Shahla is talking about Maman’s bad temper, and it’ll take some time before she begins to talk about her sickness. I listen quietly and I am preoccupied. Wherever I go, I don’t stop thinking, even when I am changing Maman’s sheets, or when I take Shadi to school and bring her back, or when I witness Hosseini’s bloodshot eyes. Amir throws one leg over the other, and then again switches his legs. He has no problem with his legs. He has a problem with silence. He starts talking. No ears catch his words. They simply swell up and fill the room.

I go to the room where Manijeh is sitting. She looks like a passenger who has lost her ticket. I bring her back with me to the room where Amir and Hosseini are sitting.

Amir is signaling me with his eyes to say something, but I have become too dumb to get his signal. He is forced to send a more obvious sign. “I’ll show you.”

When you lose it, pulling yourself back together is very difficult.

We have left Manijeh’s house. The kids are walking ahead of us. I am walking a little behind Amir. Manijeh is watching from her window. I wave to her. Amir pretends that he doesn’t see her. We have to walk to the main street to find a taxi. We start walking in the dark, and I get started on my task. Like a spider, I hastily weave a web around myself and move inside it. This web is stronger than anything. Amir starts talking, and I swiftly continue my work like a woman who weaves a vest even with her eyes closed, and tell myself silently, “Now, see if you can get me.”

Chapter 51

51

Shahla comes with her hands full. “Why are you sitting in the dark?”

We don’t say anything. She turns on the light and Maman blinks rapidly. I believe Maman has only one light, and when it’s off it gets dark everywhere. Shahla has one extra light. That’s why even when she is weeping and in the middle of crying and sobbing, she can tell the young girl who is standing nearby, “Mrs. So-and-So doesn’t have tea,” or ask her to bring tissue paper, or fill up the sugar bowl. Amir also has many lights. When the ones inside the house are off, he can turn on his own lights. That’s why he can go to the swimming pool when we fight, or go for a big breakfast of tripe, or treat himself to a cool fruit juice and take off with his friends for the mountains.

Like Maman, I have only one light. When it goes off, it feels pitch black inside me. When I am mad, I am feuding with the whole world, and I am yet angrier at myself.