Odyssey... ~~25- Hesitation

Hana walked leisurely instead of walking up the M. street to T. Square and without knowing where the tour's next stop would be, soon she found herself in front of the branch office of the Ministry of Education. For the first time she noticed that the street and the building had not changed since her secret and only date with Saeid over sixteen years ago. She remembered that May day, as it was happening at that moment; when Saeid despondently had made her walk for hours. Retrospecting their desperate love, conversation, disappointment, and anger, gave Hana an ambiguous hesitation about life and purpose of it. The skeletonized trees without leaves became her awareness that for every beginning there was an end. When on that May day, two young, hopeless lovers had walked on that street, absorbed the fresh air, watched the exuberant green trees, had shaped like a green canopy in the middle of the street, and hoped for a future together, their youth had induced them that they had been above and beyond all the obstacles of their intolerable families and society. But how soon they both had realized their difficult climb to that goal! Saeid, who had not been able to cope with that excruciating reality, had ended his life, and traumatized Hana had married the worse man to punish herself for life.

The great anguish of being in a street that had buried all her hopes, made her to believe the cruelty and unfairness of life. That building became the graveyard of her career, as she remembered the day of her fleeing from it in that cold, snowy day, exactly one year ago, when she had been very close to get arrested. That street became her apprehension of all her lost hopes and dreams.

In the cemetery, she visited mom and dad, lying next to each other. Sitting on that frozen soil, the earth that had robbed two adorable people from her, who were her everything, she implored them for forgiveness and for the first time she told them how much she loved them and needed them. The auspices of her dead parents disturbed the last vestige of self worth that was left in her heart, but she confused it with an unexpected surge of stamina. Touching the earth, she cried peacefully and then she kissed that sacred soil: "I must go now. We're smuggling in a few days. I beg your angelic souls to watch over Farhad and Sam and me." She picked a fistful of earth and poured it into her glove to carry it with her where ever the destiny would take them.

She never knew where Saeid's grave was in that huge cemetery, and there was no way of her knowing it; nevertheless, she knew he was there, too. She rose from the earth and thirstily looked around that vast cemetery and tried to feel Saeid's presence. As she was walking aimlessly, a sudden shock trembled her when she saw Saeid, as he had always been to her. For the first time after his death, she saw him. For some strange and pure luck she had stumbled on his grave. He was not bloody or surrounded with fog, the way she had always dreamt about him; but he was whole and healthy looking. She extended her hand to touch him, but there was nothing to touch. They stood there looking at each other, and an electrifying thrill entered her body. However, she had enough time before Saeid dissipated in the mystified fog that was suddenly appearing to tell him:

"I've always loved you. Your love has remained in every cell of my body like a sweet dream. I beg your forgiveness, my darling. You ended your sweet life for me; but now you're in peace and tranquility and I am and have been in agony and torture. I'll promise my soul joins yours one day and we'll be together for ever."

All of the sudden, she felt a touch, a gentle one. It was his touch; and then the voice: "I got a better deal than you. I know about you, all of you."

Dallas

To Be Continued