Page 70 - NEW_English_Spring 7

Now, read the story.
Shirin was still a relatively young girl when her parents sent her away from her home in
Tehran to live in a big city in England called London.

Shirin did not like the idea of going to live with her cousins in England, but her mother
told her, ‘It is best, little one. It is no longer safe here and you will have an exciting new

life in England and you will make all kinds of new friends.’
Little Shirin wanted to cry because she loved her mother and father very much and she
did not want to leave them. Also, she did not know her cousins at all. They had only

visited once and Shirin was too little to understand what they were saying because they
did not speak Farsi which Shirin thought was very strange indeed.

And so the day arrived and Shirin’s mother and father drove her to the airport where she
would be escorted onto the plane by her aunty.

‘I’m scared,’ said Shirin as her father and mother walked her to
the little booth where the man would look at her passport and
check her ticket.

‘How can you be scared?’ asked her father. ‘Aren’t you the
brave little girl who was never afraid when the bombs could be
heard dropping on the city? And aren’t you the girl who always
insisted that we take you to school every day even when the
other little girls were too afraid and stayed at home with

their parents?’

‘That’s different,’ said Shirin. ‘This is my home.’
Shirin’s mother knelt down beside the little girl
and hugged her and stroked her hair. She said

to her daughter: ‘I know that you will make us
proud, little one. And don’t you worry, soon
your father and I will come to England and
you can show us all of the things to see in
London. I bet you will be speaking English

even better than you do already and you can
teach me some new words.’
Shirin liked the idea of teaching her mother new words because Shirin thought that her

mother was the cleverest person in the whole wide world.
‘I suppose I could do that,’ said the little girl as her relatively: in comparison to

aunty took her hand and explained that it was time to Farsi: official language of Iran
escorted: accompanied someone
get onto the aeroplane before it flew off without them. insisted: demanded something forcefully

70