At times I was afraid of seeing her again. Perhaps she was angry at something I had done and that was why she had gone away, or perhaps she would be monstrously changed into someone I could not recognize.

Then I thought, my father—others I loved—could disappear too, for no reason I would understand. Suddenly, without notice. I asked my father over and over, “Will you always stay with me?”

“Of course, of course,” he would say at first, reassuringly.

But finally my question became a nuisance, an obvious and ugly compulsion, like a tic. To make me stop, my father resorted to punishment. He hit me on the bottom with a dry branch. “Are you going to say that again, are you?” he asked with each blow. When I rose, sobbing, I saw his face flushed and twitching. He panted heavily. The punishment silenced me but I developed a dry, monotonous cough. My father again tried to stop me, this time in a different way. One with a white liquid and said, “I got this for you from the doctor. Take two tablespoons each time you cough.” I followed his instructions and the cough disappeared after a while. A few years later he told me that the liquid was just sugar water.

6

If only I could see my mother and talk to her, I thought. Maybe my cousin Simin could tell me something about her whereabouts.

The sky outside had turned to a deep gray where one star blinked. A few mosquitoes buzzed near the window. I slipped from my room and started for Simin’s house. The streets were awake and noisy. Young boys stood on street corners, talking. Music flowed out of cinemas. I zigzagged rapidly through the streets, somewhat calmed by the activity and the cool night air.

Lights winked like a row of yellow stars along Molavi Street, where Simin lived. Except for a small grocery store with several customers in it, the street was quiet and empty.

I knocked at Simin’s door and after a few moments it was opened. In the dim light I saw a little girl grinning at me. Her face was flat and unnaturally large with beady black eyes. From her small round shoulders, which were almost the continuation of a thick neck, two folds of flesh hung, instead of arms. She had an enlarged belly and tiny legs.

“Is Simin in? I’m her cousin, Feri.”

The folds of flesh on the little girl’s shoulders began to sway back and forth like fins as she said in a high, tinny voice, “I’ve heard so much about you. My mother talks about you all the time.”

My father had written something to me about this child, the victim of a drug Simin took during her pregnancy—thalidomide probably. At first, he wrote, the deformity had caused a lot of talk among the neighbors. It was God’s punishment for some sin, they said.