“Biology.” He seemed a little surprised. “I had pictured you in something else—in history or literature.”

“We all have our stereotypes. I wouldn’t have guessed you were a doctor.”

“What then?”

“I’d put you more in academia or in the arts. A violinist, maybe.”

“A violinist?” He laughed, then got up. “I assume you haven’t seen much of Kashan. Let me take you to some places while you’re still here.”

“That would be very nice.”

“I’ll come over one afternoon this week.” He started for the door. Then he turned around and said, “Take the antacid medicine as I said, go easy on spices, and most importantly, try to relax.”

I left the hospital, one thought swirling in my head: that I must change things, drastically. I decided to walk to my mother’s house, to get rid of some of the agitated energy inside of me.

Near the hospital there was a busy street, and just beyond it stretched vast, uninhabited spaces. Small mud houses stood next to grand ones with pretty urns of flowers set on their doorsteps. Donkeys, camels, and cars travelled side by side.

I wondered if I could learn to like a place such as this and even prefer it to American cities, as Mahmood Majid did. Thinking of Mahmood Majid filled me with a sense of security as if I was wrapped in a wool blanket in the middle of a cold winter. I wondered if he had women friends he felt very close to.

I came to a food market with carts full of fruit and vegetables, and shops stacked with cheeses and spices. Women holding live chickens sat against walls, next to laborers, beggars, and idle men passing rosaries between their fingers. The chickens, bound by their feet, flapped occasionally, feathers coming off them and floating in the air which smelled heavily of spices. I sniffed in the aroma and thought: for a long time I will not be able to indulge in spicy food the way I did before, go to the kind of restaurants I was so fond of.

A little dark-haired, red-cheeked girl walked beside her mother, looking at different carts and windows. I stood for a moment and watched her, her gestures. I watched the faces of other people. Suspended between those faces and scenes were the first eighteen years of my life. I had tried to make them into shadows; they had reappeared as nightmares.

Then I went from cart to cart, touching the fruit, asking the prices. The nasal voices of vendors advertising their, merchandise, the hum of shoppers mingling with the sounds of metals from the blacksmiths in the bazaar surrounded me. I bought fresh figs, pomegranates, and white grapes, the fruits my mother liked. The shopkeeper, small as a child, with a dry dark skin, picked them carefully, one by one, and weighed them in separate bags on a brass scale hanging on the door.

My mother and uncle were waiting for me. It was as if they had had nothing to do for years and now had finally found something. On her way home, at lunch, Manijeh had stopped by their house to tell them I would be home and about the ulcer.