I think I was about nine or ten. It was one of those times that Iraqis had started bombing Tehran again and so our schools had closed down. During the bombings my grandparents’ tiny one bedroom house by the Caspian always became Shelter Central and the doors were open for any friends or relatives who wanted to escape Tehran. There were two double beds and two sofas in the living room and everyone else just slept on the floor.
Usually you would get a good mixture of people coming; kids, their parents and some older people too so everyone would have a good time and get to hang out with people their own age.
This particular time however, apart from me and my mum and dad, for some reason only the very old had turned up. And when I say old I mean proper old like most of them were older than my own grandparents even.
At first I didn’t really mind it. My mum and dad and I stayed in the little annex and every night after the others had gone to bed, we would have a great laugh in there chatting and listening to my dad read to us from some of the stuff he was writing at the time.
I also enjoyed being Babajoon’s (my granddad) self-appointed assistant and following him around the garden along with the two local black dogs, Kaapo and Haalo and when I got bored of that, I went off on my own and did what I had always done (and still do) best which is to stare into space and escape into a fantasy world in my head.
But after a few days I started to miss hanging out with people my own age. Plus my birthday was close and, not that I had anything against this lot, but I much preferred spending it with people who when started a sentence with ‘During the war…’ actually meant the Iran Iraq war and not Word War 2 or Jangeh Kaazeroon or Mamasani!
After dinner as everyone would gather around the radio trying to tune it into BBC World Service, I would kneel on the sofa with my nose pressed against the window and my hands cupped around my face, quietly singing to myself a spell my mum had taught me for when you want someone to come to you.
Alessoon-o valessoon
Abracadabra
Shadi-ro zood beressoon
Bring Shadi to me fast
Ageh neshsteh paash kon
If she’s sitting, make her stand up
Ageh vaysadeh raash kon
If she’s standing, make her walk

And then Alesson-o valesson Nader-o zood beressoon Ageh…

When we’d left Tehran, my aunt and uncle had said that they would come and join us in the north in a few days along with my two cousins, Shadi and Nader. Now a few days had passed and they had not arrived and we didn’t have a phone there to contact them.
Every morning I would walk to the top of the massive garden and I would poke my head out through the bars on the yellow metal gate and watch the cars going past while trying to get my cousins to come to me with the power of my mind.
This was something my cousins and I had done together many times when we were in the north and wanted someone else to come over. The three of us would get onto the gate and while swinging it back and forth would try to make contact with that person through the power of our minds! There was great fun to be had there even if the person did not show up at the end. Unfortunately doing it on my own just wasn’t the same. I couldn’t even get the gate swinging.

The night before my birthday I prayed like I’d never prayed before. I knew that was my last chance for them being there for my birthday because my aunt and uncle always left Tehran in the evening which meant they got to the north in the middle of the night so I knew if I woke up the next day and they were not there, they weren’t going to be there for my birthday.

The next day as soon as I opened my eyes, I jumped out of bed and looked out of the window. I couldn’t see their car in front of the house so sliding my feet into my trainers with their backs pressed down, I ran out into the garden and did a lap of the outside of the house just to make sure they had not parked somewhere round the back so they could surprise me.
But their car was nowhere to be seen and to add insult to injury, all my running around the house had made the oldies (who were up at the crack of dawn) come to the window and now instead of going back to my bed and feeling sorry for myself and giving god an earful for not answering my prayers, I had to stand there and watch a bunch of wrinkly old smiling heads, poking out of the top of flowery frocks and shirts; buttoned up to the top, sing me Happy Birthday from behind the window, as I stood on the lawn in my pyjamas.
Oh I would give anything to see that now but at the time it was torture. I would have left but that would have been very rude, so I stood there just long enough for them to finish their song and ran off just as they started clapping at the end of it and pretended not to have heard their cries of, ‘Birthday girl, come and have breakfast with us.’

My mum was getting dressed and my dad was still in bed, hands behind head. ‘Happy birthday’ they said as I walked into the annex. ‘They didn’t come.’ I said sulkily, ‘I’m going to be all alone on my birthday.’ and sat on the edge of the bed, cheeks in hands. ‘Don’t lose all hope.’ Said my mum, ‘They might still make it.’ Letting out a big sigh I said, ‘No they won’t.’ and looked down at my feet. ‘Well they might break tradition just this once and leave in the morning so they can be here this afternoon.’ she said and while putting her hair in a ponytail she continued enthusiastically, ‘And even if they don’t come, we can still have a good time together, can’t we?’ All I wanted to do was to mope around all day and feel sorry for myself but you could tell she wasn’t going to allow to me do that. ‘Come on chop-chop,’ She said, ‘we have loads to do today.’ My dad smiled and winked at me.

As a special birthday treat, I was going to be taken to town. On a normal day I would have jumped at the chance and would have dived headfirst in the car barefoot even, in case while I spent time looking for my shoes, they drove off without me, but that day, since I was determined to have a bad time, when I was told , ‘Guess what! We’re going to Noshahr.’ I just shrugged and continued to stare at the gate.

Most of the oldies stayed behind. Only me, my dad, my mum, Mamanjoon and one of Mamanjoon’s friends went to Noshahr. They all tried very hard all the way there to get me excited about my birthday but that just annoyed me because all I wanted was for them to be quiet so I could concentrate on sending brainwaves to Shadi and Nader and my aunt and uncle.
In Noshahr my dad went off to do the food shopping, Mamanjoon and her friend went somewhere else and Mum and I went to the Bazaar.

‘Cheer up’ Said Mum smiling, ‘come on, let’s go and get some ice cream.’ We bought runny ice cream that tasted like rosewater with bits of red, tasteless jelly swimming around it.
‘Now that…’ said my mum after her first spoonful. I finished her sentence for her, ‘…is disgusting.’
‘Yes that too,’ she said, ‘but I was gonna say, ‘…something worth getting upset about.’ We laughed and drank our ice creams, spitting the bits of jelly back into the cups.
On the opposite side from the ice cream place, there was a shop that sold cheapo, plastic stuff; colanders, Aaftabehs, ugly plastic dolls, salad bowls, laundry baskets and a load of other colourful plastic products. I spotted these little pink flasks with blue lids and blue straps hanging in the corner and imagined Nader and I, in our expedition gear, ready to embark on another adventure in the garden along with Kaapo and Haalo, armed with our sticks and sporting one of those flasks each. What an image! If Indiana Jones were to see what I was seeing at that moment, he would hang his head in shame.

‘Maman’ I said eagerly, pulling at her arm, ‘can we get some of those?’
‘Where? What?’ she asked looking around excitedly. She had been pointing at this and that all day to try and get me something for my birthday but I had turned my nose up at every single thing.
The flasks were cheap and nasty and stank of plastic. We bought three.
I knew Shadi wasn’t going to use hers much on account of her being two years older than I and preferring to spend her spare time reading romantic novels and Daee jon Napelone or scrubbing the bathroom and kitchen floors with bleach (instead of going on exploration missions around the garden, or fighting pirates and Iraqis) and there always being plenty of water in the living room where she read her books and in the hallway where she stood guard so she could tell people off if they tried to walk into the kitchen or the bathroom with dirty feet. But we got one for her too anyway.

Coming back, I was in a much better mood and kept thinking maybe they’d arrived. But they hadn’t. I spent the rest of the day hanging from the gate and watching the traffic.
When the sun went down, having lost all hope of my cousins ever coming and feeling a bit hungry, I went back to the house.
I was dreading going inside knowing that they were all going to make a huge fuss over me and keep calling me Birthday Girl and all the old ladies would be like ‘Oh my darling, how old are you today?’ and then ‘Oh what a lovely age. Cherish these childhood years my dear because in a blink of an eye, you will be old and broken like us. Now come and give me a big kiss.’ and then like a little bumble bee going from flower to flower, I would have to go from old lady to old lady. Only instead of drinking nectar, I would be breathing in head-spinning perfumes and instead of gathering pollen, I would be collecting different colour lipsticks on my face which no doubt someone would try to violently remove with a handkerchief a bit later.
The old men would be a lot better. Although they would no doubt ask me (for the umpteenth time) what year I was in and then when I told them, they would turn to the person next to them and ask, ‘What would that be in the old system?’ and when the person next to them said that they didn’t know because the new system was too complicated for them, they would both go on to tell me how much simpler things were back when they were my age and how the only toys they had were sticks that they pretended to be horses, ‘not like your generation with your Barbis and Kents and Donkey King games and Mickey Moze.’

‘Sorry your birthday was so bad’ said my mum as we sat on my bed. It was late and everyone else had gone to bed but I didn’t want to go to sleep just yet because I still wasn’t done feeling sorry for myself. ‘It’s ok’ I said, trying very hard not to cry, ‘It wasn’t that bad.’
‘I keep thinking of something to do for you to cheer you up but I can’t think of anything apart from ‘Hava Jeer Jeer' but I guess you’re a bit too old for that now.’ The name sounded familiar but I couldn’t remember what it was. ‘Do you not remember it?’ she said, ‘I used to do that with you when you were little.’ I shrugged. ‘Well I get on my back. You lie on the sole of my feet with your chest and give me your hands. Then I throw you up and down by bending my knees and straightening them and sing, ‘Hava jeer jeer…’’ The song was longer than this but I can’t remember the rest. ‘I think I’ll pass.’ I said. ‘Is there anything else that you would like me to do?’ I shook my head. ‘Then I suppose we better go to bed, it’s getting late.’ As soon as she said that, I felt even more depressed; for some reason I didn’t want this day to end.
‘Maybe’ I said, ‘we could could give Hava Jeer Jeer a try.’
‘Really?’ said my mum excitedly, ‘Great!’

Hava Jeer Jeer was uncomfortable to say the least. Every time she pushed me up, my ribs dug into my insides and made me cough. I wanted to stop as soon as we started but that meant going to bed and I didn’t want to do that. Also seeing my mum’s happy face as she threw me up and down while laughing and singing the song (a little out of breath) I suddenly realised what a hard day she must have had seeing how unhappy I was and not being able to do anything about it. So for her sake at least, I decided to enjoy those last few minutes of my birthday and started to laugh and sing the song with her.
As we sang and coughed and laughed and wheezed and tried to catch a breath, a light shone through from under the curtains. ‘They’re here’ I screamed.

When Shadi and Nader saw me running towards them, they started running and waving too. We collided underneath the magnolia tree where I threw myself in their arms while crying out, ‘I’ve just had the shitiest birthday.’ And then, ‘I got us flasks.’