It was then that I saw him making his way along the covered walkway in the opposite direction. He looked older, and his wavy hair had turned silver, making his dark eyebrows seem even more severe. Something else was different, too. In the film, it had been absolutely necessary to project the impression of his physical solidity, which Kiarostami had done by keeping the camera closely trained on Ershadi’s broad shoulders and strong torso as he drove through the hills outside Tehran. Even when Ershadi got out of the car to gaze out at the arid hills and the camera hung back at a distance, he’d appeared physically formidable, and this had given him a strength and authority that, combined with the depth of feeling in his eyes, had made me want to weep. But now, as he continued down the covered walkway, Ershadi looked almost slender. He’d lost weight, but it was more than that: it seemed that the width of his shoulders had contracted. Now that I was seeing him from the back, I began to doubt that it was Ershadi. But just as disappointment began to pour into me like concrete, the man stopped and turned, as if someone had called to him. He stood very still, looking back at the Zen garden, where the stones were meant to symbolize tigers, leaping toward a place they would never reach. A soft light fell on his expressionless face. And there it was again: the brink of hopelessness. At that moment, I was filled with such overwhelmingly tender feeling that I can only call it love.

Gracefully, Ershadi turned the corner. Unlike me, he had no trouble moving in those slippers. I started to go after him, but one of the kimonoed women appeared to block my path. She was waving and gesturing toward the group, which was now peering into one of the shadowy rooms of the abbot’s house. I don’t speak Japanese, I explained, trying to get around her, but she kept hopping in front of me, gibbering away and pointing with more and more insistence at the group, which had now begun to move down the hall toward the anterior garden—move with an almost imperceptible shuffle of their combined feet, as if, in fact, thousands of ants were carrying them along. I’m not with the tour, I said, making a little cross with my wrists, which I had seen the Japanese do when they wanted to signal that something was wrong, or not possible, or even forbidden. I was just on my way out, I said, and pointed toward the exit with the same insistence with which the woman in the kimono was pointing at the group.

She grabbed my elbow and was trying to pull me forcibly back in the other direction. Maybe I had upset the delicate balance of the whole, a balance determined by subtleties that I, in my foreignness, would never understand. Or perhaps I had committed an unpardonable act by leaving the group. Again I had the feeling of impenetrable ignorance, which for me will always be synonymous with traveling in Japan. Sorry, I said, but I really have to go now, and with a tug more violent than I’d intended, I freed myself of her hand and jogged toward the exit. But when I turned the corner, there was no sign of Ershadi. The reception area was vacant except for the Japanese women’s shoes lined up on the old wooden shelves. I ran outside and looked around, but the temple grounds were occupied only by large crows, which took clumsily to the sky as I ran past.