<\/p>\n
Translated from Persian by Salar Abdoh<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n That autumn night, I lay quite still next to her. Her name I have forgotten. How is that possible? Though I remember the half-moon tattoo on her left breast and the fact that our connection had something to do with the emergency that is the permanent state of things here. Sometimes she\u2019d call in the wee hours of the morning and tell me she needed a warm body beside her. Sometimes it was me who called and said the same thing. We didn\u2019t say much beyond this to each other, ever.<\/p>\n But that night she was talkative. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter who is here. It\u2019s the loneliness. I want to reach out to you on those occasions, but I don\u2019t. Not as often as I\u2019d like. It\u2019s been three years with us, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n What she said was obvious, and sad. I was surprised, though. It was as if the violence on the streets, the demonstrations, made it so that what existed between us should only happen in silence \u2014 \u00ad\u00ad\u00adan unspoken contract that dictated that only our vulnerable bodies should speak, not our lips.<\/p>\n I asked, \u201cThen why not try to live with someone?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBecause that someone would have to love me first, or at least like me, before I decided to spend a life with them.\u201d<\/p>\n She was attractive. Obviously had money or a good job. Her apartment was spacious. And she seemed to know more than enough about life that she hardly needed to speak of such self-evident things. It dawned on me that we had not needed to like each other at first to come together. There was no jealousy between us. Now and then she\u2019d mention, in a mere sentence or two, other men who were occupying her life.<\/p>\n \u201cYou mean in these three years that we\u2019ve been seeing each other there was no one else who \u2026 liked you?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere was. There is. Trouble is, I have to like them too, no?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhy can\u2019t you like them?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI can. And I do. But then a man goes and says something that I\u2019ve heard before. The same sentence. The very same words. In that moment everything ends. You know why? Because the things people are able to say to each other are limited. When it turns out there are more people in your life than words to contain them, it gets hard to want to continue.\u201d<\/p>\n I had closed my eyes. Now I opened them and saw that her face was shining in the moonlight coming through the window. Across the street, the remnants of yesterday\u2019s broken windows and tear gas were about to become memory.<\/p>\n I said, \u201cIt\u2019s true. Words start to dwindle. That\u2019s why we get lonely. Not just solitary, but lonely.\u201d<\/p>\n She pressed her fingers into the white hairs of my chest. \u201cWhen I was nineteen all I wanted was a regular guy, one who went to work in the morning and came back in the afternoon. A husband. At twenty-five I wanted a man who didn\u2019t repeat himself. Someone whose presence didn\u2019t dumb me down. A partner who didn\u2019t crush my own aspirations with their smallness. At twenty-seven I wanted faithfulness, a man whose body didn\u2019t reek of other women. When I turned twenty-nine my preoccupation was love. Thirty made me long for someone who wasn\u2019t jealous, someone who didn\u2019t imagine things, someone confident in our bond. Then, at thirty-two \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAt thirty-two?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI just wanted to be alone.\u201d<\/p>\n I continued to gaze at her in wonder. \u201cNow what do you desire?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNow I\u2019m scared of being alone sometimes. Sometimes I want an embrace in the dark. What I don\u2019t want is to wake up in the morning and see a stranger lying next to me, his face brushing against mine. I want him to arrive when it\u2019s pitch-dark and leave before it gets light.\u201d<\/p>\n We made love after that. To this day I cannot even recall if it ended between us on a sour note or not. I doubt that it did. One day I braved the tear gas and the burning streets and came to her house, and she was no longer there \u2014 even though I\u2019d long turned into that man who arrives in the dark and leaves before sunlight.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Away from prying eyes, two lonely people pass time together under the state of emergency that has become Iran.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":254,"featured_media":27116,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,2774],"tags":[867,2795,2794,2796,2793],"article-category":[],"article-type":[],"coauthors":[1882,2126],"class_list":["post-27084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","category-tmr-33-stories-from-the-markaz","tag-iran","tag-iranian-fiction","tag-love-story","tag-state-of-emergency","tag-tehran-protests"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n