Shappi Khorsandi: From Tehran to Enid Blyton

The stand-up comedian recalls the often comic upheaval of fleeing to Britain with her family from Iran in 1979

You can tell by the names my parents gave me and my brother that they never planned to leave our native Iran for good. Had they known they would end up raising us in England, they would have given us Persian names that the English could pronounce more easily — like Darius and Cyrus, Dara and Sara. They would not have named us Shaparak and ­Peyvand, thus condemning us to childhoods of being called Shakkattack and Pavement.

Our names, though, turned out to be the least of our problems when we ended up in exile after my satirist father had insisted on writing jokes that criticised the mullahs. The ruling clerics have never been known for their sense of humour, nor their interest in freedom of speech, and it was made clear to my father, by a 3,000-strong mob that stood outside his Tehran office in 1979 chanting “Death to Hadi Khorsandi”, that it was probably best to leave Iran quite quickly. That figure of 3,000 was only an estimate made later, by witnesses — my father didn’t stop to count.

So London became our refuge, and when my parents first took us to nursery school, the kindly, elderly teacher asked: “How old are your children, Mr Khorsandi?” Taking pride in his English, my father told her: “This one is half past three, and that one is half past four.”

Aged half past three, I spoke only Persian and thought English was a language you made up as you went along and everyone else would just magically understand: ­“Foroshh knoo allaw!” With my parents maintaining Persian at home, though, I soon became bilingual and able to sulk in two ­different languages. While I discovered Enid Blyton and all the other delights of this new language, my father continued his attacks on the Iranian government through the cartoons, articles and poems he penned in the satirical newspaper he published and distributed to the Iranian diaspora. His newspaper, Asghar Agha (which roughly translates as Joe Bloggs), had a wide circulation among the Iranians who had fled the regime. But the popularity of Asghar Agha made my father a target even in exile. Many times I would answer the phone and be informed by an angry, growling voice that my father should be killed for his opinions. “Dad!” I would call. “It’s for you! I think it’s the Ayatollah!”

In 1984, when I was 11, I came home from school to find two burly Englishmen in our little flat. At that time, English strangers in our home were usually bailiffs, but these two gentlemen were sipping chai and enjoying Persian sweets. Iranians are widely regarded as the most hospitable of people, but even we draw a line at breaking bread with bailiffs. They were, I was told, plain-clothes police officers from Scotland Yard who had come to take us into hiding. They had uncovered a terrorist plot to kill my father. I had often wished that my father was a plumber, like Mark Johnson’s dad at school. Never more so than in that moment, though. Plumbers are almost never assassinated.

We went to Windsor, to a little bed and breakfast. My father was told that he mustn’t let a soul know where he was, so he only told around 20 of his closest friends who all joined us for our hiding party. After a few days we were assured it was safe to come home. We did, but I didn’t feel safe. I kept expecting someone to leap out from behind a tree and throw a grenade at us. We were still under police protection, which meant that from time to time officers would stop by, drink tea and talk about terrorists with my father. “You must check under your car for bombs, Mr Khorsandi,” they told him. So, every morning, before my father drove us to school, we would lie on our bellies in our drive and stare underneath our Ford Cortina. My father would crease his brow and say: “I don’t know what a bomb looks like. There could be 10 under there, I have no idea. Jump in, we’ll see what happens.”

Nothing bad did happen, but the threat that it might followed us to and from school, travelled with us on our holidays to Brighton and Blackpool, and hovered over us as we slept. From that day on, we lived in fear of losing each other.

For a terrorist, killing is just the tip of the iceberg. His job is to take away your peace of mind and to break the spirit of your supporters. They didn’t manage this with my father. Asghar Agha is online and going strong. As for myself, I have tried to spare my own son the traumas we went through. I don’t have a car, I have given him an easy name and I am instilling in him a healthy interest in plumbing.

Shappi Khorsandi will discuss her memoir, A Beginner’s Guide to Acting English, at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival on Wednesday, March 24, at 8pm. To book, visit www.oxfordliteraryfestival.com

The Sunday Times 07-03-2010