Why every time success and superficial happiness finds a way entering one's life, a fiery outburst also strives to take away that shadowy flicker? As Hana withers in her quiet rage and depression, she generates envy to an outsider, even though she has not changed her life style at all after the favorable outcome of her book. She still lives in that one bedroom apartment she got after Farhad left her. She recalls times that she had a hard time to even buy grocery because of the heavy debt that Hamid had accumulated with his traveling and drinking and... That is not the case anymore. Those days, she yearned to have money one day, now that she is well off, the money seems to be like dirt to her. She keeps enough for herself to pay rent and bills, ad send the rest of it to Italy to her son and daughter- in- law. In fact, by doing this, Farhad and Sylvie are able to concentrate more on their school and less on working.
In the shadow of her house, The solitary Hana, who at one point was full of electrifying energy, becomes a haunting pathos and of the past. The omen of her dead son provokes the last trace of pride that is left in her heart. Throughout her life, nature has always given her a joyous comfort; nevertheless, she can not even find exultation under the blue sky or tall trees in the park across from her apartment. Besides work, the park is as far as she goes these days. She refuses the invitation of her best friend, Valery, to spend time with her, or the concern of Sylvie's family especially Rita, her mother. When she goes out into the nature, under the azure sky and blue air, her face becomes damp, and only then she realizes that the sentence of her death must be carried out soon. If she has not done that yet, is only for one reason- what will Farhad feel when he hears about his mother's death? In the exasperated silence and fearful solitude, repentance and guilt incite her conscience. The image she has always had from herself, slowly fades away into a universe of uncertainly. The color of her face is a mournful glow of fall, color of her hair is a shivering overbearance of snow, and the color of her clothes are dismal obscurity of darkness.
There is only one more thing left for her to do- she wants to die in style not in perplexity. She wants her death to be announced for natural causes not suicide. How will she do it? How can she make herself so sick that no doctor can cure her? Or maybe an accidental death is a better choice! While thinking about a plan, she prepares a will. Everything goes to her son, Farhad, and any future royalty of her book also goes to him. She decides before coming with a plan of action, to burn all her writings. Those are her soul and spirit and must go with her; But she will do that on the last minute. A wave of nostalgia fills her ashen heart, the same heart that at one point resisted the most daily trauma of life's reality. She can not help a knot forming in her throat and as her eyes fill with tears, she smells once more the aroma of a cigar of one true man she loved. The urge to be with Mario again and to be intimate with him paralyzes her to the core of her gravity as she remembers him- a man who wanted to make her his queen. Her soul brightens for a moment with the nostalgia of her lost dreams, and suddenly she feels so cold, so tired, and so far away from the best memories of her life that she even wishes for ones that she recalls as the worst. Only then, she envisions that how much she has missed the smell of her mother's cooking when every evening she came home from work or school; and how much she has missed the smell of roses in the dusk in grandpa's garden, when she stayed there on weekends and holidays as a teenager to read him Shahnameh (The book of Kings). She remembers Behroz and their Secret Society and realizes how much she misses this one true friend she ever had which was also her uncle; therefore there was no objection from her parents for her to have a male friend. She visited him every evening after school. It was mostly him that introduced him to all these wonderful literature . She thinks about how he took his life. She thinks of his daring act. "If he could do it, I can, too."
To Be Continued
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