A writer’s world is often lonely, empty, and illusive. This world can be bitter, dry, yet intoxicating and toxic. I live in one such world; I am a traveller. What I write is who I am and sometimes my inner personality can become deceptive. The roads are so wide in my illusions; there are no dead-ends, no stop signs, no walls or metal bars.

But I live in isolation. I may act fearless, I may act like a fighter, but I am still afraid of this world I live in. I’m afraid that I might slip up, or even fall. Whenever I’m alone, I think and sometimes these thoughts carry me to unreal, false destinations, ones that are so beautiful in all their fallacy and misrepresentation.

Tonight I have found myself once again in such position. I have turned myself into a fake doll, a beautiful doll with red lips, black, shimmering eyes. In my head, I belong to a prince, a prince whose lust for me will never die. I’m not in search of love. I’m too simple and I don’t live by rules. I am just a doll tonight, just a lonely, plastic doll. But this identity is too superficial, full of flaws and misrepresentations. But just as I can write anything, I can also become anybody…and that can be dangerous.

I was a novice writer, 19, and he had found me. When I finally agreed to go out with him, he thought he’d won; I was a lottery and he was a lucky player. We had a lot in common. We both had dreams, mine was to be a big-shot writer, his was being a famous architect. We both wanted to travel and see the world outside of our dorm rooms. But the one thing that made us different was the way we loved each other. He was in love with my writing and I was in love with him, with his gestures, his smiles, his grins, his kisses, his passions. I don’t know how it was that for the 13 years that we were married, I didn’t see that his love was the dying kind, not the everlasting kind. And despite his lack of attention for me, the woman who slept next to him every night, the woman who gave him her whole heart without any exceptions, I was still blinded, maybe because I was too in love to realize his weakness, his inability to give me his heart.

He read every single article that I wrote, every single piece of writing, every poem, every story, but somehow he forgot to read the sadness in my eyes, the pain I felt every time he didn’t tell me he wanted me. But I let it go, I pushed my feelings aside and focused on pleasing him. I wrote about him every chance I got and I let him read. I had become an expert on pleasing him, making him happy and I never asked for anything. I saw him, but he no longer saw me. He kept telling me to write more and tried so hard to encourage me, to make me the best writer the world had ever seen, but he didn’t try to open his heart. And I, I waited. I waited for 13 years before letting him go.

I take one sip from a can of beer that is not supposed to be in the fridge. It is bitter and disgusting. I swallow and immediately put it away. The night is humid, wet from an unpredicted rain, and warm from a prolonged summer that is too bland, too plain. I thought maybe a new taste, like a cold beer would add a little excitement to this night, but I didn’t realize that it would taste just as bitter as a cup of coffee. So I’m going to indulge myself with my usual hot tea, and I’ll just accept the fact that for now, life is stable, mild and dull.

I stare at Lolita. She’s six and no longer has a father figure. Mama used to say, every little girl needs a father figure in her life, a father who knows how to get her daughter out of trouble, a father who knows how to hold her hand when mother’s hands are busy, a father who buys her cotton candy at the fair and shows her how to build sand castles. But my Lolita can’t rely on a man who may not always be there to pick her up. She can’t depend on a father who may not always be there to take her out, a father who may be busy with a new wife, a new family, a new home.

How many times did I tell him we shouldn’t have children? How many times did I tell him that it would be a big responsibility, a big risk, a big mistake? But he never listened and tempted me. He created the perfect family picture, where I was the sweet housewife and mother, and he was the architect who had made the safest, strongest and the most beautiful house. And he did. He made a house so big, so dreamy, so luminous that no wife could ever dream of. This house was even more beautiful than the Barbie house that I always dreamed of having as a child. But it never became a home. My husband knew how to build houses from scratch, he knew where to place things, but he didn’t know how to build a home, a home where he’d watch his family grow every day. Eventually he forgot that he had a pregnant wife waiting for him. He forgot that I feared seeing my doctor alone. He forgot that it if it wasn’t for him, I would have never agreed to be a mom. He missed most of my appointments and didn’t make it on time for the sonogram. During those painful appointments, where I waited alone, in doubt and petrified of the living thing inside me, I read Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. On the day of the sonogram, I finished the book. When the doctor told me I was having a girl, I knew I would name her Lolita.

He isn’t home today. My unborn baby and I are alone. I sip from my tea and wonder when he’ll get home, when he’ll be next to me and this baby, this living thing that I’m so afraid to have. I try not to think about my big belly, but it’s always in front of me, and I can’t hide it. I can’t forget that soon I will be a mother who has to feed this baby, nourish it, and take care of it. Soon I will have to teach this child the alphabet, the colors of the rainbow and numbers. I will have to hold it. I will have to love this unborn baby, and I will, I hope. Sometimes I hate my husband because I feel like he fooled me, like he promised me a false life, a big lie. But in the end he left it up to me. He said if you really don’t want a child, we won’t have one. But I didn’t want to feel guilty for the rest of my life; I didn’t want to carry the burden of knowing I deprived my husband of a child. I couldn’t do that to him. And most of all, I couldn’t do that to myself because deep down, I was dying to know what it would feel like to be a mother. I was a curious writer, in need of a story of a mother and her baby.

The rain pours and I watch it run down each balcony, hitting the cement surface of the walls and floors. On this lonesome, dull Wednesday afternoon, the only thing to watch from our window is the rainfall. And I wonder if this rain has its own story, its own secrets and lies. I wonder if someone has already unfolded the mystery of the rain. But even if there is no mystery, I will tell its story. I will tell my own version of this story.

But not today. Today I’m just a lonely watcher, one who’s tired of waiting. I’m not in the mood to dance to the rhythm of the rain.

The man in front of me looks about 70. He has fitted himself between two women, and is resting his hand on a black umbrella, carefully reading a piece of paper. He is wearing a white bow tie, a hat, and a suit. I want to call him the umbrella man. Next to the umbrella man, is the saddest, most insecure and introverted woman. A loose scarf is wrapped around her head. She is wearing jeans and sneakers underneath a long dress. She shyly glances around, but keeps her head down most of the time. I notice no rings on her slender fingers so I know she doesn’t belong to anyone. I feel as though on this rainy day, where traffic is slow, the grounds are wet, and all the lights are red, everybody is trapped in misery. And I’m just like them. I’m another miserable rider of this bus, and I’m looking for a story. I have run out of stories just like I have run out of songs. Everything these days is a rerun. The bus rides, the songs in my head, my fantasies, the cigarette lady who I see for the second time; it’s as if I’m living the same day over and over again. But let me go back to the people in the bus. The bus driver is a woman in her mid 30s. She is also carrying a yellow umbrella with her and she doesn’t enjoy driving on wet roads. Her smile is the fading kind because she’s had a long day and unlike me, she has many destinations to stop at. For her, life is a series of bus stops, of people getting on and off the bus, of dollars and quarters that fill the coin machine, of people who look for seats closest to the doors. These people, the ones who like to sit close to the doors, don’t take risks; they want to be safe. They don’t want attention so they sit somewhere where they can easily get out, with no hassle. I’m one of these people. I sit right next to the door so I can watch each face that comes in, so I can watch the roads, but most importantly because I’m insecure. I’m afraid that if I sit away from the doors, I’ll never get off the bus or that I’ll miss my stop.

I know there are more stories to be told. I know that the bus is not just about the cigarette lady or the umbrella man or that shy, innocent woman with the scarf. But, I like to wander off to my own world and become the shy, innocent girl with the head phones. That’s simply who I am on this bus. I’m a girl who can easily pretend that the life she is living, right now, right here in this bus, is nothing more than a movie, a comedy of happy, lonely people.

I gave in. Once again, I became weak and I gave in. I had refused to marry him for months but I finally said yes when he proposed during breakfast one early morning. I didn’t find his proposal particularly romantic, but for some reason, in between my last bite of butter and cream on toast, I found myself saying yes to a man I loved too much. I liked the idea of being someone’s wife; in a weird way that I still find odd today, I liked the feeling of being possessed. But at the time when I was 21 and too young, I thought possession was the same thing as love. I thought that him having me for himself would mean he would love me endlessly. The funniest thing about this marriage was that I had been against the concept my whole life. I had been so set on not ever getting married because I was simple and a marriage seemed too complicated. I used to think that a happy life with someone I loved would be enough, no strings attached. But I had also been logical, cautious, and never a risk taker. And this was my one chance to break my own rules. It was my one chance to take a big risk, forget my better judgment, and ignore the rules I had once so perfectly drawn out for myself.

I finished my toast and couldn’t stop staring at the diamond ring on my finger, the ring that was meant to map our love for eternity, for better or for worse, in sickness and in heath, ‘till death did us part. But of course I didn’t think of any of those customs. I just looked at, thinking and believing that I had taken a risk, and that I had freed myself of boundaries and limits. I was too young, too young to know that the man in front of me was in love with something else, that he was doing what he thought was his duty. He was a boy who wanted to be a man, a husband, a caretaker of a fragile, insecure portrait of a wife.

On these endless summer days, where I ride the bus to work and listen to the same songs, and continue day dreaming, life is grand. I mean the world is literally at my fingertips. I can order a tall Caramel Macchiato with my credit card and I can buy a great book, like Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake. The possibilities are endless here in America. And yet I haven’t taken my chances at everything. I’ve lived a life too safe, too risk-free, too…secure. I went from shy freshman girl to a sassy senior, which was a big improvement, but not quite enough. It was not the biggest jump. The jump I’m still willing to make. I’m living the American dream; I’m a writer. But I have not yet played around with my own rules the way I play around with words. I’m good at taking risks with the string of words that somehow make sense, but I have failed to take those risks in my own reality.

It only takes one jump. And I will be free.

A month has passed and we have forgotten her face, her small talks, her laughter and her anger. We have forgotten what makes her giggle, what makes her laugh, what makes her smile and what makes her frown. Her empty seat at the table and her absence in every corner of this house has left us nostalgic, longing for her warm embrace, her gentle touch. There are days that we simply sleep without thinking of her, without noticing the absence of her smell, the absence of her voice.

Mother is coming back soon. And we will forget she was once gone. What happened yesterday will only be a distant memory, one that will soon be forgotten.

Yesterday I sold my wedding ring and then rushed to the bank to put the money in my savings. Today I am on a plane with Lolita, heading to Manhattan for an interview with the New York Times. The sun is out and the temperature is perfect. Lolita has her head in a book and I am reading an article in the Times. I have promised her a happy life in New York. I have promised us Broadway shows on Saturday nights and shopping adventures on 5th avenue. I have promised things that he never thought of promising. The little things that make life beautiful, the little things that my daughter will cherish for the rest of her life. I once gave him my heart, but now I’m giving it to the city, to myself and to my little Lo.

We are now walking in Central Park and Lo is enjoying the sun. I could not have asked for a better setting, a better temperature, a better picture. I don’t believe in happy endings and I’m not going to promise Lo such a thing. But I do believe that we will make the best of what we get, that we will watch out for each other, that we will make it through the busy streets, that we will make it through honking taxis and crazy drivers. I hold her arm and we cross the street, where a man is selling hot dog. I take a few bills out of my purse and hand Lo a piece. The hot dog man smiles. I smile back and head for the metro; I can’t wait to show Lo our first apartment in the middle of the city. I can’t wait to unpack my bags and go under new covers. I can't wait to sleep to the sound of motorbikes and everything else that the city will reveal.

The End

I step into my orthodontist’s office and Dr. B greets me with the same smile he greeted me with six years ago. Six years ago he smiled to a shy girl, a new immigrant whose hopes of America were nothing like those of her parents. A girl who wore a thin, disheveled scarf around her head, an oversized turtleneck and a pair of jeans, and whose smile was only out of respect and curtsey. She was too embarrassed to correct her name when it was mispronounced, a humiliation she could not bare. The day she met Dr. B and his happy, friendly assistants, who smiled too often and too greatly, she was horrified to learn that her braces were not acceptable and that they had to be redone. She was discomforted when one of the nurses took her photo and she had to force yet another smile, exposing the metal wires in her mouth. She was further distraught by the fast English spoken around her. But despite the horrors of that visit, she never forgot the sincerity of Dr. B’s smile, one that was like a promise, a promise that said everything would be okay, that time would pass and those braces would eventually come off. Unlike other patients, her concern was not due to painful doctor visits, but to the foreignness of their faces, the strangeness of their language and the difference of their appearance.

Somehow the promise I saw in Dr. B’s eyes on that first visit was not broken. Everything did work out; the braces came off and became a distant memory, along with all my bad feelings about America. My name continued to be troubling but I didn’t mind correcting it. And now today, sitting in his office as a mature, 18 year-old young woman, I feel no different than the other patients here who are waiting to be checked. I thank him, though he doesn't know that I'm not only thanking him for what he's done for me as a faithful doctor, but also because of his promising smile on that November afternoon when I was timid and humiliated by a mispronounced name.

I pick a French baguette as I realize we’ve run out of bread and wish to pick a bottle of red wine as an addition to my short shopping list. A bottle of wine to add some flavor to a flavorless meal. But in a society of rules and regulations, I simply cannot. Back home where the curtains are shut and the lights are dimmed, my father meticulously cuts the baguette into smaller pieces. Though night has already fallen and another day has terminated, my unfinished story sits still on a table and uncompleted thoughts run through my head. I eat a neatly cut piece of the French baguette and watch the orange moon that is my only source of light. I wonder if that bottle of red wine would have made this night any different. I wonder if it would have pleased me enough so I could ignore the unsettling facts of the simple life I lead. I wonder, and the moon grows fainter, no longer lighting the room. The moon has betrayed me and I'm now trapped in darkness as night wraps itself around me, like a well-fitted coat that tightly holds you against your skin.

It’s a hot summer day in Tehran and mom is asleep in her room. I am eight and tired of playing with Barbie dolls. Outside I hear the namaki, a guy who sells nothing but salt and in return collects dry bread. He shouts, “namaki, namaki” so even those in the middle of their nap can hear him. I hear the wheels of his cart as he pushes it from kooche to kooche, street to street, under the burning afternoon sun. I open the window and look down below; the namaki man is passing by, the front of his cart filled with bags of salt, the back with dry bread. I am scared of him because he wears torn clothes and wanders the endless kooches, shouting in a loud tone. He is a stranger who may have a wife and child waiting for him somewhere. But he means nothing to me. I am just a child in need of a game to break myself away from boredom. The sound of his cart wheels diminishes until I no longer hear him. Mom wakes up and makes tea. I watch her drink it and go back to playing with a Barbie doll that is slim like a model, with beautiful blond hair. But unlike most little girls, I never secretly want to be her. She is just a doll, like the namaki man who is just a stranger selling salt.

But as I sit here today, my Barbie dolls crammed into a suitcase on a shelf, the namaki man miles away in another continent, I suddenly miss them. I miss hearing the namaki’s cart wheels. I miss our kooche and the view from the roof top. I miss the indefatigable construction workers who built block after block from dawn to dusk. I picture these images in my head, these small but priceless memories of the past.

I drink my tea and listen to James Blunt. Iran is too far away now and there is not a single sound that will trace back those summer days when I was a child listening to the namaki, the man who sold salt.

I am standing on the mall’s roof, right next to the movie theater. I have just gotten out of work and I’m waiting for her to pick me up. The soles of my feet ache and I feel as though I’m sinking into the depths of the ground. My music plays in my ears and I'm watching couples enter the AMC. I have my arms stretched out, my back against the edge, like those who are about to smoke. But I’m a girl with no cigarette, no beer can. Beside my purse of personal belongings, I’m empty handed; I possess nothing. And I’m the loneliest stranger.

I ask her why she is tired. I ask her what worries her. She looks at me and I already know. She is tired of always being the grown up of the house, the one who watches out for Dad, the one who cooks, cleans, provides rides for her little sister. She has always played the role of the second mother. She tells me she never got to be a child, a child who could play without worrying about her little brother, a child who could play without wondering when mother would return.

She is eight and mother is gone. For the next five years, mother will be away. The little girl begins to feel responsible for what her brothers do, for what happens in the house. She begins to think that if something goes wrong it will be her responsibility to fix it. But she is only eight. She should be careless, free of guilt, free of blame. Suddenly she sees herself growing up. In her little mind, she is already a grown up who tries to fill the space of her absent mother. Someone forgets to tell her that she is a child and doesn’t need to worry. Someone forgets to remind her that she shouldn’t feel responsible. Someone forgets to tell her that all she has to do is play with her dolls, clean after herself, wash her teeth before bedtime and do her homework. No one ever does. And she grows up without ever having a childhood. Mother returns but her baby daughter is too grown up, too mature to yell at her for being gone for so long, too old to cry or whine or ask for a new pair of shoes.Taking care of others eventually becomes her job and she never forgets to reach out to others and give them her hand.

I cannot look into her broken eyes, eyes that have seen beyond their years, eyes that have been impaired beyond repair. Beneath her fragile figure is a strong woman, a woman of beauty, passion, and courage, a woman who I will always look up to.

I look at all the different brand names and I see Budweiser, a familiar name I often see on commercials. “We should get this one; I’ve seen it on commercials.” We are ignorant of brands for such beverages, beverages that we are forbidden to talk about, forbidden to drink. The bottle of red wine that we pick is designed with flowers, too pretty for its content. Somehow the flowers and colors make this prohibited act okay. By night, the candles are lit and I propose a toast, “To a life in New York City.” I drink my first wine, sipping a frowned upon drink, an act of sin. I swallow and my throat feels hot; I suddenly feel a warmness I have never felt before. I don’t like its taste, its bitterness and I push my glass aside. But maybe I can ignore the details and simply say that it was poetic, romantic, exotic. A bottle of wine will always be a bottle of wine. It will be forbidden for some and celebrated by others. And I, I can say what I want. I can say that I look forward to exotic adventures and frivolous pleasures in the future. Maybe in New York. Maybe here. There are no rules as to where I will choose to stay; I can pick something I’ve only heard of, like picking a beer I’ve seen an ad for. I've chosen a forbiddent taste tonight, what will I choose tomorrow?

Amid the traffic of the airport, the arrivals and departures, the yelling and screaming of children who despise long flights and trips they will never remember, I sit on a side, neither arriving nor departing, reading Lahiri’s The Namesake. A little Pakistani lady, who is guiding the travellers, asks them where they’re headed to. Brazil, Mexico, London, Hong Kong, Germany are among the list of destinations. I read from time to time in an effort to forget these foreign places, these beautiful luxuries. But I cannot forget that I’m once again a lonely watcher, one who waits impatiently for destinations of her own, for places to see, for people to meet, for planes to sit in, legs crossed, reading a book, taking short plane naps. At times I’m lost in the story of my book, intrigued by the characters and their dilemmas, by Gogol’s love affairs and his parents’ objections. I put the book aside and pointlessly, inattentively watch the rest of the passengers who wait in lines longer than our lunch lines, suddenly enjoying my little comfort zone where I’m lost in fiction, in a story that is not mine.

Leila, R’s best friend, and Hooman leave their little Pennsylvania home where the Hershey chocolate factory runs, and drive to Virginia for the weekend. Leila talks of their little town that is made up of farms and cornfields and streets named Cocoa and Peanut that smell of chocolate. They share with us what they know about good wines, how much they hate going to work, and that they came to America tens years late. We show them Old town and Georgetown and they fall in love, suddenly speaking of houses they’d wish to have. We sit by the dark water, watching its vastness, stretching without end. Night has fallen and Leila and R speak of their 20s, when they were young, juvenile college students, carelessly letting time pass, doing things they now wish they could do again. Leila tells me I’m the luckiest girl, that I came here at the right age, that I can have so much, that I can be happy. She loves New York City as much as I do and tells me one day she’ll live there. She doesn’t realize that we both live the American dream, that we are both lucky, that despite age, we both can have New York.

Night ends. And we let time pass, unaware that we are a day older. Leila has the world at her fingertips. But in the midst of cornfields, farms, empty bars and cattle, she refuses to wake up and think that one day, she will have the possibility of picking a different path. She will have a million possibilities, and nothing, not even a cornfield, will get in her way.

The afternoon sun comes out and we’re still asleep, disregarding breakfast, ignoring the phone that continuously rings, deliberately not paying attention to the clock that now reads 12. I am bored on this mundane Wednesday afternoon where mom and dad are enjoying a night in the streets of Belgium. I miss Belgian chocolates that never fail to bring a smile to my face. And I miss my brothers, their separate lives, the families they now have. I must do the laundry today because the laundry basket is too full, too heavy; someone has to empty it. She is off to the library and I’m here, in the living room, listening to Shania Twain, Nura’s favorite singer. I found the bottle of wine that she had hidden in one of the cabinets, among pots and pans. I might have a few sips. Or I might not.

I go through the mail, now filled with unwanted letters from various banks, store savings, sales. I used to be excited for the postman to arrive, dropping letter after letter into boxes that belonged to strangers. My father watched the clock and right about four in the afternoon he went to check the mail, taking the one gold key that opened our little mailbox. I looked forward to letters from Iran, from Sasha and my older siblings who were too far to be reached. But today, there are seldom any letters from home, seldom any letters that excite me. I throw away the unwanted, unopened envelopes, keep those with mom’s or dad’s names. None of them are addressed to me. The hour has reached 11 p.m. and the postman is far from the mail room, from the bag that contains foreign letters, meticulously written in black ink, sealed securely with tape, shielding secrets, stories, tears, smiles.

Last night, an unusually wistful Friday, I was at a nearby bookstore, reading Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran. I sat on a high chair, moving my legs freely from time to time, my flip flops resting on the ground, turning my head toward the coffee stand, vacillating about getting a drink. I wore my white skirt with the small flowers and a pink tank top, exposing my bare arms, my imperfect tan from the Virginia sun. I was reading a few words at a time, carelessly, habitually, but not passionately. I was too busy creating my own fiction, the kind of fiction you only see in Hollywood, in stories that don’t have a single piece of reality, a single evidence of authenticity. I played a movie in my head, a little creation from my own imagination. But it was an unsuccessful attempt. I thought back to months ago, to Friday nights where I was tired from a long school day. Friday nights where I never had the time to escape from the facts and figures of the minutes and seconds of my life as a high school student. Friday nights that I only longed to sleep through. Last night, however, I lost track of what was real, what was right in front of me. I decided to take a chance, and I invited him to join me; I missed talking to the only teacher who ever listened when I barely said a word. I missed being his student. Maybe I have lost it completely. Maybe I no longer have a grasp of the inevitable fractions of my life that are as comprehensible and clear as Nafisi's words.

Mother’s definition of happiness is the realistic kind, the simplest, the purest. We grew up learning to enjoy simple, authentic things. We learned to be thankful for the roof we slept under, the food we had, the beds we slept in each night. She lived, satisfying herself with what she had, with what was brought and given to her in the name of God. And that’s how she taught us. That life is good because we can walk and breathe and live in a world that is not necessarily kind, not necessarily giving. We admired mother’s ability to accept the good and the bad, the worst and the best, the right and the wrong. But we came to find the ideal happiness. The one that is never quite reachable, never quite achievable. We learned to want more, want the things we couldn’t have, the things we wished to have. We tell mother we are not happy but she doesn’t understand. She is still happy with the one pair of jeans she owns, the one gold ring she wears. We have grown up and America has opened our eyes to dreams, possibilities, an eternal bliss that we must somehow conquer.

A French diner, smoking a cigarette, flirting with the woman next to him. Casually speaking a language that makes me high, makes me forget where I am, makes me float. His words are incomprehensible to me, inexplicable, vague, blurred like a foggy window. But I find the foreignness of his tongue attractive, seductive, mysterious. I envy his power to speak so fluently, in rhythm, in balance, a perfect meld with the universe. I envy that he sits there, smoking negligently, speaking in beats, like a song that rhymes. I want to sit with him, smoke with him, listen to him speak, misunderstand, become the smoke that he puffs, evaporate. But we are far from the French man. It was a moment that passed, a moment I will never get back. He is still talking to the woman who understands him. He has dropped his cigarette, crushing it with the sole of his shoe.

I cried when I pictured our empty house in Tehran, the one that is now sold, the one that I revisited four years ago, unaware that it would be the last visit, the last good-bye. I cried as I pictured my aunt, sobbing, saying good-bye to my brother and his wife, the last settlers of the third floor. I cried as I remembered the summer days where we gathered together on the rooftop, eating cool watermelons, sipping tea, watching the sunset.

I picture my brother, locking the door that opened and closed a million times. He takes one last look at the empty apartment, the stain that never came off the wall, the mirror that reflected his distraught, broken face. He takes one last look at a house that he came to love, one last look at the thirty years he spent in every little corner of a house that now needs repair. One last look at the house that he became a son in, a man, a husband. He locks the door, disposing of the past that never left his memory, walks down the spotless stairs that my uncle cleans everyday, steps out in the heat of Tehran. He and Sara become renters of a new house, occupying another house, another life. The past is gone. He is free, free of every bitter memory, every sad good-bye, everything that deprived him of being a dreamer. He is free to write a book, tell the story of what happened, the story that he will now live. I hope he does.

In the bus, in between all the tired and bored faces of random strangers, I find Gogol, a little Indian boy, the main character of Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake. He sits with his mother who, unlike Gogol’s mother, is not wearing a sari. She too is pregnant. The little boy swings his legs, unaware that he is hitting his mother’s as well. I watch the two of them; they resemble a perfect picture, a perfect bond of nature, the quintessential mother and son. The mother sits with her bag of groceries between her laps, holding onto Gogol’s shoulder with one hand. This relationship that they have formed together as mother and son, a relationship so strong and secure, so intrinsic, will eventually fade once Gogol grows up. He will forget how close he was to her, how much he needed her by his side, how lost he felt without her. He will grow up, move to the city, he will find love, will learn to give things up. His mother will learn to give up the idea that Gogol and the rest of her children will be by her side forever. She will drive her own car, buy her own groceries, find her own pleasures. But that one perfect picture, the one with Gogol in her arms, will stay in a little picture frame, giving her the sense of motherhood she felt when he was still her unborn child. The sense she felt when he was hers and no one else’s.

I realize now, after four years of continuous posts, blogs, entries, that I have candidly shared my life with millions of strangers. It’s funny that I’m just thinking of this fact now, or maybe I just ignored it all along. I believe that becoming an open book was something I enjoyed and still enjoy. It is a way of getting attention, of being the spoiled kid I never really got to be, the one that got all the attention. I am also selfish. I have opened pieces of my life, fiction or non-fiction, fabricated or real, realistic or fictitious, for anyone to read. If that’s not a selfish act, then what is it? I feel a little powerful despite the sense of trepidation that I always portray. This sense of vulnerability has made me braver than I thought. Suddenly I have opened up in my own reality, my everyday life where I’m most often a closed book. All this writing has made me believe that being myself is not so bad, being imperfect is actually a good thing, that people pay attention when I act like myself. Just like I allowed myself to write a piece of fiction about a mother and her Lolita, two characters who were made-up simply from my imagination, I've allowed myself to say and not just write the things I want to say. Just as I allowed myself to reveal my deepest fears, like the fear of being a mother, a bride, a symbol of attachment, or of being alone in a city like New York, I've also allowed readers to see my most sacred imaginations. As most good readers know, all writers, even those who fabricate stories, have experienced or have thought about the things they write. By permitting my readers to see my imagination, I can no longer hide the real me, the one that only my faithful readers know.

In an attempt to prolong a night that has already fallen, we rummage through M street, making our way to the Potomac River. Streets are now filled with drunken boys holding cigarettes that distract by passers. These beautiful boys are almost falling, barely keeping up with the rest of the sober crowd, the one that gave up a bottle of wine for other pleasures. I find a Marlboro pack on a bench we sit on. A single, untouched cigarette rests inside the green and white box; I decide to keep it. Once again, we find ourselves among people who seem to be in a world far from us, or maybe we are just too sober to realize that we all live in the same world. We are too sober to realize that our world is a shadow of theirs, wrapped in reality, in logic, in facts. We decide to drift away, walk away from them, let them enjoy their drinks, cigars, campaigns, their expensive boats. Let us forget about prince charming riding on a white horse. Let us forget perfect endings. Let us keep dreaming while we're asleep; maybe then we can possess the night, the boys, the moon, the river.

In her book, Azar Nafisi asks readers to imagine her and her students reading Lolita in Tehran. I imagine them, listen to their stories, their pains, their lives, their chosen destinies by an authoritarian regime. I picture what Nafisi paints with her words, the color of her rug, the faces of her girls. Their Iran is different than what mine is. Theirs is colorless, stale, rigid, formidable. Mine is the memory of narrow kooches, the ones I freely hopped in, held my brother’s hands, walked in a loosely tied scarf, wore a fainted red lipstick. My Iran is the memory of women and the mass of hair they revealed from underneath their scarves. The memory of forgotten veils and pink scarves. But in the living room of Nafisi’s house, Iran is in a bad time period, trapped within a difficult, bitter array of rules, regulations. The girls expose the colors of their hair, their makeup and clothes inside this colorful living room, the only place where black and white don’t overrule the rest of the colors. They share their bitterness against the outside world, the world of forbidden fiction, forbidden tastes, forbidden colors. It is inside Nafisi’s living room that they enter the imagination of Nabokov, the fantasies of Humbert Humbert, the tragic life of little Lo, Lolita. What me and these girls share is quite simply the desperation to escape realities that trap us, the desperation to abandon the walls that keep us locked in a world of politics, officials, prison guards.

The couple eating next to us and their two children are Persian. The mother has the typical fake blond hair and a slightly rich accent as she announces her order to the waitress. I hear them arguing over what they should order for dinner. Should they get French fries as a side dish or pasta? Should they share a bottle of wine? Despite their varying tastes, they finally settle on French fries and instead of wine order soda. I stir my café au lait gently a couple of times. I don’t disregard its bitterness; I add sugar. But I’m still disappointed by its dullness and can no longer pretend that I like it. In my mind I imagine that I’m drinking a sweet, pleasantly tasty beverage. I imagine that I’m having the best moment of my life. I imagine that I’m not bothered by the heat and someone is ordering the food of my choice: roasted chicken with baked potatoes. I leave the last sip of the disappointing café au lait in its lonely cup and say goodbye to the owner of the restaurant. I wonder if the couple and their kids enjoyed their dinner. Or maybe the French fires were too cold.

Mahi says my inner child is dead. She says I can’t enjoy the silliness of life, the meaningless movies, the insignificant books that are not supposed to be educating. Perhaps I have involved myself with too many realities. Perhaps I have forgotten to watch a film that would simply make me laugh without any further reaction. Perhaps I have let literature consume me with all its metaphors, symbolisms, similes, oxymorons. I don’t tell Mahi that my only way of survival is my imagination. I don’t tell her that I have created a simpler, prettier world, a metaphor for happiness, a fiction that I can’t stop living in. I laugh and she amuses herself, jokingly saying that my heart is dead. I let her assume that my inner child is nonexistent. Perhaps she is right.

I found an unused cigarette two nights ago and I took it home. I keep it in sight, on my dishevelled desk, among papers and picture frames. Once in a while I take it out of its box, hold it between my fingers, look into a mirror. It scares me that I’m intrigued by a disgusting, dangerously addicting thing. It scares me that I like holding it. Holding it makes me happy. The illusion of smoking it pleases me. I play with it, sniff it and am at once disappointed. I’m curious to know the feeling of smoking despite my resentment toward it. I put it back inside the box. One day I will give in to my curiosity and I will light it.