Sometimes, they come for the excellent belly dancer, there mainly to attract rich businessmen - even belly-dancing is not Persian and the dancer is English. They are Persians, says Reza, who is 19, confident and clever: "If you say Iranian, they all think terrorists, or those women dressed like they are in mourning, or that stupid fatwa You have to explain yourself If we say we are Persian, the images are different It is One Thousand and One Nights, Omar Khayyam. Besides the fragrant rice and meat platters, there are exquisite paintings and statues of villagers, books with poetry and pictures of old Iranian cities, and a hand-painted tiled oven.It is a place that draws many young Iranians Most were toddlers when their parents fled They don't feel British; nor Iranian either. Everything else smells, looks and tastes like Iran, I am told by the Iranian customers who fill the place on a Sunday afternoon.

Little black fish swim and bump frequently into watermelons lying in the water I presume that they are some poetic cultural symbol. Hassan laughs: "It is to keep them cool, like we did in Iran, in the rivers." In another fish tank, curiously, an enormous green-haired plastic troll keeps guard. And so this place represents the stuff of his fantasies.At the front of the cafe is a DIY plastic pond (money is not freely available even to dreamers) and a fountain. His heart is still there, but safely nestled in a time and place before the megalomaniac Shah and the cruel Imams caused such devastation. Roberto tells them with passion: "You politicos don't understand - we also suffer for Colombia."And it is that pain which they say makes them turn to strong food and drink, the sleepless nights when they dance salsa till they drop - usually at Bilongos in North London, in a beautiful ballroom where formality helps to rein in the sensuality of the dancers, turning the plainest of them into the most intensely desirable creatures on earth.La Piragua Colombian Cafe, 176, Upper St, Islington London N1; Bilongos Latin Club, 6-9 Salisbury Promenade, Green Lanes, London N8Persians, poets, plastic pondsHassan, who runs this extraordinary cafe in downbeat West Ealing, spills over with natural warmth He came after the Iranian Revolution in 1980.