Heathrow airport always smells the same: rubber, tarmac. We soon reached home. SW13. Its air of quiet moderation. Semi-detached houses with magnolia trees. Pancake races round the duck pond. Every spring, cherry blossom. Leafy, suburban. We were the noisy foreigners. Thirteen days after Persian New year, No-rooz, we’d carry plates of wheatgrass down to the river and throw it in, to take the bad luck away, hoping no-one would notice or ask what we were doing. Little green islands floating towards the sea – Wapping, Greenwich, Tilbury.
