurement oversight were cast in all directions. As hot air was all that we now had to keep us warm the row raged on far into the night. By the early hours of the morning culpability had still not been established but at least a bleary eyed consensus had been reached. We would now have to have the house connected up to the mains supply of gas.

No one had considered who would be footing the final bill for the internal pipe work but first things first. Before any work could be undertaken in a property the gas board required a signed statement from the owner of the same agreeing for the connection to be made. Although our house had belonged solely to my late father-in-law it was now the shared inheritance of all his offspring. It would be divided up between every one of them with each of the brothers receiving a settlement amounting to double that of the entitlement of each of his sisters. My mother-in-law, the poor woman and I mean that quite literally, was only entitled to one eighth of the contents of the property and faced the prospect of relying on the charity of her children for the rest of her twilight years. In principal connecting a house to the mains should add to its resalable value although Mohammed said that he was not sure by how much. Certainly there was uncertainty because the figure that I overheard Hossein discussing with Parisa was far in excess of the one that Hassan was suggesting to Roghieh. However, it was sure to be worth more than the cost of a single visit to the solicitor's office. So, as the snow began to gently fall Mohammed gathered them all together and off they went. They took their mother with them to sign for the two minors and collected Farideh on the way.

Within the hour they had returned only the happy little band that had tiptoed through the first few snowflakes now looked angry, woeful and worried. Farideh was conspicuous by her absence and as my mother-in-law silently entered the house and shrank even further into her corner, her face showed the stains of freshly dried tears. Hossein and Hassan were shouting loudly whilst the younger siblings seemed too shocked to speak.

"How could you not have told us?" yelled Hossein.

"You must have known!" added Hassan.

It appeared that besides his honour and dignity, throughout the last sixty years, my father-in-law had also been carrying a terrible secret. Terrible, at least, from the point of view of my brothers and sisters-in-law.

Having finally managed to quieten his brothers Mohammed tried to explain to

Parisa, Roghieh and me the exact nature of his father's deception. Everyone had known that he had been married before he met my mother-in-law and that the subsequent divorce had not been the most amicable of affairs. I tried to protest that I had not known but received only glares for my trouble. However, the solicitor had just informed them that not only had he been married previously but that that marriage had also produced no less than six children. I was not quite sure from where the solicitor had gleaned these facts but if he was correct it meant six more heirs to the family home in which we were now seated.

Hassan once again rounded on his mother "You must have known. You absolutely must."

Tears once more slipping down her cheeks she whispered her protestations that although she had known of the wife she had not known about the children.

"Why was all this not in his birth certificate?" asked Hossein. "This sort of information is always there."

However it finally transpired that my father-in-law had rather conveniently lost his birth certificate just before he had married my mother-in-law and somehow neglected to mention his first set of offspring when applying for a replacement. It was of no importance to them as his name appeared on each of the birth certificates of all his children but it was now a great concern for his second family who had been kept in the dark for all these years.

Now the secret was out, however, there were all number of difficulties to be faced. Not least, it appeared that everyone's final entitlement was likely to be halved. Even putting that to one side and concentrating on the problem in hand could all their newly realised half brothers and sisters actually be contacted to give their consent for the house to be connected up? After all this time they could have left Tehran, possibly emigrated or even died. Indeed, should they all be contacted as they would soon come to realise that their father had died and may then insist upon the house being sold so that they could secure their share of the inheritance? From worrying if it was possible to connect a gas supply to the house we had progressed to worrying whether or not we were actually going to have a house to which to connect it.

Mohammad decided that the only way was to try to convince the gas company that, in this instance, they needed to bend their rules and relax their regulations to allow us to be connected to the local gas main with only a majority of signatures rather than with the full compliment. To this end he took leave from the building sites, that he so carefully monitored and which were also our major source of income, and began a tactical assault on the gas company. Eventually he felt that he had worn them down enough to play his final trump card – me!

"Take a day's leave," he instructed me and on seeing my puzzled expression added, "It's now or never; bring your birth certificate with you and keep that stupid look on your face."

Thus advised, I made my preparations and we set off for the gas company's head office together. On arrival we were presented with a couple of visitor identification badges and ushered into a large room filled with senior gas board officials. After the formalities, with Mohammad greeting those he knew and being introduced to those that he did not, we stood before their expectant gazes whilst my husband passed around copies of his academic qualifications and my birth certificate for them to study.

"You see," he said. "Everything that I have told you is true. Who in my position would really want to marry a foreign woman? Yet, I was obliged to just that. My father had so many children, many of whom I have never met, that I could not contemplate taking an Iranian wife because I was afraid that I might eventually find out that I was actually related to her. Surely, in this exceptional case, eight signatures would suffice?"

They all seemed convinced; a sea of heads either nodded sagely or shock slowly from side to side in sad contemplation. Yes, this was an exceptional case and our papers were rubber stamped in triplicate. On the submission of eight signatures the approval would finally be granted for our house to be connected to the gas main.

On our return Mohammad was once again hailed as a hero, not only had he been the provider of free cakes but now, he had also secured for us all a convenient fuel supply. Unfortunately, all his efforts were still to be in vain because before they could even arrange another visit to the solicitor's disagreements broke out as to who was to pay for the connection and to have all the new pipe work, that would be required, installed within the house. Even leaving that aside, it transpired that the government had taken it upon themselves to contact all those half brothers and sisters that it could trace, to notify them of their fathers demise and inform them of their entitlements with respect to the inheritance.

That very same evening the mixture of premature celebrations and highly charged financial discussions was interrupted by a knock on the door and it was not the men from the gas board.

Let Off Steam

Anyone who has studied depression knows that it affects almost every sufferer in a different manner. For some it rolls in slowly and silently like a sea mist in the early hours of a calm, still morning, little by little driving every last drop of sanity from the sufferer's consciousness. For others it can glide ominously into and out of their lives like an electric eel in the calm, shallow waters of a muddy river delta. For me, however, it descended like a vast black cloud from a great height reaching terminal velocity before it had even entered my personal space. Without even giving me time to draw breath it had crushed every ounce of common sense that I had ever possessed into tiny fragments and blown them away, as quickly as if they had been swept up by a major hurricane. I had always tried to keep cheerful and laugh in the face of adversity but it seemed that fate was not prepared to allow me to continue in this vein. One dark winter's morning, several weeks after the disheartening death of my father-in-law, the subsequent sequence of equally traumatic wakes and with the news of our impending eviction still ringing in my ears, I awoke with the knowledge that I wanted to return to England. I was not sure if I had the intention of staying a few days, a few months or a few years but I was certain that I felt the need to run away from my current set of circumstances and to run as far and as fast as I possibly could. My head, had it been functioning would have no doubt, told me that it was likely to be many years before we could actually be evicted from our home in Iran. Moreover, possessing no home in England this was probably far longer than the limited length of time that the boys and I could actually stay with my parents. In addition, with no job to which to return and far more limited employment prospects over there, as opposed to the steady supply of positions that I could secure here, I would have even less opportunity to find somewhere and be even less financially secure. Not to mention the fact that we were in the middle of the school year, which would make things very difficult for my boys. My head should have told me to stay and make the best of it but my heart, which now seemed to be making all my decisions in splendid isolation, still said run – run like the wind.

The continuing financial climate, within Iran, had meant that I had not been back home for a few years. After the war with Iraq had finished the populace were no longer prepared to queue for every little item that they wished to procure. Resentment began to grow and in response to the increasing disquiet the government devalued the currency, and then it devalued it again, and again, and again. This resulted in prices increasing two, three or four fold until only a rich minority could actually afford to purchase anything apart from the basic necessities of life, which neatly disposed of all the earlier, annoying queues. However, all this inflation, along with the self-imposed idleness in other quarters of our household, meant that we were forever having to dip into our meagre savings just to continue to maintain our existing standard of living. Add to this the expenditure that we had incurred during the forty days after the death of my father-in-law, and it meant that the cost of a set of airline tickets was moving further and further out of my reach with each passing day. My heart knew, and, in this case, my head would certainly have agreed, that if I was to stand any chance of being able to afford the fares I would have to leave the country before the next round of summer season premiums came into force.

I realise that all airline companies raise their prices during peak times but the school system in Iran means that, at least at the start of the summer, it is possible to pinpoint the exact date that the fares will go up. Each year to progress successfully to the next year pupils must pass all their final year examinations and these are held at the same time on the same day within every scholastic establishment. It begins with the first year primary school children and gradually progresses onwards until it reaches the universities. Therefore the fares go up at midnight the day before the scheduled date for the last of the first year's examinations meaning that anyone who wishes to travel with students is obliged to purchase tickets at a premium rate - unless, of course, they are prepared to see their children held back a year for the sake of a holiday.

My better judgment being clouded by my depressed state I decided to call the British Embassy. I knew that the cost of a visa had been in the region of twenty pounds but I wanted to be sure that I was going to have enough money to cover everything that I needed in one visit; three visas was already going to cost me the equivalent of one month's salary, no laughing matter even in my more jovial days, and I certainly did not want to increase my expenditure by having to incur any unnecessary bus journeys.

"Yes, I was very fortunate to have had the foresight to call them as all visa prices had just risen by fifty percent. I understood that meant each one would now cost thirty pounds and they were correct in assuming that I actually held dual nationality and that my children did, too."

"Yes, that was right; the three of us were dual nationals all travelling on my Iranian passport."

"So our case would actually be different then. I understand, as the policy had changed recently too we would not be required to purchase visas anymore (hooray). Oh, but we would need C of Es (no apparently the Church of England does not hold a copyright on that phrase) which would be slightly more expensive."

"How much more expensive?"

"One hundred and twenty pounds . . . oh, one hundred and twenty pounds per person. What? One hundred and twenty pounds per person? Half a year's salary? Why can't we just get visas?"

"Oh, I see . . . no, no that would most certainly be against the procedures, which are of course drawn up in accordance with British law, but (think, think) my mother is ill – no, she is dying and we must get back to see her."

"Right. Yes, of course, I'd better borrow the money or sell something here and return or replace it later . . . after receiving my inheritance and selling it on the black market when I find myself back in Iran again. Does that mean that you are encouraging me to break Iranian law?"

"Oh no, you would never encourage me to do that; it was merely a suggestion. In that case could I suggest that you break British laws and allow me to travel with the old fashioned visa instead of this new fangled C of E?"

"Well, yes, I suppose such a suggestion would be preposterous. No, right I'll have to try to raise the money. Now are you certain that I have the price correct?"

"Yes, one hundred and twenty pounds per person. Please make me an appointment. Yes, so that's for next Wednesday. Really, next Wednesday, not the Wednesday after or the Wednesday after that? Well yes, I can see that the recent price increases would have led to a downturn in the number of applicants. Yes, I'll be there with my passport, two photographs of each of us and three hundred and sixty pounds in local currency – no, not pounds, local currency."

I reiterated the details several times, after all there was absolutely no way that I was going to be able to afford more than one return journey on the bus now, until I was certain, in my own mind, that if I turned up at eight o'clock on Wednesday morning with my passport, six photographs and three hundred and sixty pounds in local currency that I would be assured of obtaining all the required travel permissions.

Carrying six months' salary in local currency alone is no easy task let alone raising it in a week and so over the next few days I sold everything that I had (I was so desperate that if I could have found the keys to the locked cupboards I would have sold their contents, too) and borrowed money from anyone who was willing to lend it to me (I swore that I would be paying them back when I got paid hoping to be safely away by then).

Finally Wednesday arrived and I had just about managed to scrape together three hundred and sixty pounds in local currency – not a rial less but not a rial more either. Clutching my last two bus tickets - I had sold the rest of course - I set off. To be honest with hindsight I can see that it was probably the most ridiculous errand of my entire life. Yes, I had set my heart on leaving and heart was all I appeared to still possess. Yes, the first stage was a C of E but even if I managed to pass this hurdle where was I going to obtain another six hundred pounds (ten more month's salary) to purchase the requisite airline tickets when I had already used up all my capital, resources and potential favours. However, logic did not prevail and I saw this as the only chink of light appearing through the black clouds of my depression; I was a person quite literally possessed by an insane notion, but this insane notion was my mission and I would not be deterred.

I arrived at the embassy, actually running the last few steps, even though, by having left my children in the early morning darkness, pitifully huddled together on the steps of their school, with strict instructions not to move until the doors opened, I had ensured that I would be over an hour early myself. The fact that I too had to sit on the steps outside closed doors, too, hunched over my tattered, three layered carrier bag bulging with grubby, torn notes and heavy, scratched coins did not matter either because I was the first in the queue and nothing was going to stop me now.

The doors eventually opened and I rushed in my numb hands still clutching my bulging carrier bag, which probably weighed fifteen kilograms or more, and presented myself at the desk. I was given my forms which, without even bothering to take a seat, I dutifully filled out in a scribbled hand. I then returned them to the receptionist with my passport, photographs and money. She looked at them, wrote a few random figures in the official boxes, stapled the photographs to the top left hand corner, checked my passport and started to count my money. As she sorted the last few ten rial coins into piles she informed me that I was sixty pounds short.

"That's not possible," I said. "There is definitely three hundred and sixty pounds there. I rang last week and was told several times that the price of three C of Es was three hundred and sixty pounds and I have been scrapping together the money ever since. Believe me I have counted it and recounted it so it must be correct."

"What do you mean there has been a price increase since then, it's now going to cost me four hundred and twenty pounds. Whoever made my appointment knew that I was coming here today, why didn't they tell me that the price was going up?"

"The embassy doesn't give out information like that on the phone in case people insist on earlier appointments. It's inconvenient for you? Didn't you consider for one moment that it would be inconvenient for me? I've just brought a small fortune on the bus during the morning rush hour. I could have been robbed or put my back out trying to carry it. Never mind your inconvenience what am I supposed to do now?"

At this point I could feel my composure beginning to crack, my voice was starting to waver and the tears were beginning to well up behind my eyes.

"It's not a problem you'll simply give me another appointment for next week," I reiterated between my sobs. "Even if I could manage to raise another month's salary by then what guarantee do I have that it won't have gone up again by then?"

And then sorrow gave way to anger.

"If it has gone up you can rearrange my appointment again," I shouted. "How about I rearrange your face? Yes, I do want to make a complaint"

I stood, where a few minutes before I had filled out my forms with such a feeling of ecstasy, and wrote my letter. It contained the strongest terms that I knew and even a few that I would not ordinarily admit to knowing. I almost threw it at her, and perhaps if there had been a convenient brick to wrap it around I would have, but, by now the whole process had simply left me too drained for any real violence. I slunk out of the building, head bowed, and crept home, with only my tatty, three-layered carrier bag combination of money still intact. Clutching it tightly to my chest, I fell into my bed and cried myself to sleep.

A week later an unexpected envelope arrived through the post for me. Inside was what I can only consider to be the nearest that the British Embassy could get to an actual letter of apology. Anyway what good was a letter of apology? I could not board an aeroplane with a letter of apology, could I? Or could I?

Against all the odds I managed to find a travel agency that would sell me a ticket on the strength of my letter, or at least on the strength of the richly embossed paper on which it was printed. You see they were unwilling to see their existing status reduced by admitting that they did not employ anyone who could actually read English, and were therefore obliged to assume that my letter was actually the special diplomatic visa that I told them it was. In fact, for good measure my story, along with the impression made by the headed paper, even persuaded them to take a rather rubbery cheque for one hundred and forty pounds along with my three hundred and sixty pounds in local currency. Mohammad insisted, however, that there was no way that airport officials would be fooled so easily and, as usual, he was right. Having spent several embarrassing hours at the airport, and narrowly avoided arrest on the grounds of fraud and deception, I was finally obliged to cancel my tickets, collect my money - less the ten percent handling charge, repay my debts and replace some of my possessions.

It was not that easy though; the whole affair had severely exacerbated my existing depression and the memory of the look on the face of the incredulous immigration officer had in truth driven me further towards a state of complete and utter mental imbalance. In fact, the entire incident, with its rollercoaster of emotions had left me teetering on the brink of insanity with all of previously impaired decision making capabilities completely destroyed. Consequently, this time dragging my children in my wake I returned, once more, to the British Embassy for assistance. I insisted on seeing the Ambassador; amazingly enough, he was out. I demanded an appointment with a high-ranking civil servant; they were all incommunicado. I asked if I could have a word with any British official; still no joy. In desperation I explained the situation to the receptionist and then added that my children and I were going to sit there and refuse to move until someone agreed to send us back to England free of charge. She looked at me down her long, highly powdered, supercilious nose and told me in no uncertain terms that I was being utterly pathetic. She asked me why I did not just grow up, pay the extra sixty pounds and stop being so bloody stupid. My outburst was as unexpected to me as it was to her but when it came it was totally relentless.

"Just pay the sixty pounds. Pay the sixty pounds? What do you know? Sixty pounds represents a whole months wages to me. To find sixty pounds I'd have to walk the four miles to and from my place of work for a whole month not to mention going without eating, paying bills or buying any of life's necessities. By then the price of a C of E will have gone up again. In addition to all that you seemed to have overlooked the fact that it will be coming up for the summer season and ticket tariffs will be subject to a surcharge. If my mother really were dying she would have reached a state of total decomposition before I'd even managed to clear immigration. It's not even as if I am the only one; most of my British friends are caught in the same fiscal trap but they are just too sensible to actually expect any help from a group of chinless wonders like yourselves. Sixty pounds! We're not paid in foreign currency. I can't believe that you are so heartless. Sitting there on your big fat salary, spending, earning, earning, spending and not caring about, not even trying to understand, the trials and tribulations of those that you are supposed to serve. Sixty pounds . . ."

I was still yelling and shrieking as the five burly, uniformed guards forcibly evicted me from the building but even after that final indignity I continued to refuse to go home. I stood outside the high concrete walls screaming obscenities, swearing in both English and Farsi. At first my children were too shocked to speak but then as my tirade continued they decided that this might be their only chance to use the kind of words that I generally frowned upon, and so joined in. A small crowd began to gather and eventually the police arrived. By this time I was immune to fear, after all what could they do? Deport me? Hooray! Incarcerate me? I was already a prisoner, a prisoner of poverty. I had nothing more to lose because I had already lost everything including my dignity; yes, to think I had lost my dignity for the sake of sixty miserable pounds.

Two scruffy uniformed officers bundled my children into the back of their dirty, dilapidated, white police car and as my maternal instinct finally kicked in I had no option but to cease my ranting and join them. Under the bemused gaze of the onlookers we were driven away. We rattled our way slowly along the more major streets before then turning off into a maze of smaller alleyways. On reaching our destination we were unceremoniously ousted from the back seat and pushed into a small, unremarkable, whitewashed building that obviously served as the local constabulary. No-one attempted to question me, they did not even ask for my name so for the next three hours we sat, where we had been told to sit, on a rough, wooden slat bench. Our backs up against a cold stone wall and seemingly abandoned in the reception area, we watched the local constables, most dressed in ill fitting and over washed uniforms but still managing to convey a sense of harassed readiness, come and go in pursuit of their daily business. I was too drained to even consider what was to happen next and the uniqueness of the whole episode seemed to have completely immobilised my sons, who would generally by now have thrown the whole station into complete state of chaos. So we just sat there, like a set of wax works at Madame Tussard's, silent and still simply waiting for the fickle hand of fate to intervene.

Finally, a highly polished, black government vehicle drew up beside the police station and we were accompanied outside and, once again, ensconced in the back seat. This time we glided towards our destination and when we finally drew up we saw that we were in front of a newly built, high-rise, brick and glass mega structure I realised that we must be somewhere in the political heart of Tehran. When the vehicle slowed to a complete stop we were escorted out and respectively led, by subservient minions, past others of their ilk who literally bowed and scraped as we made our way into the plush lift and out again, before finally being ushered into the presence of a high-ranking Iranian official. He was a young man with a pleasant face and a closely cropped beard. His open neck shirt and expensive two-piece suit were immaculately pressed and he emanated a stress free aura of supreme self-confidence. The office that he occupied was situated on the top floor of the building. It was a large room, much bigger than the whole of the police station reception area which we had just left, and covered wall to wall with expensive Persian carpets. The main office furniture consisted of a substantial, dark wood and leather desk and chair with matching bookcases. At the far end of the room was a cosy seating area comprising comfortable seats and a coffee table, piled high with fruit, cakes and sweets. This tempting spread was situated immediately in front of a large glass window and we were all invited to sit and partake, as if at a surreal tea party. The boys were hesitant at first but soon began gorging themselves on both the food and the view whilst I, finally realising the enormity of my position, braced myself for the worst.

To my complete surprise the official congratulated me on having the courage to take such a determined stand. He went on to say that he was very impressed with my actions and that he would like to see more western women standing up to be counted in the eternal struggle against modern evils and creeping moral degradation. It transpired that the Ministry of Islamic Affairs needed women like me, women who had embraced the true religion and turned their backs on the depravity of western society. On the spot he offered me a job with a salary well in excess of sixty pounds a month and, as I tightened my scarf more securely around my head, took a sip of the delicately perfumed tea and relaxed back into my chair, I could almost feel the black clouds of my depression start to disperse and the sunlit normality of rational thinking begin to break through.

These days I am back to my usual cheerful self, my head is no longer ruled by my heart and I absolutely love my new role. I now have both job satisfaction and security and we do all sorts of interesting and useful things such as purging the Iranian language of decadent western phrases and allowing it to be once again spoken in the purity of its original form. For instance, the word 'mobile' will soon become redundant and in its place everyone will use the much more acceptable 'telephone y hamrah' meaning quite simply 'telephone that you carry with you'. A small but important victory, in my opinion, which has not gone unrecognised for I have been informed that if I can learn to say the phrase 'Zionist usurper' with a little more venom I will also have the opportunity to become an English newsreader on television's Channel One. In addition, the money that I earn has allowed me to start a small savings account so that when the worst happens, and our extended family is finally evicted from our residence, Mohammed and I will be in the position to purchase two small flats, one for ourselves and one for my mother-in-law. Yes, I now find myself in the situation where, if I really wanted, I could pay for the C of E and still have plenty left over for copious numbers of airline tickets. I could probably afford to take a trip home every year, although, to be honest, I enjoy my work too much to consider extended vacations and anyway, now that I have the ability to actually do it, it really does not seem to be such a major issue anymore.

And You Will Fit In Just Fine

It has been over two decades now, since I first set foot on Iranian soil and I feel that I have finally become accustomed to the way of life over here. These days neither the bluebottles nor my in-laws appear quite so menacing. Since the war has finished, the queues have grown shorter and the list of items available in the shops has grown longer and now that I have secured profitable, gainful employment I have joined the elite who are financially able to indulge in the purchase of a few of these luxuries from time to time, although with inflation as it is now less and less with each passing day. Strange as it sounds we, were fortunate enough to be evicted and, bought the pre-mentioned flats because as prices continue to rise we find ourselves slowly falling back below the poverty line. Still I remain content and I like to think that the main reason for this is that as time has passed I have met some really nice people and made some very good friends. There will always be times when we have to say goodbye to someone and this can be especially traumatic particularly if they get divorced. In many cases their husband will invoke his paternal rights and refuse to give his ex-wife permission to take their children with them. My own marriage has probably lasted so long because Mohammad always told me that if it had broken down when the children were younger that I did not have permission to leave the boys with him and with each passing day I grew more and more certain that I was completely incapable of raising them alone. We still joke that just as mongrel dogs have more energy than pure breeds so do mongrel children and I have yet to meet one mixed race couple who would disagree with that.

Unfortunately, I still have not really mastered the language, relying on my in-laws, my sons or my more intelligent friends to translate for me when the going gets really tough. I have not even learnt exactly how many layers of clothing are appropriate for a given occasion, relying on, falling moral standards to compensate for my mistakes or, Mohammad to set me straight if I am in danger of committing a complete faux pas, but somehow I have still managed to raise a family and continue to hold down a job. I still upset my mother-in-law on occasions, although never intentionally, but I did try to atone by giving her two grandsons, if also somewhat unintentionally.

As for the culture and customs, I am still persevering. I am never sure when I should sit in the back seat of the car and when I should opt for the front seat or, if I have taken the front seat alternative, how many times I should apologise to anyone sitting behind me for performing the very discourteous act of having my back to them. Also, having been brought up to believe that it is ill mannered to interrupt someone when they are in the full flow it seems polite, when nature or a wailing child calls, to slip quickly and quietly from the room, especially when the anecdote, heard previously, is known to be a good hour long and experience guarantees that, like the proverbial fish, it will grow longer with each subsequent telling. I do now know that the courteous method of leaving, certainly amongst my in-laws, is to stand in the middle of the room and excuse oneself, in a voice several decibels louder than the speaker, to every person or beetle there present and I do try but so far I can still only manage an embarrassed mumble from the corner nearest to the door. I presume that in my case it really is not possible to teach an old dog new tricks.

After much consideration I have come to believe that the definition of hell is being judged in relation to an incomprehensible or completely unacceptable set of standards. Therefore, anyone wishing to fit comfortably into an environment completely alien to their own must learn much more than just the basics of a foreign language. They have to make a concerted effort to seek out the history and local customs that have moulded that society, to understand the rules which bind that community together and to appreciate how its members really think and why they feel the way that they do. We, who have come and stayed, have tried to discover the foundations on which our new found countrymen have built their lives and, where possible, to conform to their legal and moral codes. In many cases, we have also tried to tell them a little of our lives and describe to them our ethic systems, not in the hope of changing them, as we realise that it is us who have imposed ourselves on them not the other way around, but merely to save them from being upset by any of our more seemingly strange or peculiar courses of action.

Yes, many things have changed since I first started this work. Nowadays, in Tehran, hemlines, air pollution and roof tops are all rising, although not as quickly as prices. Unfortunately, much of the camaraderie caused by the hardships and after effects of war has been wiped out by economic mismanagement and raging inflation. On the surface, things may have appeared to have progressed but whereas once neighbours looked out for each other now they just keep an eye open to ascertain the most opportune time to steal the batteries and spare tyres from their cars.

Still, be it then or now, we have come to realise that where west really cannot meet east that the ability to laugh is a great gift. There is no point in running for cover or even, like some we know of, running down a whole nation, for if we can laugh at all idiosyncrasies, including our own, we can survive anything and more; we can enjoy the rest of our lives proud that our marriages are strong, our children are healthy and that we have crossed new frontiers without turning and fleeing. Perhaps, we can even feel that we have come some way into been accepted by the society into which we blindly blundered so many years ago.

So, from this day forth I can state that whatever life has to offer, wherever God chooses to take me or keep me, so long as I have a toothbrush and a fresh change of underwear, I will willingly go or stay but most definitely not without my sense of humour.
