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In 1979, when Kamin Mohammadi was nine, she left revolutionary Iran with her mother and sister to live in London. Later, her father joined them. She remembers the confusion of a new life in exile, after a move that changed their lives radically

 I don't remember what kind of day it was in September 1979 when we returned home from the park to find my father waiting for us, whether the sun was shining or if it was raining. I do remember that it was before my 10th birthday, so it was early in the month. But that, I had already learned, was no guarantee of the weather. This refusal of the weather to reflect the season was one of the many things I had discovered about London in the three months we had been there alone: my mother, sister and me.

My father was still in Iran, putting our affairs in order, guarded by Kurdishpeshmerga in our house in Tehran. They had been put there by one of his nephews – a revolutionary but more loyal to the blood ties with his uncle than to the nascent revolution. Every day, my father had to dance a complicated dance to stay one step ahead of the vigilantes of the newly born Islamic republic who he knew would soon come looking for him. My father had got out just in time, taking a series of f... >>>