"This is beautiful!" the girls laughed, running in the empty house. Sharah, overjoyed, hollered and screamed. Her voice echoed in the empty rooms. Mr. Parvin’s son-in-law walked him from one room to another, showing him the house. A very old house with fresh paint. A better neighborhood than theirs. A yard, an oak tree, green grass, and a bench facing two identical crepe myrtles, now dry, but promising to bloom in the spring. Mrs. Parvin opened all the kitchen cabinets; she pulled all the drawers out.
The Parvins moved a few days later. Not much to bring with them. They took some of Abi’s furniture intending to buy some in the future. Bibi moved in with them and started the restaurant job. Mrs. Parvin and her son-in-law took Mr. Parvin to another doctor, a psychiatrist. He wrote a prescription for Mr. Parvin’s depression and occasional hallucinations. Then his son-in-law took him to a barbershop to cut his now very long hair. Having so many chores in their new house, Mrs. Parvin didn’t have time to wash and comb her husband’s hair.
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On the barber’s raised chair, Mr. Parvin sat staring at himself with both eyes open. The barber talked and clipped his silky hair. Now feeling the old man’s bump under his fingers, he asked what that little walnut was? Mr. Parvin’s son-in-law explained that when his father-in-law was a little naughty boy, he fell off a tree and that’s how the bump grew there. Mr. Parvin either didn’t understand the conversation or paid no attention to it. He was immersed in a scene he was watching in the barber’s mirror. Through the open door of the shop he sa a half-built structure across the street. A worker stood on a scaffold laying bricks on top of bricks. Mr. Parvin watched him and waited patiently until the end of his haircut. When they left the shop, he turned toward the building, raised his head and looked up. The worker turned to see him. The strong sun was in his eyes. He held his broad hand over his brow and gazed at Mr. Parvin for a long second. As if finally recognizing the old man, he smiled. The creases of his sunburnt forehead opened, and his white teeth gleamed in the noon light. Mr. Parvin smiled back and winked at the worker, feeling a tickling joy he hadn’t felt for a long time. Knowing now that the bricklayer would always be around, he let his son-in-law take him home.
Farnoosh Moshiri is the author of At the Wall of the Almighty and The Bathhouse (Beacon Press). Thsi story is taken form her collection The Crazy Dervish and the Pomegranate Tree (Black Heron Press).
