I could see the bus driver staring at me in the mirror. He smiled. His teeth were surprisingly white and even.

I closed my eyes to avoid him and this time fell asleep.

When I woke we were passing through Khom, a religious town, filled with women shrouded in dark chadors and men wearing abas.

Golden domes glistened in the sun. A row of cars covered with black cloths and adorned with flowers passed by—a funeral. I recalled a saying about Khom, “They import the dead and export priests.”

The bus stopped for gas just outside of Khom and the passengers began to get out. We had one hour to rest and I wondered what to do with myself.

I got out of the bus and passed a huge restaurant, where many people were sitting having tea or eating, smoking cigarettes or water pipes. It was noisy, dirty, and unappetizing. I went to the back, where the restrooms were. I used the toilet with reluctance. It was so dirty and had such a strong stench.

Then I went into the bazaar across from the station. I walked around for a while. Little boys and girls leaned against walls or walked about idly. Some of them began to follow me, just watching me.

The shopkeepers sipped tea, passed rosaries between their fingers, banged with hammers against metal or stared into space, their faces immobile, their bodies limp. An old man held up a necklace, urging me to buy it. He smiled and smiled, looking a little crazy. Another old man, lining copper items with a thin layer of tin, beckoned to me to see his goods. I bought a copper colander and a mortar and pestle at prices incredibly low, even by Iranian standards. Then I bought a skewer of kebab and a glass of doogh from a stall and ate them.

As I walked back I felt something brushing against me, on and off, persistently. I turned around. It was a young man. He winked at me. I kept all expression out of my face and walked on towards the bus rapidly.

The bus arrived in Kashan two hours later than scheduled, having taken eight hours. I was aching all over, and my hair was covered with a layer of dust.

It was dusk and the air was drier and considerably warmer than it had been in Teheran.

I took one of the taxis lined up by the station and gave the driver my mother’s address. We passed a cluster of mud houses, a square, and a wide street, lined with more elegant houses.

Then we entered an older section, where many houses were only partially intact. Most of them had domes and windtowers on the roofs to keep the inside cool. The driver stopped by a narrow lane. Surrounded by mud and straw walls, it looked like a tunnel. The house stood all by itself inside an alley off the lane. I paid the driver and got out.

I knocked on the door of the house several times and waited. Did my mother really live here? How would she react to me, a stranger, suddenly turning up and claiming to be her daughter? A sense of the absurdity of the trip struck me. But the next instant I pictured my mother squatting in the shade of a tree, washing clothes in abundant suds or walking around with a broom sweeping dry leaves and twigs from rose bushes. Seeing me she pauses and we look at each other, first like strangers and then our faces form into familiar shapes, shining over the expanse of years. “It’s me, Feri,” I say. “I know, I know,” she says. We embrace, our faces full of tears.