Author:Leila Sadeghi
Translator: Saghi Ghagraman
Her slippers are the only the only thing left behind. Whenever I go to the bathroom I see them paired together, beside the radiator. Guests who come to visit with their children, let them put the slippers on, go in, and when they come out of the bathroom, they take her only souvenir off, and get busy with another object not related to her.
Maybe every piece is a souvenir left to us from someone we know or. The linen I throw on the couch and the chairs after guest are gone, to keep them from gathering dust, are souvenirs of the weavers who sat behind the wheel and weaved the textile, and now, they might even be dead. These cups we drink tea in. The pale, little carpets. Even the bricks laid over one another, and plastered, and then painted. There are hands living behind all the pieces arranged around me, sometimes they shake me and take me there, to the right, or somewhere in the left of nowhere. There are hands drape over my eyes sometimes, sometimes slap blush my cheeks. I pick up the fruit dish empty the fruits in the box of the ice box. Hands that have picked the fruits creep amid the fruits, scatter them on the ground. I don’t know whether to pick up the hands or my self. From the closet I get the vacuum out drag it over the lint of the carpet. Particles of dust enter the throat of the vacuum, and the weaver’s hands, under my foot, weaving memories dated before my time, continuing or pretending or become pretensions or pretend… a whitish fog blocks the view of the cars driving in Chaloos inter-city road. With my sister we were on a journey to Sisangaan. Leilaa was asleep in my sister’s lap. I said, you’re tired, let me take her. My sister said, no, she is so adorable, let her sleep. My eyes were heavy with sleep, my eyelids dropping shut when my sister said: Leila is like a slice of the moon; I wish I had a daughter like her. Would you let her stay with me for a while? You’ll have a better chance to tend to you work. Or you know what, leave her with me when you go to work, and pick her up on you way home. I said, god bless you, but make sure she doesn’t get the impression you’re her mom. I am joking, I am joking.
We’ve stopped by the roadside to get out of the car so we can splash water on our face, freshen up, if anyone wants to pray, or visit the washroom, or eat, or rest, or whatever, get rid of the drowsiness of the ride. We walked from that side of the road to this side and we saw I saw no one has followed me to splash some water on their face to eat to breathe to be with me who sees that I am walking to the other side where a truck–trailer crashed in to a white Peykaan, with our plate number, now it’s only me, and the hands fallen limp outside of the car’s window, like a dried up branch of a tree. I turn off the vacuum cleaner, walk away to change my cloths. Cloths that don’t belong even to the ones made them, and not to the ones who weaved the textile; cloths that do not belong to a thing like me. I feel something heavy under my belly. That was separated from me years ago, and then separated again. I too am dangling heavy under my mother’s belly, have separated from her many times. I go take a shower, rub my body with a bath-cloth, dead cells fall off, water run over the fresh cells. I change into fresh cloths. It doesn’t matter that the hands. I brush my hair and run my hand over the tiny hair grown by my ears and on the crown of my forehead. I remember how fresh and lively I am. I fix something to eat; my cells breathe with relief. They grow up, or exercise in the area of mind. I pick up the tooth brush go to the washroom that the slippers the only souvenir remained of her paired side by side by the radiator