Half Eaten Biscuit

First chapter

"The college had been built over an old aqueduct; it wasn't a college during Reza Shah's reign, though it was originally a barracks. Later on it was turned into a women's prison, then an orphanage and in the end it was converted into a college. But the college sank deep under the ground like rich Qaroon's treasure and you can't find a trace of the building at all."

While shaking his head, the old man crossed Zafar Street slowly and trembling. Aref watched the deep abyss.

"However, the Rehabilitation College was not here. We had to walk about a hundred meters down from Mohseni Square to reach it," Aref corrected the old man. Then he turned back to the old man but he didn’t see him
He could hear the muffled din of the city from the distance. He walked alongside the abyss. A wooden fence had been built around the whole wreck and enclosed with barbed wires. Signboards had been hung on wooden posts and tree trunks at every few meters. They warned of death and forbade. He laid his head on the wall and tried to look into the depth of the abyss under the fainting rays of sunset that was ebbing. He thought he heard a sound. He listened carefully but couldn't hear anything. Maybe it was the wind that blew among trees.

All houses and shops up to the old Shemiran Avenue and Abbasabad hills and Zafar Street had been evacuated. During a course of six months a mysterious leprous fear had gnawed the city and the college was the center of the terrible disease.

Aref was on a trip when a small highlight in the newspaper made him stand transfixed. The highlight announced" The college building sinks. Fire fighters, rescue workers and police officers are rescuing those who have possibly survived in the disaster. Meanwhile they are studying the reasons of collapse."

Aref thought: "Maybe the roof of the old headquarters has collapsed or something likes that." But the next day and the following by days more news and pictures about the wreckage he found out that no building had ever existed in that area under the name of college. One news column claimed, "It seems that a mysterious power has sucked the vast college compound tens of meters under the ground. The smooth and shining building walls that sank proves erosion as a result of a violent sucking by the depth of the ground. Several fire fighters and policemen have searched the depth of the abyss but have not returned yet."

Another paper said: "The terrorized inhabitants of the neighborhood are evacuating their houses and moving away. The shops are either moving their goods to safer places or have started a real sale and are selling everything they possess."

Few remains from the college were notable. You could see the big pond at the bottom of the giant abyss and its fountain that still sprinkled water. The bunker that had been built during the war and looked like jinni’s chimney had survived on a lofty pile of earth at the northern wing of the abyss and continued to hold the stone and brick portal with a tiled inscription that clung stubbornly on the guard room.

About 8.30 a.m. in that autumnal morning a mild fog descended from the northern mountains towards the city. The fog spread like a breeze into the plane trees, cypress and box trees and concealed the college from the eyes of passersby. After a few minutes the fog disappeared and the first motorist that drove as usual to the college crashed into the depth of the abyss, and the pedestrians noticed that the college had ceased to exist. Nobody had heard a roar of an explosion or the crashing fall of the debris. The whole college with hundreds of professors, students and staff sucked into the depth of the earth. The neighbors and the students of the adjacent primary and secondary school rushed to the windows. Many people had gathered on the roofs and were looking in silence and awe at the yawning deep abyss. One hour after the northern wing of the college started to collapse, silence turned into hubbub and the hubbub changed into horror.

Schools were shut down. The police and rescue workers rushed to the site and the fire fighting trucks attended the scene honking their sirens and tried to extinguish the fire that had broken out after breakage of gas pipes in the neighboring houses. All the uproar issued from the streets to the cavity was hushed up near the cavity like the deafening sound of a radio that was abruptly put off. The wirelesses were put off, the sirens ceased to honk and the eyes were fixed on the giant cavity that yawning. The disaster was far bigger for inspectors of ordinary incidents to focus their imagination and describe how the blast had occurred.

Helicopters started to fly and hover around the wreckage. The repeated exertions of the fire fighters to descend and break the gabled roof of the headquarters were defeated. An immense force was sucking the choppers down and could hardly pull themselves above the abyss and they deserted the scene because their exertions were in vain. The special forces that had tried to descend the walls with enough equipment, suspending found their ropes too short to hit the bottom and were in the middle, and those who had resisted the strong sucking power of the yawning cavity rushed out of the perilous zone.

A horrible cold chilled the whole area and before evening nobody stayed within a 100 meters radius of the scene of catastrophe.

During the first few days of the incident the news was echoed faintly in the press, but the families who were expecting hundreds of their dear ones that had disappeared restlessly questioned and pestered the puzzled authorities. Like when folk react to a rumor, the inhabitants of other districts heard the news with a shrug. If somebody claimed that a spacecraft had landed at Mirdamad Street they would believe much more credulously, but the rumor about the collapse of a giant compound without the crash of even a single brick did not strike them as real.

For several days both local and foreign media were dominated by the crash of the district. The government announced a state of emergency and invited local and foreign experts and specialists to find a convincing answer to the unusual catastrophe.

The police cordoned the district, forbade folk to enter it and set up patrol towers around the wreck. They closed the streets leading to the college and the disciplinary forces patrolled the area.

Due to the deadly silence that dominated the area day and night, the howling wind echoed more violently and because of power and water were cut off and especially the frightful collapse of other parts of the building into the cavity that happened every now and then, even the boldest men in the district had evacuated their homes and all their questions about the catastrophe remained unanswered.

The only thing that was certain was that the college had sunk under the ground in an autumnal morning after the appearance of a thick mysterious fog.

Aref returned to Tehran from Shiraz one month after the disaster and went straight to the place, but the police stopped him from every direction he attempted to approach the site. One night after he had overcome his original fear, he approached the restricted area under the light of a cold and big moon. He too couldn't believe that over forty thousand square meter building, facilities, trees and lawns had sunk under the ground silently before the eyes of the puzzled neighbors without an earthquake or without leaving any adverse effect in the district.

The ghastly incident was probably a nightmare, but he was awake and could see the wreckage with his own eyes. The incident was so astonishing that could lead to other strange consequences. Perhaps no building had ever collapsed and the people in the college were all alive.

With such an idea Aref rushed to the police station at the kakh e Javanan and while he was unable to introduce himself or explain things, from a sheer excitement, he only shouted, "They are alive. They are alive. They are..."

Believing that he had seen the unusual, the police officers went to the scene of the catastrophe, but after an hour of search they returned in despair. Next time Aref went to another police station and the same thing happened again.

"They are alive... They are alive... Nazanin..."

When he referred to the fourth police station, he received a sound beating and was detained for several hours as he was shouting and roaring: "It seems that all of them are alive. Why don't you try save them? Why don't you try' Why?"

After several months Aref's questions became ordinary and he emerged as a half-crazy young man who had lost his mistress.

The police officers looked at him with sympathy. Aref had become an entertaining subject to them. They asked him, "Did you love her so much?"

Instead of answering their questions Aref begged them crying, "Please do something. Please do something for me."

He wrote over ten letters to the President, the minister of higher education, minister of health, and.... but was disappointed from all directions.

Winter was about to end but the abyss looked alive in the city like a whim, like a yawning fear and a taboo question.

The inquiries by the families whose dear ones had been buried in the collapse remained unanswered, and gradually the grief for those who had been buried alive was going to be buried in the hearts of the mourners. The incident was studied from scientific and security viewpoints and the results were considered as confidential.

Vendors had posted signboards advertising watches, refrigerators and coolers at the mouth of streets leading to the abyss. Colorful electric lights were hung on the trees surrounding the area and were lit up at nights. At the beginning the people carried their furniture away from the district. Then they returned and took away their house's doors and windows and the shopkeepers removed their shutters. But the authorities stopped the stripping of the district to stop the city from looking attacked by leper and plague.

During the first weeks Aref worked in the daytime and roamed around the abyss in the evening and night. Then he quit his job. This aggravated family quarrels and in the end his wife left him. The story of a wandering lover that roamed around the restricted area was published in several newspapers, and it was a sufficient evidence for Rosa to apply for a divorce under the pretext that her husband had gone mad. Aref became more and more lonely. His sister, Sonbol, was the only person who sympathized with him.

*

Aref settled in a deserted house near the southern wing of the college and its portal that was visible from behind the wooden wall. Now and then he would slip out of the region silently and without attracting people's attention from secret passages from the stricken district to mail application for work, buy newspapers or battery for his radio. And he would return in the deep silence of nights, which spoiled the merriment of young patrolmen. He passed through loose boards whose nails he had removed from the wooden wall walked to the abyss as far as he wasn't sucked to the bottom of the pit and tried to listen clearly the muffled sound that he thought he was hearing. But it was only the sound of the fountain that sprinkled in the pond. He had grown so familiar with the zone that he could easily find his way in darkness without moonshine and walked with the least noise. He would lie down on the ground, lay his ear on the ground and listen to noises. But his efforts were fruitless and his failure exasperated and excited him.
He would banged the ground and pleased that somebody answer his shouts. The desire to find a path to the college melted his heart. He would sleep on his back on the ground and watch the twinkling stars in the sky that descended lower at the end of the night. He talked to the moon and asked God and the elements of nature to help him.

At such times when water seemed to murmur, he thought that somebody was talking to him. He would lift his head and ask him at a low tone, "Who are you? Where are you? Speak louder?" But since he didn't receive an answer he would raise his voice, and yell and abuse the pond, the earth and the college.

During these months the walls of the abyss continually sank and its yawning mouth grows wider. The sprinkling water of the fountain puzzled geologists.

Aref could no more hear the jig jig brawling of sparrows and croaking crows that hovered over the trees and bothered the students. Although he had sprayed several packages of rice, millet and wheat grains around the abyss perhaps to attract pigeons, the compound looked haunted and deserted. Except for noise of passage of patrol cars, engineering and geology teams there was no wandering soul but Aref in that district streets. His hair and beard had grown long and he grew thinner and paler day by day. His sickly and haunted look worried Sonbol. Aref's parents couldn't do anything for him except to express their anxiety and cry for his grief and since his presence bothered them, Aref didn't return home under the pretext that he was traveling. Sonbol, who knew where Aref was living, managed to make an appointment with him to take food and clothing for him at fixed intervals.

Thorns, rubbish and plastic bags covered the barbed wires surrounding. The area and the number of patrols decreased. There was less need for care and the people didn't go to that district anymore and the area gradually grew into a speck of recollection in their minds.

Aref grieved when he saw the death of nature around the abyss and tried to water the trees that during the sinking of the college had lost their connection with the gurgling gutter to stop them from withering and found engagement to fill his idle hours. But his efforts were fruitless.

The underground canals continually discharged sewage. The street gutters poured in the abyss from several directions.

Aref had planted some vegetable seeds in the pavement north of the abyss but they didn't sprawl up as if everything had stopped. It was only the sun that rose, the moon that set, the stars that twinkled in the sky and Nazanin's face that appeared at different spots now and then, dragged him after her.

One night Nazanin would get lost like a comet behind trees. Another night she became the moon, and one night he thought Nazanin was holding his hands. But it was only the wind that was howling around him. He couldn't remember to have felt the blow of a breeze even in the 365 days that the college had sunk under the ground, but he had understood the rebirth of a suppressed love in his heart. His soul was beaten and his body was in fire in her absence. A revolting whim dragged him near the abyss and more than ever his aching soul burnt and desired his dear Nazanin and he sought the miracle of her healing kindness. He was seeking Nazanin to tell her that he had wounded his soul by killing her recollections. Every remembrance inflicted a newer and bloodier wound in his wearing body.

His existence melted like a burning candle and he clung to every object like a drowning man to find a new incentive to live.

At nights he dreamed of Nazanin who was rising from the horizon mounted on a ship. The ship was sailing and the sea was lashing its waves strong and stronger at the advancing ship.

He just remembered that he had called Nazanin in his boundless inside, and he repeatedly heard Nazanin saying, "Escape not the reality. The more we escape from the reality and change our dresses and faces, the more we are likely to encounter it."

Days rolled away and Aref couldn't apprehend the march of time. He had lost his appetite. He was forgetting his body. Had the recollection of Nazanin stopped his heart from beating, had he not melted from the desire of meeting her or failed to beat himself for having lost her, he would surely have sunk sink into oblivion.

One night he walked as far as possible to the brink of the abyss and slept on the ground. He heard the splashing crash of a heavy object in the pond accompanied by a blazing light as if a comet had fallen into the pound and it was boiling and sinking in the water. The comet radiated for a moment in the big pond and then vanished. In that crucial night Aref saw Nazanin behind the bunker window. She was looking at him with her hands under her chin and she was so close to him that he thought he could touch her. He asked Nazanin at a hushed tone as if he was afraid of frightening her, "What happened, Nazanin?"

And Nazanin cried.

*

Sonbol repeatedly visited his haunts but she failed to see him. She thought Aref had either died or was in need of help somewhere in that horrible region.

Sonbol was very mad at Nazanin. "Who are you to distrub our life so badly and why have you wrapped yourself around Aref's brain like an ivy? You'll kill him eventually. He wasn't happy but he was leading a normal life. He had forgotten the death of his child. He was pardoning Rosa, too. But what a nuisance you were? He compared everything in his wife with you. Aref told Rosa that Ms. Zahedi was watching her child with wide-open eyes. He said Ms. Zahedi sang lullabies for her kid. Ms. Zahedi is doing this... Ms. Zahedi is doing that... How much can a woman tolerate to be compared with an unknown and invisible woman all the time? How much?"

While gushing tears prevented her from driving, she had a hard time to find a police station.

The officers in the police stations had a vague horror about the cavity and the rumor about the sunken college. When they returned from they daily rounds, they smiled with relief. The officers stretched on their beds and tried to cast the pressure of the heavy atmosphere of that district off their shoulders. They talked to each other and shifted the loud voice of the radio from one station to another so that the noise would make them understand that they were alive. And the monotonous and frightening sound of the wind that howled at the same rhythm all the time causing the electric wires to shake in a monotonous tone was another reason for the alarm.

Finding a new strength from disappointment and anger Sonbol mounted the stairs that led to the police station.

"Isn't anybody here?"

Her shrill and firm voice reverberated through the empty corridors. The standby officer walked out of his office.

"What do you want? What are you doing here?" he asked.

"What am I doing here? Do you know what you are doing here yourself? My brother has been living in this place for several months. He enters and exits the college compound whenever he wishes. But you have never noticed him."

"Did you say your brother? Do you mean that crazy man...?"

"It is you who are crazy and not him. You've got to help me to find him."

"We don't have enough forces and the district is large. Your brother knows the region well. Don't bother. He won't get lost."

"Maybe he is in trouble. The food that I brought for him last week has remained untouched."

In the end two officers volunteered to make a round. After searching the streets and alleys and avoiding the abyss they found Aref unconscious in the lawn of the deserted sports ground. A blanket of dried leaves covered his body.

*

Aref spoke nonsense for several days between sleep and awareness and the only thing one could gather from his whispered nonsense was water.
"Aref, my dear! Open your mouth and drink a cupful. Do you know how many days it is since you ate your last dish?"

"Don't say no. When the doctor removed your serum yesterday, he said you could eat. Try to eat some of this soup."

Sonbol rose and pulled the table near the bed, and then she turned to his mother.

"He is killing himself. Even if Nazanin is still alive, she has lost her beauty.... She may even be dead."

She turned to bed.

"Come on! Drink fruit juice."

Sonbol's words seemed as if a lancet pierced deep into Aref's body. But her last sentence almost killed him. She took hold of Sonbol's hand firmly and said, "No she can't be dead."

Startled by Aref's yelling shouts, his father entered the room.

"What's wrong?"

"No she isn't dead," Aref insisted.

Aref's begging was lost in his loud sobs and that of Mrs. Pirnia and Sonbol and in Aref's hand where the print of his fingers was visible in three parallel lines.

Mr. Pirnia who was going to sit on the chair beside the bed repented from sitting.

"Didn't the doctor say that you must not make him excited or make him remember his recollections?" said Mr. Pirnia and walked out of the room.

Mr. Pirnia recovered himself in the hospital corridor. He studied a bunch of paper that he had picked up from the chair. On every page there was a sketch. One sketches showed a woman with big eyes, prominent cheeks, fleshy lips, wide eyebrows and a melancholic yet penetrating gaze. On another sheet of the paper, there was the sketch of the same woman crying. On another sheet the same woman was smiling and on another sheet this sentence was written, "My Nazanin floating in water..." there was no sketch

All that time Mr. Pirnia thought that no Nazanin had ever existed and it was because of the loss of some of his friends in the incident that Aref had received a mental shock.

After a month’s rest at the neuropsychological ward in the hospital, Aref was transferred to his house. Most of the time he lay in his bed and looked outside through the window. The noise of the city approached him and moved away. He was not in the mood to read anything. He was either thinking or sketching. The only sketch he made was Nazanin's face. He either wrote "Nazanin" from the top of the page to the bottom or rewrote "Nazanin" with bolder letters over the small "Nazanins."

When he wasn't sketching he was thinking about his life - about education, the university and entry exam for the Ph.D. degree, his unsuccessful marriage and this catastrophe.

On whatever subject he focused Nazanin's face appeared like a refrain. More than everything else he loved to think about his recollections of the first days when he was admitted and registered. The crowded rooms and the energetic educational stuff, the frowning and smiling staff and Nazanin...

When he picked up the registration forms he didn't know what exactly he had to fill in some blank columns. He filled but crossed them. Then he went back to the registration desk to pick up another form, but again he spoiled the form. Filling forms was always a difficult task to him. When he referred to the employee to pick up another form, the clerk asked, "Aren't you the guy who has picked up 10 forms?"

"No, I have just picked up two forms." He answered.

"Now you will demand another form if I don't stop you? Don't you think what will happen if 300 students waste the forms so extravagantly? You can use one of forms as a draft, and then fill the other form neatly. Now if you had asked before filling the forms one form would have been enough and you wouldn't have wasted so many forms. You don't have time to write from the beginning."

"Would you answer us if we came and asked you repeatedly?" Aref asked.

"Of course we would, but this is not an elementary school to ask questions repeatedly. Look at other students and see what they are doing and copy from them.

"O.K."

After that he never asked anybody, learnt from nobody or made no draft of his exercise until he received his bachelor's degree. Whenever he had a problem he went straight to Nazanin and said, "Excuse me Miss! What must I write here?" And every time Nazanin laughed at his droll questions.

Aref resorted to every excuse to go to Nazanin to ask questions such as:" when will the professor come?", "Will the class be held?", "When is the date of the exam?", or" Are they registering?"

On those days that Nazanin was on vacation he would grow peevish and would bother the clerks about cold classrooms, bad chalk, small blackboards, poor classroom lighting or he would complain that such and such professors were not teaching properly, as if Nazanin was the only incentive that attracted him to the college. He didn't bother Nazanin much. He was after his lessons, or would pry into the business of other students or fall into meditation. His only pleasure was to meet Nazanin on his way to the canteen, greet her and receive a warm greeting from her.

He didn't love Nazanin only because she answered the students courteously and treated them well. Almost all the educational staff was kind and patient. They were so patient that seldom could a student bet that he would be able to anger them.

Even when the students were rebuked or their illegal and impertinent demands were turned down they loved the university staff. But Nazanin was the most beloved among other staff. Although the students didn't expressly say, they were unanimous that Nazanin was different from others. In their private gatherings the students would reveal how different Nazanin was from others. They praised her pride and firmness which were mixed with kindness and merriment.

Aref laughed when he thought what tricks he had made to attract Nazanin's attention. Nazanin acquainted him with the world of books. She had flatly rejected some of his ideas and had proven that they were wrong. Not only did she guide Aref but other students as well. She would even advise them on their family affairs. She was very kind, but God forbid if she went mad. Nothing big was needed to make her furious. She would grow indignant when one kills an ant. When angry she would boil and criticize every thing that was faulty. When her anger reached a peak she would say, "No, I am not indignant. I have just revolted and will calm down in a few minutes. Don't take my rage seriously." Then she would calm down and became the same lovely Ms. Zahedi.

It thrilled Aref to think about Nazanin. For several months he was busy thinking about her. He ate his meals and devoured his pills punctually to stop his relatives and friends from visiting him or messing around him so that he would be left alone to think and plan.

During the years that he was married to Rosa and lead a life full of mistrust and stress he hadn't thought about Nazanin, but he knew that he was indebted to her for his self-confidence, patience and the ability to restrain himself. When pressed with difficulties he remembered the carefree years at the university and felt sweet warmth in his vein although the rapid unpleasant events after his graduation and the death of his one-year old child gave him little opportunity to think about Nazanin.

Now he knew that Nazanin was as necessary to him as was the vital air that he breathed or the sun that shone on him. But hadn't he known her worth when she was alive? Why he didn't understand Nazanin's important role in his life when he read the news of her death in the paper? Why hadn't he seriously thought about her? Was it because before meeting Nazanin, she was married, had given birth to a child and had lost her husband in an air crash?

During his undergraduate years and before his marriage with Rosa, he had had a few girlfriends. He had pondered about his girlfriends and had flirted with them but in his masculine mind, he had never thought of Nazanin in this way. Without being conscious Nazanin had sailed above all his dreams. Everything in Nazanin such as her parents, her daughter and even the path she drove her car was respectable to his eyes.

Thinking about Nazanin made him feel alive. He would walk to the courtyard, remove the yellow leaves from the bushes, cut away the withered tree branches and attend to the garden. He always loved to water the flowers especially when he sprinkled water on rose bushes with a water sprayer over and washed them completely. He felt a special thrill when he saw the trembling leaves and the drops of water falling on each other. At such moments the roses opened wide, they let loose their petals and the drops of water flowed into the crowns. But now he watered the roses by a hose. He stood in the veranda, put his fingers on the tip of the hose and sprayed the water to the end of the garden and the ivies that were struck to the walls. When the water hit the leather-like sticky ivies it made a lovely bass sound.

He lifted the hose and sent a flood of water in the air like a fountain. The water sprang into the air and then poured down and for a few seconds he saw a rainbow sliding on a fat baby with long hairs.

"Aref! Aref! Why are you drenching yourself?"

Aref came to himself when he heard his mother. He didn't know how long he had sat under the shower of water. He was wet through.
"Get up quickly, run to the bathroom and take a hot shower before you catch cold. O God," his anxious mother exclaimed.

Aref rose to his feet and went to the bathroom in a gleeful mood that he had not felt for many months. When he walked out of the bathroom, he felt life flowing in his veins. He carefully dressed and turned to his mother who was watching him worriedly and said "I will be back soon."

*

It was mid-May and the town pulsating with its usual rhythm. The people had walked out for their daily rounds and shopping. Aref joined the pedestrians. He stopped with them behind the shop windows, watched the colorful headscarves and tried all of them on Nazanin's head and then in his mind he chose some of them for Nazanin. He examined the shoes and watched goldsmiths' window displays. He caressed the head of a child eating salted chips carefree beside her mother who was staring intently at the goldsmith's window. Then he stopped by a fruit vendor's booth and drank a glass of lemon juice.

"Don't you have sweet lemon juice?"

"No, sir. It is not the season for sweet lemons. Neither are oranges juicy."

Aref felt a sudden hunger. He was walking in front of the Daneshjoo Park. He knew a store that baked big and delicious piroshky. He searched for a few minutes until he found it. He had a pleasent memory of store. He bought two piroshkies - one for himself and the other for Nazanin. He tried to eat his piroshky but repented. He took a cab to Vanak Square. From Vanak Square he walked up to Mirdamad Avenue. He waited for a taxi for a while to take him to Naft Street. The college premises started from that area. He dismounted from the car at the junction of Naft 3 Street and walked towards the wooden wall at the end of the street. Some people in the street had returned to their homes. For some time back the dropping of ruin had stopped in that district. Aref thought an underground canal could be dug to the college from the street, but couldn't by one person. It would take many years. He needed help. But his intimate college mates had scattered to different places. Some had traveled abroad, some had gone to provincial towns and he had no news about the rest for the past few years. Rosa had frightened his away from their home. She didn't want Aref to associate with anybody. She would find fault with all his married and single friends.

The more he thought the less he could remember anyone would be bold enough to help him in the canal digging. He found a broken wooden door, laid it on the barbed wire, climbed over it and kicked the rotten lumbers and entered the premises. He didn't even watch around. He sat down on front of a bank half of which had collapsed. The calendar in the wall showed Saturday, the 25th of the Persian calendar. He drew out one of the piroshkies and began eating.

"It is cold. I must buy a warmer piroshky for Nazanin if I survive from this wreck," he thought.

He entered South Razan Street and arrived at the southern wing of the abyss. The college portal was visible from that point. All the walls surrounding the college had collapsed, but a street had remained intact as wide as the portal and the guardroom beneath it. The abyss looked like a peninsula linked to Hemmat express way.

The college gate looked like the open mouth of a dragon ready to devour him. Aref started to walk with caution on the path toward the gate. As he was walking he felt the breeze grow stronger. The wind that was blowing from behind pushed him forward. He tried to stop in front of the portal, but the wind pushed m ahead. He pressed his heels and sat down on the ground to avoid the push of the wind, but the quick current opened a hole under Aref. He threw himself on the ground at one side and tried to creep to the guardroom. He raised dust while crawling forward. Each time he pressed the ground with his ankle and the tip of his shoe he ripped part of the soil and the soil turned into dust. In the end the fierce wind made him roll towards the abyss.

He gathered his remaining energy and by a sudden leap he hung himself on the doorframe and pulled himself ahead. A thick iron pipe that laid in front of the guardroom to hang a chain came to his rescue. He pushed the pipe and opened the door of the guardroom with his head. He took hold of the leg of a table that had slid to the door and pulled himself inside.

The howling wind looked uncanny and horrible. The furniture in the guardroom had slid toward the brink of the abyss and had the iron table been moved closer to the door, the door would not open. The T.V. set had dropped to the ground and its dried up projector yawned like a dark cavity.

The floor was littered with the employee punch cards and there was dust on all cards. He pulled out several cards from under his stomach. Asghar Ahmadi, Reza Fathi, Fatemeh Ebrahimi ... These were all strangers to him. The cards had been punched in from 7 to 7.38 a.m. on September 25. The western wall and part of the ceiling of the guards' bedroom, which opened to the entrance foyer crashed with a terrible din and the wind rushed inside through the door. The guardroom trembled from the fierce blow.

He rolled to his back. The wire hanging on the ceiling without a bulb in the end was dangling violently. The watch on the punching machine had stopped at 8.15 a.m. The empty racks of cards were hung on the wall and one of the racks that were hung on a nail was swinging and in each semi-circular movement it caused part of the plaster and mud to drop. The only windowpane in the large window in the guardroom that formerly opened to the public telephone booth had broken down and the wall holding the window succumbed towards the abyss and the gaps on the wall widened

Aref was pulling himself towards the opposite direction when he saw a card that had remained in the card rack. He could read the number on it. His heart suddenly missed a beat and he could feel his pulse in his ears up to his wrist. He tried to pull himself higher to see whose card it was. The wind tossed the cards Aref had gathered towards the window and scattered them outside the room. He clung to the card rack and pulled out the card. The part of the wall that held the window crashed again. He looked onto the card and held it fast on his chest. Nazanin’s card had not been punched in on September 25. He looked at the card again and sighed with great relief:

"Nazanin did not come to the college that day. She can't be inside. She can't be dead," Aref sighed with joy...

He heard his own voice distinctly. He stood up.

"God forbid if she has forgotten to punch in?"

Once he was on his feet, Aref composed himself unconsciously and clung to the overturned iron table. He was afraid to be sucked away by the violent wind, but the wind had settled down.

"What has happened? Why isn't the wind blowing?"

He walked toward the crashed wall with caution and fear while he tested the ground under his feet to make sure that it was solid. He threw out a card out of the guardroom. The card swirled this way and that way and hastened to the depth of the abyss. He pulled out his handkerchief and tossed it in the air. The handkerchief fell down on the ground in the room in a very natural manner. He was not wrong The storm and the sucking wind had subsided. He put Nazanin's card into his pocket and opened the door and walked out when he was sure that the card was secure in his pocket. He walked cautiously step by step towards the edge of the precipice. Nothing happened.

He stood motionless for a while and watched the abyss. Then he sat down. He was trying to find out why the sucking wind had stopped. He walked to the guardroom to see whether he was right in his guess. He wanted to put Nazanin's card back on the rack to see whether the wind would start to blow again or not. He had not yet fully risen when the guardroom collapsed toward the western wall. The iron beams of the ceiling reclined on the ground for a few minutes and then crashed into the abyss.

He again sat down on the ground. He drew out the card from his pocket and examined it. He drew out Nazanin's piroshky from his jacket pocket and put it on her card: "Eat Nazanin! It is cold and crushed, but it is delicious. It is the piroshky you love so much."

He sat down at the edge of the abyss until evening. Stars appeared in the sky one by one.

"Nazanin! Where must I look for you? Why didn't I ever dare to approach you ever? You were so intimate with me. Do you remember how at some occasions our conversations ended with a single sentence and I told you that I just wanted to say the same thing?

"Nazanin! I was dumb and dazed. I knew that I shouldn't have cried. It never occurred to me that you were dead. But all I did was to mourn for losing you. Darling, had I known you were alive earlier I wouldn't have been slave to fear and pain all the time. Guide me yourself and tell me where you are, my darling."

He was awakened from his trance when he heard an ambulance approaches then it sped away.

"Nazanin, I will stay here tonight!"

He fastened the top of the piroshky plastic bag and put the bag and the punch card in his pocket.

Aref stretched his body on the ground, put his arm under his head and fell asleep. He woke up. His arms and limbs were cramped. He could hear the sound of water and could smell the wet soil. He looked at the sky. A big white moon was looming in the middle of the sky. He remembered his grandmother's tales: "Mahpishooni (moon-faced beauty) was so beautiful that she asked the moon not to rise in the sky because she had already risen from sleep."

Now that the moon has risen in the sky surely Mahpishooni is sleeping in her room and has covered herself with the quilt; otherwise the moon wouldn't dare to show its face.

He fell asleep again. In his dream he was talking to Nazanin. Nazanin was indignant.

"This is a hasty marriage. You should not look at such an important matter as a trivial thing and marry when you feel that you should marry. The time for marriage for each person differs from others. Now Minoo, your classmate...Why do you consult with me when you don't follow my instructions? How can I explain to you that to Minoo marriage is just to find a husband? Ah! How you bother me. There are things that..."

"Ms. Zahedi! I will hold you accountable if you refuse to tell me things you know about Minoo. If you feel yourself responsible and believe that our marriage would end unhappily ending you must stop me. Since you know her you can give a better opinion compared with others. Do you think you must keep her secrets because she has confessed to you? But tell the facts clearly so that I can be convinced that you are interested in my destiny."

"What if you have been chosen to excite another man?"

"Who?"

"Now I'm sure this must remain a secret with me. Goodbye!"

Nazanin disappeared in a dense fog.

Minoo pulled his hands.

"Come on Aref! Come on!"

He turned to Minoo. Minoo had knotted her hair into forty locks and had put a jasmine on each lock. She pulled him and Aref followed her.

He heard Nazanin's voice: "No!"

Minoo turned towards the direction of the sound and threatened the voice with her fists. Every lock in her hairs became alive. Black snakes started mounting her neck and face. She turned back and called Aref. A big snake struck her head out of her mouth when she opened her mouth. Aref was about to have a stroke from horror. Her arms had also turned to snakes and had wrapped themselves around his wrist and were dragging him into Minoo's open mouth. Her eyes no more resembled the Minoo he knew. They looked like two blazing balls staring out of her face and stunning him. Alarmed, he shouted aloud for help. A man walked out of the fog.

Aref cried, "Help! Help me!"

The man who looked exactly like himself continued his way without minding him. Aref saw that the man disappeared with Ms. Zahedi among the trees.

"Help me Nazanin!"

He suddenly woke up. His body was wet through by a cold sweat. After a few minutes he found out where he was lying. It was only a dream, he thought. He was glad. He felt chilly. He wrapped his overcoat firmly over his body and fell asleep again dreading to be beaten by a snake.

Nazanin was sitting over a green hill and Aref was running in a winding mountain track to reach her.

He approached her and observed that the apparition was bending over his body. He embraced her and put her head on his chest.

He looked for Nazanin among the stars.

Nazanin said, "Look Aref! The Greater Bear looks like a small milk boiler."

"Nazanin!"

His voice echoed in the space and the stars fell like small pieces of diamonds.

Aref was melting and evaporating like an ice statute. The statue rained and changed to Aref again. He died and resurrected and every time Nazanin's absence burnt his body like a furnace. He boiled and burnt. He shouted and the echo of his voice was the echo of a thousand birds that warned each other about the impending storm in the jungle. Aref yelled and the birds flew away from the trees but fluttered and fell down from the tree branches like pebbles.

He walked with the music of Nazanin's rhythmic name. One, two, three, and with that rhythm he circled round the world. Two green circles issued out of his burning eyes that stared straight at Nazanin and burnt everything in their path. The fire built rivers of molten objects and Aref walked over the mesh. Clouds struck at the mountain peak and the moon tore the clouds like a big scythe. Earth was trembling like a ruined castle. The moon burnt in the sky. Half of the sky was burning and the other half looked dark blue. Evening came and spread its dark mantle on everything, and it got darker and darker.

*

Aref woke up with the movement of a soft creature on his arm. He opened one of his eyelids slowly and saw a small sow bug crawling on his arm. He shook the bug off his arm and took its presence as the sign of good luck. He heard sparrow twittering. He rose, rested and rubbed the dust and rubbish off his garments. He tried to awaken his sleeping muscles. He stretched his body then bent and shook his waist. Then he walked towards the abyss and was astonished to see that water had risen from its bottom. Water had risen up to the windows of the first floor of the building and the pond had vanished under the water. A turning rustling sound in the middle of the abyss proved that the fountain was working.

He felt terribly hungry. He drew the flattened piroushki out of his overcoat pocket. As he was trying to open the knot of the plastic bag he again promised Nazanin to buy a hot piroushki for her. He smiled at his own thoughts, as if Nazanin was a kid. Of course Nazanin was not a kid. She had started her life very early and had repeatedly experienced fear and had become accustomed to frustration. Nazanin had suffered pains. That is why her advice was convincing. She had not made repeated mistakes like Aref in her life. No, he wasn't a kid, either he felt all his masculine strength with all his cells. He had never felt such strength so obviously and intensely. He could feel his throbbing muscles and felt a queer nimbleness and a great desire - a great desire to live with Nazanin.

"I must find her!" he promised himself.

As he was passing under the college portal he cast a glance at the abyss.

He returned from the same way he had come. He felt restless, glad and worried at once.

He hired a cab and told the driver his address.

Aref tried to remember all his conversations with Nazanin and whatever he had heard about her from others. He would search for her if he knew tentatively where she was living. Nazanin would always go eastward, so maybe her house was located east of Tehran. But what district? Who was the most intimate friend of hers? All the college staff, perhaps…

"I've got to find her!" he said loudly.

"Did you say something sir?" the driver exclaimed.

"I wasn't talking to you."

The driver inspected Aref curiously and without doubt in his mirror. Aref ignored him.

Which of the senior students were her friends? He should ask the students. Maybe the college employment headquarters possesses her address. Maybe that office retained the employees' files. Maybe the insurance department possessed Nazanin address. He hoped Nazanin had not changed her house.

After the death of her husband, Nazanin moved out of their big house? Aref knew where that house was. He had obtained the address to distribute charity among her neighbors. She had gone to Nazanin's house on the fortieth day of her husband's death with some friends. The house was full of beauty and taste, but sad and stricken by woe and disaster. An artistic atmosphere dominated the house. Nazanin's dead husband, wearing his pilot uniform, was looking proudly into his house out of a picture frame. In another picture frame Nazanin, her daughter, and her husband were smiling at the guests. Nazanin and her husband each had laid a hand on Nazli's shoulders, as if they were promising Nazli to protect her forever.

On that day Nazli was not home. They had sent her to the cinema along with her cousins to keep her away from the sad ceremony and probably stop her asking repeatedly, "Where is daddy, mummy?"

During the Iraq-Iran War and the war of cities Nazanin seemed to die and resurrect every day from horror, but she smiled all the time and attended her workplace. She encouraged everybody to remain firm and she never left Tehran.
"Are you going to Sa'adatabad sir?" the driver asked.

"Stop at this square. I'll drop here."

He paid the fare and walked ahead. He entered a confectionary around the corner and bought a box of pastries.. He wanted to please everybody and tell them that he had resurrected.

The cashier glanced at him.

"A leaf is on your hairs, sir!"

Aref inspected himself in the mirror, as if it was the first time he was looking himself in the mirror. He was taken aback, but it was he with a dry plane leaf on his hair.

He paid the cashier and walked out of the shop. He put the box of pastries on the roof of a parked car and put his two hands into his hair and shook them. The air was filled with the scent of toasted wheat and roasted peas.

Aref had a pleasant feeling. He felt gay and carefree like when he was a kid and roamed in the farms and orchards in their town along with the children of his relatives. Nature bestowed gifts to them every where. Even during the cold months of fall they could find grapes, raisin or a dried fruit under bushes and trees. During summer everywhere looked full of divine gifts for people as they had no green grocery in their provincial town. Now he felt the same childish emotions and was sure that he could find Nazanin. The only thing he had to do was to find several pebbles and knack down Nazanin that stood at the peak of the tree branch like a ripe walnut. It was enough for him to seize the trellis, set his foot on the platform near the pond, stretch his hand and try to pull the overburdened pomegranate tree branch softly and crack the pomegranates. After that he didn't mind if the pomegranate fruit fell into the pond. Each year the most delicious pomegranates grew on pomegranate trees in her grandmother's house - the pomegranate trees whose heavily laden branches bent towards the pond.

Aref felt he had a mission in his life. He wrote down programs for himself, crossed them and wrote them again.

"First I will go to the employment headquarters. Maybe I can find her file. If I don't find it, I will go to the insurance department. Then if fail to find her address I will go to Mashhad and ask Javad. Javad was a friend of Nazanin and her husband. No, before I go to Mashhad I should go to her former district in Tehran and ask her neighbors. They may have Nazanin's new address."

These plans tasted like the unripe black cherries that he licked in their house. It was a black cherry tree that stood on his way and every day he licked the ripest cherry on the tree branch. And all the time he licked them while they still hung on the tree, without allowing them to fall down.

*

"What is her husband the surname?"

"Zahedi."

"How about Nazanin's surname?"

"Zahedi. We used to call her Mrs. Zahedi. Her name card is printed as Zahedi. Look and see!"

"They can have the same names if they are relatives. I wonder how you don't know anything about the woman whom you love so ardently."

"Don't scold me Sonbol. I know everything that two people must know about each other. I know what she loves. I know what writers she reads? What books. What kind of poetry and dress. I know her idea about this world and the next life. I know how she could discover or can discover the reason for any phenomenon, but it was pure accidental that I found out how old she was. I never thought I should ask her what province she came or what the business of her parents was? It was when her husband was killed that I understood that he was a pilot. I had seen her kid because she took her to the kindergarten... When my daughter died. and I lost her so easily... I never could forgive Rosa because Rosa put the child on the table and it didn't occurred to her that the child would fall down and would have a brain damage..."

"We were speaking about Nazanin. Don't bother. You will marry again and will have healthy and beautiful children again, and I will be their dearest aunty. Please stop thinking about your past! What is done can not be undone. You should think about your future. "

"I think my future without Nazanin would be quite useless. Living without the one you love is a gradual death."

"Aref! May I ask you something?"

"Sure, what?"

"I don't want to upset you."

"No I won't be upset."

"I as a sister, you always tell me that I am the closest person to you, yet I can't believe that you are so much in love with Nazanin . You never talked about her before. You had other girlfriends. You married another woman and now suddenly..."

"Once I asked myself the same question. When I was single, free, and young, a student without job and income and with no self-confidence, she was a married woman and was attached to her family. When she became a widow and lonely I was a married man with a kid. Now that I have no obligations, I don't know where she is. I am afraid of finding her and see that she is married or something bad has happened to her. I swear to God that I am telling the truth that I cannot live without her."

"You shouldn't ever give up. The first thing that you must do is to find her. I'll help you."

"I'll find her. Wherever I look I see her. Last night I dreamed I was wandering in a field. The sky was starless and cloudy. I saw a light. First it was a star, and then it changed into the moon. When I looked closely the light disappeared. I ran after it. I heard the whistle of a train, but no train was in sight. It was as if I was racing with the light and I ran towards it. A light issued out of a tunnel. I was so disappointed that I decided to throw myself under the wheels of the train. But I was dancing like a cloud in the air. Nazanin approached me then she walked away. She climbed a black mountain higher and higher and then she disappeared. And I was shouting at the foot of the mountain. You know Sonbol, she had or has strange ideas. She always said ""Enjoying beauty is something that you cannot share with others. It is like listening to music from Walkman tape recorder. While you are drowned in music and listening to music through the headphone, others are busy with their own work and talk. They are completely strangers to your world. The movements you make from the joy of music are either funny or interesting to others. But you are completely on your own and if you want to share your joy with another person you will be deprived of your own joy. It seems to me that to dividing pleasure is the result of your wish to dominate another person's feelings. You can reach an agreement with another party about the meaning of beauty and enjoying beauty, but you cannot share your pleasure with others!"" Now I don't want to divide with you the joy of my search for Nazanin."

*

Days rolled away and water kept rising in the abyss. One could not trace the buildings anymore. Life in that district had become normal to some extent and birds hovered over the lake.

Gradually the streets leading to the abyss were unlocked. The cracked and broken asphalts were repaired. Several shops started working and every day one or two families returned to their homes or moved to that district. The broken and collapsed houses had been turned into mounts of dust with due to sunlight and repeated rain and snow and weeds had grown on the mounds.

In those days the findings of the expert teams that had been dispatched to the district was published as follows, "A spillway has opened and part of the district with the college in its center sunk down due to the collapse of lower earth layers. The reason for the rise of water is because the underground aqueduct has been blocked."

Aref could not find anything in the employment headquarters. The clerks explained that the personal files of the affiliated departments were being kept in the college, and no copy was kept in the employment headquarters. He was disappointed with the insurance office. The addresses of the employees were their workplaces. He referred to the traffic department too, but they couldn't give any useful answer. They knew Nazanin's old address. He contacted Javad, her friend, in Mashhad. Javad didn't know Nazanin's new address, either.

Whenever he discovered a new way to find Nazanin he accumulated an endless energy in her body and walked from one side of the city to the other without getting tired. During such wanderings several times he had a premonition that Nazanin had died. He referred to the morgue at Behehesht-e Zahra cemetery. They quickly searched their files and informed him that their computer had not registered such name among the dead.

At the beginning of summer the water in the abyss had risen so high that city hall led the spill water to flow into a canal east of the college. The debris of the demolished houses was removed. Some buildings were leveled, poured fresh soil on them and grew lawns. The college portal was preserved as a gateway to the artificial lake and the bunker that was connected to land by a bridge was used to store the lawn-making equipment, spades and other equipment of the municipality employees. The municipality built beautiful and colorful booths around the artificial lake and rented them to vendors. In the afternoon the district pounded with the roar of children and the noise of vendors of balloons and roasted popcorn. Small boats sailed in the lake and took the folk for excursions.

A row of fountains was constructed at the western side of the lake and small ponds were put up around it by colorful stones. The water falling from the fountains looked shining and beautiful. Japanese quince bushes, yellow jasmine and decorated boulders were placed here and there around the lake and added to the beauty of the landscape.

Every time he hit a dead end Aref walked to the lake and walked around it. He repeatedly hired a boat and paddled alone across the lake. He would stop in the middle of the lake, concentrate deeply, and send a message to Nazanin because he feared that Nazanin had forgotten to punch her card.

Several times he dived and swam as deep as he could in the depth of the lake, but all his search was in vain. He couldn't reach the bottom of the lake. He could not hold enough breath and had to return to the surface and suffer the reprimands of the lake guards. While his wet underwear was obvious under his pants, he would sit down on a bench under the sun and would talk to those who were asleep in the lake. It was the first week of August and the third anniversary of the disappearance of the college was ending.

Aref was still hopeful to find Nazanin, and the desire to meet her blazed more furiously in his heart. For the past several weeks nobody had replied his advertisements in the papers to give Nazanin's address and receive a reward. After they received more information about Nazanin, several rogues called him now and then and pestered him or made fun of him. After that he stopped picking up the telephone receiver.

Continued