“He thought Tehran was also like an addict. A city addicted to smoke, to humiliation, to poverty and torpor whose slightest effort to sober up gave rise to panic. Tehran was an addict that wanted to get clean but lacked the will, and after several days of sobriety would begin using again with even greater intensity. It was an addiction to oppression, an addiction to poverty, and an addiction to inhibition and nostalgia.”

Dad wrote everything again. This time he cut out all the parts he had realized were incomprehensible to their stale minds, and embellished here and there to make it thoroughly believable. This time he wrote nothing about the black snow or my ghost, or Aunt Turan joining the jinns, or Beeta and Issa’s circular flames of love-making. In this new version, there was nothing about Homeyra Khatun’s enchanted garden and well or Effat’s black love, the magical sleep or Razan’s holy fire—all of which I had told him about. He wrote nothing about the prayers of the ancient Zoroastrian priests or the mating of the cows and roosters with wild birds and animals during the time of the black snow. This time he wrote neither that Roza was once able to walk through the air above Naser Khosrow Street with The Wayfarer by Sohrab Sepehri, nor that his brother Khosrow could appear and disappear before everyone’s eyes.

“It’s life’s failure and its deficiencies that make someone a daydreamer. I don’t understand why prophets and philosophers didn’t see the significance in that. I think imagination is at the heart of reality, or at least, is the immediate meaning and interpretation of life.”

Briefly Hossein explained that seven years ago people had taken to the streets, chanted death to the Shah and death to America. So, the Shah and his family had fled Iran, His Holiness Ayatollah al-Azmi Imam Ruhollah al-Musavi al-Khomeini returned to Iran from exile in France, the Holy Islamic Republic replaced the tyrannical Pahlavi regime, nighty-eight percent of the people voted for the Islamic Republic of Iran, the leaders of the previous regime were executed, and any remaining opponents of the Islamic Republic were opponents of the Islamic Republic were arrested and sent to prison. Ayatollah Khomeini ordered that housing, water, and electricity would be free for the average Iranian, women had to wear a headscarf, and the Great Leader of the Revolution had ordered all relations with America and all other bourgeois countries cut off. Hossein declared that Iraq had invaded Iran and now all men, young and old, and even children, were on the front fighting to preserve the Holy Islamic State.

In the midst of all of this, just once did one old man ask, “Where is Iraq, anyway? And who is America?”

The middle-aged man blushed in embarrassment and asked, “I’m sorry, is this how people tell stories?” The old man answered, “Yes, this is one way people do it.”

Moreover, her account of the events of the last several years was so succinct we didn’t dare ask more. She seemed to have become inexplicably accustomed to keeping silent. I didn’t blame her. When she described how she had joined the first student dissent group upon enrolling at the university as a student of art history, and was arrested at a student protest, banned from studying, and then sent to prison, we realized that life still had yet grimmer things in store for the members of our family. It had taken her less than an hour to recount everything from start to finish;

Instead, he wrote that he had been completely opposed to the political system prior to his arrest, that Beeta had lost her sanity and now believed she had been transformed into a mermaid and was in a psychiatric ward; and that his wife, Roza, had Alzheimer’s disease and had gone missing. He wrote that I had died in a fire Revolutionaries had lit in our house and they hadn’t seen my body since. He wrote many things. Things that were partly his own dreams. He wrote that for years he suffered from depression and was house-bound until, one day, he set off and travelled through most of the country, teaching and procuring illicit political books for young people. He wrote that he was neither a monarchist nor a communist nor a Mojahedin; that he just wanted democracy and believed that people had the right to choose their religion, dress, and political parties, and that the media should be free. He wrote that he had no living family members and the story of his brother, Khosrow, had merely been a figment of this imagination; and that he had never had a sister by the name of Turan.