Neda had a passionate entreaty for death; but she knew and hoped the craving she had to part life, which she also loved, would make it more difficult to achieve. She knew she could not end her life on her own. After all she did not want the entire world to know about her secret, her daughter! She did not want to please Mansour and Mitra that she was gone for ever, that she was no more. She did not want Aria, her nephew, who looked like a man now, to think of her aunt as something different not what he had pictured all his fourteen years of life! She did not want her mother to suffer, even though she only suffered for herself. She did not want that the spirit of the old, frail doctor, under earth, to blame himself for her death and to hurt even in his death. She did not want the spirit of her father to agonize for what he had done to her; and above all, Sohrab, Maryam, and Kasra, yes, kasra, the good, aging, fateful friend of almost eighteen years, the one, who had stood by her and her mood swing, in good and bad days for ever, who knew more about her than herself, to grieve for ever because she liked herself so much to tolerate her pain and was so tired of life and could not take it any more!!!!!
She had desired and pictured a scene with her daughter for so many years that she had memorized that display. Now those settings came to her in dreams. Every night when she went to bed, she prepared herself for a dream, a glimpse of Ariana; as if she had gained a power of mind to dream about what ever she wanted. Or perhaps she was not dreaming at all, but hallucinating, or making up those dreams.
When all these had started, she had no idea that they would have such an impact on her, so powerful, so merciless. When she woke up every morning, if she slept at all, in her lonely bed, for a long time she could not understand why she was sitting on her bed, why she was shaking, why she was all sweaty, why she was so frightened! She felt cold, hot, wet, shivering, all the things that they did not go with each other. "Yes, it's all over now. I'll always be alone... I 'll never see Ariana!"
She would stare at the clock. Every morning at five as if some divine power had programmed her mind to wake up.
The dream she had had the night before Ariana called her was about good byes. She was surprised at the change of tone, of not being condemned. " Ariana, Ariana..." She almost cried in her dream. "Why good bye, where are you going?" But her daughter was silent. It appeared that Ariana did not know what to say to her mother. She always saw her faceless; like seeing a person with the head of a mannequin. No hair, nose, eyes, lips, cheeks, nothing. Why was God punishing her? Why didn't he show her Ariana's face?
To Be continued
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