His beautiful prose. His beautiful face. Even his beautiful silence on the phone, when he was irritated and tense. The word beautiful doesn’t even apply to him anymore. That was for the early, middle, and late days when I believed he was an enlightened person, a defender of workers’ rights, of the oppressed—and I was one of them.
The sound of my typing fills the room. My fingers aren’t warm yet. It’s like they just came back from somewhere they shouldn’t have returned from.
Dad used to wake up at six in the morning, turn on the kettle, and make tea. From my room I could hear the gas lighter clicking and I’d go under the blanket. Early mornings he’d go to the market and buy fresh fruit and vegetables. With his tea he’d light a cigarette and drink and smoke slowly, with patience. Today, after God knows how long, I woke up at six. I made tea and went to the market and bought fresh cress and parsley. I set up a royal table and ate breakfast like a prince. Steam from the tea lands on my face and for a second everything becomes like before—then it stops being like before again.
The last time I told him I wake up in the morning thinking of him and go to sleep thinking of him, he shouted: immature sixteen, seventeen-year-old girl. He said our lifestyles are too different. I never asked him to become vegetarian. He chose not to eat meat himself and said it was the best thing. He started cooking lentils. Making eggplant stew. Stopped going to the Chaman restaurant near Niavaran Square—and even if he did go, he wouldn’t tell me, because I didn’t matter much to him, and he didn’t tell me things, important or unimportant.
His name was Iman. Someone from my past. He compared me in his mind to his ex-fiancée, Azi. Azi had a Cerato, an apartment in Zafaraniyeh, and a bottomless trust fund from her father, who was the CEO of a company full of power and connections. And me? I was 300,000 toman per article freelance work.
He used to take me to the Book Garden and I would listen to his stories. They were masterpieces. He did magic mushrooms and in his good trips he saw dances of light and color and leaves, and SoundCloud would play incredible music for us, and I would kiss his hand because I loved him so much.
Colored lights march behind my eyelids, even now when there is no light.
I bled through three seasons trying to bring him back into the relationship. Not irrationally. Not like he said, like an immature 16–17-year-old girl. I believed we were soulmates and in another world we had promised to find each other here too, not to let each other go. Because my close friend from that time, Miss Khoshbayaan, had a daughter named Azi, and his ex-fiancée was also named Azi Khoshbayaan. Because on one of my hikes in Darabad, a 31-year-old man with his same name, Iman, at the foot of the rocks, started talking to me and said he wanted to commit suicide and I stopped him. All these signs couldn’t be random. Francesc Miralles once said, “Synchronicities are always mysterious. They try to tell you something only you can interpret.”
I had dreamed we were together. He wore glasses. He told me I know I’m not what you want, but I want to bring you something you like. When I woke up I couldn’t remember what he gave me. My therapist said write your dreams in a dedicated notebook with dates. It strengthens intuition and later becomes a code to decipher.
I went to protests and chanted slogans and twice got bruises on my thigh from paintball. After a while it didn’t even matter to me if I died. Iman grew a beard and looked like the moon. Tonight is a full moon too. I used to say to him: is there anyone better than you? He liked it and thanked me. He said he’d take it as seventy-thirty and try his best to improve. Then he left me. I told him I didn’t lift you up so you could climb high and then throw me down from there.
I swallowed three lorazepams so I could go to his house and leave a bag of his keepsakes at his door. I was pacing at the entrance. My heart was pounding in my chest. He had said his mother and sister were coming to stay with him.
I dreamed we were very good together. He told me I was too busy to ask how you were. Are you okay?
I didn’t answer. I just looked at him.
Azi, his ex-fiancée, had started posting on Instagram. Flowers she got for Valentine’s Day, Nowruz Haft-Seen table, and a music video of herself dancing.
I told him: you did to me exactly what Azi did to you. He screamed, how dare I compare their love to what I felt. Last time I told him, if you had a ten-billion-toman car and a house in Elahiyeh, Azi would have married you two years ago and maybe you’d have a child by now. If Azi lived in Khani Abad or Shahr-e Rey, you wouldn’t want to marry her. That’s how small it is. That’s how anything except love it is. I typed it to him because on the phone he would just scream or hang up. And I wrote that you have a toxic, dominant masculinity in you, and thanks to your upbringing and your mother for that.
The big bag of books he had given me, Murakami’s short stories with a note on the first page that said, “In this meteor that was you, I hesitated for a brief moment, and you recurred a thousand years later.” the necklace and earrings he gave me for my birthday, the wooden tray, the films—all of it I left at his apartment door. Voices were coming from inside. Murmurs. Far away. My head was spinning. I was about to hit my head against the wall. I hid in the ruins at the end of his street so he wouldn’t come out and see me. A crescent moon above my head. Terrified like a dog. Two cats fighting over a piece of meat.
I went to the mountains. In rain, in heat, full moon, crescent moon. Three seasons passed and he didn’t come back. I never even knew whether he was with Azi, or had been with her and they broke up, or there was a third person, or whether he wanted the worst revenge on me.
Dad said I wish I would die. I wish I would wake up and see it was all a dream.
I told Iman: in sickness and in health, in poverty and wealth, let’s stay together. He shouted again: it’s too classical. Then he said, like, I want to go to Paris, what can you do about that? In the last conversation, I was the one who raised my voice a little and said do you mean how much money I have in my account? How much money do I have? And he screamed I should have blocked you from the beginning and I screamed back I’ll block you myself.
Since dad was diagnosed with lung cancer I don’t cry for Iman and my broken heart anymore. Today I didn’t cry. The night before and the night before that I did. Before that I don't remember.
I wanted to tell Iman that dad is in intensive care and the doctor said there’s no cure, only keeping him alive a bit longer—and he would talk to me about how his own father died of the same cancer.
Early morning at six I went into the living room. I saw dad sitting on the sofa, blood dripping from his nose. He said softly and innocently: I dreamed of mom, that we went on a trip together. The ambulance came. Dad firmly said I wish I would die. A few days later he died.
Iman never really loved me, even though he said: during the period I hated women I was with you. He never wanted to know me. To him I was a boring, undesirable girl who he eventually left.
I used to wear my best clothes on dates with him. Mostly blouse and skirt. He rarely complimented me. After we started dating again after ten years, I began drinking chicory and barberry water so my skin would glow. I wore my hair the way he liked it ten years ago. Showered, perfume, lotion—but it didn’t seem to matter, or he acted like it didn't. His conscious and unconscious obsession was Azi. Azi wasn’t even beautiful. Just rich and seductive and had monstera and pothos plants in her apartment. She painted and was CEO of her father’s company. Her last Instagram post was a painting titled “Regret.”
By late winter I had lost a few kilos and my pants kept falling off, but he didn’t notice. Dad had lost weight too. They were poking holes in his body everywhere, trying to find veins. Today they took him for an MRI and even under anesthesia his body kept shaking so badly they couldn't do it.
I once asked Iman on the phone what kind of girl he likes. I wanted to try to become that girl. In a terrifying tone full of pride he said: sorry, that’s too personal. My heart shattered into a thousand pieces. I told him I experienced something you didn’t. He didn’t care. He just wanted to hang up. I cried and couldn’t say it, and I never told him I had experienced longing.
Before dad went into ICU I hugged him and said are you upset with me? He said no, why would I be. He talked to me again, looked into my face. When I talked about my job and writing to the man in the next bed, a documentary filmmaker, he listened eagerly and joined the conversation. His hand was warm, short, like something slowly disappearing.
I haven't smoked for days. I don't even crave it. Only once I went to the backyard and smoked one of dad’s cigarettes and didn’t inhale, like I was smoking in his place. Dad had dreamed he wanted to smoke and was looking for matches.
My therapist said don’t call it leaving, call it staying in another form.
The last day dad was at home and unconscious he kept repeating like a mantra: Shiva is a good girl. Shiva is a good girl. Shiva is a good girl. His voice went in and out, from the walls.
My therapist said some names, if you repeat them enough, lose their meaning and become a distant sound without an owner anymore. The window was open and the curtain didn’t move.
He said nothing else. He looked out the window.
I told Iman: let’s hit the road. Let’s go somewhere new. Let’s make new beautiful memories. Let’s start over. Iman stayed silent. His hands were locked together, like he was holding something he didn’t want to drop.
Tonight is a full moon too.
Even though it’s past eleven at night I put on clothes and go downstairs.
I dreamed dad was okay. We were at the ChaiBar Cafe. I asked him, "How are you?" He smiled and said, "Ooooh," meaning absolutely wonderful. We held hands, as if after a long, long time, we had finally reached each other.
I only keep the cigarette until it burns to the end as if something remains in my hand that no longer has an owner.
My phone rings. No number. I turn it off. Go back upstairs. Lock the door.
Autumn 2023
