The Queen's English

My favourite students (Grandad in the middle with the hat)



Before coming to Iran I was adamant that I wouldn’t teach English. I didn’t want to spend my time doing a ‘boring’ job, or speaking English too often. Iran is not exactly inundated with TOEFL qualified students on their gap year, so being a native speaker meant I was hot property around town. Against all my better judgment, within a month I’d lined myself up three different jobs at three different language schools across town. The English language teaching community in Isfahan is fairly small, and I soon realized that various colleagues from various institutes all had some prior connection to each other. It also seemed that competition was rife, and I was soon tapped for information by my various bosses about the other institutes: what books to they teach from? How many students do they have? Do they do any special classes? I gave up all the information I had; they could fight it out between them.

The shaking minarets

At no point did I claim that I was real teacher, or an expert on grammar, and luckily my bosses listened to me, so I only taught free discussion/ conversation classes. Basically, I chose any topic I liked, allowed my students to do a little preparation for it, mainly by trawling the internet, and then (usually) a lively debate would ensue. It took my students a little while to get used to my accent, as they are all much more used to American ones (through films and TV shows, lots of people watch Dubai based TV channels available on satellite that broadcast un-dubbed American shows like Desperate Housewives and Friends), and it is indeed that accent of choice for anyone studying English at university. I also asked them to call me by my first name and not to stand up every time I entered the classroom, I wasn’t used to getting this much respect. Teaching all female classes was difficult as nearly all of them are always too shy to speak, except for one mouthy one who completely dominates the class and ends up interrupting when one of the other girls actually plucks up the courage to say anything. Classes of all boys are a lot more relaxed, but always go off topic as instead I am asked: Do you have a boyfriend? What is your favourite alcoholic drink? Do you get tired of wearing hijab? What do you do for fun in your country?

Pelicans and a white peacock at the bird sanctuary, Najnoon Park

My favourtie class was a group of very advanced, mixed gender and mixed generation students. One of them, known as granddad, always came to class armed with horoscopes or poems he’d found on the internet that he liked to quote when he felt the debate was getting too heated. Over the course of the past few months we’ve discussed racism and prejudices, compared educational and legal systems in England and Iran, talked about the environment and ecology, the positive and negative effects of tourism, our favourite books/ films/ music and the growing generation gap. In the lesson on crime and punishment I spent a long time explaining about date rape, which interested the younger students a lot but made the older ones look very uncomfortable. The unanimous response I had already expected was that date rape does not exist in Iran. (How can it? Dating/ unsanctioned relationships/ sex before marriage are all against the law, and as far as proving a husband has raped his wife, I might be wrong, but think you’d be laughed out of court).

Me as tour leader in a fetching body-warmer

As well as teaching I’ve also been leading bi-monthly tours, where we take the students to a restaurant, or a hotel or shopping and get them to do all the transactions in English. Most of them have never been abroad and as getting a visa is so hard, have no plans to. This is the only way they can use their English in a practical, real-life situation. I once had to lead them

around the Aremeian church, having learnt the history of the building half an hour before. I managed to bluff it pretty well and realized had it been a mosque I would have been harder, growing up in an Atheist household, in England and travelling around Western Europe meant my knowledge about churches and Christianity was far superior to my knowledge of Islam. For our last class my favourtie group arranged a day of touristy fun for me, visiting the shaking minarets, a bird sanctuary and a traditional restaurant. At our first stop, the minarets, there was a big group of Japanes tourists who seemed to take a particular shine to me, and lined up to have their picture with me. We all giggled quietly, none of us having the heart to tell them I wasn’t really a typical Iranian girl.

My new friend

The down side of being a native speaker in a language institute is the endless questions from students and teachers, and the dissapointed, almost disgusted looks I get when I don't know the answer. One teacher came to me with a list of postcodes asking me what citities they stood for, and then proceeded to ask about all the different methods of sendings letters and parcels in England. My British politeness failed me and I responded in sarcastic Farsi with ‘sorry I’m not a post man’. My students are all obssessed with learning idioms, so I’d come armed to classes with phrases such as ‘water of a duck’s back’ and ‘eye of the tiger’. They’d then want to know the root of the terms and I’d struggle; ‘Well, erm, separating the wheat from the chaff, well the wheat is the good part of the plant the famers would keep and, erm, the chaff is.. is .. the debris, yes, the debris that they would get rid of’. I’m also constanly asked advice on how they can improve, where again not being a teacher, I’m not really sure what to suggest. The biggest issue I see is the lack of exposure to natives, which means students are learning from teachers who speak with terrible accents. My advice; it is near impossible to sound like a native, but try at least to not sound like an Iranian : ‘Hhello, I am f-erom Ee-ran. I am leeving here e-six ye-ars. I go to e-school.’ (know it is familiar to some of you!)

Sa-ma-nu! Sa-ma-nu!

Every year my dad's cousin Nosrat cooks up a big pot of samanu and invites all the family over while she is cooking it. Samanu is a wheat pudding, made from wheat grain, water, hazelnuts and almonds (no added sugar). It is one of the things that are placed on the haft sin for Noruz, and so it is traditional that it is cooked around this time, just before the New Year. It is also believed to be a good omen. Samanu burns very easily, but takes a long time too cook, which means it has to be continually stirred until it is ready, usually taking at least 48 hours. This samanu party is the kind of traditional gathering that is hard to find nowadays, even in a city as traditional as Isfahan. So as friends of mine partied with ambassadors in Tehran, I was at a much more exclusive engagement.

Nosrat's house is the old fashioned kind, with a courtyard in the middle and rooms coming off opposite sides. For the samanu cooking the whole garden was covered with a huge chador (tent). We entered through the back garden, and straight into the heat emulating from the huge copper pot the samanu was cooking in, and the gas underneath it. The garden was full of about 30 women, and 5 men. Traditionally cooking samanu is something women do, probably because, well, cooking is something women do. It means that at a samanu party the ratio of women to men is always very unequal. Everyone had their roosari's on. Neither my cousin or I were sure why, but decided as the average age of the guests was 60, and the kind of ladies who don't take their roosari's off, the youngsters must have decided to keep them on in their company. So we did too. After a long round of hellos, with many comments directed at my Ameh "Is this your brother's daughter?", "The one with the foreign mother?","Mashallah!" (literally-May God preserve you, but an expression of praise) etc, a few gave me big smackers on my forehead, and then continued questioning my Aunt; "Does she speak Farsi?", "How long is she here for?", "Does she like Iran?'". Only one deemed to address me directly, but then commented to my Aunt and not me; "Oh her Farsi is good!". The huge wooden spoon was passed between us to stir the samanu and make a wish for the coming new year. There is also a special song/ prayer that is sung, but seemed no one could remember much of it. The joke is that girls wish for husbands, and are even teased for going to the samanu party for that reason. Clearly there is nothing else worth wishing for. Not to break tradition my Ameh took hold of the great spoon, rolled up her sleeves and as she turned the spoon announced how she was wishing for husbands for her daughters and me, to whom the older ladies responded with cries of Enshallah (god willing), and again a few big kisses were placed on my reddened forehead. It was one of those situations I often find myself in Iran, where everyone knows who I am and I don't have a clue who anyone else is. It's not just that they know who my dad is, they know me, they know I'm the younger daughter and they know my name. Luckily my Ameh was on hand to fill in the blanks about everyone as we plonked ourselves on a ledge next to the pot of bubbling samanu. The gossip was fairly usual; she can't have kids, she is trying to immigrate to America, her dad is a criminal. Tea, juice, ice cream and cakes were offered, until ghormeh sabzi was ready. We sat on the ledge eating, gossiping, listening, others inside the house, and others in another corner, everyone just spread lazily wherever there was room. Eventually we said a long round of goodbyes, and went home with full, warm bellies.

I wish I was a little bit taller

I wish I was a baller

I wish I had a rabbit in a hat

We were back the next evening, to an even fuller garden (at least 70) and accompanied by more of my aunties and cousins, although all the males in our family chose to stay away. We all carried buckets and pots to be filled with samanu and carted home the following morning. Overnight the colour of the samanu had deepened from a rich caramel colour to a dark chocolatey brown, with hazelnuts and almonds bobbing along the edge of the pot. The night unfolded much as the previous one had, with slight differences: we sat inside, we ate Ash-e Reshteh, we gossiped about different people. On leaving we were told to take a big handful of sweets and nuts. They're called moshkel goshaa (problen solving) sweets and nuts, while you suck on them your problems somehow melt away.

By the following morning the samanu was finally ready. We drove the 3 minutes to Nosrat's house, as we would be taking all the family's samanu home, and couldn't manage to carry it all. There were a few girls and Nosrat in the garden today, with rows and rows of pots filled with the chocolate coloured samanu arranged on the floor. The huge copper pot had been washed and discarded on its side, to be hidden in an attic until next year. No roosari's were worn today, revealing disheveled hair, and limbs heavy from a long night of stirring. A feeling of satisfaction hung in the air, a good deed done, hopefully proving auspicious for the year ahead.

On getting the samanu home I finally had a little taste. I'd tried it before, and wasn't keen, but that was the store bought variety… of course the fresh stuff is better right? Wrong, as suspected it was disgusting, the kind of thing you only eat once a year. Doesn't matter.. .....someone enjoyed it.