FIVE
Departures are blue. Returns are estranging. The house used to be caring, loud, lively. The day after their famous house parties, she and mother would give out leftovers in identical topper wears, door by door. Sometimes they kept the gate half open so that passersby could grab free prepared meals on the go. Mother swore every time that the amount of food she cooked was according to guest numbers. But the house kept giving. The house was also sometimes sneaky, stealthy. But never vengeful until after that incident. You wouldn’t be able to tell how stubborn they were from their outlook. You wouldn’t know that they would decide to close their eyes and block the sunlight, sometimes for a whole week; or that they would burn mother’s stews for a whole month. One time the stove gave mother’s hand a second degree burnt. It was when she decided the fig tree had to go. After a week of the sounds of arguments bouncing back from wall to wall in the house, mother brought in a handyman and cut the fig tree’s trunk. That very day, the flames caught her hand in fire. The house could be ruthless at times.
The building resembled any other house built in the forties in Tehran. With a large green iron gate that opened onto a narrow alley in the old part of the city. The tall full windows with dark green frames were surrounded by a terrace that circled around the second floor. A massive yellow dog-rose bush had climbed up to the second floor. In the spring it would endow the terrace with countless fragrant miniature flowers that overflew from the rails onto the front yard like a golden waterfall. How she loved to burrow in the space between the bush and the rail, as if hiding in a tunnel of flowers. Especially when father was in a bad mood. His bad mood grew louder with time, took more space. It is awfully quiet without him here.
Sitting behind the kitchen table, she is waiting for mother and her plumber to arrive. She hasn’t yet bothered to step foot outside. Why would she? Tehran is even more estranging than the house. On her way from the airport, she noticed that Taxis aren’t orange anymore. Mantos aren’t tight and short, they have ankle length flowy shapes now. Tehran devours the soil around it. Redistributes energy to itself by redirecting resources. The dams. Damned dams that play god, deciding where the water streams, and which land to dry out.
Although she has not had the chance to bring the house back to life, not that she was considering it, she still feels calmer here than out in the urban wilderness. Who knows what awaits her on the other side of the green gate? A prolonged sanction war and many proxy wars later, she doesn’t even understand how the currency works anymore. Zeros in price tags boggle her brain. She recognizes that the house is a fixer upper at this point. Mother has warned her that the plumbing is the first and the last thing she will do for the house. She reminded her of the gravity of the house, of the heaviness of its mass. “It will suck you in you know.” She doesn’t think that’s possible.
