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It did not feel good to be so different from others and Shirin wished once more that she
was back home with her mother.

It was during lunch break, as she was sitting in the corner of the playground planning her
big escape back to Tehran, that a young boy approached little Shirin.

‘My name is Stephen,’ said the boy. ‘Would you like to share some of my milkshake with
me?’ And with that, the young boy offered Shirin his strawberry milkshake with a straw
in the top.

Shirin thought that the milkshake tasted amazing and had to stop herself from drinking
it all up.

‘Don’t pay any attention to the others. They are mean to me too sometimes. We don’t
have much money and they always laugh at me because they say I am poor and have
dirty clothes.’ Stephen looked down at his blazer and shoes and shrugged. ‘They’re not
dirty, they’re just old.’

The young boy suddenly broke into a big smile. ‘They are silly anyway. What do
they know!’

Shirin laughed because Stephen had a lovely smile and he also had a big strawberry
moustache from pulling out the straw of his milkshake and drinking straight from the
bottle, all down in one glug.

The young girl had to admit that she had never let other people’s opinions bother her

before, so why should she start now?
‘You’re right,’ she said, ‘what do they know anyway!’ And in exchange for giving her some
of his milkshake, Shirin pulled four pieces of baklava from her pocket and shared the

sweet pastries with her new friend.
‘I think your headscarf looks cool,’ said Stephen as he wolfed down a whole piece of

baklava in one go.
‘It is called a chador,’ Shirin told him.

The young boy rolled the words around in his mouth along with the sugary baklava.
‘Well it looks really cool,’ he said.

Suddenly, Stephen pulled his blazer up over his head so that he too wolfed: ate greedily
was wearing a kind of chador. Shirin had to laugh again as the boy
looked very funny indeed. She imagined that her mother and father would like Stephen

very much because he was a strong person and always looked on the bright side of life
which Shirin’s mother said was very important for people to do.

—Adapted from a personal experience

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