The only room this way – Part 3
I give him my mouth and he pushes me down onto the mattress. I tell him things to encourage him. I whisper his name and
I give him my mouth and he pushes me down onto the mattress. I tell him things to encourage him. I whisper his name and
“Joonam azizam” he whispers again, his voice coming out like a sigh. He rests his cheek against the slope of my neck and my hands
No one ever goes up the dark stairway in the corner. Mine is the only room this way. I sweep my own floors and make
Everything inside had been prepared for my own departure early the next morning. The pots I’d used to cook our last meal were washed and
It had been three and a half months since I last saw him. Looking back, it’s hard to say whether the time passed quickly. I
The flight numbers and Iranian cities on the display board shuffled and rearranged themselves so that it was now my time to board. I glanced
Yazd, Iran I woke up frightened. The speakers around me crackled and filled our wing with a wailing so long and high and
In London, my first meal of the day often came at 10 p.m.. My assistant Katrina and I would reach for my cheap, Chinese plastic
My shopping bags were beginning to cut into my wrists and I struggled to find space to set them down. It was cold and a
“Yesterday I had your dream and I dreamt that you were my wife,” Vahid said. “That you loved me the most and we were peaceful
We knew that we didn’t have very long to stay here, in one place. The peasant, village boys who made up the lower ranks of
Release came in small doses – in the shadows of the Harunieh mosque, in the twist of a passageway near my guesthouse, in those fleeting,
I’d been expecting Vahid’s phone call that he would be coming to Esfahan but when it came I was suddenly nervous. I tried to imagine the restrictions
A girl like me belonged in the kitchen and meanwhile my new guesthouse had paired me with their cook for a few days. Ali had a
“Yesterday I had your dream.” It was our fifth resting place in less than an hour – the riverbanks of the Zayand e Rood. A
Through my indulged, peripatetic lifestyle, I saw the huge gulf that had grown between me and my parents. I was salaried, desk-bound and lax while they toiled
At first, I’d marvelled at my new sense of importance. I had a desk. A digital phone. Not one but three flat screen monitors. Corporate
When I returned to Canada at the end of the year my mother – who had imagined that I’d subsisted on spaghetti and tuna fish
Cont’d. Our humble family ceremonies – eating salamis hung in the woodshed by my father, roasting slabs of bacon on sticks over the coals of the fireplace,
Growing up, my memories of the kitchen were of being ushered out of it by my mother. Frazzled from a long day at work but
“Yesterday, I had your dream.” He stretched out his long legs in front of him and his brown eyes were dark like coffee. He peeled
I felt conflicted and torn and drawn to him. In any other situation I would have enjoyed him with zeal and tenderness. It had nothing
‘Ask her how the police would behave in her country,’ he said sharply to Vahid motioning to me. ‘My cousin is free in her country,’
I could make out the silhouettes of four officers through the dark, tinted windows and as they opened the door I could see that they
The low sun was still intense and its heat burned into the navy fabric that covered my shoulders. “Maybe I should leave you alone for