“Once she bought each of us a pinwheel,” Simin said. “You broke yours and kept crying and we couldn’t find another one to buy for you so I purposely broke mine. That only made you cry harder.”

“Do you know where she’s living right now?” I hesitated and then went on. “My father told me that she had left him for another man.”

I could see contradictory emotions playing on Simin’s face. “I guess she did,” she said finally, her hands fidgeting over the fraying edge of the rug. “I don’t know where she is.”

I could taste my disappointment. “It doesn’t make sense that I wasn’t allowed to see her, or live with her part of the time.”

“I guess because of this other man ….”

“Can you really blame my mother for wanting to follow her feelings? It must have been a strong passion, devastating, for her to abandon everything, even her child.”

Simin bit her lips, lowered her eyes, and all she could say was, “May God forgive her for her sins.”

“Who was this other man anyway?”

“A young, handsome man who had worked in her father’s office and later, for a while, for your father. He was an accountant or something.” She rubbed her fingers on a stain on her blouse. “You became shy after she left.”

“I guess I was ashamed. I thought it could be my fault that she left, or that others would think it was my fault.”

Simin nodded.

“I wish I could see a picture of her,” I said.

“I may have one among the old pictures. I can go and see.”

She went inside again and I waited. When she came out carrying a bag full of photographs, I took them and looked at them one by one. Some were group or individual family pictures and some were just scenes—a cliff, a mountain, a particularly dramatic mass of clouds.

Simin pointed to two photographs, both of the same woman. “These are your mother.”

I looked at them closely. She was young and beautiful but her expression was quite different in the two pictures. In one she held onto the column of a porch, her head tilted back, laughing. The wind played in her heavy, coiling hair, making it whip around her face and neck. She seemed extremely happy at first glance, but as I looked more carefully I saw that her eyes were haunted, frightened.

In the other picture she sat on a rug, her legs stretched out, a book open on her lap. She wore a chador, covering most of her hair, and her eyes and face were expressionless. It was impossible to tell what emotion lay behind that mask of detachment.

My eyes filled with tears. “I couldn’t remember her face that well,” I said.

“Supposedly she was the prettiest girl on her street. She had many suitors but your grandparents selected your father for her. They said he had a head on his shoulders. I think they thought your father was wealthier than he was.” Her voice seemed to hang in the air. And then it was as if she was talking to herself. “I used to be pretty, too, remember? Now look at me. I’m a bag of sticks and bones.”