Anxieties from Across the Water

It was early September. The morning mist, like outspread remnants of silk, came from the green fields with a gentle breeze, passed over the hills and faded away in the sky.

A middle-aged woman was sitting in an armchair beside a window that opened onto a small garden with low hedges linking a mild incline to the hills and fields. She was listening to nature’s most magic symphony in the songs of robins, buntings, swallows, sparrows, and nightingales praising the rising sun, and in the ecstasy of that sacred tranquility, with the magic of a dream, she was stepping into the faraway years, the years of her youth. She had once directly encountered the field, the sky, and the silk of mist in those summers when she went with her parents to her aunt’s house in Kelardasht.¹ And now for a few long moments she found herself once more, swift footed and full of energy, in that lost paradise, which was like this quiet, peaceful village of Highworth near the town of Swindon. There, every morning the sun opened like a flower in the middle of the colourful silks of jugglers, and swarms of butterflies disappeared into the raspberry bushes. Grasshoppers in darting flight broke the crystal of the open air, and dragonflies with their quick leaps reflected with their small colourful wings the sunlight on the pool and the water lilies.

It had been a few days since she left hot, dusty Tehran with its heavy, polluted air and come to this corner of the world, to the house of her daughter Sadaf. Her son-in-law had been sent to the Far East by the company he was working for, and she was cherishing this sweet private time with Sadaf. It was a few years since the mother and daughter had seen each other. For the mother this felt like a few centuries. The first two days she was so excited and confused she couldn’t even speak properly.

Instead of talking, she had just looked around. Maybe she thought that if she started talking, she would wake from this wonderful dream. The daughter was quite excited, too. She had filled the whole sitting-room table with dishes of chocolates, cookies, and cakes, and yet every other moment she went to the kitchen to bring more sweets from the refrigerator and cupboards. The mother followed her around all the time, watching her every move, and the daughter urged her to go back to the room and sit down. She made tea for her, poured her coffee, sat down beside her and leaned her head against her mother’s shoulder with a sigh of satisfaction. She asked her about her father and the family, and the mother told her more about her father—he’s worn out, but even in this state he keeps working. The idea of taking a rest makes no sense to him. There is not a doctor in the world as dedicated. And she thought, He even forgets his wife and children! Otherwise, he would have agreed to come on this trip with me, after all my begging.

She never said these things to her daughter, though. She had not written to her daughter about her troubles. She didn’t want to worry her. Her daughter had completed her studies; now she was working full time in a laboratory, but she wanted to spend all her time with her mother as long as she was there. It was not possible. It was only two months since she had started work. After lots of begging, the laboratory head had given her a week’s vacation without pay, and the week had begun two days before her mother’s arrival. Those two days were spent getting the house ready for the joyous occasion. The remaining days passed like a carefree dream. The five days during which she didn’t have to wake up early, take a shower half asleep and get ready and rush through breakfast and go to work. Mother and daughter slept until ten, ten-thirty, and then ate a big breakfast, and then the daughter took her mother in her little car to show her the neighbourhood. She took her to the little market and showed her the few villages in the area; once they went to the town of Swindon, about half an hour’s drive from their house. That golden week had gone by like the wind.

When Sadaf woke up, she came out of her room very quietly, trying not to wake her mother, and when she saw her mother wide awake waiting for her at the breakfast table, surprised and embarrassed she said, “Mom, why did you wake up so early? The sun isn’t even completely up yet. And you got everything ready. You shouldn’t have. You should rest. Please, when I leave, go back to bed and don’t do anything. There is fried chicken in the fridge for lunch. And for dinner we’ll go to a restaurant. There is a beautiful Italian restaurant in our neighbourhood. I want to have dinner with you there. Promise me you won’t do the housework.”

And to reassure her daughter, the mother said, “All right, Sadaf dear, I promise. And please don’t worry about me. I’ll take good care of myself and won’t do a thing!”

About an hour later the daughter, like the first day she went to school, upset about leaving the house now filled with the scent of childhood, kissed her mother and left.

And now the woman was alone in front of the green farms that went on to the horizon and the large trees that, with their waves of colours, dark and light green, turquoise, silver and dark red, were emerging from the morning fog. And since autumn was coming, sometimes among these colourful waves, scattered trees with red and golden leaves rose like flames, and she watched them joyfully; just as during these few days she had watched her daughter walking, sitting, getting up, the light in her black eyes, her dimples when she laughed. During these days the daughter talked most of the time; she talked about her worries during the Iran—Iraq War and her separation from her parents, then about her present life and tranquillity, her husband Farrokh and their love, and she regretted that her parents hadn’t seen him. The mother had concluded that, contrary to her husband’s expectation that one day Sadaf and her husband would return to Iran, her daughter and son-in-law were properly settled in England, and it would be wrong to endanger that. She thought, I should convince Javad to get our things together and move here so that we can spend our last days with our children.

Before the trip she had argued many times with her husband, “I just can’t understand how you can be so indifferent. Sadaf got married, and you saw that I couldn’t get the damned visa from England and be at their wedding. You didn’t care. In no time she will have a kid, and once again I’ll be here, useless, without seeing my grandchild. I don’t want the same fate as my aunt. For years that poor woman cried because she wasn’t with her children. Her room was full of photographs of her son and daughter; their pictures in their graduation gowns, pictures of their weddings, then pictures of her grandchildren. Do you remember, every time someone went to see her, she would take them to her bedroom first and pick up the photographs from the shelves one by one, and tears would flow and she would say, ‘I know the pain of separation will kill me in the end.’ And that’s exactly what happened. She died surrounded by those photographs and never saw her children and grandchildren. It’s every mother’s natural right to see her children every once in a while, to touch them, to be present at the events of their lives, to see the births of her grandchildren. To be there for their first laugh, their first word, their first steps. How many years have I suffered. It’s been ten years since Sadaf has gone and I’ve seen her only once; five years ago, when I went to Italy to see Marjan. And my poor child had saved her money to come and see me and her sister. Back then it was impossible to get a visa for England, but now we can. If only you would agree, we could move there to live. I am miserable here.”

And the husband, upset, would say, “There you go again, Mina! You have become like a broken record. You talk as if they weren’t my children, as if I don’t want to see them. Frankly, I’m the one who should be tired of this life. I really have had enough of it. You just close your eyes and say, ‘Let’s move.’ You don’t think about anything. You don’t see the situation. There are a million problems. You know my degree is not from a European or American university, and it won’t be easy at all for me to find a job there. Besides, here is where I am needed. Here I have my own identity; I am a doctor. What would I do over there? Beg? Besides, suppose we could sell what we have and decide to go to England as you wish. And suppose they give us residency permits without difficulty. All right, what will you do about Marjan? Can she simply leave her school and come and live with us in England right next door to us? You know, you are driving me crazy. I just don’t know what else I should do. Sadaf said she wanted to go to England to study, and I said fine. Marjan said, ‘I want to study painting and I have to go to Italy’; I said fine. I worked day and night to pay for their schooling and their lives over there. What more do you want from me?”

Every time they reached this point, she got angry and said, “Whatever we have done was our duty. Besides, it’s been a year now since Sadaf got married and we haven’t sent her anything. Thank God her husband is educated and has a good job. My dear child is working too, and doesn’t need us. We really should thank our children for being so good and for having brought honour to us. Sadaf finished her studies, and God willing, Marjan will be done in couple of years and will start working and won’t need us anymore.”

Then the husband usually changed the subject and said, “That’s enough. You’re making me tired. You talk as if I were responsible for you being separated from your kids. As if I am in charge of the British Embassy and all the embassies in the world and specially ordered them not to give you a visa. In the six years since Marjan has gone to Italy you have travelled there twice at least. Where have I gone? Of course I have been traveling, too, but where? During the eight years of war, I travelled back and forth to the front, and I had a lot of fun! Besides, this past spring, if you hadn’t caught that damned pneumonia everything was ready for you to travel to England. You know what? The problem is that you decided for no reason to go on early retirement. If you had been busy these past five years, you would have been occupied with work and wouldn’t have bothered me without reason. But then again, I’m sure you would have found something else to accuse me of. The same way you treated your employees…”

And the woman would grow even angrier. “Please, Javad, don’t say that! Back then you didn’t understand my concerns as a human being, and you don’t understand them now either. When you, a doctor, don’t understand these pains, what can we expect from others? Oh my God…”

The couple continued to argue until the night before the woman’s departure. But at the airport when they checked in the luggage, they realized that in about one hour they would be separated from each other. Then they went and sat down on chairs next to each other and the woman looked at her husband and said, “You don’t know, Javad, how much I wanted you to be with me so we could see Sadaf and Marjan together. I will miss you a lot. Don’t you understand? You will be alone here. Please take care of yourself.”

And the husband said, “You have to be careful while you are there. Don’t worry about me. You will have time. Think about our life. Stop dreaming. Encourage Sadaf and Farrokh to come back. Farrokh’s roots are here. It’s true he has lost his parents, but he has lots of family here. Be strong and patient, and all our children will return.”

And now the woman, surprisingly calm, was sitting on the chair in front of the window and following her dreams. Suddenly the phone rang. Who could it be? Farrokh or Javad? It can’t be Farrokh. He called last night.

It was Sadaf, calling to make sure she was all right. Javad had called twice in the past five days but she didn’t know why she expected him to call. She looked at her watch: ten-thirty. In her mind she moved the time ahead three and a half hours and then realized that her expectation was unreasonable because during that time of day her husband would be quite busy in the hospital. She thought, What a wonderful dream. Now I am going to do the dishes and tidy up a bit. Then I’ll do the laundry that Sadaf means to do when she’s back. The poor child doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She says I shouldn’t do a thing, just wait for her to come back from work and do everything. The idea!

When she picked up the sheets to put them in the washing machine, she saw some patches on them and realized that Sadaf and her husband were being very careful with their finances, as was only right and proper. They were both young, and Farrokh had started working only three months ago. Her daughter had only been working for two months. Then she thought, these five days have added so much to their expenses. Then she felt a lump in her throat. And now she wants to take me to a restaurant tonight! Why? Only if she lets me pay for it. I know she won’t. In the past five days she hasn’t let me spend so much as a penny. This is not right. I have to plan ahead. I know she likes khoresh-e fesenjan.² And I have brought walnuts and pomegranate juice from Iran. Tonight, we’ll have rice and fesenjan. We will miss Javad. Sadaf and Javad love fesenjan; so does Marjan, but not as much as they do.

Then as she worked, the thought of her husband filled her mind. She remembered that a week before her trip, although she was busy buying souvenirs and every day she had to go to different places and stores in the city, she managed to find some time and buy a lot of food and prepare a few kinds of khoresh that she knew Javad liked, including fesenjan, and put them in plastic containers, one each for a meal, and put them in the freezer so her husband would have something to eat while she was not there. But when she told her husband proudly, “All you have to do is to take one of those containers and make a couple of cups of rice and you will have a delicious meal,” her husband said, laughing, “What were you thinking of? You haven’t yet arrived in England and you’ve already forgotten the situation here. Don’t you see that most of the time we are without power? What am I to do with these cooked khoreshes that every day are thawed and then refrozen? Don’t worry about my food. I am going to eat at the hospital while you’re not here. Tomorrow when the cleaning lady comes you should give her all this. You know what, you can unplug the freezer and give her whatever is inside.”

And the woman, annoyed, accepted the husband’s logic. The next day when she put all the food in a bag and gave it to Fatemeh Khanom³ and saw the light of happiness in her eyes, she forgot her fatigue and all the pains she had taken to prepare the food. Now she was thinking, what is Javad doing at night? With all those mosquitoes? I know when he is back from work, he is so tired he doesn’t have the patience to put up the mosquito net. I’m sure he sleeps inside. If he leaves the door and windows open the mosquitoes will drive him crazy. I’m sure he closes the door and windows and leaves the air conditioning on all night and puts up with the heavy, humid air. And still, he wants me to encourage the children to go back. No, this is not right. I wish a miracle had happened and he was with me on this trip. Even this short time, this wonderful weather and so much calm would have taken away the fatigue and pollution and the pain of years of fear and war.

When she had tidied up a bit, she put the rice in water so she could cook it in the afternoon. Then she went to the large living-room window again and joyfully looked outside. The leaves of the trees and the petals of the colourful dahlias and geraniums around the garden were flashing under the sun, as if the ground and air had been washed with light a thousand times. She looked at her watch; it was eleven-thirty. She thought now that she had the time she would go and work a bit in the garden. She had seen a few dead branches that had to be removed. Some of the flowers were withered and looked unpleasant among the green branches. She put on her sweater, looked for the gardening scissors and finally found them in one of the drawers in the kitchen. She took some matches with her to burn the withered flowers and dead branches so everything would look tidy. Then she went through the hall door that opened onto the backyard and garden.

In the midst of white, orange, red, and pink roses she saw one rose with a light velvety colour, the same colour as the jasmine’s gleanings, and once again she remembered how much her husband liked this colour. Many times, he had bought this flower and had planted it in the garden, and every time it had withered. How strange! Once more she wished a miracle had happened and her husband had come with her. She would have felt the pleasure of this trip much more deeply, without any guilt.

Very carefully she cut the dry branches and flowers. Patiently she picked a few branches of climbing passion flowers that had changed their direction and fallen onto the branches of the cypress, and put them back on the wall. Then she told herself, After I finish with the garden, I’ll make myself a coffee.

She remembered a few years ago, one afternoon in the month of Shahrivar ⁴, she had gone to see her husband at the hospital. Before entering the hospital, she saw a peddler selling cigarettes. He also had a few small jars of Nescafe. She fancied having coffee. She went ahead and asked the middle-aged man the price of one of the medium-size jars. The man looked at her up and down and in an almost offensive tone said, “Are you a doctor? An engineer?” And when she, startled, said, “Neither, and do we need a degree to ask the price of a jar of Nescafe?” The man objected insolently, “Then don’t meddle with me and my business. You cannot afford Nescafe.” And the feeling of being small, of being alienated, had hurt her so much that for two years she didn’t touch coffee. Later, when she told the story to her friend Simin who liked coffee a lot, she realized that coffee was quite expensive, and that her friend who loved coffee hadn’t been able to afford it for some time. One day three months ago Simin called her and said that her sister had asked a traveller coming from England to bring her two jars of Nescafe and invited her over for coffee and a chat. When she wanted to go back, Simin had insisted that she take one of the jars. Now she was feeling guilty that Simin wasn’t here so they could have a coffee together without even thinking about whether it was cheap or expensive.

She was still busy gathering the dead branches when she realized that her back no longer felt the warmth of the sun. She looked up and saw there were scraps of clouds in the sky, and a grey one had covered the sun. All of a sudden, a harsh wind came and she heard the sound of the building door closing. She rushed to the door and tried to open it and enter the building to get something warmer to wear. But it wouldn’t open. She couldn’t believe the door was locked. For a while she turned the handle vainly, in disbelief. Then she remembered detective movies and police and criminals who would use a pin or a card and open any lock with ease. She pulled a hairpin from her hair and tried to do likewise, but it was no use. Then she thought, I should find a strong, thin sheet of something. She looked everywhere, even under the flower bushes; finally, she found a thin sheet of iron at the end of the garden. She was happy and came back to the door. She inserted it in the crack of the door. She bent down and looked. She could see the lock’s bolt, which touched the iron sheet. But no matter how much she pressed nothing happened; the bolt didn’t move and the door didn’t open. She thought about trying the front door.

She thought, it is a good thing the backyard is connected to the front of the building. There was a two-meter space between this building and the one next door. Through this alleyway she went to the front of the building and examined the lock. First, she tried it with the hairpin. It didn’t work. Then she tried with the iron sheet. She was busy moving the sheet up and down in the crack when she heard footsteps, along with the sound of a wheel on the street. She raised her head and turned toward the sound and saw a middle-aged woman with her shopping cart in front of the building next door. From her surprised look it was clear she had been watching her for a while. All of a sudden, a weird feeling mixed with insecurity came over her. She lowered her head and rapidly went back to the yard. She told herself, It’s no use. The door doesn’t open. What should I do? What can I do until five-thirty when Sadaf gets back? There’s nothing to do. For now, I am going to finish my work in the garden. It’s a good thing I have some matches. I’m going to burn the dried branches and flowers at the end of the garden; that should make me warm, too.

Then, as she was busy carrying the dried branches and leaves and flowers, she heard the voice of a woman who was standing on the path between the two buildings saying, “Hello… I say… Hello… I say…” She was saying other things in a loud voice; words that didn’t make sense to her; she interpreted them as, “Hey, who are you? What are you doing over there? What have you come to this house for?”

Now she didn’t just have the strange feeling of insecurity. A flood of fear and terror was pouring into her heart. Her mouth was dry. Her face, her forehead, under her hair, her ears and her whole neck were completely red. She tried not to make any noise so that the woman would think that she had made a mistake to consider her a stranger and go away. She was so terrified that even the sound of the beating of her heart, which was going round and round in her ears, made her shiver with fear.

She told herself, for sure she thinks I’m a thief. Well, why shouldn’t she think so? She has seen with her own eyes that an odd-looking woman is playing with the lock. She thinks she’s caught me.

The feeling of shame, of smallness, of crime, however uncommitted, hurt her. She thought, how hard it is not knowing the language. If I knew English, I wouldn’t be so miserable now. God bless my father. He loved the French language and literature so much, so instead of English I studied a little French at school. Although I don’t remember much from what I studied back then, at least I could have made this woman understand that I am not a thief. And that this is my daughter’s house and I’ve locked myself out. It would have been good enough.

The fear had so taken her that she thought her thoughts were being spoken out loud. She wished she could stop thinking. For a while she stood there motionless and quiet as a stone; finally, after a few minutes, which lasted a few centuries for her, the woman’s voice stopped; instead, she heard the sound of the wheel and footsteps going away. Then she calmed down a little. Slowly she went to the end of the garden with the dried branches and leaves. She cut a few more dried branches from the trees at the end of the garden, placed them on the top of one another and tried to light a match. For a while she tried. There was a wind that prevented the flame from staying. A couple of times the branches caught fire, but the flame was so lifeless that even though she bent down and blew under the branches, nothing happened and the fire went out, and finally there were no matches left.

Now she was really cold. The wind was hitting her on the side; it seemed like it was going through her ribs; it made her shiver inside. She looked up. She could still see a bit of blue sky here and there, but that transparent, limpid, total blue was gone now. She looked everywhere but found no shelter to protect her from the cold. The problem with all these villas was that their structures were all straight, not providing any form of cover. Although she was basically timid, she wished she had seen the neighbours once or twice before, or at least knew whether or not they were home, so that she could go there and knock, and tell them with body and sign language what had happened to her. But her daughter had mentioned that the neighbours on the left were a young couple who had gone on vacation to Greece for a week and the one on the right was an old woman whose nephew came to see her, but unfortunately, she had been sick for ten days and was in the hospital. Her daughter didn’t know any other neighbours because they hadn’t been here for long.

Miserable, she began walking in the garden and cursing herself. How could a normal woman of her age be so stupid? Poor Sadaf had given her the key yesterday. But she was so immersed in the pleasure of seeing her daughter that she had carelessly left the house without the key! Then she justified herself by thinking, who would have thought that that great weather and shining sun could change in less than an hour. Then she remembered that Sadaf had told her that on the north side their street turned directly onto a main avenue and at the corner there was a bus stop and it was less than three minutes away. She thought, I should go there. Then she remembered that she didn’t have a single penny. She was disappointed. If she had two pounds, she could at least take the bus and go to the town centre and spend her time in the shops to be safe from the cold. Despite her despair, she concluded that going to the bus stop, which might have a shelter, was better for her than her present situation.

She hurried. When she reached the street, she saw the same woman with her cart. Luckily her back was toward her and she didn’t see her; the same fear, even stronger, came upon her. She thought, for sure that woman is telling everyone in the neighbourhood that she is a thief. There was no other way. She hurried up and reached the bus stop and sat on the bench. The bus shelter had a roof, but it was open on both sides, and every time the wind rushed in, she felt cold and her muscles tensed. Fortunately, it was the middle of the day and there was nobody at the bus stop and there wasn’t any bus. This was the only thing that made her happy: that there wasn’t anyone to see her in this miserable situation with her slippers. She sat there for a while and busied herself with her thoughts.

She remembered her father, God bless his soul, and the day she was on her way back from visiting him at the hospital. Father was going through the last days of his life, in such pain. He had cancer. The war wasn’t over yet. Her husband was working at the front and she was alone with the fear of him being far away, fear of bombing and missiles, fear of general chaos, fear of losing her father and of separation from her children. That day she was sadder and more anxious than any other day. When she got off the bus she tried to cross the street in the middle of the taxis, buses, and other traffic. She hadn’t gone more than a few steps when she saw a young woman facing her from a distance who had covered herself head to toe with a black chador and scarf and was arguing with an imaginary person. She thought, What times; even young people have so many stress-related problems. She was busy sympathizing with young people when another young woman exactly like the first one joined the scene and then the two of them came over to her. The first one said with a strange hatred and in an insulting tone, “Cover yourself, woman! How did you come out of doors like this!” Her hand involuntarily went up to her forehead and touched her scarf, and when she realized that not even one hair was out, she was frozen like someone who has suddenly received a blow to the head. She stood there, confused and surprised. The first one yelled again, “Why don’t you listen? Didn’t I tell you to cover yourself? Slut! Why do you think every day one of our Umma⁵ is being martyred? So that you and people like you can go around like this? Have you no shame? You have reached this age and still don’t give up such corruption? My God, look how shameless she is. She is staring at me! Don’t you realise your neck is exposed?”

That was when she came to herself. The whole world turned upside down in her head. It was as if an earthquake, a storm, had scattered every part of her existence. She carried her hands toward her neck and brought back the two sides of her scarf, which had been blown back because of the wind and tucked them inside the collar of her manteau⁶. Then suddenly her face was covered with tears. Like a hunted animal looking innocently at the hunter, she gave the second woman a long look. The second one, who had probably understood the meaning of her look, with a touch of compassion yet also afraid of the first one, said, “Why are you so unhappy, mother? Why are you crying? You had to be guided, so you were. What are you waiting for? You can go wherever you wanted to go. Go on, mother”. And then when the woman saw that she was about to fall down she took her arm and walked with her a few steps and leaned her against the wall of a shop.

Sobbing, she said, “That’s it! I should go! Where can I go? I have no place to go anymore. I just want the ground to open up and swallow me. I am tired. Tired of being alive, of breathing. I am ashamed of being alive. I am not alive. This woman told me—I who am as old as her mother! —every single terrible thing, and as ‘guidance’ took every ounce of desire for life from me and walked over my dead body. What strange times! What children we have!”

This event was so bitter and catastrophic that she didn’t want to remember it anymore. But now at this bus stop, in this strange land, in spite of herself she remembered it and told herself, Although I suffered that day, at least that was my own country; I could understand the language and the look of the people.

Then she remembered the day she went to the national retirement bureau to pick up the official letter of her employment status. She came back home at two-thirty in the afternoon, tired and hungry, with no success. When she arrived home, she looked for the key in her purse but didn’t find it. Very naturally and quite at ease she went to the neighbour’s house and knocked. Behjat Khanom had welcomed her very amiably and happily, and had even joked, “Dear Mina, you don’t know how happy I am that you have forgotten your key! I suppose such things happen so that you come to our house! You don’t know how much I have missed you. Come in and call your husband first so if he calls home, he won’t be worried.”

After talking to her husband over the phone, Mina realized that Bahjat Khanom had prepared a bowl of ash-e reshteh⁷ with kashk⁸ and hot mint, a dish of cutlets and one of vegetables, and a salad and had put them on the table. That afternoon Mina ate with a good appetite, and after that they sat and chatted. Mina talked about her children being away and Bahjat Khanom talked about her husband who was chasing other women; apparently, according to what she had heard, he had taken a sigheh⁹as well.

Then she remembered the war when her husband was away at the front; how every time they announced the possibility of air raids, this Bahjat Khanom, and sometimes other neighbours, with such compassion and sense of responsibility, would come to her house. If there was time, they would go to Bahjat Khanom’s garage, and if there wasn’t enough time they would stay with her, taking refuge under the staircase or under the dining table until the end of the raid, so she wouldn’t be alone. Remembering all that compassion and friendship now, her heart was wrung and she felt guilty. Perhaps she had the same feelings that Adam and Eve had when they were driven out of Paradise after eating the forbidden fruit. In her heart she cursed and blamed herself: Oh, how wonderful are the honesty and friendship you find in your own homeland. You cannot forget these things. Over there, good and bad belong to you. But when you don’t belong somewhere, you are small and without refuge. You have no security. By now that lady has probably reported me to the whole neighbourhood, maybe even to the police. Maybe a policeman is even now waiting for me in front of the door. What a scandal! Oh, I have given my child a bad reputation. No, I won’t wish Javad had come on this trip with me anymore!

A bus stopped in front of the station. A few ten- or eleven- year-old girls in school uniforms and an old couple got off. The driver didn’t take off right away. He waited for a while so she would get on, but when he saw her hunched up in a corner of the bench, he drove off. The woman looked at her watch. It was four-fifteen in the afternoon. The wind was blowing faster now and was rapidly bringing black rain clouds over the horizon to her daughter’s neighbourhood. She was feeling very cold. She couldn’t sit there anymore. She had to leave. She came out of the bus stop and started walking in the direction opposite the bus, which she knew was the way her daughter would come. She thought she could reach the intersection and the phone booth before the rain started. True, she had no money to call her daughter, nor did she know her work number, but she could stay in the booth and, with her weak lungs, be safe from pneumonia until her daughter’s car passed the booth.

A few minutes after she entered the booth, the rain started. What a downpour! It was raining fiercely; the drops, big as marbles, hit the ground and scattered. Earth and sky were shaking with the roar of thunder, and the iron gratings of the sewers were pulling the flood inside along with the pleasure of the morning mist, the sunrise, the peace and quiet of the hills and all the magic of newly-regained paradise. In the midst of that misery, she was happy only because she had found this shelter in time.

When Sadaf left the laboratory and set out for home she was filled with happiness once she remembered that when she arrived, the home would be full of her mother’s warmth. Since the day her mother came, whenever she thought of Farrokh and missed him, she told herself, it’s great that Mum is here and I’m not alone.

The one thing that bothered her was this downpour, which was not at all well-timed and prevented her from driving at her usual speed. She had to drive cautiously. The minutes were like hours. When she turned off the main avenue into the small street suddenly, she saw from behind the windscreen and rain the silhouette of a woman the same age and figure of her mother who came out of the phone booth and waved her hand over and over and signalled her to stop. Hesitantly she put her foot on the brake and stopped the car. It took her a few seconds to believe that this middle-aged woman, pale and dishevelled, tired and soaking wet, was her mother!

When they arrived home, Sadaf, after she had heard what her mother had gone through, was crying and thinking that all the years of living in fear and insecurity had made her mother weak and tired. She helped her change her clothes and then sleep on the sofa in the living room in front of the television. She brought her a hot water bottle and a blanket, wrapped the bottle in a towel and gave it to her mother. Then she began stroking her hair and kissing her. And the mother pressed the daughter to her bosom and said, “Sadaf, dear, don’t worry. It’s nothing. I’m just a bit cold. I’ll be fine in half an hour.”

The doorbell rang. Sadaf got up and went to the door. The mother heard her talking with a woman in English. If it weren’t for the occasional laughter in the midst of their conversation, she would have become quite worried again. When they had finished talking and Sadaf shut the door and came back, before allowing the mother to ask a question she said, “You see, Mum? I was right. You imagined all those things for no reason. That was the same woman you thought took you for a thief and reported you to the neighbours and the police. She’s in charge of delivering the local paper. She came by because she was worried about you. She said yesterday when we were getting in the car, she saw us and waved to us but we were so busy talking we didn’t notice. She said she could guess you were my mother because we look alike. She said she tried hard to help you. She was very unhappy she wasn’t able to help you. She asked after you, and she says hello.”

The mother, confused, looked at her daughter for a while. Then a teardrop rested in her eye; she sighed with satisfaction and said, “Sadaf, dear, don’t forget to give her a box of pistachios and a box of nougat from me tomorrow.”

Then, as she lay on the sofa, she looked at the large window facing the garden. There was no trace of the paradise of those youthful days. It was drizzling, and the sky was completely grey.

The End

London, 1995