Now she is biking. I have been left behind. Even as a child, she was always too smart to get stuck in any kind or unkind person’s web. She always managed to get away.

“Lady athlete, what about me?”

“What do I want you for? I want a sweetheart.”

A strong, well-built man passes by. I say quietly, “Here is your sweetheart.”

Mahin says, “You’re a woman with no dreams,” and that’s why she is sorry for me.

But I don’t give up. “So, who else looks good?”

And I look at the faces of every single man in the park. But Mahin’s love doesn’t look like any of these men. Her love wouldn’t burp or scratch himself; he wouldn’t stare or curse. He would just bike by her side. I will wait till her sweetheart gets off his bicycle. The bicycles finally have to stop somewhere.

Mahin says, “Now he smiles at me and asks me, ‘Are you tired, my dear?’”

“But I think he smiles and says, ‘Honey, what’s for dinner?’ And the sound you hear isn’t coming from his loving heart. I hate to disappoint you but the sound comes from a little lower, from his empty stomach.”

After dinner, the sweetheart’s eyes become heavy and his yawns are as big as the pictures in the dentist’s office. I’ll point out that yawning has one positive outcome. It reminds you that your sweetheart has a cavity, and you have to pay for it with your next paycheck.

Mahin says, “Poor you, you hear the sound of yawning and I hear soft music after dinner.”

“But dishes, dishes, honey, dishes.”

Mahin says, “Shut up. You’re mean and jealous. God help Amir. You ruin everything.”

I say, “I’m sorry. I don’t want them to write in your obituary ‘unfulfilled young woman.’”

She starts walking fast, “And I am sorry for you because that’s all you see. That will be exactly what you get in life, and nothing more.”

Chapter 40

40

I put the kids to sleep. Leaning on the wall, I stretch my legs as if I have returned from a very long trip and not from Shahla’s house. My back hurts and my mind is preoccupied. I have no choice but to return and live with my kids.