was the part that really surprised Amelia. There was nothing unusual about all the tales of war and betrayal. History was full of stories like that. And revolutions as well. But only fifty-nine years ago? The revolutions Amelia knew about, like the French Revolution, and the American Revolution, had happened hundreds of years ago. That was when history happened, long ago. Yet fifty-nine years . . . Fifty-nine years wasn’t that long. It was long, but not that long. There were plenty of people still alive who could remember things that happened fifty-nine years ago. Amelia’s Dee grandparents, on her father’s side, for example, and her Arbuckle grandparents on her mother’s side. Although her grandfather Arbuckle on her mother’s side had become very forgetful in the past couple of years and sometimes forgot Amelia’s name. When that happened, everyone laughed quickly and pretended he hadn’t really forgotten, and was just playing a game, but Amelia knew he really had forgotten, and every time she saw him he seemed to forget more. But Amelia knew that he was over eighty years old, and looked even older, so if his memory hadn’t got so bad he would easily have been able to remember what had happened fifty-nine years earlier.
And yet the history book spoke about the Irafian revolution just like any other revolution that had happened hundreds of years in the past. It gave the names of the family that had been removed from power, the Shan and Shanna – which were the titles the Irafians used for their king and queen – and their six children. The youngest was Princess Parvin. Parvin! There she was, in a book about history, just like some dead person. Yet she wasn’t some dead person from history. She was a live person who turned up, fifty-nine years later, in a fur coat over a green leotard to do yoga with Mr Vishwanath on the ground floor of Amelia’s house. She scowled and was haughty and then looked at a lamp and cried. And yet, at the same time, she was a person from history as well.
It made Amelia think of all the people she had heard about in history: Julius Caesar and Napoleon and Galileo and Captain Cook and Florence Nightingale and Christopher Columbus and Madame Curie and Joan of Arc. Suddenly she realised they weren’t really anything more than names to her. But they hadn’t been just names, not when they were alive. They had been real people, with real personalities. Some must have been nice, some nasty, some friendly, some prickly. They must have had real feelings. They must have laughed sometimes, and cried, and had foods they liked to eat and foods they couldn’t bear, and maybe they sang to themselves in the bath. When things happened to them – all the things that happened in history – they must have felt real pain, or real pleasure, just as Amelia herself felt when things happened to her.
What happened in the Irafian revolution, according to the book, was that the Shan didn’t want to allow the people to have any say in choosing who would be in the government. He wanted to choose the government himself. In fact, instead of allowing the people to have some choice, which might have kept them happy, he tried to take away even the small amount of choice they already had, and he became more and more brutal as the people resisted. It was complicated, and Amelia wasn’t sure she understood it all. There was also some kind of disagreement with officers in the army about the way the Shan was talking to the leaders of some other countries which they regarded as enemies. Eventually it all exploded in a revolution. A number of people died, and the Shan and the Shanna themselves might have been killed had they not been secretly spirited out of the country on a boat, together with their six children, by a loyal captain. They had no time to pack or prepare, and could take with them only what they could carry. When news spread that they had fled, the violence got even worse. Looting and riots broke out.
And yet the history book spoke about the Irafian revolution just like any other revolution that had happened hundreds of years in the past. It gave the names of the family that had been removed from power, the Shan and Shanna – which were the titles the Irafians used for their king and queen – and their six children. The youngest was Princess Parvin. Parvin! There she was, in a book about history, just like some dead person. Yet she wasn’t some dead person from history. She was a live person who turned up, fifty-nine years later, in a fur coat over a green leotard to do yoga with Mr Vishwanath on the ground floor of Amelia’s house. She scowled and was haughty and then looked at a lamp and cried. And yet, at the same time, she was a person from history as well.
It made Amelia think of all the people she had heard about in history: Julius Caesar and Napoleon and Galileo and Captain Cook and Florence Nightingale and Christopher Columbus and Madame Curie and Joan of Arc. Suddenly she realised they weren’t really anything more than names to her. But they hadn’t been just names, not when they were alive. They had been real people, with real personalities. Some must have been nice, some nasty, some friendly, some prickly. They must have had real feelings. They must have laughed sometimes, and cried, and had foods they liked to eat and foods they couldn’t bear, and maybe they sang to themselves in the bath. When things happened to them – all the things that happened in history – they must have felt real pain, or real pleasure, just as Amelia herself felt when things happened to her.
What happened in the Irafian revolution, according to the book, was that the Shan didn’t want to allow the people to have any say in choosing who would be in the government. He wanted to choose the government himself. In fact, instead of allowing the people to have some choice, which might have kept them happy, he tried to take away even the small amount of choice they already had, and he became more and more brutal as the people resisted. It was complicated, and Amelia wasn’t sure she understood it all. There was also some kind of disagreement with officers in the army about the way the Shan was talking to the leaders of some other countries which they regarded as enemies. Eventually it all exploded in a revolution. A number of people died, and the Shan and the Shanna themselves might have been killed had they not been secretly spirited out of the country on a boat, together with their six children, by a loyal captain. They had no time to pack or prepare, and could take with them only what they could carry. When news spread that they had fled, the violence got even worse. Looting and riots broke out.
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