Dallas-
Now twenty years have passed from that fancied life and Hana still wishes for an imaginary friend here, in Dallas, so she can write or talk to him. Nevertheless, she is so involved in working, supporting her family, and raising her sons that she knows the impossibility of that unreal act. All she can do is to create those good people in her mind and communicate with them in her only free time which is in bed while she can not sleep, or driving while she can think. Her other- self, who has lived all these years within hers, and nobody knows about her but herself, this time is a woman. She had to create one just like herself. That could not have been a man. This other- self has gone through the same thing as her, who looks like her, talks like her, walks like her, and seems so real to her that sometimes when she is in that world, she is not sure which one is the real Hana. She if afraid other people may see her other- self; even though her other- self is a very strong woman, nothing like her, something that she wants to be and is not. The other day, the other-self told Hana that she wants to terminate this miserable marriage and change everything completely; however the overwhelming fear that has rooted in her from the first day of her marriage always obstructs her and she ends up not listening to her other- self.
Resting in bed, while she does not not know what her husband is doing at that moment, or even where he is, or how much he has drunk, since he is an alcoholic, or whether or not he is with another woman, she conjures up a particular summer.
Tehran-
Summer arrived with finishing school year. Children in that dead end alley played even noisier than before. Inside the house, everyone got on each other's nerves; and father had some kind of problem which Hand did not know what it was. Often times he and mom whispered and when any of children showed up, they stopped talking. It was Hana's fifteen birthday- too old to have children in her party and too young to know her father's trouble. Her other grandma, mom's mother, she called her good grandma, and her uncle Behroz, mom's youngest brother, were at her home for her birthday. She liked Behroz, her uncle from mother side. He was nothing like her other two uncles, from father side, whom they lived with them.
After blowing the candles on the cake, while every one singing Persian happy birthday song, she began opening her presents which all made her very angry- a dress, a blouse and a skirt, a pair of shoes, and her first perfume. The pungent odor of the cheap perfume gave her a headache. She liked the book Behroz gave her, THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, by Fydor Dostoyevsky, her favorite Russian author.
"Go on, put the dress on. Let me see how it fits." One grandma said.
"No, put the skirt and blouse on." The other grandma, as in competition, broke in harshly.
She was upset. She did not like any of those clothes; and she was not going to wear them.
"Okay, I try them." She surprised herself and took all her gifts to her room. She was not sure why she had agreed to try them on while she hated to model those ugly, old people clothes. But being a good, decent girl meant that she had to obey.
In her room, instinctively something struck her, she had to have a title for her nightly letters she was writing to her imaginary friend, Mesa. Pondering intensely, which meant a deep furrow between her eyebrows, she whispered: "To a Friend," no, that was very ordinary. Everyone could think of something like that. Unexpectedly, a lightening moved her, "THE TALES OF NIGHTS". She smiled slightly and was happy to find o right title for her nightly visit. She wrote down the title, being afraid of forgetting it while hearing a loud scream:
"Why does it take you so long. We want to see your clothes." It was the old shrewd grandma."
Hana ignored the call and wrote, "THE TALES OF MY NIGHT". She looked at it thoughtfully and then erased My and wrote THE and added S to Night. "TALES OF THE NIGHTS". She was pleased.
In the back yard, with the loose, ugly dress on that hanged down to her ankle, she felt like a clown.
"This is beautiful." The shrewd grandma said.
Hand looked at her mom while tears glistened in her eyes.
"Mom, I don't like this. It is too big, too long."
"Hush, don't you talk like this! Say thank you." Dad said in a possessive way.
The skirt and blouse were not any better than the dress.
"Thank you all; they're nice." She said those words to please her dad and then ran to her room with the book that Behroz had given her.
Dallas-
Thinking with exasperation, she discerns that the furrow between her eyebrows has deepened even more for all the unwanted things that she has lived to accept them.
To be Continued, Next Chapter, '"FALLING IN LOVE WITH DAD"
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