I unfolded the yellow paper and began to read.

“My dear daughter, I went through so much trouble to find your mother’s address so that I could give it to your husband. What’s taking you so long? Your husband had to come all the way here to get you.”

I smiled, reading my father’s crooked and disorderly handwriting which had gotten worse in his old age.

My mother and uncle came in bringing tea and fruit, and sat in a corner. My mother’s face was mostly hidden behind her chador. I could see confusion reflected in her eyes. My uncle stared at Tony, a smile warming the immobility of his posture as he sat stiffly on crossed legs. They tried to talk to Tony through me and he tried to talk to them, but a silence lingered behind the voices. Everything seemed in slow motion again as it had when I first arrived in Iran.

“It’s late. We’d better let you sleep,” my mother said. “I heated the water if he wants to take a shower.” Then she and my uncle left the room quietly, the way they had entered it, as if it no longer belonged to them.

Tony took a shower quickly—in an area off the room, a patched-up stall added on later, not much more comfortable than the one in my father’s house. Then we went to bed, which was barely large enough for both of us.

“Sleeping here is like camping out,” he said.

The window revealed a sky crammed with stars.

“That’s right,” I said.

His hand was on my breast, his mouth on the side of my face, but we were strange with each other.

“You’re different. I’ll have to pluck you away before you become too comfortable here, he said.”

He removed his hand from me and faced the ceiling.

“What’s bothering you?” I asked.

“Nothing.” Then he said, “I had to leave my work and come all the way here. I left so many things in the middle. Do you know, they gave me a class of one hundred students to teach next semester?” A bitterness had come into his tone.

What would he be like in a few years if some of his expectations for himself failed? He would be like those colleagues of mine or his who always felt put upon by the world, begrudging the success of anyone who did better than themselves. And what if I became like that?

“You don’t care about my troubles. You’re only worried about your work,” I said.

“No? Why did I come all the way here then?”

“It’s just that I wish we didn’t worry about work all the time.”

“It’s easy for you to say that. You’re a woman. There isn’t as much pressure on you to produce.”

“There must have been some pressure. I have an ulcer.”

“What?”

“An ulcer. That’s why I was in the hospital.”

“I assumed you had a virus.” He seemed as surprised as I was when I found out about the ulcer. He raised himself to his elbow and, staring at my face, said, “Are you sure the doctors here know what they’re talking about?”