“Are you Zienab Khanom?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“I’m looking for Banoo Khanom. I wonder if you could tell me where she lives.”

“She doesn’t live in Teheran any more.” She stared at me with curiosity. “She’s been living in Kashan for years.”

“Do you have her address? I’m her daughter.”

She looked confused for an instant and then said excitedly, “Her daughter! My god, you must be Feri.”

“I’ve been away for many years.”

“You wouldn’t remember me. You were very little when your mother brought you here for visits. Come in, come in now.”

I followed her into the hallway. She hugged and kissed me and said, “I can’t believe it! After all these years!”

We went to the courtyard which was small and shaded by overgrown trees. A worn-out rug was spread by a pool of water. Melon seeds and bits of bread lay scattered on the ground. She pointed to me to sit on the rug, then went down into a basement and came back with a samovar, a tea pot and two glasses. The samovar was already lit. She filled the tea pot with hot water from the samovar and set it on top to heat. Then she sat also, her legs crossed, her hands folded on her lap. A young girl opened the doors of a room, looked at me with curiosity and shut the doors again. A small child, sucking on a pacifier, stood in a doorway of another room, staring at me.

“Once your mother brought you here and you kept running around, trying to catch a bird. You were stung by a bee. Your mother held your finger and sucked it where it had been stung,” Zeinab said.

“What’s she doing in Kashan?” I knew Kashan was an ancient town with ruins and clay houses.

“It was her fate to get stranded in a strange city, away from her relatives. But luckily her brother is with her. Do you remember your uncle Mohammed?”

“Yes,” I said, “Vaguely.”

She reached out and touched my cheek. “You must have gone through so much but your poor mother did too. She used to go back to your house, hoping to have a glimpse of you. Then she came here and stayed with me for a while and all she talked about was how she wanted to die. She would open the door to the cistern and sit at the edge. I would have to go and pull her out. Finally I had to put a lock on that door.”

“Wasn’t she happy with him, that man?”

“Happy? How could she—having lost you, her only child? Besides he always reminded her that once she had been another man’s wife.”

“What happened to him?”

“He stayed with her for a while and then disappeared. Just as your mother was beginning to get used to that, he came back again and talked her into selling a house she had in her name and going to Kashan with him. He opened a bakery there with that money, sold the bakery after a while, and went away with the money.”