Arrival

Landed in Tehran's Mehrabad Airport on Monday 23 July 2007 at 1.30 am, seven years to the day we returned to London after three years in Tehran. Why do I have the feeling I have already seen this film?
The children, Athena (14) and Yusef (12), had already flown to Tehran two and a half weeks before us. Nobody was waiting for us this time; all the previous times Hossein's father, Haj Nasser (God rest his soul) came to meet us and take us home in his decrepit pick-up truck. All that was left of the doors was the metal body; the interior upholstery of the door had long since fallen off, leaving the springs of the opening mechanism and the window handle exposed. That truck was his trade-mark; he could be traced through the location of the truck. Under the replacement scheme of new-for-old vehicles, this truck was exchanged for a brand new pick-up truck last year. But Haj Nasser doesn't need it any more.