One evening he was late coming home. She went back and forth between the two windows in the room and looked for him. He came home late and ate his supper very quickly. When she asked him why he was so late, he said his work took that long, but she knew something was bothering him. That night she had a dream, which began to recur, about passing through a succession of alleys and ending up before a dark, deep stairway. The steps were wet and slippery and very steep. She had to descend without knowing why. The fear woke her.

After that the man was his old self for a while and then was late again one evening. She heard knocks at the door. Hesitantly she went to open it. A group of beggars stood there asking for food. They were an awful-looking bunch, mutilated in an arm or a leg. She went inside to get some food and they followed her and sat down on the rug in the courtyard. She was not sure what they wanted. For a long time they refused to leave. They just sat there, not even talking, mute and frightening. After they left she waited for him by the window again. There was no electricity then, and she first saw him coming by the glow of his cigar. She ran out to him and clutched at his arm, begging him never to leave her alone for so long. Inside she hinted that she had given up a lot for him and that threw him into a fit—he began to smash everything—dishes, a vase, a mirror.

A few days later they left the village and she stayed with relatives in Teheran while he went to Kashan to set up a house for them. That was when she hid in the basement, too ashamed to be seen by anyone, when she tried to drown herself in the cistern. Sometimes she took long, aimless walks which would always end at our house. She stood in a hallway nearby and watched for me. Once she saw me wearing an ugly loose-fitting dress and that made her cry aloud. Another time I saw her from the window and ran out to her. I told her she must take me with her. I cried and cried. She took my hand and walked with me a bit in the bazaar, buying me ice cream and sweets and a pinwheel. She promised to come and take me away as soon as she had her house settled, not knowing how difficult that would be. I was always watched closely by someone—a maid or my father. She wrote me letters which I never responded to and she knew my father must have ripped them up. Her only hope was that I would try to find her when I was older, but as time went by and she did not hear from me she grew afraid of me. Really afraid. That I would never want to see her, that if I did I might spit in her face or throw a rock at her.