When Bibi Fatemeh, in the twilight of Najaf's dawn, before the first muezzin’s call echoed from the shrine's golden dome, spun the spindles between her tired yet steadfast fingers, she was weaving the warp and weft of our destiny. The rhythmic motion of those traditional spindles was not merely a lone woman's means of survival amidst the political and religious storms of a Baathist-suffocated Iraq; that movement was the steady heartbeat of a family destined to be shattered, to die, and to be reborn time and again, until a new generation could emerge from the flames and bloom in the soil of exile.

Decades have passed. Today, in the year 2026, I, Mohsen, sit in a quiet house on the ocean shores of Sydney. I stare at the first joint of my right index finger, where the deep, rough, and white scar of a line is engraved upon my skin like an ancient border. This line is the relic of an ominous, heavy, and crudely shaped key; a key that I pulled from my pocket on a scorching afternoon in Golestan Town at the age of thirteen, and handed to my mother, Marzieh. A key that was supposed to unlock the door to our own home, but inadvertently unlocked an eternal tragedy.

I wrote this book not merely as a simple memoir or a physical crossing of geographies, but as a sacred memorial to keep the history of my family alive. For me, writing these pages means putting an end to years of psychological anguish, isolation, and the backbreaking burden of guilt that had chained every fiber of my being since my teenage years. I wrote this book to make peace with my wounded past and to tell the world that behind every cold immigration statistic and every news broadcast of wandering boats in the vastness of the ocean, stand real human beings with beating hearts, soul-scorching sorrows, and boundless hope.

This is the epic of my family; a tale stretching from our roots in Najaf to my birthplace in Isfahan, and from the limbo of waiting to the shores of salvation.

[[break]]

> "Author's Note on Names and Details: In this book, to protect the moral rights, privacy, and legal considerations of the individuals involved, the names of certain characters and locations have been altered or replaced with pseudonyms. What you read in these pages is the bare, unvarnished manifesto of our lives."

> © 2026 All rights reserved. Written by Mohsen Al Moussawi. Any copying, republication, adaptation, cinematic or audio derivation, or translation without the written permission of the author is strictly prohibited by law and is subject to legal prosecution.

Running barefoot on the scorching, molten asphalt of Golestan Town, the astringent taste of dust kicked up from the wobbly wheels of bicycles, and the sound of loud laughter echoing through the dirt alleys; this was my entire share of the world's kingdom at the age of thirteen.

We had a small empire. Our crew—me and my closest middle school friends—had an unwritten but ironclad pact among ourselves. We had vowed that nothing, not even the harsh punishments of the school disciplinarian or the endless nightly homework, could break the chain of our camaraderie. On spring afternoons, when the final school bell rang with a lazy rhythm, we would pour into the alley, free and reckless, like birds escaped from a cramped cage. Our fast-paced games on the soft dirt at the edge of town were my safe haven; a cozy place where I could, if only for a few hours, forget the hidden heavy atmosphere of our home.

But no matter how far I went from home, my right hand would subconsciously slip into my pants pocket. I would slide my index finger inside and run it along the sharp, rough, and crudely shaped edges of that ominous key; a key that my father "Zaher" had given me to open the door to our own house. Its cold, merciless metal seemed to have an ancient enmity with my small fingers; every time I tried, with all my thirteen-year-old strength, to turn the stiff, rusted, and stubborn lock of the door, the key would slip in my hand and wound the upper joint of my index finger—a red, burning scar that seemed to want to remind me that entering that nest always came with injury and pain.

Tomorrow was Friday, and the thought of Fridays always melted like sugar in our hearts. Friday wasn't an ordinary day in our family; it was a grand narrative of togetherness and an escape from endless anxieties. The whole family—from Aunt Roya and her husband Hamid to their children Leila and Hamed, the tireless Aunt Khadijeh and Uncle Nader—we all gathered in Bibi Fatemeh's large house, full of pomegranate trees. Bibi's house in those days was the anchor and safe haven for the entire extended family.

My sisters, Faezeh and Maryam, and I would make plans for Friday days in advance. The image of that crowded courtyard, the smell of lentil stew and warm bread, the sound of men's banter, and the chaotic noise of us kids in front of the TV while watching weekend series, was the most beautiful, heavenly postcard of my childhood.

And most beautiful of all was watching my father, Zaher. My father, a thoughtful, quiet, and unassuming man who worked all week in a pharmacy and quietly carried the heavy weight of the forced migration from Najaf on his shoulders, seemed to come back to life and regain his spirit in these gatherings. Sometimes in the afternoons, he, along with Sina and Uncle Nader, would grab a volleyball, and we would all head to a large dirt field in the shadow of the famous and majestic Mount "Allah-Akbar".

Standing at the foot of that massive mountain, with the imposing name of God engraved upon its heavy brow, carried a strange feeling. The cool, wild mountain wind that blew would toss my father's hair. I would sit on a rocky hill and look at my father with eyes brimming with admiration and love, watching how he played with the others in the dust, and how loud, sincere laughter settled on his face. In those moments, under the shadow of Mount Allah-Akbar, I felt my father was the strongest man on earth and no storm in the world could shake the roof of our house...

But that afternoon in May 1995 (Ordibehesht 1374), when I reached our own alley in Golestan Town with a trembling hand and a finger that still burned from the pressure of the key, the air felt different. I no longer heard the laughter of my friends. I climbed the stairs to the second floor; where my mother Marzieh's small hair salon was located. The thick smell of hair dye and chemicals lingered in the air. My mother Marzieh and Bibi Fatemeh had just returned from a two-week trip to Syria. My mother came to greet me with that same cold smile and eyes that held the trace of hidden tears. The souvenirs from Syria were laid out on the table, but our house, on the eve of Friday's arrival, had plunged into a heavy, suffocating silence...

## Part Two: Empires of Mischief and Silent Angels

Fridays at the house of Bibi Fatemeh were far more than a simple gathering; they were akin to a bustling, vibrant, and adventurous theater. Before the sun had even reached the center of the sky, the roar of Uncle Jalal's old motorcycle exhaust from the top of the dirt alley heralded the arrival of yet another spring into Bibi's courtyard.

Among all my uncles, Uncle Jalal held a profound and special place in my heart. He was an intensely quiet, patient, and gentle man; it was as if an entire ocean of tranquility rippled within his eyes. He was the electrician and the neighborhood's jack-of-all-trades—a man who, armed with just a pair of pliers and an old voltage tester, bestowed light upon the darkened homes of Shahrak-e Golestan. Every burnt-out appliance would draw breath again beneath his miraculous hands. Yet, Uncle Jalal's greatest artistry lay not in mending intricate wiring, but in his boundless patience against the formidable tempests of life.

Whenever Uncle Jalal entered the courtyard, he would first lift his daughter, little Haniyeh, off the back of the motorcycle in a firm, fatherly embrace. Haniyeh was the silent angel of our family—an innocent child who had been struck by a fierce and ruthless fever in her infancy. That ominous fever, much like a sudden tempest, had swept away all the little girl's physical strength, leaving her entirely paralyzed for the rest of her life. Even so, Bibi's courtyard blossomed in Haniyeh's presence; Uncle Jalal would settle her onto a soft cushion beneath the shade of the lone pomegranate tree. Haniyeh could not run or cheer as we did, but her large, beautiful eyes would sparkle as she watched us play, and the sound of her innocent laughter was the most exquisite music in Bibi's courtyard.

But the tranquility of the courtyard never lasted long once the next person arrived: Milad!

Milad, Uncle Jalal's son, was only a year younger than me, and this narrow gap in age had forged us into the inseparable, conjoined twins of the family. Milad was the apple of everyone's eye and, naturally, the greatest headache for the adults. From the very moment our eyes met, the spark of a new scheme and a fresh act of sabotage would ignite in our minds. We were enamored with mischief, and whenever we joined forces, we formed an unstoppable two-man team that none of the grown-ups could ever tame.

One of our favorite pastimes was raiding Uncle Jalal's tool bag. While Uncle Jalal sat on the couch beside my father, Zaher, sipping his tea, Milad and I would silently swipe his magical toolbox. Using my uncle's wires, capacitors, and tiny lightbulbs, we would construct imaginary bombs, hiding them in every nook and cranny of the courtyard.

It only took Bibi Fatemeh setting down her rhythmic spindle for a few minutes to step into the kitchen. In the blink of an eye, Milad and I would transform her rosary-weaving wheel into a combat crane, or we would string the threads of her bobbins across the courtyard trees to rig up make-believe booby traps for the rest of the family!

The shouts of Aunt Khadijeh as she chased us with her sewing yardstick, the grumblings of Uncle Nader claiming our mischief had shattered his afternoon nap, and the subtle, hidden laughter of my father, Zaher, who took quiet delight in witnessing our boundless vitality—all of these were the very warp and weft of a dreamlike paradise we had woven in Shahrak-e Golestan.

Amidst this uproar, Milad would always bump his shoulder against mine, look at me with those mischievous eyes, and ask, "Mohsen, what's the next plan?" And I, swelling with the pride of an older brother, would touch the iron key in my pocket and laugh. We were the emperors of that tiny realm—emperors of thirteen and twelve who truly believed that these bustling Fridays, the gentle hands of Uncle Jalal, the sweet smiles of little Haniyeh, and the boundless fervor of our friendship would endure for all eternity...

## Part Three: The Silence of the Spoons and the Bitter Taste of Souvenirs

But that innocent paradise and the Fridays full of clamor beneath the shadow of Kooh-e Allah-Akbar did not last long. An autumn storm was brewing, right in the heart of Ordibehesht in 1374...

The two-week journey of my mother Marzieh and Bibi Fatemeh to Suriyeh had come to an end. Two weeks that I, Faezeh, and little Maryam had spent at Bibi's house, enveloped in the unsparing affections of Aunt Khadijeh. Aunt Khadijeh, who had separated from her husband years prior and bore the grueling weight of working day and night to provide for her two children, Sina and Sara, had been a mother to us during that time.

When mother returned, her suitcase carried a strange scent; a medley of Damashq jasmine, cardamom, Arabic spices, and the settled dust of long roads. The souvenirs were laid out on the table: rich, delectable sweets from Suriyeh, colorful prayer beads, and small toys for Maryam. Yet, behind mother's smile, a light had gone out. The woman who had so eagerly boarded the bus to visit the holy shrine had returned like a bird with broken wings, trembling even at her own shadow.

It was lunchtime the day after her return. The Ordibehesht sun filtered through the windows of the upstairs hair salon, casting its glow upon the tablecloth spread across the living room floor. We were all gathered around it: my father Zaher, my mother, myself, Faezeh, and little Maryam, the spoiled youngest child of the house who, blissfully unaware of everything, sat waving a spoon in her hand.

We waited for mother to recount her journey with her usual vivid enthusiasm; to tell us of the bazaars of Damashq, the shrine, and her fellow travelers. Instead, she sat beside the spread with an anxious face, her eyes devoid of their usual spark, wearing a smile that resembled a prolonged, silent apology.

Lunch began, yet no one uttered a word. A suffocating, leaden silence filled the room; a silence broken only by the monotonous, stubborn clatter of spoons against the melamine plates. Filled with confusion and dread, Faezeh and I kept darting our trembling gazes between father’s agitated face and mother’s downcast eyes. Even Maryam, despite her tender age, seemed to sense the heaviness in the air, eating far more quietly than usual. Something was profoundly wrong. It was as though the journey to Suriyeh, rather than healing my mother’s weary and despondent soul, had carved a deeper, hidden wound into her very being.

Once the spread was cleared and mother moved to take the dishes to the kitchen, my father called out to her. His voice was quiet yet resolute, laced with a faint tremor of anxiety: "Marzieh... sit down. We need to talk."

The color drained from mother’s face. In a frail voice, she pleaded, "Zaher, for God’s sake, not now... let it be for another time. The children are here..."

But father insisted. Both were so deeply submerged in their own turbulent thoughts that they seemed to have completely forgotten we children were even there. Mother was tightly clutching the edge of the tablecloth. Her cheeks had flushed crimson like those of a bashful little girl, and teardrops trembled in the hollows of her fragile eyes.

With his familiar composure, yet in a tone overflowing with love, father placed his hand over hers and asked, "Marzieh, tell me. I need to know what happened to you on that trip that has made you waste away like this?"

The dam of mother’s tears finally broke. She began to weep; a soul-wrenching cry whose heavy sobs frightened little Maryam, so much so that the child threw herself into mother’s arms and began to cry alongside her. Father gently stroked Maryam, and mother, amidst her jagged, breathy sobs, finally spoke:

"I don’t know, Zaher... perhaps it was the change in weather, or maybe the violent, endless jolts of that cursed bus on those far-off roads. The journey was so long and grueling that I, being the younger one, instead of looking after your mother Bibi Fatemeh, fell severely ill and became bedridden myself. I was ashamed, Zaher... I was so embarrassed. But your mother... even when I was burning with fever and asleep, she would pull the blanket I had draped over myself right off me and pull it over herself to stay warm! As a stranger on that bus, how could I possibly ask her for help?"

Mother lifted her head, fixed her tear-soaked eyes on father, and continued: "The severity of the illness had completely drained my endurance. I had no choice but to explain my predicament to the bus driver. And the driver, with true chivalry, procured medicine for me when we arrived in Suriyeh and took me to the nearest clinic for treatment. Zaher... you tell me, did I do something wrong in a strange land?"

Without a moment of hesitation, father looked at her with his steady, kind eyes and said, "No, my dearest Marzieh. You did the right thing."

But mother’s tears only fell harder, like rain pouring upon the parched soil of Shahrak-e Golestan. "Then why are they saying such vile things about me? Why did the pilgrims who traveled with us whisper these false, wicked rumors into your mother’s ears? I don't deserve this, Zaher... I don't deserve this. You should be thanking that driver for looking after your wife, not having to answer to the slanders of your relatives!"
My father, Zaher, whose pride and honor were woven into every fiber of this woman's being, took mother's trembling hands between his broad, rough palms. He caressed her and spoke, his voice now rippling with an undercurrent of hidden wrath:

"My Marzieh, I have absolute faith in you. I know you to be purer than refined gold. No word could ever cast a stain upon your honor. Put on your chador right now; get ready so we may go to the house of my mother, Bibi Fatemeh, and see what they have to say. This turmoil must end this very day."

Father rose. I looked at his face; anger and a fierce, masculine protectiveness flickered in his eyes. Still oblivious at thirteen, I did not know that stepping into Bibi Fatemeh's house on that scorching afternoon would mark the beginning of the eternal ruin of our little paradise...

## Part Four: The Ashes of Paradise in the Hall of Bibi's House

When I, my father Zaher, and my mother Marzieh, with her black chador and trembling shoulders, stepped into the house of Bibi Fatemeh, we did not linger in the courtyard. We climbed the stairs and entered the "hall"; that same large reception room where velvet cushions were always lined up all around, and which, on Fridays, served as the beating heart of our bustling family gatherings. But on that day, there was no trace of that familiar intimacy and warm embrace.

A strange, heavy, and suffocating silence reigned over the hall; it was as if our sudden arrival had caught everyone off guard. Aunt Khadijeh, Uncle Nader, Sina, and Bibi Fatemeh were each huddled in a corner, but with our arrival, everything froze in an instant. No one spoke a word. The silence of the hall was so heavy and cruel that even the sound of my mother's ragged, broken breaths could be clearly heard.

My father Zaher, whose slight trembling of hands betrayed his inner fury, stood waiting to see who would strike the first blow against the sanctity of his home. Finally, Aunt Khadijeh rose to her feet with a flushed face, approached my mother, and said with a tone laced with command: "Marzieh, get up and come with me to the next room. I must speak with you."

My father stepped forward with a furious glare and blocked my aunt's path: "No! Whatever needs to be said must be said right here, in the hall, and in my presence!"

Bibi Fatemeh, who was sitting on her old small mattress, tried to calm the uproar. She turned to Aunt Khadijeh and said, "Khadijeh, sit down. This matter does not concern us, do not interfere."

But Aunt Khadijeh turned a deaf ear. She pivoted toward my mother Marzieh and, with harsh and ruthless words, criticized her behavior during the trip and her interactions with the bus driver. My mother kept her head bowed, pulling her chador over her face. Bibi Fatemeh, seeing that silence was of no use, recounted the story to my father exactly as she had heard it from the Arab woman—the leader of the caravan:

"Zaher, in a foreign land, this woman has done things unbecoming of a modest Muslim woman! She would ask the driver to load her heavy suitcases or hand them to her. Whenever she felt ill, she constantly went to the driver, asking for his help to take her to the clinic or pharmacy. Even before my very own eyes, the driver would hold Marzieh by the arm to help her walk! God only knows what went on between them when I was not with them!"

Upon hearing these unjust accusations, the dam of my mother's being broke, and the sound of her forlorn sobs filled the hall of the house. My father Zaher, who was now seeing red, shouted in a fit of rage: "I have complete faith in Marzieh! To me, she is purer than gold, and I will allow no one to slander my wife!" Then he grabbed my mother's hand and cried out: "Marzieh, get up so we can leave this house!"

Sina, Aunt Khadijeh's son, and Uncle Nader ran forward in a panic and blocked the exit door of the hall to prevent my father from leaving. When they pleadingly asked him where he was going in such a devastated state, my father, in the peak of despair and the madness born of his wounded honor, screamed: "I am going to drown myself, my wife, and my children in the water canal!"

Everyone rushed toward my father to restrain him and keep him from leaving the house. My father, seeing himself trapped in their clutches and unable to free himself in that confined space, at the height of his nervous breakdown and delirium, suddenly smashed his head with all his might against the entrance door of the hall; that same old wooden door with its stained-glass windows.

The terrifying and ear-piercing sound of shattering glass shattered the silence of the house. In a single second, the beautiful colored glass cascaded down, and warm, crimson blood flowed from my father's forehead, covering his face. The strength instantly drained from his legs, and he collapsed unconscious into the arms of our relatives.

The hall turned into a hellscape of screams, glass, and blood. Faezeh, Maryam, and I trembled with fear, weeping over the shards of glass. Sina and Uncle Nader hurriedly carried my father's blood-soaked and lifeless body into the room to bandage his head. Aunt Khadijeh, suddenly crushed under the heavy burden of regret and guilt for this tragedy, went into a seizure, collapsing onto the hall's carpet with trembling limbs.

Amidst that uproar, the screams, and the scrambling to bring sugar-water, no one paid any attention to my mother. But I noticed her absence. Anxious and worried, I slipped out of the chaos of the hall and ran toward the backyard of the house.

My mother was there; with a tear-streaked face and a distressed mind, pacing rapidly and muttering things to herself under her breath. Upon seeing me, she ran toward me. Her eyes darted wildly. She placed her trembling hands on my shoulders and asked: "Mohsen... Mohsen, do you have the keys to the house with you?"
My right hand slid unconsciously into my trouser pocket. The rough, sharp edges of that ominous key pressed exactly against the first joint of my index finger—against that same old, burning scar—and the physical pain of the key knotted together with a strange dread in my heart.

With a trembling voice, I said, "Yes, Mom, I do."

She pleaded, "Give them to me, Mohsen. I have to go back home. It isn't right for me to stay here under these circumstances. I don't feel well at all; I need to go home and get some rest."

I was afraid. I clenched the key in my fist, its sharp metal biting into my finger. I asked, "What if Father regains consciousness and notices you're gone?"

My mother offered a bitter, feeble smile, caressed my small fingers, and said, "No, my dear, I will be back soon... just give me the keys."

I felt the pressure of the key's cold metal against the scar on my index finger for the very last time, and I, in my thirteen-year-old innocence, pulled the key from my pocket and surrendered it to my mother's trembling hands. She adjusted the chador over her head and hurried away, vanishing through the courtyard door like a weightless shadow in the fading light of dusk...

If only... if only I had never stepped into the courtyard on that scorching afternoon, never crossed paths with my mother. Even now, after all these years, I still hold myself as the prime culprit for all the storms that raged behind those closed doors...

## Part Five: The Echo of an Ominous Ring and Scorched Asphalt

Nearly two hours had passed since that tragedy; two hours that felt like two centuries to me. The atmosphere of Bibi Fatemeh's house, following that heavy storm, had sunk into a deadly, purgatorial silence. My father, with a bandaged forehead, lay lifelessly on the mattress, not yet fully conscious and unaware of the chaos outside the room. Aunt Khadijeh, after surviving a severe seizure, was huddled in the corner of the living room with a pale face and lifeless eyes. The agony of conscience and the weight of the accusations leveled against my mother had settled like gray dust upon the faces of the entire family. No one spoke a word; it was as if everyone were waiting for another spark to shatter them once again.

Suddenly, the ring of the tabletop telephone shattered the suffocating silence of the living room.

Every single one of us jumped up in terror. Aunt Khadijeh, with hands that were still trembling, ran toward the phone and picked up the receiver. As soon as she heard the voice on the other end of the line, her face turned as white and bloodless as chalk. Her mouth fell open, as though there wasn't enough air for her to breathe. With a voice that seemed to emerge from the bottom of a well, she pleaded and cried out several times: "No... wait! Marzieh? Marzieh, is that you?... Marzieh! Marzieh!"

The receiver slipped from my aunt's trembling hand and dropped onto the cradle. With a panicked, broken voice, she turned to Sina and Uncle Nader and shrieked: "Let's go, quickly... It was Marzieh... she said come get me, take me away... I am not well at all!"

A strange uproar and tumult engulfed Bibi's house. Everyone was spinning around in a panic, having only just realized that they shouldn't have taken their eyes off my mother for even a single second. Amidst that chaos, the weight of a mountain of guilt crashed down upon my chest. My entire body trembled with dread. With a tearful, quivering voice, I confessed: "Auntie... Mom asked me for the house keys... and I... I gave them to her!"

Aunt Khadijeh spun toward me, her eyes brimming with terror and anger. She shook my shoulders and screamed: "You made a mistake, auntie! You made a mistake! How am I supposed to answer to your father now? If, God forbid, your mother does something to herself, what on earth am I going to do?"

With my aunt's words, it was as if the sky above me collapsed and the world grew dark before my eyes. I wished the earth would open its mouth and swallow me whole. The thought of running away from home crossed my mind. My terrified sisters, Faezeh and little Maryam, stared at me with eyes overflowing with fear and pity; a gaze whose weight, like a righteous court, condemned my thirteen-year-old innocence.

The adults quickly bundled up to head toward our house. So that we wouldn't get in their way or cause a commotion in the yard, they took me, Faezeh, and Maryam into one of the back rooms and locked the door from the outside. Only Sara and Aunt Parvin stayed behind in the house to watch over us and our unconscious father.

Time passed agonizingly. I could hear the rapid beating of my heart in my chest. Enduring those four locked walls and having no news of my mother was impossible for me. My legs were trembling, but my will to leave was resolute. Sara, whose heart ached for us and who saw my pleading tears, secretly unlocked the door, but set a condition with a trembling voice: "Mohsen... for God's sake, go, but don't tell your father anything about Marzieh leaving."

I didn't wait for another word. Despite the objections of Aunt Parvin and Sara, I bolted out the door of the house.

I didn't have a single qiran of spare change in my pocket to take a taxi. My right hand was empty, and the scar on my index finger still burned from the pressure of those damned keys. I started to run. The dirt road leading to Shahrak-e Golestan was scorched beneath the blazing afternoon sun, but I ran barefoot, without shoes, the entire 4-kilometer distance to our house. I was panting, my lungs burning from the dust of the road, and I couldn't feel the searing pain in the soles of my feet on the hot asphalt. The only image flickering in my mind was my mother's distressed face in the backyard. I pleaded with myself: "Dear God... just let my mother be safe. Just that."

When I reached the beginning of our alley in Shahrak-e Golestan, a paralyzing fear chained every fiber of my being. Our alley was crowded and bustling with movement. The neighbors had gathered in front of our house, whispering among themselves.

My heart plummeted. Frantically, with legs that no longer had the strength to run, I pushed through the crowd. Suddenly, I froze. A white ambulance was parked in front of the door. I saw Aunt Khadijeh, driven by the agony and madness of regret, relentlessly banging her head against the metal body of the ambulance, screaming with heart-wrenching wails and moans: "Marzieh!... Marzieh!... Forgive me, Marzieh!"
The ambulance siren flared to life with a dreadful, ear-piercing wail, and the vehicle pulled away, weaving through the angry, curious crowd until it disappeared. A cold sweat broke out across my forehead, and my vision blurred. The heavy, pitying gazes of the neighbors turned toward me—a naked little boy with wounded feet, standing on the threshold, staring at the exposed wires of the house's intercom. Aunt Roya and her husband Hamid were there, too. Hamid, an electrician, had yanked out the intercom wires to bypass the lock and force the door open so they could get inside.

Deaf to the voices around me, I stepped into the dark courtyard of the house. I climbed the concrete stairs to the second floor; stairs enveloped in the sharp, biting stench of chemicals, dust, and a deadly poison...

## Part Six: The Acrid Scent of Death and the Shattered Heel

With legs that could barely support my weight beneath the crush of dread and exhaustion, I climbed the cement stairs. Every step was heavier than the one before it. I reached the second floor—the very place where my mother, with a thousand hopes and dreams, had set up a small women's salon. But that room was no longer a sanctuary of colors, the fragrance of shampoos, and beauty.

The salon was terrifyingly ravaged and in disarray, as if a blind storm had swept through it. The leather chair facing the large mirror had been overturned, cast mercilessly to the floor. Cosmetics and bottles of hair dye were scattered all around it; thick, colorful liquids now crept across the linoleum like an ominous pool of blood.

A sharp, suffocating, and biting odor burned my throat. My gaze froze on the dark stains and empty bottles. Oh, my God... Mother had used those very toxic substances, those dangerous hair dye chemicals, to end her own life. The same chemicals she had always, with maternal tenderness and concern, warned us children to stay away from, telling us they were deadly poisons. And now, in the depths of her desperation and solitude, she had swallowed those very toxins herself. My entire body trembled; absolute terror clawed at my soul, and in a fraction of a second, I envisioned my dark, ruthless future without the presence and embrace of my mother.

Later, Hamid, my aunt's husband who was the first to reach my mother, recounted that horrifying scene with a trembling voice. He had found my mother lying on the floor, her always-immaculate hair splayed wildly around her, foam spilling from her mouth and nose. Hamid said the agony from that lethal poison was so soul-scorching that in her final moments of resisting death, my mother had pounded the heel of her right foot against the ground continuously and with all her might.

Efforts to bring her back to this world were in vain. Even though the doctors at the hospital quickly pumped her stomach and washed her intestines, her frail body and exhausted soul could no longer withstand the internal ravages and wounds of that merciless poison. Finally, on that black Friday, the 15th of Ordibehesht 1374 (May 5, 1995), Marzieh, my innocent and long-suffering mother, closed her eyes to this unforgiving world forever.

Throughout those two or three ominous hours as these tragedies were unfolding, my poor father had lain unconscious on the floor of Bibi Fatemeh's house, oblivious to it all. When he finally regained full consciousness, dizzy and disoriented, he asked for his wife, until those around him, with tearful eyes and trembling lips, were forced to break the devastating truth to him.

That proud and reserved man crumbled upon hearing the news. My father immediately rushed home, and with loud sobs and wails the likes of which I had never seen from him before, he screamed the name "Marzieh." He searched the entire house like a madman and then ran up to the roof. I watched him in shock, through tears and a suffocating sense of guilt, bearing witness to his torment. My father stood on the roof and cried out to the sky: "Marzieh! Just a little while ago we washed and swept the roof together... My dear, where are you?"

The next day, the sun rose over our town, but for us, the world remained entirely dark. A prayer ceremony was held at our home, and for the burial, all our relatives and even the neighbors came dressed in black to the only cemetery in our small town. My father had become so ill, broken, and devastated that he could not even make it to the graveyard to attend the funeral of his love.

Only I and my little sisters, Faezeh and Maryam, were present among the throng of mourners. They had taken my mother into a room to wash and shroud her body. My thirteen-year-old heart pounded in my chest; terrified, my face drenched in tears, I wanted to see her for the very last time.

When I stepped forward to enter the washhouse, the female attendants initially blocked my way, but after the insistence and pleading of the women from our family and the neighbors, they finally allowed me to cast one last look at my mother's face.

I entered the room. My mother's beautiful body, bare and white as snow, lay lifeless. The marks of wounds were visible on her head and face, and her right heel... the very heel she had pounded against the ground in her battle with death, was shattered.

Upon seeing that sight, such a shock coursed through me, and the weight of the entire world collapsed upon my head so heavily, that I let out a piercing scream. I covered my face and eyes with both hands, and with a voice that tore at my throat, I just kept screaming: "Mom... Mom..." The women in the room guided me outside, still trapped in that state of sheer delirium.
I was trembling. Like a weeping willow in the winter wind, I trembled. I sought refuge among the other mourners who were grieving a short distance away. My relentless weeping had left me disoriented, and amidst all that tumult, my thoughts were drowning in the depths of the dark sea of a future without my mother; a future I did not know how to bear without her, among these people...

## Part One: The Exodus to Mehrabad and Loneliness on the Rooftop
Our house in Shahrak-e Golestan no longer bore any resemblance to that safe nest full of old laughter. After the sudden, lonely, and innocent flight of my mother Marzieh on that bitter Friday in Ordibehesht, it was as if the walls of the house had opened their mouths and were constantly screaming her name. The sharp, biting, and heavy smell of chemicals and hair dye from the upstairs beauty salon seemed to have seeped into the very warp and weft of the room's plaster walls, showing no intention of ever leaving.
After that horrific tragedy, no one in the family dared to return to that house anymore. It was as if the shadow of death had pitched its tent upon its roof, turning it into a cursed place of wandering spirits, where its memories stung every soul. In those early days, it was only me who would sometimes secretly, with that same rough key in my pocket, unlock the door and seek refuge in the house's lonely embrace.
I, a thirteen-year-old boy, amidst that prolonged and suffocating silence, with tears and a heavy lump in my throat that choked my breath, searched for the last signs of my mother's existence. I would sniff the kitchen, touch the cold rims of the pots, and pleadingly search for the taste of the last meal she had cooked, hoping a trace of it might still linger in some corner of the house. Every lifeless object in that house flaunted her last gaze or the final touch of her kind hands, burning my soul.
After a few days had passed, we all reluctantly returned to the house with father to face the phantom of reality. For my father Zaher, climbing those cement stairs and sitting in the living room where Marzieh's warm voice no longer echoed had become an endless daily torture. He, who was once a harsh, resolute man and a pillar of steel, had now turned into a quieter, kinder, and profoundly sorrowful shadow of himself, whose shoulders were bowed under the heavy burden of loneliness and regret.
It did not take long for father to realize that the spirit of life had flown from that house. To escape that suffocating heaviness and to break free from the constant image of Marzieh's death, he put my mother's house up for auction. We packed all our belongings into a few old cardboard boxes and, as a first step, moved to Bibi Fatemeh's house. But staying there was no sanctuary of peace either. A deep, dark, and cold resentment had been drawn between my maternal family and my father's relatives; a relationship that was completely severed after my mother's tragic death, replaced by vindictiveness and terrifying threats.
Uncle Reza—my mother's older brother—whose grief seemed to have morphed into a maddening rage, would occasionally appear in my father's path, shouting warnings and threatening him never to think of bringing another woman into the house after Marzieh. My most terrifying memory of those purgatorial months was a scorching afternoon when my father was trying to cross the street; Uncle Reza, sitting behind the wheel of his old minibus, saw my father, accelerated, and drove with sheer lunacy, intending to run him over and destroy him. The fierce gust of wind from the minibus's assault shook the chadors of the relatives, and it was only my father's swift reaction and sudden, miraculous leap onto the sidewalk that prevented another bloody tragedy on the hot asphalt of the street.
Father knew that to protect our lives and tear ourselves away from that traumatic soil, we had to distance ourselves leagues away from Shahrak-e Golestan and the shadow of Uncle Reza's threats. That was how we all packed our bags and migrated to a larger town named Mehrabad.
In Mehrabad, we rented a large two-story house that possessed a strange atmosphere. The family's agreement was that Bibi Fatemeh, Aunt Khadijeh, and their families would take the first floor, and the second floor would become entirely the share of our small family: me, father, Faezeh, and little Maryam.
This relocation defined our lives on the narrow border between chaos and solitude. The downstairs was always brimming with commotion, the comings and goings of relatives, the sound of Aunt Khadijeh's sewing machine, and the ruckus of Sina and the rest; but when we climbed the cement stairs and stepped onto the second floor, a strange and biting silence would suddenly embrace us. My sisters, Faezeh and Maryam, exhausted from playing downstairs, would fall asleep early, but for me, at thirteen or fourteen years old, the tangible absence of my mother was still unbelievable and akin to an unhealable wound.
In those nights of Mehrabad, my first and last refuge was the sky.
When absolute silence reigned over the house and my father drifted to sleep, drowning in his own strange thoughts, I would climb the stairs to the roof with soft steps. There, beneath the endless, indigo canopy of the sky, I would kneel by the edge of the mud-brick walls, tilt my head toward the stars, and begin to whisper. My tears would stream silently down my cheeks, and I would pour all the aches I had locked inside my little chest throughout the day into the ears of my mother, Marzieh. In my childish faith, I believed profoundly that she was sitting somewhere among those luminous specks of light, listening to her son's cries.

I will never forget; on one of those cold autumn nights, as I gazed up at the sky in supplication, a shooting star suddenly pierced the heart of the darkness with breathtaking speed, tracing a thin, radiant line of light before vanishing in a fraction of a second. In that moment, my heart stopped. My entire being flushed with a strange thrill. Within my dreaming, sorrow-stricken mind, I imagined that this was the very sign I had begged her for; this was the whisper and reply of my mother, Marzieh, calling out from leagues away: "My Mohsen, do not grieve... I hear your voice, I am watching over you..."

## Part Two: Aunt Tahereh and the Magic Nintendo Box

Our lives on the second floor of that rented house in Mehrabad passed in a prolonged, gray silence. It was as if the cement stairs connecting us to the floor below were the boundary between two entirely different worlds; downstairs flowed with the sounds of commotion, the coming and going of relatives, the hum of Aunt Khadijeh's sewing machine, and the ruckus of Sina, but on the second floor, time had stood still, and every corner of the house laid bare the void left by my mother, Marzieh. My father, Zaher, who seemed to have abandoned all his former vigor and tenacity in his grief for Marzieh, had become a quieter, gentler, and deeply sorrowful man who spent most of his hours off work in silence, smoking cigarettes in solitude. Faezeh, Maryam, and I were huddled in our own loneliness, and every night on the rooftop, I would whisper the aches of my thirteen-year-old heart to the shooting stars.

Until one ordinary afternoon, a faint and polite knock came at the entrance door of the second floor. The door opened, and a young woman, deeply elegant and dignified, entered the house alongside my father. I had seen her a few times before at old family gatherings, and we called her "Aunt Tahereh." She was a close relative of one of Bibi Fatemeh's sons-in-law. Tahereh gracefully gathered her chador, sat beside us, and looked at us with hazel eyes brimming with kindness. Her gaze was neither born of the agonizing pity of the neighbors nor the harsh judgments of our relatives; a light of pure understanding and warmth rippled in her eyes.

Aunt Tahereh had not come empty-handed that day. She placed a large, colorful gift box on the carpet of the second floor and said with a warm smile, "This is for you, children..." Faezeh, Maryam, and I gathered around the box in curiosity. When we opened the gift, our eyes sparkled with wonder; a Nintendo gaming console!

In those years, when the 8-bit Micro Nintendo was one of our greatest childhood dreams, gazing at that cream-colored console with its two red joysticks and the famous "Mushroom Eater" (Super Mario) game cartridge felt like a miracle on the second floor of our house. Father, with Tahereh's help, connected the colorful wires of the Nintendo to the old television on the second floor. The moment the console was turned on and the rhythmic, electronic, and joyful sounds of the game echoed through the room, the dark and sorrowful atmosphere of our home suddenly shattered.

My sisters and I instinctively grabbed the controllers, and the shared courtyard of the house with Bibi downstairs, after months of silence, was finally filled with the sound of our cheers, laughter, and joyous squeals. Aunt Tahereh sat beside the television through all these moments, guiding us, and with every successful move we made in the game, she cheered us on with all her heart.

With Tahereh's repeated visits, the shifts in my father Zaher's spirit began to reveal themselves one by one. He, who for months had become a cold shadow of himself, was now laughing again; he attended to household chores with greater enthusiasm, and his lusterless eyes had come back to life. We children quickly understood that Tahereh's compassionate presence, far beyond simple neighborliness, heralded the arrival of a new and vital chapter in our home.

Until one warm and sunny summer day, Father decided to take us on a leisure trip to the historical city of Isfahan. When the car's old engine roared to life, Aunt Tahereh, with her usual poise, adjusted her chador over her shoulder and sat in the front seat, right beside Father. Faezeh, Maryam, and I were huddled comfortably on the leather back seat. From there, from behind, watching the breadth of my father's shoulders and Tahereh's serene profile in the daylight evoked a strange feeling. It was as if a new image of a family had emerged, one I did not yet know how to face.

We hadn't driven more than a few kilometers from home and were barely at the beginning of our outbound journey when Father seemed unable to bear the hidden eagerness, haste, and trepidation in his chest until we reached Isfahan. He was in a bit of a hurry; he wanted to settle the matter of his heart with us before our eyes fell upon the roaring Zayandeh-Rood and the splendor of Naqsh-e Jahan Square. He slowed the car down a little, cast a glance at Tahereh—who, with feminine modesty, turned her head toward the window and stared at the passing scenery—and then adjusted the rearview mirror so he could see the eyes of all three of us in the back seat. With a gentle yet trembling voice, laced with a vibration of hope and anxiety, he asked: "Children... would you like Aunt Tahereh to come and live with us forever?"
Faezeh and little Maryam, without a single second's hesitation, bounced up and down in the backseat with joy, clapping and cheering. But I... I froze in the backseat. I fell silent, my gaze fixed on the road ahead. A storm of emotional contradictions raged in my chest; on one hand, I deeply loved Aunt Tahereh and yearned for my father to taste happiness once more, yet on the other, a paralyzing dread—much like the crushing weight of guilt—tightened around my throat. I thought to myself that if I accepted Tahereh as a new mother, it would mean betraying the memory of my mother, Marzieh, and that lonely grave in Shahrak-e Golestan.

My right hand slipped unconsciously into my trouser pocket. The real key had gone with Marzieh, lost forever, but the phantom trace of that old wound on the first joint of my index finger still burned. I clenched my hand into a fist inside my pocket so that no one in the front seat would notice its trembling, nor the formidable secret I harbored in my chest.

Tahereh, however, was far too patient and magnanimous to force acceptance upon a wounded teenager like me. With an invisible chain of quiet affection, she laid siege to the walls around my heart. In the days that followed, she continued to climb the stairs to the second floor in Mehrabad; she spent time playing Nintendo with us, cooked our most delicious favorite meals, patiently helped Faezeh with her difficult homework, and held Maryam’s small hands in her own. She never tried to play the role of a mother, nor did she attempt to usurp the empty space left by Marzieh. Instead, she honored her grave, and with gentle humility, built a new home overflowing with love within our fractured hearts.

## Part Three: A New Key in the Heart's Lock and the Call of Nejat

Leaving the crowded house of Bibi Fatemeh and becoming independent in Mehrabad was our first step toward escaping the heavy memories of the past. We vacated the second floor of that large two-story house, which had been inextricably linked to the chaos of Bibi's downstairs, and moved into an independent, rented house in that same city of Mehrabad. This relocation, for the first time after months of tension and mourning, restored a sense of true peace and security to our four walls. In this new and independent sanctuary, Aunt Tahereh was no longer an occasional guest; she was slowly weaving herself into the very fabric of our daily lives, and with her boundless patience, she was building a new home within our fractured hearts.

Tahereh possessed an uncanny gift for reviving the lost flavor of life. She never attempted to usurp the sacred, empty space left by my mother, Marzieh, or to erase her image from our memories; instead, with utmost humility, she honored Marzieh's lonely grave, while taking root in an entirely different corner of our hearts. She devoted time to us with that same old Nintendo, patiently helped Faezeh and Maryam with their schoolwork, and the aroma of her delicious meals brought the warm spirit of family back to our home once more.

In those early months, as a thirteen-year-old boy, I had spun a cocoon of silence and isolation around myself. I felt that every smile directed at Tahereh, or every step taken toward intimacy with her, would draw a line of oblivion across my mother's grave in Golestan. Sometimes, driven by my inner conflicts, I would argue with her or my father, only to drown in regret afterward; yet Tahereh never reacted harshly to my anger or coldness. With a chain of silent affection, link by link, she dismantled the concrete walls encircling my heart.

One evening, a heavy rain was beating against the roof of our independent house in Mehrabad. The savory aroma of Tahereh's cooking filled the living room, and she stood beside the lit samovar, pouring tea. Faezeh, Maryam, and I gathered together in our room. A glance circulated among us; a profound, unwritten decision that required no words came to life in our eyes. We stepped out of the room and stood beside Tahereh. All three of us together, with voices trembling with a mixture of shyness, unshed tears, and pure love, called out to her: "Maman..."

Tahereh's hand froze on the red-rose teapot. She turned around slowly. Tears of joy streamed from her hazel eyes; she set the tea tray on the counter and, without uttering a single word, pulled all three of us into her warm, maternal embrace. That embrace marked the end of our purgatory; it was a new covenant that, through her boundless sacrifices, endures to this day.

A year and a half after that eternal collapse, our independent house in Mehrabad was blessed with a new and sacred light. On a sunny day, the cries of a newborn echoed through the house, and my father, Zaher, cradled him with eyes brimming with tears of joy. Father named him Nejat. This name was no coincidence; for my father, Nejat was a symbol of liberation, salvation, and rescue from all the chains of the past, the displacement from Najaf, the trauma of grief, and the gray cocoon of lonely days. With the arrival of this little angel, his sweet, childish laughter and squeals completely transformed the atmosphere of our home. My sisters and I would sit around his cradle for hours, caressing his tiny feet, and Father, watching this perfect family portrait, was breathed back to life.

Yet, behind this newfound paradise, an old and irrepressible yearning had reignited in my father's mind. He had never formed a deep bond with life in Iran; the agony of lacking a birth certificate, the perpetual label of "Iraqi-born immigrant," the daily discrimination, and the shadow of the old grudge from my mother's family who constantly threatened us, had disheartened him from staying. He would stay awake every night, suffering from insomnia in the dark living room, lighting cigarette after cigarette, and talking about Australia; the dreamland of boundless opportunities, a place where its ocean smelled of freedom and its people were kind and cultured.

Every time we sat at the lunch or dinner spread in Mehrabad, Father would stare at me with a deep, responsibility-laden gaze. He knew well that, as his thirteen-year-old son, I possessed a spirit full of passion, curiosity, and audacity. He would place his hand on my shoulder and say in a serious, paternal tone: "Mohsen, you are the older brother. When I am not here, the key to taking care of this house is in your hands. You must be strong."
My father used the word "key" as a metaphor, signifying the guardianship and sanctuary of our home; yet he never knew what a tempest he unleashed in my heart by uttering that word. He did not know that in that very moment, I had subconsciously clenched my right hand into a fist inside my trouser pocket to conceal its trembling. The physical key had gone with my mother, Marzieh, lost forever, but the phantom of guilt from that Ordibehesht afternoon burned like an invisible wound upon my index finger. With a constricted heart, I smiled and nodded at my father, burying the secret of that key and its crushing weight in absolute silence. I did not yet know what a heavy and bloody price my father was destined to pay to buy the ticket for the dream of Australia...

## Part Four: The Heavy Price of Flight and the Silent Migration at Dawn

That rough iron key, after that ominous Ordibehesht sunset in Shahrak-e Golestan, never again returned to the pocket of my teenage trousers. My mother, Marzieh, took it from me in the backyard of Bibi's house, carried it away with her, and with her departure, the lock on the door of our home remained forever closed to her presence. The physical key disappeared forever in the dust of that incident, but the heavy phantom of that cold metal was an invisible wound that I hid beneath my clenched fists throughout all my teenage years in Mehrabad; a kept secret of which no one in the house was aware.

Our life in Mehrabad had regained its footing with the affectionate presence of Maman Tahereh and the laughter of little Nejat. I loved all the members of my maternal family from the bottom of my heart; my uncles and aunts were kind people who, with Marzieh's departure, had each suffered a broken piece of their heart, and we never held any grudge against them. But amid all this, Daee Reza was another story.

He was my mother's older brother, and the heavy grief of Marzieh's departure had left his soul agitated and restless. Daee Reza sometimes brought torment and tension to our home with his harsh behavior, and he was ostensibly resentful of my father; but we children, despite all the respect we held for Daee Reza, would instinctively and with all our being take our father's side in every tempest and confrontation. Father was our entire world, and watching him suffer lashed at the very soul of our innocence. Furthermore, statelessness, the agony of lacking an identity card, and the eternal label of "Iraqi-born immigrant" made my father grow more disheartened with staying in Mehrabad every single day.

One afternoon, my father returned home from the pharmacy in Mehrabad where he worked. When the door opened, we all froze in our tracks in sheer terror. Father's patient, beautiful face was covered in blood and bruises, and his front teeth were broken. Faezeh and Maryam formed a wailing circle around him, and Tahereh frantically brought him water. Father remained silent at first, but faced with our insistence and tears, he finally unveiled the truth with a frail voice: Daee Reza, having caught wind of my father's dream of migrating to Australia, had savagely stormed the pharmacy that day, beating and kicking my father, severely injuring him to dissuade him from the thought of leaving. He had furiously screamed that if he did not get the idea of leaving Iran out of his head, he would face far worse consequences.

This ruthless beating, rather than frightening my father, only polished his iron will. Despite his wounded lips and anguished face, he looked me dead in the eye and said with an unshakable resolve: "This is not just about me, it is about the future of us all. These chains must be broken so I can give you children a chance to live in a free land, without these discriminations." And in that moment, more than ever before, we stood behind our father and squeezed his weary hands.

A short time later, Hamid (Aunt Roya's husband) came to my father in secret. He said he knew a reliable smuggler who knew the routes to Australia like the back of his hand and guaranteed his work. But Hamid had one fundamental condition: my father had to cover his travel expenses as well, and they would journey together.

It was a monumental decision. Scraping together the funds for such a perilous journey was akin to moving a mountain for us. But when the dream of freedom is on the line, a person will forsake all they own. My father rolled up his sleeves; he auctioned off the small plot of land he owned, the herbal medicine shop, and even his car. Maman Tahereh, too, in a sacrificial act I will never forget, sold all her gold and valuable dishes. Hamid also liquidated everything he had into cash.

It was unbelievable; the entire auctioned assets of two large families amounted to a mere ten thousand US dollars! This was our entire fortune to buy a ticket to a new life. With this money, Father bought two one-way tickets to Kuala Lumpur, so that from there they could take the ocean route toward Australia. The smuggler had promised that three months after my father's arrival in Australia, we would legally join him.

The night before the departure, our home in Mehrabad experienced its most crowded night. Hamid and his family had brought their remaining belongings to our house. Relatives, neighbors, and friends had come to say their goodbyes. Our home was a medley of tears, prayers, offerings of water, and grand hopes.

That night, Faezeh, Maryam, and I stood before Father's bed for the last time and bid him "goodnight." He pulled us into a tight embrace and caressed us. I saw his tired yet hopeful eyes, and we assumed that early the next morning, I would wake up and watch him bundle up to leave.
But the next morning, when the pale sun of Mehrabad peeked through the windowpanes, I jolted awake and rushed into the room. The sofa was empty. The suitcases were gone. Father was gone... Maman Tahereh, her eyes red from weeping, was rocking Nejat's cradle and said softly, "Your father could not bear your tears and a formal farewell... Very early, before the break of dawn, he showered each of you with kisses as you slept. His tears fell upon your faces, and he slipped away, silently, into the dark of the morning..."

We stood in the doorway of the empty house, the cold morning wind fluttering the curtains. Father had gone to build a paradise for us in the heart of the oceans, unaware that a terrifying storm awaited him on the shores of Indonesia...

## Part One: The Heavy Hands of Waiting

The auction of the house and the echo of the ominous ring—Father's empty sofa in the living room of our rented house in Mehrabad had become like an abandoned altar, where the bitter scent of his Bahman cigarettes still breathed in the warp and weft of its fabric. His silent departure in the twilight of dawn, without us having the chance to embrace his steadfast stature one last time, had plunged our home into a heavy, purgatorial silence. From that day on, time took on a different shape for us; it no longer passed with the turning of the sun, but was measured by the rapid beating of our hearts and our constant gazing at the television screen.

Weeks passed one after another, and no news reached us of the travelers on the unpaved paths of the ocean. The Pars television in the corner of the living room, which had once been a source of joy with the classic 8-bit beeps of our Nintendo, had now turned into a terrifying box. Every night, Faezeh, Maryam, and I would sit huddled around Aunt Tahereh, listening to the news with dread. Images of broken, wandering boats of asylum seekers amidst roaring waves, or news of the discovery of undocumented migrants' bodies in suffocating metal containers, clawed at the soul of our innocence. Every time the news anchor uttered the words "drowning" or "death at sea," the breath would catch in Tahereh's chest.

Meanwhile, little Nejat, who was now a toddler of almost three years old, wandered around the corners of our empty house with her sweet, childish innocence. Having just started to speak, she still did not understand why Father was not coming back home; every now and then, she would stand beside Father's empty sofa, point her little fingers at the living room door, and ask in a fussy, pleading tone, "When is Baba coming?" Hearing this innocent question tore at the strings of Tahereh's heart, and to hide her tears, she would frantically pull Nejat into her embrace and press the little girl's head against her shoulder. I, too, would unconsciously clench my hand in my pocket each time, and remembering the old scar on my knuckle, I would silently beg the ocean to return my father to us.

The cruelest lash of those days was the tightness of our livelihood and the financial strain. Before leaving, Father had left some money with Tahereh to cover our living expenses for three months; but the cost of living in Mehrabad rose much faster and more ruthlessly than Father's calculations, and that meager savings ran out far sooner than expected. This newly emerged crisis severely darkened and strained the relationship between Tahereh and Aunt Roya. Aunt Roya and her family had also come to Mehrabad and were our neighbors, and Hamid had become Father's traveling companion. But Aunt Roya—perhaps out of desperation or despondency—did not contribute to the current expenses and household costs, and the heavy burden of daily expenses, providing milk and food for three-year-old Nejat, and feeding the children, had entirely collapsed onto Tahereh's slender, weary shoulders. Tahereh kept her cheeks red with a slap to save face, but the hidden disputes between her and my aunt escalated day by day, and these family tensions tormented our souls.

When the spatula of our savings completely scraped the bottom of the pot and we did not have even a single qiran left to buy our evening bread, we were forced to hold the most bitter auction of our lives. Tahereh put on her chador, and I stood beside her as the older brother. One by one, we went through our household belongings; the very items Father had bought with the sweat of his brow to give us children a taste of an independent life. We auctioned off the television, the tape recorder, the carpets, and even the smallest valuable items in the house, selling them to the secondhand dealers of Mehrabad just so we could survive and stay alive for another month or two. Watching every corner of our home gradually empty out squeezed my heart; it was as if our very identity had been put on the auction block, and we were left in an empty house, waiting for a miracle in the ocean.

Finally, on an ordinary afternoon when the cold silence of the house was mingled with Nejat's childish games on the empty living room floor, the persistent and stubborn ring of the house telephone sounded. The noise echoed like thunder through the furniture-less space of our home. We all rushed frantically toward the telephone receiver and formed a circle around Tahereh. With trembling hands, Tahereh picked up the phone. As soon as a static-filled voice from across the borders caressed her ear, tears welled up in her eyes: "Zaher? Zaher, is that you? Are you okay? Where are you now?"

We children stared at Tahereh's face with indescribable eagerness, waiting for news that would shatter all our sorrows like a bomb of joy. But... it did not take long for the smile of sheer delight to freeze on Tahereh's lips. The color drained from her face, and her eyes remained wide open in shock and terror. Aunt Roya stepped forward frantically, asking over and over: "What happened, Tahereh? Is Hamid alright? Are they alive?"
Tahereh, her voice scraping from the depths of her throat, choked by a sob that cut off her breath, pleaded with me: "Mohsen... quickly, bring a piece of paper and a pen... quickly!" I hurriedly pressed the paper and pen into her trembling hands, and she began to jot down an unknown phone number. When Tahereh hung up the phone, it was as if every ounce of strength had drained from her body. She collapsed to her knees on the floor, buried her face in her hands, and wailed aloud. In a single second, Faezeh, Maryam, even Aunt Roya, and I involuntarily joined her, our collective lamentation shaking the empty walls of the house.

The truth had crashed down upon us like a heavy ruin: my father Zaher and Hamid, along with a large group of asylum seekers, had been surrounded and arrested in a hotel in Indonesia by police and soldiers armed to the teeth. They were on the brink of deportation, facing forced repatriation to their countries.

A paralyzing fear shackled every fiber of our being. We knew all too well what deportation meant; if my father and Hamid were returned to their country of origin—Saddam's Iraq—the Ba'ath regime would immediately send them to the gallows or the execution square on charges of seeking refuge in Iran, treason, and desertion from military service. That night, sleep forsook our eyes. In the darkness of the room, the searching eyes of my sisters were fixed upon me; and I, a boy of sixteen or seventeen, crushed beneath the burden of an old guilt and a new dread, stared at the dangling wires of the ceiling until dawn, begging for my father's life...

## Part Two: Escape Along the White Sheets

Years later, when my father, Zaher, gazed out at the ocean shores in Sydney with those tired yet tranquil eyes, he recounted the story of those days in Indonesia to me time and time again. But on those autumn afternoons and nights in Mehrabad, all we had was a strange telephone number jotted down on a trembling slip of paper, and a dark vision of an apartment hotel in Jakarta that had morphed into a ruthless prison.

In Indonesia, time had ground to a halt for my father and Hamid within the damp, oppressive heaviness of a besieged room. Behind the wooden door, the monotonous, relentless thud of boots belonging to heavily armed Indonesian soldiers echoed, each footfall quickening the pulse of terror in the migrants' chests. The fear of imminent deportation loomed like a dark incubus over the ceiling. For the other asylum seekers, deportation meant a return to the absolute zero of poverty; but for my father, Zaher, and Hamid, this word was a naked synonym for a "death sentence."

Iraq, under the iron grip of Saddam Hussein, showed no mercy to draft evaders, refugees fleeing to Iran, or so-called traitors to the homeland; the hangman’s noose or the firing squad awaited them without question in Baghdad. Inside that sweltering, suffocating room, the anxiety was so palpable it could be distinctly felt in the acrid stench of fear-induced sweat, the parched lips, and the trembling hands that frantically turned prayer beads. All terrified eyes were fixed upon the lips of the ringleader—the man who served as their sole psychological lifeline in that purgatory.

Suddenly, the hand of fate turned in the midst of absolute despair. A strange death in the hotel became their ticket to salvation. An elderly woman, a guest in one of the other rooms, suddenly passed away from cardiac arrest. Amidst the frantic rush of her family, the hotel staff, and the ensuing commotion in the hallways, the guards' and soldiers' attention was diverted from my father's door for a few precious minutes. Seizing this golden opportunity, the ringleader cracked the door open, assessed the situation, and whispered in a voice trembling with adrenaline and haste: "Hurry... the time is now! Either we leave this very second, or by morning we'll all be on a plane to Baghdad!"

The escape plan, as simple as it was, reeked of danger and a deadly fall. With frantic haste, they tied the coarse white sheets of the hotel beds together in tight, blind knots. My father, Zaher, slowly pushed open the room's weathered window, revealing the darkness and a warm, tropical drizzle. The drop was sheer, and the alley below lay steeped in shadows.

Father tied the makeshift rope of sheets to the metal leg of the bed. He cast a glance at Hamid, whose pounding heartbeat was visible through his sweat-soaked shirt, whispered the names of his children back in Mehrabad, and swung himself out the window. With every downward step, the white fabric stretched under the crushing weight of their bodies, and the faint, agonizing creak of the knots made their hearts plummet. Their exhausted, sweat-slicked hands slipped against the cloth, but the sheer will to survive was far too fierce to let go.

One by one, their feet safely touched the wet cobblestones of the back alley. Without wasting a single second, they sprinted under the cover of the walls' dark shadows, following the ringleader until they reached a vehicle waiting in a secluded corner. It was a fully enclosed, metal-bodied cargo van. The ringleader hurriedly yanked open a small hatch in the floorboards, revealing a suffocatingly tight, pitch-black, and freezing iron compartment. He ruthlessly shoved the asylum seekers inside: "Quick... lie on top of each other... don't breathe!"

My father, Zaher, and Hamid crumpled their entire frames into that suffocating metal enclosure. The hatch slammed shut, and absolute darkness swallowed everything. Oxygen barely reached their lungs, and the biting cold of the iron sheets pierced straight to their marrow. As the engine sputtered to life with a harsh roar, their purgatorial journey across the rugged roads of Indonesia began.

Every pothole and bump the vehicle hit savagely hurled their contorted bodies against the iron walls. Midway through the journey, terrifying noises suddenly erupted from outside, as if massive stones and heavy objects were battering the metal cabin. In that confined, pitch-black space, the harsh impact of stones against the chassis created an ear-piercing echo akin to continuous gunfire, magnifying the terror of suffocating and dying in the dark a thousandfold. In a deathly silence, they squeezed one another's hands, their eyes wide open in the belly of that freezing box, simply waiting for death.
After hours of relentless torture, the violent jolting of the vehicle finally subsided, and the engine fell silent. The door to the metal compartment crashed open, and the overseer of their escape shouted, "Get out, quickly... quickly!" When my father, Zaher, emerged from that iron coffin and stood on his own two feet, his eyes burned from the sudden rush of light that had studded the ocean in silver. They found themselves on the shores of a dark, boundless ocean. The full, golden disk of the moon shone upon the breast of the roaring waves, casting an eerie yet beautiful luminescence across the water. The cool, salty sea breeze mingled with the acrid stench of the vehicle's diesel, swirling deep into my father's exhausted lungs; after weeks of captivity, this was the first true scent of freedom, breathing life back into his soul...

## Part Three: Toward the Boundless Horizon and the Storm of Destiny

The group leader pointed his index finger toward a distant speck amidst the darkness of the waters; a place where the phantom of a small wooden boat bobbed up and down upon the chest of the waves. His voice was raspy and curt: "Get into the water quickly and make your way to the boat. The water isn't deep, there is no need to swim... from here on, your journey is with the captain."

My father Zaher and Hamid, shoulder to shoulder with the other asylum seekers, stepped into the cold, dark waters of the ocean. With every step they took forward, the startling chill of the water rose higher; first to their knees, then to their chests, and finally, it swallowed them up to their necks. The biting salt of the water burned their eyes, and the soft sands of the seabed slipped beneath their trembling feet. But the fear of being left behind kept the will to move alive in their souls. At last, one by one, they reached the small vessel. The captain, who had been waiting for them, took their wet, cracked hands and guided them all into the stifling, pitch-black space below the deck. As the last person boarded, the boat's engine roared to life with a harsh grating sound, and their oceanic voyage began.

Down there, beneath the deck, a veritable hell unfolded. The space was so cramped and confined that the people were forced to sit crumpled on top of one another. The terrifying jolts and heavy blows from the ferocious waves crashing against the hull mercilessly slammed their exhausted bodies against the walls. It was not long before the pungent stench of diesel, dampness, and severe seasickness filled the entire cabin. The conditions were so wretched and unbearable that many of the refugees broke into weeping and wailing in the heart of that darkness. The only portal to view the outside world was a tiny, circular porthole through which one could watch how the full moon danced madly up and down amidst the horrifying turbulence of the black waves.

As the sky lightened at the first dawn, it was as if the ocean's furious storm subsided and the boat reached open waters. My father would later tell me with awe about the paradox of that morning; the ocean that had wanted to devour them all the night before had now transformed into a boundless, silvery expanse, so silent it seemed to have fallen into a deep slumber. From that same small porthole beneath the deck, dreamlike scenes emerged: a pod of gray dolphins diving playfully across the water's chest in parallel with the boat, and flying fish that suddenly leapt from the heart of the water, gliding for leagues alongside the vessel before vanishing once more into the ocean's embrace. This magical frame was a fleeting moment of absolute tranquility amidst all that chaos.

But this silence was nothing more than a mirage, for survival on that wandering boat grew harder with each passing day. The drinking water supply had been strictly rationed; each person's share in that scorching, humid air was merely one small cup of water a day, barely enough to moisten their cracked lips. The captain constantly tried to offer them hope with brief assurances that Australia was near. But the true storm erupted when the ominous shadow of a military warship appeared on the ocean's horizon. The warship's massive searchlights swept across the waters, and through their loudspeakers, they warned that the boat must immediately change course and turn back, otherwise they would open fire.

A suffocating terror seized the asylum seekers. The captain, with a skill laced with dread, swiftly spun the helm, veered off course, and steered the boat toward the ocean's more hidden, untrodden paths to remain concealed from the military radars in the darkness. In the midst of this, the madness born of absolute despair gripped two of the young refugees. Believing the warship to be their ticket of salvation from that sub-deck hell, they suddenly hurled themselves into the ocean and began swimming with all their might toward the military vessel. But the ocean was far more ruthless than their childish calculations. The roaring, violent waves swallowed their trembling bodies in a fraction of a second. From afar, they waved their shivering hands for help, but the next wave came and drowned them forever in the ocean's bruised embrace. The refugees watching this scene from the small porthole fell to their knees and whispered Salawat.

Following the drowning of those two young men, a deathly, heavy, and suffocating silence reigned over the entire boat. No sound could be heard anymore save for the howling of the wind and the ceaseless battering of the water against the hull. Everyone, in their own solitude, wondered whether this dream of freedom was worth such a bloody and horrific gamble with death. My father Zaher and Hamid, in that damp darkness, with lips parched from thirst, clasped each other's hands and silently turned their Tasbih beads; they knew there was no turning back, and that the road to freedom passed only through the house of death...

## Part four: The bell of rescue in Derby and the storm of separation
After the ocean quietened and my father Zaher was steered onto more hidden routes, our trembling link to the far side of the borders was cut entirely. The strange telephone number Tahereh had written on that crumpled scrap of paper was no longer a gate of hope. Every time Tahereh dialled it with shaking fingers, a foreign, unintelligible voice answered from the other end in a different language, from which we understood only one thing: "They are not here any more…" That short, obscure sentence was a merciless lash on the half-dead body of our hope.
A heavy silence swallowed our half-empty house in Mehrabad. Stunned and broken, we had come to the appalling conviction that our father and Uncle Hamid had been arrested and deported to the Iraq gripped in Saddam's claws; a place where a death sentence and the gallows undoubtedly waited for them. Tahereh's and Aunt Roya's eyes were dark, swollen and red from unceasing weeping. There was not even strength left for wailing. We children sank into depression and a dark dread; the little three-year-old Nedjat no longer wandered through the hushed house asking for her father, as though she too had understood that the evil shadow of death had pitched its tent on the roof of our home. On the threshold of seventeen, I felt the weight of the duty to look after my sisters on my adolescent shoulders, and every night I stared into the darkness with an old guilt.
On one of those dark, spiritless days, when a veil of grief covered the whole house, the ring of the telephone suddenly shattered the absolute stillness. Tahereh snatched up the receiver in a frantic rush. A crackling voice crossed the oceans from miles away and rang in our ears. It was my father's voice! Tahereh cried out with sobs that clawed at her throat: "Zaher? Zaher, is that you? Where are you? Where are you now?" In a second every person in the house rushed to the telephone. Aunt Roya pulled the receiver from Tahereh's hand and asked in a shaking voice: "Zaher, how is Hamid? Are you safe? Are you alive?"
My father's voice was warm, steady and full of relief: "Don't worry, Roya… Hamid and I are both well. We are with our companions now and everything is safe." Tahereh took the receiver again, tears of joy running down her face, and asked: "But how? You were trapped in Indonesia! Where are you now?" And my father's answer was a name that tasted to us of a true miracle: "We are in Derby, on Australian soil…"
He explained that they were being held in a temporary camp for quarantine and legal interviews, but that all the hardships and lethal dangers of the ocean were over, and once these stages were finished the Australian government would grant them asylum. My father said the story of their escape and their crossing was long and he would tell it later. When the receiver was put down, we children looked into one another's eyes. The empty walls of the house in Mehrabad shook suddenly — but this time not with wailing, rather with our cheering, our cries of joy and our shouts of delight, as though we had woken from a long nightmare.
But this great, burning joy did not last, and the wheel of the days sent another storm our way. The lease on our house in Mehrabad had expired and we had no money to renew it. Meanwhile the earlier financial disputes and tensions between Tahereh and Aunt Roya reached their peak. Aunt Roya packed her things before the lease ran out and went to Bibi Fatemeh's house; but the resentments and grudges of this period had grown so deep that they spread even to the correspondence between my father Zaher and Hamid in Australia. Their letters to each other filled with bitterness and sting, and in the end those two companions of hardship parted in Australia as well; Hamid stayed in Perth and my father went alone to Sydney.
This rift and the newly born family enmity broke my seventeen-year-old heart badly. For I was deeply and secretly in love with my cousin "Leila" (Aunt Roya's daughter). Leila was more to me than a family tie; she was the beautiful dream that gave colour to my life through all the grey years after my mother Marziyeh's death. In the solitude of my room I drew her delicate face, collected her photographs greedily, and struck up a close friendship with her brother Hamed only so that I might see her more often.
I do not forget it; years earlier, when she was still a small girl, I had told her with all the courage of my adolescence how much I loved her, and she had only laughed with a sweet, childish shyness. Now I was an eighteen-year-old young man, and that love had struck roots in every part of me and burned brighter still. But this love had now become a "forbidden love". Our families had cut off contact, and a wall of grudge and estrangement had been raised between us. I asked myself how I could calm this family storm. How could I bring the stony hearts of the elders closer together so that I might reach Leila? But I had no answer to these painful questions.
With the lease expiring, we were forced to pack the few belongings we had left and move into Tahereh's father's house. Setting foot in that large, crowded house in "Bagh-Shahr" was the beginning of one of the hardest, strangest and most challenging periods of my life and my sisters' lives. We had been thrown from the shelter of an independent family suddenly into a place with a completely different atmosphere and different moral rules, which awoke in Faezeh's and Maryam's innocent souls a sharp feeling of strangeness and homelessness…

## Part One: A Stranger in a House of Strangers and Playacting in the Limbo of Loyalty

With the expiration of our house lease in Mehrabad and the depletion of our savings, we were forced to pack the few unsold belongings of our lives into a few old cardboard boxes and move to Tahereh's paternal home in Bagh-Shahr. For me, Faezeh, and Maryam, stepping foot into that large, crowded house marked the beginning of a year that was the strangest, most challenging, and heaviest period of our lives. We, who had grown accustomed to having an independent and peaceful nest, were suddenly thrust into a space with a completely different atmosphere and moral code, which resurrected a profound sense of alienation and displacement within our souls.

Upon our arrival, our first and most beautiful refuge was the warm, open embrace of Tahereh's mother, the grandmother "Bibi Fakhrieh." Bibi Fakhrieh was a pure and infinitely kind woman whose tired eyes rained love and compassion; with that very first embrace, she tried to dust the sorrow of exile from our weary bodies. Yet, in that massive house where several families lived simultaneously, we were met with a towering wall of coldness, indifference, and the heavy, alienating stares of Tahereh's brothers and sisters. The patriarch of that family and the absolute ruler of the house was a fiercely irritable, ill-tempered, and strict old man named "Jeddo Abdulrahman." He ruled the house with an iron fist, and his eight grown sons feared him and obeyed his commands without question. The atmosphere of the house was constantly at the mercy of Jeddo Abdulrahman's mood swings.

In the early, heavy, and anxiety-ridden days of our arrival in Bagh-Shahr, Uncle Reza and my aunt suddenly appeared in that crowded house. They had come with hands full of compassion and worried eyes to check on us, the orphaned children of Marzieh, and see how we were faring. But before they could even step inside, I had fallen under the influence of the whispers and indoctrinations of Tahereh's brothers and sisters. They murmured into my adolescent ears, encouraging me to stand up to Uncle Reza; they said he was the one who had attacked my father in the pharmacy, and now I must not let him step into the sanctuary of this house. I, a seventeen-year-old, in a desperate attempt to prove myself and demonstrate my eternal loyalty to my father Zaher, who was miles away in a camp in Australia, surrendered to this manipulation.

When Uncle Reza entered, a paradoxical tragedy and a painful psychological turmoil unfolded within me. Deep in my heart, I was profoundly pleased and content to see Uncle Reza in that harsh, alien house that felt like a torture chamber to me; the scent of my mother Marzieh and the sweet memories of Shahrak-e Golestan had been resurrected in the room by his presence. Yet, my true self was hidden behind a bitter, theatrical mask. I stepped onto the stage like an actor; with fury and screams, I attacked Uncle Reza, who was a guest in the house, and with profanities and harsh words, I threw his past violent behaviors against my father in his face and berated him. I was shouting and thrashing about, while inside, my soul wept blood at this horrifying performance.

Tahereh's brothers and sisters, who had poured gasoline on this fire themselves, now outwardly adopted the posture of saviors; they formed a circle around me, covered my mouth, and squeezed my arms to force me out of the guest room. Uncle Reza, who had realized this dirty game and my mental distress, left that bitter gathering in silence, with a heavy heart.

But the hand of God is greater than the grudges and games of us humans. Despite my fierce attack and disrespect, Uncle Reza returned to us in the following days with an open face and hands full of forgiveness. He would crack open the door of that torture chamber in Bagh-Shahr, take the innocent Faezeh and Maryam for a ride, and bring them to my maternal grandfather's lush, beautiful orchard. There, Faezeh and Maryam would pick fresh, ripe fruits and, for a few fleeting moments, forget all the stress of being separated from our father, of being orphaned, and of our displacement. When they returned home with eyes shining with joy, I would be immersed in delight and peace.

Alongside all this turbulence and these heavy days, there existed another unparalleled sanctuary and anchor that calmed the rapid beating of our hearts: my dear Uncle Jalal. Uncle Jalal visited us a few times, both secretly and openly. His stepping into those gatherings and that harsh atmosphere was like a cool breeze in the scorching heat of a summer day; his presence brought a profound tranquility to us stateless children. Even though the inhabitants of that house did not show him a welcoming face, and after his departure, unpleasant whispers and remarks about his presence could be heard from every corner, for me, Uncle Jalal possessed a sanctity and a completely different story compared to Uncle Reza.
He was a man who was always calm, composed, dignified, and infinitely kind, exuding a profound self-confidence. When he sat amidst the clamor and the heavy gazes of Tahereh's family, he spoke with such dignity and firmness that it seemed no storm could ever shake his shoulders. Throughout my life, I always held for him a respect mingled with deep admiration. I knew well the immense hardships and suffering he had endured during the years of migration, his displacement from Najaf, and starting over in Iran; but witnessing that these storms had failed to shatter his spirit, and that he still stood tall with his unwavering strength and confidence, served as an eternal beacon and exemplar for me, a lost and wandering teenager. From him, I learned how one could stand amidst the ruins without becoming ruined oneself.

Yet, the storms within the house in Bagh-Shahr were endless. To escape the suffocating atmosphere of that home, I had tried my hand at various jobs; for a while I worked in a bakery, and then as an unpaid apprentice in a mechanic's shop. But due to my fragile mental state and the depression born from my father's absence, I eventually abandoned the mechanic's job as well.

When Jaddo Abdul Rahman discovered I had quit my work, his uncontrollable wrath was unleashed. Right before the eyes of the family, he hurled the most ruthless insults and humiliations at me and my father, shouting: "Your father has made himself a vagabond in exile, and you are nothing but a useless idler!" With a broken heart and eyes brimming with tears of rage, I kept my head bowed; it was only the intervention and pleading cries of Bibi Fakhrieh, who made herself my shield, that finally put an end to that horrific ordeal. After that day, I spent most of my hours wandering the alleyways, my heart constricted with the dread of what humiliations Faezeh and Maryam would have to endure in my absence within that crowded, tension-filled house...

## Part Two: A Spark in the Darkness and the Call of Father's Return

Life in that vast, bustling house in Baghshahr was a grueling ordeal for the three of us. In those days, when the heavy, sudden wrath of Jeddo Abdul Rahman and the bizarre apathy of my half-uncles made the very walls of the house feel suffocating, my young eighteen-year-old soul floundered between the melancholy of my father's absence and a deep-seated, lingering guilt. I spent most of my days outside, drifting aimlessly through the alleys or seeking refuge in the silence of the library, just to escape the fraught atmosphere within.

Until, in the heart of those gray, monotonous days, a pure and unexpected spark named Bahar emerged. Bahar was the daughter of my uncle Abdul Hussein (one of Tahereh's brothers). She was a breathtakingly beautiful, dignified, and tender-hearted girl who swiftly forged a deep, intimate bond with my sister, Faezeh. With her constant visits to Jeddo's house to see Faezeh, the frigid atmosphere of the upstairs rooms slowly began to bloom with life. I, usually withdrawn and drowning in my own thoughts, could not remain indifferent to her stolen, modest, and deeply attentive glances; glances that, whenever they met mine, would instantly drop in bashful surrender.

One day, with a mischievous persistence, Faezeh asked me to create a set of fantasy illustrations of the English alphabet for her friend Bahar, to help with her studies. Sketching and painting had always been my sanctuary from sorrow. I rolled up my sleeves and, brimming with enthusiasm, began tracing designs onto white cardstock. The day I was brushing the final details onto Bahar's commissioned artwork, Faezeh rushed in, an indescribable excitement sparking in her eyes, and sat on the edge of the bed right beside me. She leaned in a little closer, tilted her head, and asked in a quiet, secretive tone, "Mohsen... I want to ask you a question. Will you tell me the truth?" I pulled my paintbrush back and said, "Ask!" Faezeh locked her curious eyes onto mine: "Do you really have no feelings for Bahar in your heart?"

I laughed involuntarily, trying to maintain my composure, and replied with feigned nonchalance, "No!" But Faezeh, as if she had just unearthed a grand secret, clapped her hands together and exclaimed with delight, "But Bahar truly, from the bottom of her heart, likes you! Take it from me." At those words, the blood rushed to my cheeks. My entire face flushed crimson with embarrassment, and to mask the frantic pounding of my heart, I let out a nervous, clumsy laugh.

From that day forward, whenever Bahar set foot in Jeddo's house, my entire being was flooded with a strange, magnetic pull. In my eyes, she was an infinitely captivating and endearing soul; yet, an old ache and an unwritten vow kept me from letting this fragile sprout grow. My heart was still submerged in the forbidden dream of my cousin, Leila. I refused to shatter my childish vow of loyalty to Leila by embracing a new love. Thus, despite the profound yearning within me, I treated Bahar with cold indifference, wanting her to believe my heart had already been surrendered to another—even though turning away her innocent, tender affections was the hardest burden I bore in those days.

Amidst all this emotional turmoil and the profound loneliness my sisters and I endured in Baghshahr, our sole anchor of hope was the crackling voice of my father, Zaher, echoing through our home via telephone from thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean. Every time he called, with an anxious and paternal yearning, he would ask after each of us and tell us about Australia. But the sweetest, most dreamlike words we ever heard from him came as a promise that ended our year-long wait: he told us his asylum process was finally complete, he had purchased his ticket, and he would soon be returning to Iran to see us. The news of my father's imminent return echoed like a hymn of salvation through the house in Baghshahr, breathing a renewed sense of hope into all our hardships, our feelings of orphanhood, and our weary exile...

## Part Three: A Canopy in the Rain and the Warm Embrace of a Father

In the summer of 1379, the scorching desert heat of Bagh-e Shahr weighed heavily upon the clay bricks of Jaddo Abdul Rahman's house. For my sisters and me, enduring that tense atmosphere, the cold glares of our half-uncles, and Jaddo's martial laws had drained the last of our strength. Our days were spent in a purgatory of waiting; a purgatory colored only by Bahar's drawings of the English alphabet and the unresolved dreams of our youth.

Until, during the sweltering days of Tir, the miracle we had spent an entire year counting the seconds for finally came to pass. On the 4th of Tir 1379, the sudden ringing of the courtyard bell echoed with a rapid, impassioned rhythm through the afternoon clamor of Bagh-e Shahr. The chime felt entirely different from every time before; it carried a vibration that struck directly at the chords of our hearts. Lost in my own thoughts in the upstairs room, I heard the sudden cries and jubilant cheers of the household and rushed frantically to the window. I leaned my head out of the metal frame of the upper floor to gaze down at Jaddo's brick-paved courtyard. I could not believe what my eyes were witnessing; my entire being trembled, and tears welled up in my eyes.

My father... my father Zaher, with that same steadfast stature, his patient face, and a smile that seemed to have dissolved all the sorrows of the oceans within it, stood in the center of the courtyard with his large suitcases. Smiling and with arms wide open, he walked toward the stairs. My sisters, Faezeh and Maryam, and little Nejat, who was now nearly four years old, ran toward him with shrieks of pure joy. To witness that scene was breathtaking; like light-winged angels, they climbed all over him, kissing his tired, masculine hands, refusing to let him go for even a moment. With legs that were trembling yet swift, I bounded down the second-floor stairs two at a time, stepped onto the expanse of the courtyard, and instinctively surrendered myself to the broad, warm embrace of my father.

That embrace was the safest place in the world. The scent of my father's skin, a blend of the fragrance of exile and Bahman cigarettes, carried me back to my most distant childhood memories in Shahrak-e Golestan. All the hardships of that year of displacement in Jaddo's house, the veiled humiliations, and the terrifying roars of Jaddo Abdul Rahman over quitting the mechanic job—all of it melted away and vanished in a single second within my father's loving arms.

My father Zaher remained in Iran, by our side, for two months. Those two months were fleeting, yet they felt like a piece of heaven on earth. With his resolute presence, my father wiped the dust of past sorrows from every one of our faces. His first and most vital act was to rescue us from the clutches of that crowded, tension-filled house in Bagh-e Shahr. Using the savings from his grueling day-and-night labor at the bakery in Australia, he rented a quiet, independent house for us in Mehrabad.

Moving into that independent home was the most beautiful sigh of relief that Faezeh, Maryam, and I had ever breathed. Regaining our independence felt like awakening from a long, suffocating nightmare fraught with familial tension. During those two months, we once again tasted the true essence of being a family under one roof; the sound of our carefree laughter filled the new house, the aroma of Tahereh's cooking was breathed back to life, and we children reclaimed our lost sense of security. This brief reunion was a monumental turning point in all our lives—a luminous message reminding us that our father's unconditional love and support, even leagues across the oceans, would forever remain a canopy over our orphaned and desolate heads.

But days of happiness possess a strange urgency to end. Two months passed with unbelievable speed, and my father had to return to Australia to resume his work. Yet this time, he did not leave us in the dark. Before his departure, he entrusted us with all the documents, the necessary paperwork, and the legal sponsorship forms he had painstakingly prepared with his heart's blood, readying us to open our family visa file. Tahereh, armed with courage and hope, gathered the documents and submitted them to the Australian Embassy in Tehran. From that day forward, our new home in Mehrabad entered a new phase of anticipation. It was a patient waiting, where every day dawned with the sweet dream that perhaps tomorrow, the bell of our new home would ring, summoning us for our visa interview and our flight toward the boundless horizons of Sydney...

## Part One: The Temporary Exodus to the Capital and the Heavy Weight of Marzieh's Secret

Following father's departure once again for Australia, our independent home in **Mehrabad** had transformed into an island of patient anticipation. The days slipped by wrapped in the dream that our family visa application would finally be set in motion; a foundation father had laid by sending the sponsorship documents and records from across the ocean.

At long last, after months of fixing our eyes on the front door and enduring ceaseless anxieties, the summons for an in-person interview from the Australian Embassy in Tehran arrived. The resonance of this news unleashed a wave of excitement, intertwined with a strange dread, within the four walls of our home. Maman **Tahereh** wasted no time; she promptly gathered her things and purchased bus tickets bound for the capital. It was decided that Maryam and little Nejat would remain in Mehrabad due to the arduous nature of the journey, leaving only me, Maman Tahereh, and Faezeh to embark upon this fateful voyage.

In the early dawn of our departure, the heavy, clamorous engine of the Volvo bus roared to life. Gazing through the rain-streaked window, I watched the road from Mehrabad to Tehran unfurl, while the monotonous rumble of the tires against the asphalt fell into rhythm with the rapid, anxious beating of my heart.

This temporary migration was nothing like our leisurely trips of the past. The very life and future of our family hinged upon the words destined to be exchanged behind the glass partitions of the embassy. Yet, what eroded my young soul more than anything else, injecting sheer terror into my marrow, was the crushing weight of a monumental emotional and legal deception.

To untangle the severe bureaucratic knots in Australia, my father, Zaher, had been forced to weave fundamental alterations into the fabric of our life story. In our official immigration documents, there was no trace of our real mother, Marzieh, nor of that bitter, tragic end in the month of Ordibehesht in **Shahrak-e Golestan**. Under no circumstances were we officially permitted to breathe a single word about "Marzieh" and her death; Maman Tahereh had been inscribed across all the paperwork as our true and legal mother.

This meant that Faezeh and I had to bury the searing ashes of Marzieh's grave deep within our hearts and, wearing masks of indifference, feed a fabricated story to the immigration officers as the absolute truth of our lives. The mere thought of it ignited a silent yet stinging agony of guilt within my being; it was as if, to purchase our ticket to the future, we had to draw a heavy line of erasure across our mother's emotional identity.

## Part Two: An Interview Flavored with Fear and Fateful Forms

The Australia embassy building in Tehran, with its cool corridors, heavy silence, and bureaucratic structure, felt like another world to us who had come from Mehrabad. Stress enveloped my entire being like a thick fog. After hours of a breath-stealing wait on the leather chairs of the hall, a woman with a soft, calm, and kind voice finally called my name from behind the counter. I was the first who had to step into the interrogation room.

As I closed the door to the room and sat across from the female interviewer, a biting cold seized my hands.

She stared at me with scrutinizing yet compassionate eyes. Before asking a single question, in that same gentle tone, she delivered a terrifying warning that made my heart plummet: she said I must answer with the utmost honesty, and should the slightest contradiction or discrepancy be found between my words and my father's registered file in Australia, our entire immigration case would be automatically canceled and destroyed.

Terror possessed my entire soul. In my mind, the embassy walls spun around my head. I thought to myself, if they ask me, "Where is your mother? What is her name?" what should I say? How must I arm my eyes with deceit so that the truth of Marzieh would not slip out? My hands began to tremble, and once again, I hid my cursed right hand in my pocket.

Fortunately, however, the questions were far simpler than I had imagined—ordinary questions about age, education, and the simple details of life in Iran, answering which posed no particular bureaucratic challenge. The woman was satisfied with my precise answers; finally, she handed me a blank sheet of paper and said, "Very well, I have no further questions. You must fill out this form personally." She entrusted me with a similar form for Faezeh and guided me out.

After me, Faezeh entered the room. When she was finished and returned to the hall with her form, her gentle face bore no trace of either joy or worry; just like me, it was as if we had both been crumpled beneath the heavy burden of that unspoken secret. Then, it was Maman Tahereh's turn.

For the duration she was inside the interview room, Faezeh and I whispered to one another about the similarity of the questions to ease our stress. At last, Maman Tahereh emerged from the room as well. Moments later, that same kind woman approached us with a warm smile and a batch of visa forms. She patiently explained that we needed to complete our medical examinations promptly, and that submitting these documents as quickly as possible would expedite the visa issuance process. Bathed in joy and feeling light as air, we left the embassy building, imagining that the dream of Australia was now only a few forms and simple tests away.

## Part Three: The Dead End of Racing Heartbeats and the Impossible Guarantee

But the journey of migration is no smooth, unblemished road; all too soon, the wheels of our case became mired in harsh legal ruts.

The first great challenge was my physical health. The severe stress born of that secrecy, the anxiety of being separated from my father, and the heavy weight of the future had taken their toll on my body. My blood pressure had spiked suddenly and alarmingly. Every time I visited the embassy's trusted physician for medical examinations, the dread of our papers being rejected sent my heartbeat soaring, and my blood pressure would stall at a dangerously high number. The doctor would flip through my file with concern and say, "A long-haul flight in this high-pressure state is incredibly dangerous for you..." This issue became a massive hurdle in clearing my medical tests.

Yet the true, soul-crushing dead end took shape leagues away, on the soil of Australia.

Over the drawn-out course of this process, I had surpassed the legal age limit for a child visa. Under the laws of Australia, I was no longer a dependent child, but considered an adult, a single young man whose case required an "independent and credible financial guarantor" on the ground in Australia to ensure I would not become a burden on the state's coffers.

My father Zaher, despite his grueling, day-and-night toil at the bakery, knew no one of such standing in Australia who would be willing to financially sponsor a single young man. The reason was painfully clear: any guarantor feared that upon arriving in Sydney, I might fail to find work and struggle to meet the steep costs of living in Australia, prompting the government of Australia to deduct all my living expenses straight from the guarantor's personal accounts. Because of this, no one would dare take such a financial gamble. Our case was utterly locked in a dark impasse.

Hearing my father's voice over the phone, speaking of this bureaucratic defeat with profound despair and a heavy sorrow, tormented my soul. He, who had run himself ragged for years to carry us to the paradise of his dreams, was now crumpled in loneliness and regret, lighting cigarette after cigarette—and all of it was because of me!

It was then that I made a monumental and sacrificial decision. During one of our phone calls, with a tone that was firm yet overflowing with love, I told him: "Baba... if this whole process is stalled because of me, that isn't fair at all. I have thought about this; I am willing to stay behind here in Iran, all alone, so you can separate my file from the rest and let Mom and my sisters come to you sooner. Don't worry about me, I am strong..."

A heavy silence reigned over the line. Hearing his son's sacrifice, my father was deeply moved, his heart torn to pieces. He could not bear the agony of this unjust separation. With a voice trembling with both unshed tears and sheer resolve, he said, "No, my Mohsen... I cannot leave you alone... I will soon return to Iran so we can find another way."

This "another way" was no empty promise meant merely to comfort me. The moment my father returned to Iran, he traveled the long road to Tehran time and time again. With a stature that was once as steadfast as a mountain, he would go in person to the embassy of Australia, and behind those glass walls, with wet eyes and a trembling voice, he pleaded with the officers. A man whose pride and stubbornness were legendary among our relatives had now trampled upon his own pride, begging to save his son's case and prevent this cruel separation, hoping to untangle the blind knot of this unfeeling law. But the embassy walls were built of cold legislation, and the pleas of a heartbroken father held no sway against bureaucratic clauses.

And so it was that after a year and a half of running through the halls of the embassy, our case was left suspended on the precipice of an incomplete exodus and my father's return once more...

## Part Four: The Red Suitcases and the Dual Road of Destiny

Waiting is the most eroding part of living in limbo; but when love and hope breathe behind the windows, even the dust upon the mirrors takes on the taste of eagerness. After father promised over the phone to return to the homeland once more, the atmosphere of our home in Mehrabad suddenly changed.

On one of those cold winter days, my mother Tahereh, with a face upon which the lines of a smile had finally been drawn after months, rushed into the room and cried out, "Children, rise; we must roll up our sleeves and clean the house like a rose garden, father is on his way!" Upon hearing these words, a wave of pure energy engulfed our entire four walls. Faezeh, Maryam, and I, with childish zeal and delight, busied ourselves with dusting, sweeping, and washing the courtyard; as if with every speck of dust we shook from the windows, we were also wiping away the cold walls of distance and longing from our hearts.

Finally, on Monday, the 6th of Esfand 1380 (February 25, 2002), the impassioned ringing echoed, and father announced that he was no more than a few kilometers away from home.

I could no longer contain myself within the house. With trembling yet hasty steps, I ran into the alley and reached the main bend of the neighborhood. I stood there, panting, sweeping the end of the alley with curious eyes. A few minutes later, a white automobile turned slowly and came to a halt at the end of the alley. The door opened, and the weary yet majestic figure of my father appeared.

I ran toward him with all my being, threw myself into his embrace, and locked my arms around his neck. He, too, with that same boundless, fatherly affection, showered my head and face with kisses. When we went inside the house, Mama Tahereh and my sisters Faezeh, Maryam, and four-year-old Nejat came to welcome him with shrieks full of joy, each embracing a piece of his weary yet smiling body.

That night, our family dinner spread experienced its most crowded and longest night.

Around that spread, father, with gleaming eyes, told us of the bustling life in Australia, the night shifts at the bakery in Sydney, and the endless blue ocean that smelled of freedom; and we, too, one by one, recounted the events of this period, the hardships of **Baghshahr**, and the sweetness of our independence in Mehrabad. But the peak of my excitement was when father took my hand and gave me the wondrous gift he had brought for me from leagues across the oceans: a highly precious and beautiful red Discman (CD player)!

In those years, when beholding such modern technology was akin to a dream for a nineteen-year-old youth in Mehrabad, gazing at that metallic red color and listening to music with headphones was a gift far beyond its material worth; this gift was the most tangible manifestation of love, attention, and remembrance that father had forged for me in the loneliness of exile. The first twenty days of father's renewed presence passed so immersed in the intoxication of his warm presence, the laughter, and the gazing into his kind eyes, that I did not record even a single line in my diary, striving only to savor every second of being by his side with all my being.

But the dark clouds very soon reappeared upon the ceiling of our home's sky.

The holidays had ended, and father once again began his continuous travels to Tehran to follow up on our visa affairs at the embassy of Australia; but unfortunately, no good news could be heard from those glass walls. The deadlock of my financial sponsorship remained firmly in place; none of the sponsors in Australia were willing to accept the financial commitment of a single eighteen- or nineteen-year-old youth, and the fear that I might not find a job upon arriving in Sydney and that the government would deduct the expenses from the sponsor's account kept my case in an iron lock.

With a heavy sorrow, I witnessed the worsening of father's mental and physical state; he, who had been afflicted with prolonged insomnia at nights due to severe stress, would pace in the darkness of the living room, lighting Bahman cigarettes one after another, as the gray dust of his loneliness filled the space of the house. Watching the gradual breaking of this man of iron squeezed my heart; for I knew well that all these sleepless nights, these anxieties, and these bureaucratic hurdles were solely and entirely because of me and my legal age.

Father, who had noticed the heaviness of this atmosphere and the mild depression among us children, decided to arrange a pilgrimage and recreational trip for us so that our spirits might be refreshed.

We all became fellow travelers of the road and set off for holy Mashhad. There, beneath the shadow of the celestial shrine of Imam Reza (AS), we laid our foreheads upon the cold stones of the sanctuary and, with tears and supplication, prayed for the untying of the closed knots of our lives. After a few days' stay in Mashhad, father turned the steering wheel toward the verdant and dreamy north of Iran.
We settled in a breathtaking, secluded, and lush villa hidden among towering trees. In the mornings, as I gazed out my bedroom window, I was spellbound by the sight of lofty mountains, half their stature veiled in a thick, white mist. Throughout the day, we roamed the pristine forests, marveled at the majesty of the waterfalls, and breathed in the damp, pure air of nature; for a few fleeting moments, we forgot the nightmare of the embassy and Australia.

On one of those heavenly afternoons in Shomal, as we were packing our belongings to return to Esfahan with calmer hearts, the sudden, loud ring of the villa's telephone shattered the silence of the room.

Father picked up the receiver. The moment the voice of the embassy secretary echoed in his ear, his face blossomed with an indescribable excitement. Receiver in hand, he walked toward us, and with a smile that filled the entire breadth of his face, he cried out: "I have very, very good news, children! The embassy called... our visas have been approved!"

We involuntarily leaped into the air with joy, embraced one another, and our cries of elation filled the space of the villa. Years of waiting, years of displacement and suffering, had come to an end in a single second. But... our jubilation had not yet ceased when we suddenly noticed father's tone change on the phone. The smile froze on his lips, a heavy frown settled upon his brow, and his face became flushed and distraught.

He hung up the phone. A heavy, biting silence reigned over the room. We stared at him in sheer disbelief. With a trembling voice and eyes brimming with sorrow, father said: "Everyone's visa is ready... except for Mohsen... Mohsen's case has been rejected once again..."

My heart collapsed in my chest. My sisters stared at me with eyes overflowing with pity and grief. But I, who had already been expecting such a cruel blow, offered a bitter yet resolute smile. I gazed into father's sad, worried eyes and spoke the very words I had previously vowed to myself: "Baba... don't worry. I was expecting this myself. I had personally told you before, and I say it again now; if I am the sole problem with the case, you must go to Australia without me. Separate my file from yours so that the family can be saved. I will stay right here, and later we will figure out something for my new application..."

Father, with a constricted heart and out of sheer necessity, put this decision to a vote and consultation, and all of us, with hesitation, dread, and lumps in our throats, agreed that my case would be separated from the rest of the family members. This was our most bitter family agreement; watching the tear-soaked eyes of my sisters and the trembling of father's shoulders lashed at my very soul.

But the final coup de grâce of fate struck my shoulder when we realized that, simultaneously with this event, the visas for Aunt **Roya**, **Hamed**, and **"Leila"**—the forbidden, hidden, and eternal love of my life—had also been approved, and they too were preparing for an immediate departure from Iran and a flight to Australia.

This news drove the storm of my depression and helplessness to its absolute peak. Now, not only did I have to endure a desolate separation from my father, mother, and little sisters, but I also had to face the agonizing reality that my closest friend Hamed, and most painful of all, Leila, were leaving Iran forever. The thought that I might never see Leila's eyes again, that she would be lost to me forever across the vast expanse of distant oceans, turned every fiber of my being to ashes. To escape these horrific, intrusive thoughts, I sought refuge in computer classes, or I would lose myself for hours in the silence of books in a dark corner of the Mehrabad public library; yet no sanctuary could soothe the restless, moaning palpitations of my heart.

Finally, on Monday, Aban 6, 1381 (October 28, 2002), the seal of separation was stamped upon my destiny, and officially and legally, my immigration file was severed and separated from my family's. My family received their visas with a heart torn in two; I shared in the joy of their flight, while the rope of loneliness, alienation, and the fear of a dark future without them tightened its grip around my throat in Mehrabad with every passing day...

## Part Five: The Bloody Airport Farewell on the 5th of Dey, 1381

"The days following the official and legal separation of my case on Monday, the 6th of Aban, 1381, our home in Mehrabad had become like a workshop built of haste, dread, and the dismantling of the remnants of an independent life. While my family, with hearts torn in two, were preparing for their flight to Sydney, I was forced to carry the heavy burden of administrative tasks and the final liquidation of our past in Iran all alone upon my twenty-year-old shoulders, at the dawn of the third decade of my youthful dreams."

The greatest and most suffocating obstacle facing the family was registering Maman Tahereh's official exit from the country at the special department for foreign immigrants in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The colonel sitting behind the director's desk of that department threw obstacles in the path of the case with a cruel, bureaucratic coldness, fabricating a new flaw in the documents every single time. We were pushed to the brink of despair, and with every day of delay, the risk of the tickets expiring and my sisters' visas being invalidated grew greater.

Ultimately, after relentless running around, one of my father's close friends sat down to talk with that colonel, and upon emerging from the room, he revealed the secret of those stone walls: our matter would not be resolved with any legal document or proof, except through a hefty bribe of one million tomans!

In those years, scraping together such an amount in a short period of time for a family whose entire fortune had been auctioned off was akin to a miracle. But my father, leagues away in Sydney, doubled his night shifts at the bakery and sent this money with his heart's blood; the one-million-toman bribe was paid, and finally, the exit stamp landed on Maman Tahereh's passport to pave the runway for their flight.

Simultaneous with this frantic running around, the hardest and most bitter mission was entrusted to me.

I had to visit the secondhand shops and liver-kebab stalls of Mehrabad and sell off, piece by piece, the furnishings and belongings that my father had once bought with the sweat of his brow to give us a taste of independence, letting them go at the cheapest price possible just to scrape together the remaining money for the family's flight tickets. Every time a junk dealer came to our house, ran his hands over the sofas, inspected our beloved Pars television, and placed a pathetic price on our possessions, I felt that it was the very fabric of our family identity being sold off in exchange for a few slips of paper money.

When we loaded the last of the furniture and carpets into the back of the junk dealer's pickup truck and the house in Mehrabad was left completely bare and desolate, I stuffed my few personal belongings into an old bag and moved, like a stranger, to Bibi Fatemeh's house.

Finally, that bitter and ominous Thursday arrived—the 5th of Dey, 1381 (December 26, 2002).

My father had hidden the exact date of the flight from me; perhaps to protect my weak and aching heart from the countdown anxiety of farewell. That night, I was huddled in the peaceful silence of Bibi Fatemeh's house. The hands of the wall clock moved swiftly, and around eleven at night, the sudden ring of the telephone shattered the silence of the house.

Bibi Fatemeh picked up the receiver. Maman Tahereh's trembling, tear-filled voice echoed from the other end of the line as she said her goodbyes to Bibi for the last time.

The moment I heard this conversation, the world spun around my head. I realized that right now, in these very seconds, my family was leaving Iran forever! Without a second of hesitation, I pulled on my boots, sprinted into the alley, and with pleas and begging, hired the first private taxi in Mehrabad, shouting: "Bagh-Shahr... Sir, for God's sake, faster! They are leaving..."

When the taxi arrived at the door of Maman Tahereh's paternal home, I was confronted with a terrifying, hellish uproar.

The alley was crowded, and the atmosphere of the night was heavy with the sounds of crying, wailing, sighs, and curses of the relatives. Amidst that dark commotion, the shouts of the stern old man, Jeddo **Abdolrahman**, could be heard louder than anyone else's, as he angrily and furiously picked a fight with the airport taxi driver over a trivial private fare.

In the midst of this turmoil, the wet, terrified eyes of my sisters, Faezeh and Maryam, lit up the moment they saw me among the shadows. Weeping and crying out, they ran toward me and formed a circle around me.

Little Nejat, who was now six years old, had gripped the sleeve of my jacket, sobbing with those innocent eyes. I embraced Maman Tahereh and my sisters one by one with all my might, breathing in the scent of their bodies deeply to store it away for the days of loneliness.

Until the very last second, the delicate, trembling hands of Faezeh and Maryam were locked within my twenty-year-old hands. But the driver honked mercilessly and shouted that it was getting late. They got into the car, and the metal doors slammed shut with a harsh, grating sound.
The car pulled away, and I ran after it. Never, for all eternity, will I forget that searing frame; the innocent, rain-washed faces of my sisters fading into the darkness of the road, staring back at me from behind the dirty, blurred rear window of the car with eyes brimming with entreaty, their small hands pressed against the glass...

A heavy lump choked my breath, and tears blurred my vision entirely. All the way back to Bibi's house, I wept in the backseat of the taxi with relentless, manly sobs; the profound sense of orphanhood, shelterlessness, and displacement had shattered my heart into a thousand pieces. That night, until the winter dawn of Mehrabad, my eyes remained fixed upon the hanging wires of the ceiling, and sleep forsook me; I was left behind with a long, three-year purgatory in a homeland that was no homeland...

Part One: Bibi's Sanctuary of Peace and the Nocturnal Whispers of Mehrabad

After that heart-rending night of the 5th of Dey, 1381, and watching the tear-streaked, pleading faces of my sisters fade away through the rear window of the taxi, I was left alone with a vast, endless solitude in a homeland that had now become a land of exile to me. In those first two or three days, a paralyzing fear of an uncertain future clawed at my twenty-year-old soul like a dark phantom. But very soon, the hand of destiny placed me in an environment that felt like waking from a long, convulsive, and anxiety-ridden nightmare of many years.

I had spread out my meager personal belongings in a small room in the old house of Bibi Fatemeh in **Mehrabad**. In that cozy quietude, broken only by the ticking of the wall clock and the nocturnal hooting of birds, my soul tasted the astringent yet healing flavor of peace for the first time after years of turmoil. Bibi Fatemeh—this long-suffering, dignified, and steadfast woman—and **Ameh Parvin**, took me into their shelter with such an open and unconditional embrace that it was as if a loving mother were pouring all the lost attention, love, and compassion of the world at my feet.

Every time the telephone rang and my father or sisters anxiously asked after me from Sydney, I would comfort them with a calm, deeply contented voice, saying: "Do not worry about me... I am living in a little paradise where, after years of wandering, I have finally found peace."

But this newfound peace, rather than lulling my mind to sleep, awakened it. When the heavy dust of the daily stresses of migration and bureaucratic runarounds settled, it was as if a dam had broken within me. In the cozy solitude of Bibi's house, a strange contradiction seized my soul; I would ask myself, why must my world and that of my sisters be so inextricably bound to pain, stress, constant familial neuroses, and displacement? What had befallen us that our share of youth and an ordinary life was nothing but sorrow, alienation, and the forfeiture of joy?

Involuntarily, I would slip my right hand into my pocket and rub my thumb over the upper joint of my index finger, over that rough, white line; the cursed, red trace of that ominous key! The key that, on a scorching afternoon when I was thirteen, with naive simplicity and at the insistence of my mother Marzieh, I pulled from my pocket in the courtyard of Bibi's house and handed to her, allowing her to unlock an eternal tragedy. The guilt and that old, backbreaking remorse awakened in my chest once again, but this time I made a different choice. I decided to stop running from the shadows; I wanted to lift the veil from the secrets, the surrenders, and the past miseries of our lives. I wanted to know where the root of all this turbulence lay.

And the root of this paternal family lay entirely in the calloused hands of Bibi Fatemeh. She was the anchor and the keeper of our past; a woman who bore the heavy burden of Saddam's scars, forced expulsion, the disappearance and murder of two children, and the loss of her husband.

In the evenings, when the clamor of Mehrabad faded into silence, Bibi Fatemeh's old house took on an ethereal and sacred atmosphere. Bibi would light her antique brass samovar. The continuous, gentle bubbling of the boiling water in the cozy space of the room was the only living sound in the twilight of the night. **Ameh Parvin** would bring a tray of fresh, cardamom-scented tea, and we would gather around that warmth.

I took an old notebook with blank, straw-colored pages and a pen, rested them on my knees, and sat facing the tired, dim eyes of Bibi Fatemeh. I gazed at her and, with a voice trembling with eagerness, said: "Bibi... tell me about Najaf. Tell me about our roots. Tell me what befell us that the destiny of us children became so intertwined with exile and pain?"

## Part Two: The Chest of Bibi Fatemeh's Secrets and the Lost Voice of Najaf

The winter rain of Mehrabad beat gently and ceaselessly against the small windowpanes of the room, drowning the atmosphere of the house in a dreamlike silence. The faint light of the kerosene lamp cast long shadows upon the plaster walls, accentuating the deep wrinkles on Bibi's face.

Bibi adjusted the samovar with hands that trembled perpetually from Parkinson's and the sorrows of time, placing a glass of fresh, cardamom-scented tea before me. I watched the faint quivering of her lips and the labored rhythm of her weary breaths; breaths that, with every inhalation and exhalation, seemed to drag the ashen dust of bitter and sweet memories—decades of displacement endured by the Moussawi lineage—from the very depths of her chest.

A long, cold sigh rose from Bibi's chest. Her gaze fixed upon an unknown point in the boundless expanse of time; it was as if the mud-brick walls of the Mehrabad house suddenly melted away in her eyes, and the resonant timbre of her voice carried my soul leagues away and decades back... to the sweltering alleyways of Najaf!

Bibi closed her eyes and softly said, "My Mohsen... the sun of Najaf was merciless and searing, yet the golden domes of the Amir al-Mu'minin shrine gleamed so brilliantly amidst the city's desert dust that beholding them would purify the soul of any weary human. On the outskirts of that same sacred, sweltering city, we had a cozy little house with whitewashed walls, its courtyard serving as our sanctuary beneath the shade of a lone pomegranate tree. When your grandfather **'Mohsen'** died in his youth, taking flight from this world due to illness, I was left behind with two innocent, unsheltered children in the bleak exile of Najaf—having to single-handedly be their mother, their father, and their breadwinner..."

It was here that I raised my hand, paused the movement of my pen, and with a hesitation that had crept into my eyes, said, "Bibi... wait. There is something that disrupts the mathematics of my memories. You said Jeddo Mohsen passed away years ago in Najaf, when he was very young... You said my father Zaher and Uncle **Jalal** were orphaned in childhood... Then how is it possible that you have so many children? How is it that years after Jeddo Mohsen's passing, my younger uncles and aunts were added to this family? What secret lies hidden behind these unspoken words?"

A profound silence enveloped the room. Bibi Fatemeh drew a heart-rending sigh and pulled her chador tighter around her frail shoulders. In the dim light of the kerosene lamp, her eyes glistened with tears. She gently laid her wrinkled hand over mine and whispered, "My Mohsen... this is that great unspoken truth, the hidden pillar of our home in Najaf. The truth is that your father Zaher and your uncle Jalal were the only fruits of my union with my late husband, Jeddo Mohsen... When Mohsen took flight, I was a young woman with two orphaned children in the harsh society of that era. In the unwritten law of the Sadat people of that land, a brother's orphans were not to be raised under a stranger's hand, nor should another name be stamped upon their brows. In those very days of despair, a man forged of chivalry and selfless honor stepped forward; my husband's brother, your great-uncle: **'Sedmir'**! Sedmir was a family man himself; he had his own independent home and life. But he carried the fierce honor of the Sadat; he could not bear to see his brother's orphans wandering and unsheltered. So that he could build a legal, lawful, and eternal sanctuary for me and his brother's children, he rolled up his sleeves, took me as his wife, and became a sheltering father to little Zaher and Jalal. My dear Mohsen... all the younger brothers and sisters you named—from **Mohammad** and **Ali** and **Nader** to Zohreh and Halimeh and Roya and Parvin—are all the children of me and the noble Sedmir. He was not just an uncle, but he acted as a father to this entire family, and until his very last breath, he never let the dust of orphanhood settle upon the faces of Zaher and Jalal..."
After a sip of her cold tea, Bibi reached the most heart-wrenching page in her chest of memories: "My days would begin long before dawn. In the twilight of the room, I would kneel and, with these tired hands, spin the yarn spindles—the *masouleh*—to provide an honest living for this large family. In his youth, your father Zaher was very quiet and thoughtful, working in a small pharmacy. Every night, we would spread our simple dinner cloth under the shade of that same pomegranate tree in the courtyard, and despite the hardships, we were happy... But Saddam's Ba'ath regime was growing more ruthless by the day. Because I was of Iranian descent, the shadow of suspicion soon fell over our home. Finally, before the Ba'athist storm could tear us apart, your father Zaher was forced to secretly leave Najaf for Iran... Four years after his departure, that black day in the year 1363 (1984) arrived! Saddam's Ba'athist soldiers raided our home and dragged us to a crowded, terrifying detention center. Amidst that wailing chaos, two ruthless soldiers suddenly grabbed the hands of my eighteen-year-old son, **"Mohammad"**—your brave and noble uncle—to tear him away from me. I sobbed, I screamed, I clawed at their boots... but they said grown young men had no right to leave for Iran. As he struggled, Mohammad stared into my tear-filled eyes and shouted with all his might: 'Mother... be strong! I will find a way back to your embrace...' And that was the last time I ever heard my son Mohammad's voice. Nearly twenty years have passed, Mohsen... and still, every night when I spin the yarn, that same cry from Mohammad rings in my ears. No one ever knew in which of Saddam's mass graves the very piece of my heart perished in utter loneliness..."

I will never forget that moment. When she reached this point, the words choked in Bibi's throat. To her, the names "Mohammad" and "Ali" were not merely words; they were a trigger that shattered all the dams of her soul's resistance. Whenever the conversation turned to these two sons, Bibi would lose herself entirely. She pulled her chador over her face and fell into such a heart-rending, sorrowful weeping that her frail shoulders shook violently. Her sobs filled the cozy space of the room, and she could no longer utter a single word.

With trembling hands, I set down my pen and notebook, moved closer, and in silence, took her cold, wrinkled hands into mine. Long, heavy minutes passed until the storm of that profound grief subsided a little. With the corner of her chador, Bibi wiped the tears from the deep furrows of her face, took a deep, trembling breath, and when she had calmed down slightly, she continued the blood-soaked story of our family for me like this:

"The wound of Mohammad's disappearance was still fresh when a greater agony bent my back... the agony of my son **"Ali"**! My ill-fated and noble Ali, after migrating to Iran, could never endure the bitter taste of exile and distance from his homeland. He decided to secretly return to the soil of Iraq... but in the middle of the border roads, the Ba'athist soldiers caught sight of his shadow, and with a hail of bullets, they dragged my Ali into blood and dust..."

Bibi's voice broke amidst the flood of her tears. She pressed her trembling hand against her chest, as if blood were still dripping from those old wounds, and with a stature utterly crushed beneath the weight of these two tragedies, she rested her head against the room's old cushion and wept silently. With trembling hands, I placed my notebook on the floor. My own tears had also dripped onto the page, blurring the words. I glanced at my right hand; now I understood perfectly well that we were the children of a lineage whose roots in Najaf had been watered by the blood of Uncle Ali's martyrdom, the innocent suffering of my missing Uncle Mohammad, and the selfless sacrifices of devoted figures like Sedmir. I had become the scribe of these sacred pains so that our history would not be forgotten.

## Part Three: The Fall of Saddam's Statue and the Rain of Kinship in Mehrabad

The spring of 1382 (April 2003) arrived; I was on the threshold of twenty-one when a historic storm swept across the Middle East. The Ba'ath regime and the suffocating rule of Saddam Hussein collapsed.

I will never forget it; sitting beside Bibi Fatemeh, eyes fixed on the television in the cozy corner of our old house in Mehrabad, watching Saddam's bronze statue being pulled down in Firdos Square in Baghdad felt like the end of a dark, eighteen-year nightmare—a nightmare that had drained the very blood of our family. With the crumbling of that iron fortress, borders that for decades had reeked of blood and barbed wire were suddenly thrown open to the exiled families.

Right in the midst of those hope-filled days, the wooden bell of Bibi's courtyard gate sounded with a joyful rhythm. When I opened the door, a dignified woman, draped in an abaya and with eyes brimming with a rain of tears, stood in the frame. It was my noble aunt, **"Ameh Halimeh"**, who had been left behind in Najaf years ago. The moment Bibi Fatemeh and Ameh Halimeh met and embraced was a scene that could melt a heart of stone; two women from a lineage of grief-stricken Sayyids, after twenty years of displacement, held one another so tightly and wailed with such sheer joy that it seemed all the heart-wrenching agonies of our family were spilling over at once.

Very soon, other relatives like **"Ameh Zohreh"** and her children also found their way to Bibi's small house, drowning it in a vibrant commotion of laughter, bustling Iraqi cooking, and curved glasses of cardamom tea. It was as though a lost Najaf, in all its glory, had moved into Bibi's home, offering a fleeting balm to the purgatory of my loneliness in the absence of my father and sisters.

## Part Four: The Opium Storm and the Sorrow of the Shattered Television

But my purgatory of solitude in Mehrabad was not always laced with the scent of cardamom and sweet family gatherings. The greatest and most sorrowful of these storms was embodied in my young uncle, **"Uncle Nader"**.

At his core, Uncle Nader was a profoundly kind and compassionate soul; yet, to flee his inner agonies, he had been led astray by the wrong crowd and ensnared in the trap of addiction. A sinister captivity that, every weekend, dragged the thick, dark smoke of opium and his volatile behavior into Bibi's home.

One weekend, Bibi Fatemeh and Aunt **Khadijeh** left the house to run an errand. Bibi pulled me aside and said with anxious urgency: "Mohsen... lock the door from the inside and do not open it for anyone, not even your Uncle Nader." I obeyed and triple-locked the wooden door. Then, I retreated to my room and lost myself in the magical realm of my favorite game (PlayStation). I was so submerged in the thrill unfolding on my small 14-inch television screen that I became utterly oblivious to my surroundings.

Uncle Nader had arrived at the door, and upon finding it bolted, believed he had been cast out. This perceived rejection ignited a fire of rage within his sensitive soul and restless mind. When I finally noticed his kicks against the door and fearfully pulled it open, he shoved me backward and roared, "Why didn't you open the door when I rang?" I explained that it had been Bibi's strict instruction.

These words only wounded his already bleeding soul further. He stormed into my room, tore our family portrait—the sole solace of my lonely nights—from the wall, and smashed it to pieces! He then laid out his opium paraphernalia in the courtyard. I sat huddled in the corner of my room, shedding silent tears. Uncle Nader, drowning in the thick fog of the opiate, returned to my room wielding a screwdriver and, at the height of his fury, struck the glass of my beloved television, shattering it right before my eyes!

With trembling hands, I dialed the number for Sydney and, between heavy sobs, recounted the ordeal to my father Zaher, though Uncle Nader remained entirely submerged in his own world of sorrow. The grief of Uncle Nader's downfall grew unbearably heavy when I witnessed how this sinister affliction had disfigured his noble spirit; so much so that, to feed his habit, he sold the bicycle my cousin Hamed had gifted me, and would even secretly pilfer the allowance from my pockets. My purgatory in Mehrabad became more grueling than ever as I was forced to watch the ruin of a man I loved.

## Part Five: The End of the Three-Year Purgatory and the Miracle of the Flight to Sydney

Three years of agonizing wait; three years of running between fear and hope, and three years where every single day was a test to measure the caliber of my resilience in a homeland that offered no refuge but the cozy room of Bibi Fatemeh.

My visa file at the embassy in Australia remained blocked under the pretext of lacking a financial sponsor. Even Uncle **Hamid** rolled up his sleeves to become my sponsor, but the embassy, with bureaucratic cruelty, rejected his sponsorship as well. In these very years of limbo, mixed news reached my ears from Sydney; the news of my sister Faezeh's engagement and suitors melted my heart with joy, but the bitter news of the sudden death of my brother **Tahsin**'s unborn child in its mother's womb left a heavy brand of grief upon my chest.

Perhaps the reader might ask here: when no sponsor was found and the file had hit an absolute dead end, how was this blind knot untied and where did the visa come from? The answer to this question is one of those strange and bitter untold stories of migration. In the days when absolute darkness had cast a shadow over my file, my father Zaher and Mom **Tahereh** in Sydney, with broken hearts, weeping eyes, and a pride they had trampled upon to save their child, reached out to every acquaintance and stranger.

The pleas and restlessness of these distant parents finally brought mercy to the heart of an Iraqi businessman. Deeply moved by this family separation, he intervened and persuaded one of his wealthy friends to take on my financial sponsorship; with the firm promise and agreement that upon my arrival in Australia, I would never become a burden to anyone and no problems would arise.

Finally, thanks to this lifesaving sponsorship, on Monday, Ordibehesht 19, 1384 (May 9, 2005), the miracle I had wept for over three years knocked on the door of Bibi Fatemeh's old house: **my visa had been issued!**

When the news of the visa issuance became certain, upon my father's strict recommendation and advice, I went to the bazaar and bought two high-quality and valuable "Seiko" wristwatches from Iran. One of them was meant to be given to that mediating businessman, and the other was to be delivered through him to the wealthy friend who had sponsored me, so as to compensate for a fraction of this immense favor. Though in my own solitude, I always harbored the suspicion that perhaps there was no wealthy friend at all, and that the kind businessman had magnanimously sponsored me himself and simply did not want his name revealed!

After much running around and passing the barrier of government officials to get the exit stamp, the promised day arrived: Friday, Khordad 13, 1384 (June 3, 2005). I, at the age of twenty-three, boarded the airplane and flew over the oceans. When the wheels of the plane touched down on the runway of Sydney airport, my heart pounded in my chest. With trembling steps full of eagerness, I entered the arrivals hall. There, amidst the bright lights of the airport, I saw the exhausted yet smiling face of my father Zaher and my sisters.

In a single second, time stood still. We embraced each other with all our might; tears of joy flowed down our faces, and the three-year purgatory of loneliness turned to ashes in the fragrance of our reunion. Faezeh and Maryam, and little Nejat who had now grown taller and was nearly nine years old, formed a circle around me with joyous laughter. They had grown older in these three years, and their cheerful energy was the most tangible anthem of liberation for me.

That night, my father took me to his simple yet infinitely warm home in Sydney. Around the dinner spread, my father, with eyes gleaming with tears of joy, looked at my stature and said, "My son... you have come a long way. We have come a long way together..." It was there I realized that the invisible threads of asylum had carried us from the heart of the ashes of captivity in Najaf and the exile of Iran, to the free shores of Australia. My purgatory was over, and the opening epic of our lives in this foreign land was just beginning to unfold...

## Part One: 10-Dollar Bills and the Oven of "Black Work" (2005)

It perhaps lasted only a week or two; two short, dreamlike, and fleeting weeks where I drowned in the intoxication and joy of reuniting with my family. After three years of absolute, purgatory-like loneliness in Iran, being beside my father and sisters again possessed the quality of a miracle. I remember in those very first days, my father, with a smile brimming with pride, longing, and tenderness, pressed some pocket money into my hand and said, "Mohsen *jan*, go out, wander around, see Sydney, and spend it on yourself so your mood might lift."

But when I held those plastic, colorful, and unfamiliar dollar bills in my hand, comparing their value in my mind to the rials and tomans of Iran, my hand would tremble. I could not bring myself to spend even a single dollar of that money. The value of the currency felt so strange and heavy to me that I kept the bills untouched in the depths of my pocket, merely walking along the orderly sidewalks and alleys of Sydney to see how the society of this alien land pulsed and how its people breathed.

I had crossed to this side of the ocean carrying thousands of colorful hopes and dreams. In the depths of my heart, a fierce yearning blazed to pick up a bag and books like my sisters, to go to school or university, to continue my education, and to partake in the unparalleled opportunities of this free land. But the slap of reality landed on my face all too soon, hard and merciless.

The laws were strict; for the first two years of my residency in Australia, I was excluded from any form of financial support or government allowance. The family's economic situation was so tight, the financial calculations so unforgiving, that the dream of school and study was suspended in a single second, then vanished into smoke. There was no initial time or opportunity to attend English language classes.

Instead of classrooms and blackboards, I was thrust directly into the harsh, ruthless, and hidden world of **"black work"**. Hand in hand with my father Zaher, I made my way to the same dark bakery where he had sweated for years, burning his youth at the foot of its oven. Our work was entirely cash-based, informal, and under the table: just 10 dollars an hour, in cash! I was a twenty-three-year-old young man, yet I had absolutely no knowledge of the legal rights of a worker in Australia; nor was there anyone to take my hand or teach me my rights. Five days a week, from the middle of the night until well into the day, beside the scorching oven and the heavy dough, I wore my body down to the bone.

Not knowing the English language was, of course, a serious and paralyzing barrier, but the true monster was the bizarre cultural divide and the profound sense of alienation. True exile, for me, was defined in Sydney like this: to work and walk among people whose world, perspectives, and behaviors bore no resemblance to anything you had known until yesterday.

At the end of every week, when I received my cash wages with dough-stained and exhausted hands, my father would collect the money from me to save for my future. He set these funds aside penny by penny, especially whenever the conversation turned to the future, my marriage, and my becoming independent in the household. I had practically become the errand boy of the bakery's oven; a young man without the language, without awareness of his rights, and drowning in backbreaking labor, who had pinned all his hopes on a future his father had promised.

## Part Two: A Newborn's Arrival and My Sister Faezeh Taking Flight

In those very first days of settling in Australia, our small home in Sydney was pregnant with fateful transformations and events—happenings that left the atmosphere of our lives suspended between the radiant light of a new birth and the melancholic aura of change and separation.

First came the birth of our youngest brother, **"Ehsan"**. Mom **Tahereh** brought her little boy into the world, and the presence of this newborn infused the heart of our grueling, labor-filled days with the fragrance of hope, blessing, and the motivation to carry on. With Ehsan's arrival, our home was once again, after so many years, filled with the cries, the kicking limbs, and the laughter of a newly arrived infant, breathing fresh life into our weary souls.

Meanwhile, the courtship and marriage of my sister Faezeh—the early stages of which had already taken place in Iran—grew more imminent. Fortunately, before Faezeh’s wedding, I had the chance to spend some time by her side and with the family, witnessing the comings and goings, and feeling with all my being the growth of little Ehsan in our home. But at last, the time for Faezeh’s vows and wedding arrived; with a face so noble and beautiful, she donned her bridal gown, pledged her life to her husband, and soon after, set off on a honeymoon to Europe to begin her own independent life.

Faezeh’s departure and newfound independence marked the first sign of a profound and inescapable shift at the core of our family. I felt that the tight-knit, warm, and unified circle we once shared back in Isfahan and Iran, where we had all grown up side by side, would never again be as it was.

We were no longer that seamlessly whole, ever-present family of the past; everyone was drifting in their own direction, forging their own independent paths in this new continent. With Faezeh gone, the house felt profoundly empty. And I, amidst the grueling, endless hours of hard work at the bakery, returning to a home where Faezeh’s voice no longer echoed, felt more deeply than ever that the sweet era of our family’s togetherness had drawn to a close, and we had crossed into a cold, new season.

## Part Three: The Shattering of a Dream in Perth and a Glimmer of Hope Named "Bahar"

Amidst the long hours of grueling work in the bakery and my father's saving of my wages, the day finally arrived when the family gathered to discuss my future and my settling down. With a warm familial intimacy, they asked me directly, "Mohsen, do you have anyone in mind for marriage? What are your thoughts?"

In my heart, I was astonished. I thought to myself, did they not already know the answer? In my mind, everything had been clear, engraved, and absolute since childhood. Without a moment's hesitation, and driven by a deep yearning that had taken root in my being over the years, I spoke the name **"Leila"**—my aunt's daughter.

With a resolute voice, I said, "Since childhood, it was always said that Leila and I belonged to each other. That truth had been etched into my mind all these years. I have fallen in love with her, and I love her. If I am to marry anyone, it can only be Leila."

The moment those words left my lips, a heavy, biting, and pregnant silence descended upon the room. I looked at their faces, watching their features tighten and their eyes dart away from mine. It was then that I grasped the true depth of the tragedy: the familial ties between Aunt **Roya **'s family and ours in Australia had soured terribly. They lived in Perth, at the farthest edge of western Australia, while we resided in Sydney, in the east of this vast continent; leagues of geographical separation and a world of coldness, resentment, and estrangement had forged a stony chasm between us.

Nevertheless, they maintained my dignity and did not outwardly oppose my wish. But as to how and in what manner they reached out to Perth behind closed doors to propose the union, I was kept entirely in the dark.

Until one day, Maman Tahereh came to me. Her gaze was brimming with hesitation, compassion, and sorrow. Softly and with great caution, she told me that Aunt Roya had declined the proposal, stating that their daughter intended to continue her education and was not considering marriage at all for the time being.

Hearing those words felt like an iron sledgehammer crashing down upon my heart and soul. The memory I had clung to for years in the exile of Iran, through loneliness, displacement, and beneath the scorching heat of the bakery oven in Sydney to keep despair at bay, crumbled into ashes in a single instant. My heart shattered profoundly at this cold and cruel rejection—a rejection I knew all too well was rooted in those very family disputes and darkened relations, not merely in studies or higher education. I was left stranded in Sydney, bearing a fractured heart and a dream that had set forever in the sunset of Perth.

My family, noticing my profound grief, sorrow, and brokenness, stepped forward time and again to console me. They would say there were many girls and that they could consider other options for a proposal. Yet, every time they spoke these words, my thoughts would involuntarily drift to **"Bahar"**—that beautiful girl in** Baghshahr** of Iran, whose lovely, modest glances had melted the ice of sorrow in my heart, and whose memory always remained alive and beating in a quiet corner of my mind.

One day, amidst the suffocating heat of the bakery and the monotonous rhythm of work, my father came over to comfort me. He placed his hand on my shoulder and said with deep compassion, "Mohsen, how long are you going to be like this? So it didn't work out with her—there will be someone else! I am heading to Iran very soon... would you like me to roll up my sleeves and find someone for you while I'm there?"

I looked at my father's weary face. Pushing my sorrow aside, I said, "Well... if it is to be anyone else, that person is Bahar."

At the mention of that name, my father's weary face suddenly brightened, and a spark of joy danced in his eyes. With eager enthusiasm, he said, "Yes! Excellent! I know Uncle **Abdolhossein**, Bahar's father, very well. We are close friends. They are a highly respectable and good family, and they have raised wonderful daughters."

And so it was that the story of "Bahar"—the tale of a union destined to be a balm for the wounds of the past and the dawn of a new identity in my life—was set into motion...

## Part Four: The Call from Bibi's House and the Final Silence on the Line

As usual, my father would collect my weekly wages from the bakery and save them himself. He had a grand plan in mind: to cover the costs of traveling to Iran, the expenses of the courtship, and the hosting of a respectable, beautiful wedding in our homeland. Traveling to Iran was costly in its own right, let alone throwing a wedding ceremony; yet my father meticulously set aside those funds, penny by penny.

I, however, was spiritually shattered and entirely broken. The wreckage of horrifying experiences and the bitter hardships of my purgatorial years in Iran, the heavy burden of migration, the profound alienation, the grueling labor beside the bakery's scorching oven, and ultimately, the rejection of my longest-held dreams had drained every last drop of my strength. Amidst this depressive haze and crushed spirit, the time for my father's journey arrived. He set off for Iran to officially ask for Bahar's hand in marriage on my behalf.

My father was still in Iran, busy with preparations and the courtship, when suddenly the phone rang in our house in Sydney. Aunt Roya had returned to Iran following a trip to Iraq, and that day, she called me from Bibi Fatemeh's house. Having learned of my courtship in Iran, my aunt spoke through the receiver with a tone of astonishment and distress: "What happened, Mohsen? Why did you rush? Why did you back down so soon? Leila was just being childish, she just said something... I was talking to her!"

Dumbfounded and in absolute disbelief, I simply listened to her words. I was in shock. Hesitantly, I replied, "But Auntie... I was told you had rejected everything! You said Leila wanted to study and had absolutely no intention of marrying."

Aunt Roya answered instantly, "No! It's not like that! She only said those things out of shyness... She is standing right here beside me right now, her face flushed red with embarrassment!"

My heart began to pound violently, but reality stood before me like a solid, impenetrable stone wall. I said, "Auntie, it's too late now... My dad has gone to Iran, proposed, and received a yes." My aunt insisted, "No, dear! It is never too late. You aren't married yet!"

Waves of anxiety washed over my entire being. I knew my father well; a stern, proud, and unyielding man who would never tolerate such a reversal of decisions. If he found out that while he was over there in Iran making plans, I was taking a different path behind his back over here, he might disown me forever. I did not want to torment my father or shatter his masculine pride.

My hands were trembling. I said, "Auntie, put her on the phone... Let me speak to her myself."

When Leila took the receiver, in the depths of my desperation, I decided to make my tone harsh and cold to discourage her. Reproachfully, I said, "Why did you say those things? Didn't you know how much I loved you?"

Leila's quiet, innocent voice came across the line: "No... How was I supposed to know?"

In that very moment, a strange bitterness coiled within me, and in my heart, I laughed at myself and my own naivety. I finally realized that my love had been entirely one-sided all these years! I had never officially told her how much I loved her. She had never noticed my behaviors, my hidden feelings, or those drawings I used to sketch for her in Iran.

I said to her, "Do you remember when we were kids, I told you I loved you and that one day you would be my wife, and we both laughed?" Leila did not answer; only a brief, embarrassed giggle was heard over the line. I made my tone more serious and said, "If you truly do not want to live with me, don't say anything..."

A heavy, agonizing minute of silence settled over the line. Neither of us spoke a word. That one minute of silence was the scream of the end; the final boundary drawn across all my childhood and adolescent dreams. I broke the silence and swallowed the lump in my throat: "I wish you happiness..." Leila said in a soft voice, "Me too... I wish you happiness."

I said, "Give the phone back to Auntie." When the receiver was back in my aunt's hand, I spoke with a firm, absolute tone: "Auntie, we talked... Leila doesn't want me. Goodbye."

I hung up the phone. The chapter of a story I had nurtured in my mind for years was closed forever, in that very house, and in that single, drawn-out minute of silence on the telephone. Now, I was left alone with the sorrow of things left unsaid, and a father in Iran who was proudly arranging the preparations for my union with Bahar...

## Part One: New Roots in a Distant Land and Moving Beyond the Shadows

The gentle afternoon sun of Sydney filters through the lush leaves of the courtyard trees and falls upon my desk. Today, in the year 2026, as I reflect on my forty-four years of life, I feel I stand miles away from that teenager who, in the dusk of Perth, amidst a heavy and drawn-out minute of silence over the phone, watched the dream of **"Leila"** turn to ash. That silence, though it first felt like defeat, became the threshold of my awakening. I realized that clinging to the shadows of the past and lingering in the sorrow of what never was, is but a shackle locking my feet on the path to the future. Thus, I resolved to cease summoning the ghosts of the past and to step onto the chest of the present to build a new land.

In those very days when I was sweating by the oven of a Sydney bakery, my father in Iran was proudly arranging the preparations for my union with **"Bahar"**. The same girl who, years ago, in the dark and suffocating days of displacement in Jaddo's house, had melted the ice of sorrow in my heart with her noble and serene gaze. Marriage to Bahar was a God-given balm for all my old wounds; she was not merely a wife, but became a patient companion, a devoted friend, and a steadfast canopy through all the fierce winds of exile. Today, after years of journeying together on a road paved with respect and shared dreams, the fruit of this love is four radiant children whose laughter and cheers have flooded the walls of our home with light and life.

Our family, which was once like autumn-struck leaves wandering and displaced in the merciless winds of Middle Eastern tragedies, has now taken root and grown tall in the safe soil on this side of the ocean. My sister Faezeh has been blessed with two children from her marriage, and Maryam also has two darlings from her second union. Our little Nejat—that same angel whose footsteps bestowed the fragrance of liberation upon the lifeless home of Mehrabad—is now a dignified woman in her thirties who has built her own independent nest; and Ehsan, our youngest brother who was born in the heart of the days of exile and under-the-table labor, is now a handsome and robust young man proudly navigating his university studies.

Every single one of these laughs, academic degrees, and secure roofs is a silent yet sacred tribute to every drop of sweat, every tear, and the boundless sacrifices of our father and mother.

## Part Two: Sorrows Along the Way and the Dust of the Pandemic

Yet the wheel of fate, even in the paradise of liberation, never ceases to forge sorrow. Time marched onward, and though we had reached the shores of tranquility in Australia, the heavy hand of death continued to cull its blooms in the Middle East.

In late 2016, the central pillar of the Moussawi family tent, the safe harbor of my entire childhood, and the only woman who carried the chest of our secrets and our bloodstained history in her breast, closed her eyes forever. My grandmother, **Bibi Fatemeh**, found her rest at the age of 75. When she took flight, her old brass samovar went cold, yet her absence left a dark, hollow void in the depths of each of our hearts; she was the woman who, with the turning of her spindles in Najaf, had woven the very warp and weft of our salvation.

A few years later, with the dawn of 2020, the world plunged into the blackness of a global nightmare known as the COVID-19 pandemic. This ruthless virus, from leagues away and from behind closed borders, once again brought down the burning lash of grief upon the body of our family. First, my kind and tireless aunt, **Aunt Khadijeh**, fell ill and innocently closed her eyes to the world. The wound of her departure was still fresh and bleeding in our hearts when, in late 2022, my **maternal grandmother (Marzieh's mother)** also surrendered to this disease; the very same long-suffering woman whom, following the horrific tragedy of my mother's death and due to familial grudges, I had met only two or three times, secretly and like a stranger, in the back alleys of the city... Their taking flight in exile and solitude was a bitter reminder of the fragility of the human soul and the profound bonds that no ocean possesses the power to sever.

## Part Three: A Family Scattered in the Wind

The gears of destiny scattered the branches of this ancient tree across the globe, surrendering each to the wind in a different clime:

• **Aunt Roya** settled in the city of Perth, on the western shores of Australia. Though telephone lines would sometimes unite our voices, the geographical divide of thousands of kilometers has kept alive the sense of a silent, permanent separation between us.

• My other aunts—**Parvin, Halimeh, and Zohreh**—kept their roots planted in their mother soil, Iraq. They found solace amidst the dust and history of their homeland, raised large families, and honored the noble traditions of the Sadat.

• **Uncle Nader**, with his restless, wounded, and weary soul, could never find a permanent sanctuary, and for years he has drifted like a wandering shadow back and forth across the borders of Iran and Iraq.

• And my patient and kind **Uncle Jalal**, who remained in Iran, confronted life’s heaviest boulders; his wife’s grueling battle with the ruthless disease of cancer and the physical trials of his children lashed at his very soul. Yet, with an astonishing fortitude—an extension of the very composure and grace of Bibi Fatemeh—he stood firm as a mountain and never once faltered.

## Part Four: The Twilight of My Father's Stature, Rebirth in Melodies, and the Miracle of Artificial Intelligence

My father, **Zaher**, the fundamental cornerstone of our survival, honor, and salvation, now stands in his late seventies. Years of backbreaking labor beside the scorching ovens of the bakery, the marrow-burning stress of crossing borders, sleepless nights, and endless bureaucratic runarounds have drained his physical strength. His steadfast stature, which once stood like a pillar of steel in the shadow of Mount Allah-Akbar, has now grown stooped and frail.

Sometimes, when I gaze at his calloused hands and fading eyes, my heart trembles. The gradual decline of his health is the most agonizing scene I am forced to witness; yet I know full well that this broken frame is the heavy price he paid to buy all our dreams, our freedom, and our future. Now it is our turn to hold his trembling hands and be the sheltering shade for a man who once single-handedly carried the weight of an entire lineage upon his shoulders.

On the other hand, I have realized in recent years that leaving Iran alone did not free me from the shadows of the past. The weight of that ominous key at the age of thirteen, the nocturnal nightmares of the barbershop, the bitter guilt, and the searing brand of orphanhood were burdens far too heavy for me to carry forever in the silence of my soul. Acknowledging my need for help and stepping into the rooms of psychotherapy was my vital stride toward salvation.

But the true miracle of my healing occurred when I found my lost peace in composing music and weaving words. I sang songs, wrote poetry, and screamed out all the heartache that had been suffocated in my chest for decades. And I owe this entire miracle to the advent of **"Artificial Intelligence."**

The emergence of artificial intelligence was not merely a technological leap for me; this technology gifted me a new tongue. I, whose voice had been tied for years under the weight of past trauma, crumpled in a heavy silence, was finally able to open my mouth, speak, shout, and scream the cries of my heart with the help of artificial intelligence. Through reciting poetry and songwriting, I dissected my wounded soul and managed to make the inner melodies of my being heard by the world.

I learned to forgive that naked, barefoot little boy on the roads of Shahrak-e Golestan, to take his hand, and tell him that he was not to blame for the storms of the world. Music and art became a mirror through which I could finally make peace with my wounded past.

## Part Five: An Endless Ending

The epic of the Moussawi family has no endpoint on paper. This story is a living narrative that will course through the veins of our children and the generation that sets foot in this free land.

Today, I have launched a dedicated website where I share all my works, songs, and music with the world. And this book is my final work that I offer to the public in written form; so that anyone who visits that site and listens to my songs will know who the artist behind these poems and melodies is, what a blood-stained past he has endured, and why his songs are all brimming with a heavy sorrow and a soul-searing grief. Most of my works are melancholic, for they have emerged from the ashes of the most genuine human pains; yet it was precisely within this very outcry of sorrow and the creation of art that I finally found the absolute peace of my being.

When I sit in the loving embrace of my wife Bahar and look into the shining eyes of my four children, I realize with all my being that not a single teardrop, not a single sting of a wound, and not a single drop of sweat from the brow has been lost over these years. My father's sweat by the oven, the solitary tears of my mother Marzieh, the silent and maternal sacrifices of Tahereh, and the rhythmic spindles of Bibi Fatemeh—all joined hands to forge the earthly bed from which we could leap from the ashes of tragedy and bloom.

This book is not merely the memoir of an exodus; it is the national charter of our family and a steadfast testament to the defiant and invincible power of the human spirit. It is a story of the invisible threads of love that did not sever, even under the barrage of Ba'ath bullets, the fierce waves of the ocean, or the barbed wire of the borders.

Our journey from the hot, dusty alleys of Najaf to the blue shores of the Pacific Ocean in Sydney was a tremendously long path, fraught with pain and steeped in blood and tears; but at the end of this dark corridor, the light awaited us. In a foreign land, we built a home woven from hope, and we take pride in every single blister on our feet from this path.

I slip my right hand into my pocket. With my thumb, I trace the first joint of my index finger... the trace of that rough, white line is still there. But this line is no longer a mark of a guilty conscience; it is my boundary of honor. A symbol of a key that, though it once unlocked the door to a tragedy, ultimately paved a road toward liberation and the resonant cry of art.


** The End—but this is merely the beginning of the story for our future generations...**