Chapter Nine---Abstraction

That monstrous evil, that unjust fear, the dying,
That daring love, more fearless and bolder than a reason!
Pouring rain frightens the earth, oh, that crying!
But stone delightfully smiles in that rainy season.

Why can't we find the stars at night?
Why only a seaman can see where they lead?
For us, stars are beauty and delight.
To them, is study, a life and deed.

In daybreak the sun brings tears with its fire.
It carries an honorable, glowing redness on its wing.
At dark-fall our souls long a desire
When the stars smile like a king.

Each person's life comes with poison and benediction.
I can drink the poison, if the person is a friend;
And I only taste sweetness, abstraction,
A clear taste of sun and stars to the end.
*
For New Year's eve, Anna's eighteen birthday, she accepted her brother's invitation to go out and have fun; to see how Americans celebrate the New Year, so she could compare it with the celebration of the New Year (Nourouz) in Iran on the first day of spring. Marianna and her boyfriend were invited, too, and they joined them.
They had dinner at the restaurant Aria worked. Aria insisted that his sister drink wine, so she did. It was the first time. Before the dinner was over, Aria was drunk. He had started with wine and switched to vodka. Anna did not like what she saw. She had never seen her brother this way. She did not know how to stop him. He acted silly and talked nonsense with a lot of gesticulating with his body and hands.
In the lady's room, she broke into a sob. Her friend, Marianna, was there, too.
"I know why you're crying! It's for the way your brother acting, isn't it?"
Anna looked at Marianna through the mist of her rainy eyes. "I can't recognize him tonight."
"I don't think he is over Rosy yet." Her friend offered.
"You think that is why he is drinking like this?"
"Yes, sure. What else can it be?" Marianna suggested.
"God dammed Rosy. See what she had done to Aria?"
"Don't blame her. Your brother fell for her. There are many girls like Rosy out there. They can be very charming!"
"You're right. What am I going to do?" Anna babbled.
"You can't do anything. He is an adult."
"I wonder if he drinks at home, too!"
"You have the key to his apartment. Why don't you find out?" Marianna's suggestion seemed logical.
"I'm scared to find out. I have a feeling..." Anna could not continue.
"Listen Anna, it is New Year and your birthday. Try to enjoy yourself tonight. We think of something."
"How can I enjoy myself? Oh Marianna, what am I going to do?"
"Just pray and hope!" Marianna's response seemed shallow.
"Pray! Pray to what? I don't believe in praying." Anna was not sure about her belief.
" If you did you would be much more at ease and peace."
"But I don't."
"I understand. Lets go back to our table. We talk more tomorrow."
A few days later, it was a day of reckoning. Anna's recent confusion for her own life had stopped her temporary to watch her brother. In his apartment not only she found full and empty bottles of vodka, she also came across many signs of women that perhaps had been with his brother. His place was so untidy that she did not know how to start cleaning. Dirty and clean clothes were piled up all over his place. But none of those broke her resilience more than discovering that there were no books or sign of a student living there. How could she be so naive, so ignorant, and so involved in her own world that did not even realized that her brother had quited school? What was happening to him, to that motivated, intelligent young man, who wanted to become a medical doctor, who had gotten scholarship?

To be continued