Sloping Light of the Morning Life

Ali and Nina, morning birds, are having their morning coffee. The silence of the morning, the mellow light of the unseen sun, stretched from behind the fridge to the end of the sitting room, and them, sitting peacefully on the sofas of Nina’s flat, they think of the same things. It’s Wednesday and they start their little parties on Wednesday nights. I do the shopping today, Nina says, it’s not cold. Ok then, Alireza says, and I guess we’ll have Chinese food with lotsa garlics. Oh yeah, she says cheerfully, but now I’m gonna do some exercise, you don’t mind loud music, do you? Na ta tall, he says, like he’s reading the first lines of Lolita.
When she goes to the dark, to her room, he tries to see himself in the glass table. You haven’t done anything since you graduated. Even if the election changes anything, even if Mousavi becomes the president nothing changes for you, you still can’t have your own house, even if you have, you still can’t have your own life, they’ll control you, they’ll come to your house uncalled-for. He then raises his head to the always-off-TV and sees a deformed face of himself: Long curly black hair and a professor beard, a gaunt face and smart brown eyes behind the heavy glasses. When does life begin? Where does it?
In her dark room embracing herself with loud music, bathed in sweat, she puts her hands on her knees. I won’t go back to Shiraz. Life stands still there. At least here you can walk, walk as much as you want. Vali’asr is long enough to swallow down your sorrow from your feet and then there’s Konj Café, small but pacifying: The café to which she goes alone or with the three others. All through the winter they went there and now that spring is on its way… yeah… only two weeks to Nowrouz… and now she gets filled with joy. Nonetheless, she should find an excuse to stay in Tehran and she will. She sits down on the floor and looks at her bass guitar. It was her father’s gift for her sixteenth birthday. Back then it was heavy for her but she got used to it. You get used to anything, you get used to life.
He lights a cigarette and leans back, closes his eyes and thinks of the moment he was born. That was when the life began. No, those moments you couldn’t remember aren’t the beginning of life. When did he miss the starting gun? At which point did he understand he hated his parents? When was it that he realized he didn’t like other children because they were dumb? Life had already started or was already dead before he was born, or died at some point. Will he teach till he retires or will he find the way to the beginning, and continue to the last drop of joy, will he someday get to know who this suffering lonely world is?
As she’s washing away the sweat she sings her favorite song: ‘summer wine’, and when it comes to the point where she needs to sing ultra-bass, she explodes with laughter. For a second she thinks Alireza may think she’s crazy! But yay! Who cares! She stomps her feet on the watery floor like when she was six, at her aunt’s, in New York. Yoo-hoo! Yay! Yay! And once more! Yay! Yay! And once more!