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But Shirin also remembered that her mother had always told her it was no use trying to
hide your true self from others, so Shirin wondered why her aunty chose to be in disguise
when in England.

London turned out to be a very strange place indeed. It rained every day for the first
week and Shirin did not think much of British summertime at all. She had trouble
understanding what people were saying even though she was told that her English was

very good. And it turned out that not just anybody could go and say hello to the Queen
in her big house, even though there must have been a hundred rooms in which to
welcome visitors and have tea.

The young girl was very disappointed in her new home and she missed her mother and
father and her friends. Even the food was different: it
was grey like the weather and seemed to come out of
boxes from the freezer, not like her mother’s loobia
polo with saffron, or crispy tah-deeg which was

colourful and delicious to eat.
When the day arrived for Shirin to go to her
new school, she was very nervous and tried

to convince her aunty that she was too sick
to get out of bed.

‘I don’t want to go,’ she protested. ‘I don’t
know anybody and people keep staring at
me!’

‘There are lots of girls at school who wear
a chador just like you, little one,’ said her
aunty. ‘I am sure you will make lots of
friends today, you just wait and see.’

But it did not go that way at all, not at
first. There were indeed other girls who
wore a chador, but they were all older

than Shirin and they refused to speak to
her. The girls in her own class pointed
and laughed. They all had light brown
hair or blonde hair and blue eyes, and
they did not want to make friends with

the new girl because she was different from loobia polo: an Iranian dish of rice and green beans
them and had dark skin and dark eyes and tahdeeg: a traditional Persian dish of pan-fried rice,
that is fluffy and buttery, and often includes saffron
wore a chador. protested: expressed an objection to something
blonde: pale or yellow/golden colour

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