No one answered the knocks. I put my head against the door and listened but there were no sounds from the inside. I went back into the lane and looked around, hoping to spot someone who would tell me whether my mother still lived there. Several boys sat in the dust, playing with rounded little rocks, their bare legs spread open, not bothering to wave away the flies swimming around their eyes.

A little girl came out of a house and began to stare at me. “You should go to the Bagh Fin,” she said. “That’s where all the tourists go.”

“Do you know Banoo Khanom?” I asked.

“Yes, she lives right there.”

“Do you know where she is right now? She doesn’t seem to be home.”

“No.” She shrugged. “I can show you around if you want. I know every place in this town.”

“Maybe later.”

I went back and knocked at the door again. Still there was no answer. Uncertain, I waited for a while and then decided to check into a hotel and come back in the morning.

I walked to the wider street and waited for a taxi. Many cabs went by ignoring my raised hand and finally one stopped. “Parsi Inn,” I said to the driver, having seen that name on the way.

The corridor of the hotel had a foul smell. It was lit by a naked bulb, around which mosquitoes hummed. A man was sitting behind a desk and an older man was rising and reclining over a prayer rug in a corner.

“Do you have any single rooms?” I asked the man behind the desk.

“Are you by yourself?” He had deep-set black eyes and wore an old suit which hung loosely on him.

I thought I caught a hint of suspicion in his eyes and was afraid again of being a woman alone in that backward, religious town. “Yes,” I said hesitantly.

He pointed to the man praying. “He’s the boss. We’ll have to wait until he’s finished.”

Soon the man finished praying and came towards us, his eyes turned downward. “I wish women wouldn’t go around without chadors. This town is being infested by them.” He had a goiter under his chin and he kept drawing in his mucous and swallowing it.

I thought of leaving and going to another hotel but I felt exhausted from the bus ride and was not sure what the other hotels would be like.

“She wants a room. Do we have any left?” the younger man asked him.

He did not reply for a moment, then turning his back to me, he whispered something to the younger man. The other man whispered back. Then the older man said, “We’ve only one room left, a good one overlooking the garden for 110 tomans. I can show it to you if you want.

The sum, about $16, seemed outrageous for that dismal hotel but I said, “Fine, I’ll take it.”

“Sit over there and wait. I’ll make a bed for you,” the man behind the desk said.