They fought with the Allies and were invited to come here in 1949. Their grandchildren were born here, but the Polish centre in Hammersmith is still thriving. Here, Marak, the chef, serves up authentic Polish food to all those who cannot forget where they came from. He laughs: "They love the food and try to believe that they are not going to put on weight if they eat Polish cakes or potato dumplings."I sit with four effusive, retired men: Boleslaw, Zbyszek, Janusz and Hampel. "I look at those pictures of Isfahan, I read Hafez, an old poet, and the ghost that lives inside me stirs. I don't know why I love it so much." The Moroccan writer Fatima Mernissi describes this as a drift of the hopeless towards the only area where "phantasms can flourish, toward the past."Ba Ba Iranian Cafe, 222 Uxbridge Road, London W13Poles apartThey've been here for over half a century.

Nargis describes village hospitality, but adds: "They're also naive; they can be fooled by anyone too nice, a bit like my father." Nargis and her brother Sayid have turned to Sufism to find inner peace and sense of identity For Reza and others it comes through art. They don't want to be part of the (British) in-crowd, says Nargis, Hassan's teenage daughter: "There is too much pressure in the club scene, to smoke, do dope." The parents, too, are happier that their children mix with their own.They still miss the fruit, the air and even the water. That's the culture I want to follow."So they come here, to drink tea from the lovely brass samovars, to look at the books, dance to Iranian music. 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.