The e-mail was in English: I am a scholar interested in the old Jewish quarter of your city. Your article about Haim Synagogue across from your apartment piqued my interest. I would like to pay you for some research, as I am unable, due to political circumstances, to come to your excellent country.

I shut the computer down, turned the lights out, and stood by the window in the dark. I’d never thought of Iran as “excellent,” but that was one way of looking at it, I supposed, if you’d never been here. Was this a new trick by H? Had the man no other cases to handle but mine? He was breaking protocol by sending text messages. Now this e-mail.

I didn’t want to think about these things anymore. Through the slats of the window shutter I watched the quiet garden of the synagogue. Everything was still and I had forgotten the seasons. It was neither hot nor cold, neither raining nor dry. It was nothing. A stillness was everywhere and there was a lull in everything. Did it even matter what season it was? Maybe even the war, which I hadn’t the stomach to read about if I wasn’t there myself, was over. In fact, it was as if the war simply never was and all along it had been a figment of my imagination. Meanwhile I was going through the routines of daily and weekly life in Tehran—visiting my mother, who was slowly losing her awareness of the world and barely registered my presence, spending a couple of hours a week with Ajooj and Majooj at State TV to come up with the latest illogical adventures of Abbas, and I had even begun the art column that Mafiha wanted at the Citizen. Whenever I entered the offices of the paper I’d see Atia in the film department, looking fairly satisfied with her choice in life. I would see her in the hallways when she and Mafiha happened to run into each other, their quiet understanding and laughter: they were in one another’s orbit; they had a union and were on the same team. I had put away my feelings for Atia a long time ago, shelved them. Which was just as well. It was Mafiha who had the woman, the position, the prestige, and even the invitations abroad for his empty poetry.

Because I was quietly jealous, I threw myself into work more than ever. The Middle East was in flames, Iran was utterly broke, yet Tehran was bursting with art galleries and art shows. Women and men were making their fortunes overnight. There were exchanges of money that boggled the mind even as our currency plummeted right into the sewer. In such a world, why not make cartoons of people? Maybe I would never even return to the war.

But I knew that sooner or later the war would return to me.

* * *

And it did.

The impossibly tedious diary of the war in Syria that I had inherited for editing from the martyr Moalem was put into circulation just as fast as the Abbas episodes were coming out on the O Channel. Overnight the diary became a best seller in the provinces. I was sure the government was buying up all the copies to make the thing a quick hit; it made for good propaganda. I did not care one way or other; I would not even get a “thank you” for my labors except the regular editor’s fee, which was a joke. But the publisher would score a fortune and so would the martyr’s family.