UNFulFILLED- Nineteen- ✍✍✍✍ The Birth

... she had the better bargain!.

In the midst of these exchanges of feelings between two friends, their reminiscences about love, romance, pleasure, their secret love affairs their parents did not know anything about; the morning became noon, and hours passed one after the other. Ariana got a phone call from her mother, Mitra. To answer her question if she was going home or not, she said:

"No, mom, I'm staying at Roya tonight."

"Don't stay mad at us, sweet heart. I have no role in any on this!" Mitra was telling the truth. She loved Ariana as if she had given birth to her herself.

"I know... It's always men that do these kind of things. I know that my grandfather and the doctor were involved, too. I've been to the hospital, and finally had gotten my hand on the real truth. I know you just went along; but you didn't have to. You still could have been my mother. I can't even go and scream at these men. My grandfather is dead, the doctor committed suicide. I've heard shortly before he killed himself my mother, I mean Neda, had visited him. I heard that they had a very long meeting. What do you think, mother? Isn't that a suspicious thing to you or not?"

Mitra was silent during the tirade of her daughter. Since the truth was revealed to her last week, Ariana had spent almost all her time at her friends. She had gone home during the day when she knew her parents were not home to pick up things. Now it was apparent that she was crying, that she was shameful. She truly did not have anything to say to her daughter, whose sadness and anger was uncontrollable.

After her mother's phone call, Roya asked her:

"Have you written any poems lately?"

"Yes, I wasn't writing for a while. But I write one after I found out about my real mother!"

"Do you have it with you? Do you want to read it for me?"

"No, I don't have it with me."

"Oh, I know you have photographic memory! Why don't you read it to me? You know I heard that Neda had a photographic memory, too. I read it somewhere."

" I know; It seems that we are very much alike in everything."

✎

"How do I tell the story of pain;

Sorrow on my pale face, or torrential rain?

When at night, all shadows are slave,

Tempestuous ocean is doomed in its own wave,

All protected obscurities in a center turn

Towards the hasty currents, so stern.

✎

In the lonely house of pain abides a poet's heart.

The essence of her poems remains so far apart.

At nights when the night at sea unfolds,

Its vision piles upon each other and scolds.

The Poet begins anther poem, nothing new.

She opens a different path, closes the view!"

✎

Kasra was not very far from a scene of another murder. People around him were saying that some one was shot. But there was no way of an emergency car, or an ambulance to reach to any wounded or killed. They were all left behind, stamped under feet of the crowd as though they were the leaves of autumn season on the ground. It did not matter that most of these dead and wounded had met their makers accidentally, for just being there; but these people who claimed they were Muslim, had forgotten the respect this religion had required for the dead. No, no, they still wanted to be part of this dirty history in making!

Kasra had a feeling that the "ANOTHER MURDER" was her Neda. He knew that a little more ahead there was something besides the riots, burning, destroying, speeches. His heart stopped beating. Somehow he felt that Neda was no more, that almost two decades of being in love with her had come to a screeching halt, or had just begun. But could love begin or end even with death?

When he finally pushed his way to the scene of murder, he saw some men were trying to revive Neda. He covered his face. It was a savage ending for a poet, who had gone through so much suffering. He knelt down in front of Neda's dead body. Somebody screamed from the top of the truck:

"Do you know her?"

Kasra raised his teary eyes and looked at the bearded man.

"Yes, she is my wife!"

"Then Take her away."

She was shot in the back. There was a big hole in front torso of her fragile body. The contents of her stomach were half inside and half splashed on the surface of the street. There was a pool of blood all around her! Kasra picked up the lifeless body and pushed his way through crowd. This time people opened a lane like a narrow alley for him to carry her. Neda'a belongings and part of her stomach stayed behind. He and she, finally together, looked like a wall of blood walking towards home.

To Be Continued