"Why did it take you so long to write me? I thought I never hear from you. As smart as you are, I knew that by now you have found out about Hana and me; and I was waiting for your interrogation. Yes, it is true. I love your niece; I love her innocence, her purity, her intelligence, and the earth she stands on it. I can't live in a city that she also lives. If I can't see her, talk to her, be with her, and tell her that how much I love her, my life would be a narrow stream that never finds a way to an ocean."
A roaring cry stopped Hana from reading. The flood of tears wet the letter and the blue ink of the words ran like a stream; the same stream that would never reach the ocean. She got up from the chair and walked a few steps to bed. Kneeling down on the floor with the letter now on the bed, she tried to look through window to the mystery of the night. Then she tried to console her roaring emotion. After a few minutes, she sat on the edge of Behroz's bed, and began reading the rest of the letter.
"You're offering me help! what kind of help can you give me and Hana while we both know how predigest your parents are. How can you make them change the attitude that had rooted in them from generations before them? Can you help us to run away? Do you want us to do such thing? I don't think so. You can't even help yourself. Remember Lida! How she had to get away because of the way your brother treated her.
"My empty life is full of activities. With sublime and abject moments, I stay busy all day and everyday; and take a journey to unknown all night and every night. My life is an exasperated silence and a fearful solitude. The day I decided to join the army, I wanted to keep it that way; but now with your insistence, I am going to try one more time. I want to share my life with Hana. Fearing a life of doubt and revelation, I'll come to Tehran in the middle of August for two weeks. If things work out the way you have promised, which I doubt it, I quit the army and stay; if not, I am not sure what I will do. What you've written me has given me a hallucinated lucidity. Hoping for clarity, I'll see you soon."
Hana kissed the letter so many times that it began looking like a dirty handkerchief. A narrow gleam of hope enlightened her tortured heart. Wishing for a miracle in the middle of August, she left Behroz's home without saying good-bye to him or to her grandparents. The crumbled letter, wet of her tears, remained on the bed.
Dallas-
"Mom, why are you crying?" Sam's small hand touches Hana's wet face. She, not being sure of her surroundings, hugs her son vehemently. How much she wishes that Saeid was his children's father.
Kerman-
In the barrack, lying down on his bed, Saeid thought about a hope that looked so far, so faded, and so unreal that caused him to cover his face with a nostalgic squeal. The distraught vision brought him the memory of a pure, untouched, and serene love. Then he joined hand with Hana by a bond that was more solid than love- a common edge of conscience. Suffering a delusion, he felt more fear than pleasure. Wondering in terror, he did not know how he had gotten to that abyss of abandonment. The torrential downpour for the past three days made him shudder with the evidence that time was not passing but it was turning in a circle. The insomniac nights had tortured his soul to think with exasperation about the indelible solitude then and days to come...
To Be Continued
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