He always wore a suit. A slim cigar between his fingers, he would sit in the same corner of the Iranian restaurant he owned each evening, gazing out across the floor. His staff - I was one of them - worked through the night, and at 6.30am I would cycle home to Ealing in west London and sleep. I was 19.
Arabs and Iranians pit-stopped at the restaurant between visits to nightclubs and casinos. Some tipped, others tipped less. There was a smartly dressed guy who always had a coffee at about 1am. One night he left without paying. In the glance that he threw us was a plea that we wouldn’t chase him. He had always been a friend to the waiters. I wanted to tell him that I could slip him some cake alongside his coffee if he had no money. But now he’ll never know.
The boss taxed our tips. At the end of each night, he would cash up and, in his tired Persian drawl, say: “Fifty per cent house,” sliding the remainder towards three eager waiters. We split it into four - the 40 quid, that is - the last quarter going to the kitchen staff.
Yet though he treated others badly, the boss was always civil to me, and I enjoyed working there. It gave me an identity. I liked the people too: the young Italian waiters Franco and Niccolo (who was eventually fired for wearing trainers). And the parade of nocturnal urchins it was our job to serve: drunk foreign blondes with older men stuffed with cash, tourists, clubbers, can’t-get-laid rich boys on their way to whorehouses and on the way back, for a post-coital smoke and a coffee. “You have to try it,” one guy said. I remember the look of satisfaction on his face.
Regulars trickled in after 11pm and sat at the boss’s table until three. Some were his friends. One, a thin, dark-skinned man with a hoarse voice, never said much but always smoked after eating his koubideh (skewers of minced lamb with rice and tomato). Another, whose name I forget, used to order us about and was always complaining. I hated him. I saw him once, years later at a Farsi film in a cinema on Leicester Square. I wanted to kick him to the ground, but he was older than me, of another generation, and rules are rules.
One afternoon the man who did the flower arrangements turned up at the restaurant and asked for his money - 50 or 60 quid. He knew the boss wouldn’t be there - it was daylight outside. I knew why he’d come and gave him the cash.
“Why did you pay?” the boss demanded later. I’d seen him arrange the flowers, I said. “Farda!” he shouted. “Tomorrow! You should have said tomorrow.”
Jamal, a dishwasher from south Tehran, would come up to the bar from the kitchen for a smoke. His eyes, in a permanent wince, made him look cynical and tired. He was a bony chap, his hair greying, and his skin cratered. One day he looked at me. “What are you doing working here?” I did not know what to say. Weeks later I lost a new sweater from the staff cupboard.
A month or two after that I saw Jamal wearing it in the kitchen; it was bedraggled. Evidently, he’d avoided wearing it to work until it was barely recognisable. What could I say? As well as my sweater, Jamal wore a permanent snarl. In any case, he probably needed it more than I did.
Towards the end of my fifth month at the restaurant, the boss fined me ₤40 - a whole night’s wages, with tips, because I’d messed up a credit-card transaction. Here I was at 5am, paying for a mistake. Louis, I think that was his name, one of the regulars, offered me ₤5 to assuage my loss. He owned a club nearby, spoke with a French accent and had a big drinker’s nose. I refused the money, angry and indignant. “OK,” he said, “I don’t want to offend anyone.” So he invited me to his nightclub instead. “Bring a friend with you, and you can get in free.”
I took my friend Ali, who was always taking me to places. We turned up at Louis’s dive. The bouncers summoned him. Once he was sure one of us had paid the entry fee, we were in. That was his idea of generosity.
My boss’s only good quality, as far as I could discern, was that when a customer ordered orange juice, it had to be freshly squeezed. He couldn’t abide concentrate, and didn’t like the stuff in a carton. So even at our busiest times, we would make fresh juice. I liked this about him. It wasn’t enough to redeem his faults, but it was definitely a virtue.
Peyvand Khorsandi is the son of the exiled Iranian satirist Hadi Khorsandi. He gave up catering to take A-levels.
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