“How could she really, under the circumstances?” I kept crying.

“You’re feeling guilty because you found her in the state she’s in, basically alone and destitute. If she were happy and well settled you wouldn’t think of it.” He came over to me and caressed my arm, trying to console me. “What you could do is give her some money. Maybe send her some every month.”

“I offered to help but she refused. I said I’d buy her a house but she said she likes this place.”

“Just send her the money and come and visit her again.”

He was so reasonable and understanding.

Perhaps I was trying to escape into the easy emotional comfort of childhood. Only a month ago everything in Iran had seemed nightmarish. My doubts piled up more and more. How odd my staying would seem to those who knew me in the United States. What impulse, they would ask, could lead a woman like her to abandon her career and stay on in a place she professed to have left behind, a place whose values she had outgrown, where the attitude towards women remains so primitive?

I wiped my tears with a handkerchief and began to pack.

“Hurry up,” Tony said, walking ahead of me through a wide open area with an ancient crumbling bridge on one side and some huts on the other.

“You stop hurrying. This is as fast as I can go.” The lace on one of my sandals kept coming loose.

“You always lag behind me.”

“You always walk ahead of me.”

He stopped for a moment. “Is this your Iranian upbringing, to always walk behind a man?”

He was trying to joke but I could see he was tense, as he always was when away from work for any length of time.

I caught up with him.

“What was your mother saying to you before we left?”

“The usual kind of thing—that I should write to her and come for a visit soon.”

My mother and uncle had acted surprisingly serene when we said goodbye. They kissed me and shook hands with Tony. He smiled at them politely.

Through the lattice beneath the bridges I could see people sitting by a stream, picnicking. They ate, washed dishes, or reclined on cloths they had spread out. Children were swinging on ropes tied to trees.

“I’m going to take some pictures here,” Tony said. “That bridge is interesting. Look at the intricate lattice supporting it.” We went closer to the bridge. “I wish I had more time to study this town. I can’t get over how ancient it is and how these people just sit around its ruins.”

“It gives you an odd sensation, doesn’t it?” I said.

He adjusted the camera. Children began to collect, one by one, in its area of focus. “Look at them,” he said, clicking a few times.

He slung the camera on his shoulder and we walked away. The children continued watching us, squinting in the sun.