After months of going back and forth about whether to publish my essays, I’ve finally decided to share them. From personal essays to short memories, I’ll be writing more in the nonfiction section.

I’ll also keep writing about books and travel—and maybe a few other things along the way.

I’d love to hear your feedback. If you read my first essay, I’d really love to know your thoughts.

Take care, and I’m looking forward to reading your comments. ☺️📝

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Orange Blocks

It was a beautiful Sunday at the end of summer, like today, when we heard the news. One of those last days of Shahrivar when the morning air carries the softest, lightest feeling in the world. A pleasant coolness, with gentle sunlight and a scent the air only has in the nights and early mornings of late summer.

This morning, I woke up short of breath and suddenly remembered.

Was it because of the breathlessness — or because of the pleasantness of the air that the breathlessness had ruined?

Was I in secondary school, or middle school?

How is it that my weak memory, so poor at recalling the past, on a day like this, twenty years later, in another country, on another continent, found its way back to that wretched day?

In our residential complex, ugly, misshapen buildings were crammed close together, in the best available space in our grey city.

The complex was made up of three colours: grey, orange, and wealth.

We were orange. Faranak was grey, and Sorour was the colour of wealth.

I always thought orange was a beautiful colour, and my mum believed there was nowhere better in the world than the orange block.

In literature class — my favourite class at school — there was a teacher whose name I can’t remember…

Let’s call her Mrs So-and-So.

In that wretched class, where I was always the first to volunteer to read the day’s stories and poems aloud, Mrs So-and-So would repeatedly ignore my raised hand and ask Parastou to read instead. In the middle of some pointless discussion, the conversation turned to our estate, and Mrs So-and-So explained that the orange houses had been built for workers during the Shah’s time, the grey ones for engineers, and the wealthy ones for senior managers. From that moment, I understood why I had never liked the orange block.

I tell myself: we need to find a grey house sooner rather than later. Why should we still be living in an orange house on this side of the world?

I woke to the sound of police sirens and an ambulance. Mum insisted we stay inside and not catch a whiff of what was going on.

An impossible ask.

Mum always tried to hide things from us. Like the time she’d failed her driving test for the fifth time and was whispering on the phone to my aunt, saying, “I don’t want them to find out.”

I always assumed “them” meant strangers — outsiders. Maybe that’s what orange houses do to you.

Her efforts were mostly fruitless. Despite her instinct for secrecy, whatever she did, everyone always found out.

Like when Mr Habibi had been killed in Pakistan, and she was quietly telling the neighbour how he’d been shot to pieces and could barely be identified — all while insisting the children mustn’t find out.

That day, like today, a cool breeze drifted through, and the sun fell softly across our faces from behind the curtain.

At the sound of the sirens, we went to the window and saw the frightening old man from the building next door being led away in handcuffs.

We ran downstairs after Mum. Everyone was saying something, weaving stories whose connections we couldn’t quite follow.

The old neighbour — the bad-tempered, frightening retired colonel — lived in the orange building next door. Despite living in an orange block, his monthly visitors from the capital drove the most up-to-date cars of the time.

SUVs. Black. Sleek.

Two well-dressed, attractive middle-aged sons, with elegant wives — the kind you hope to become one day — who endured a three-hour journey just to visit their frightening father-in-law in the orange blocks.

Thursdays, when those beautiful cars appeared in our shabby, open parking area, were days full of hope.

The hope of glimpsing a world that might be reachable even from an orange block.

There was a lot of talk. One neighbour said she had heard them arguing but was too afraid to knock. Another said she had always known something bad would happen to that poor woman. An old lady from the ground floor kept striking her hands together, repeating, “Oh, that poor woman…”

Every summer evening, the women would gather in front of the colonel’s orange building, below Zahra Khanom’s flat. Zahra Khanom would bring her chair out onto her terrace, which sat right by the pavement, and the others would sit on Nahid Khanom’s mat, talking until well past midnight. Their distance from our bedroom window was just a few steps, and I, sensitive to noise, was always driven mad by them. Mahsa, Nahid Khanom’s twenty-year-old unemployed daughter, was always there too. She would sit beside her mother and the other women and spin stories about the rest of the orange and grey houses. Watching her from the window, I would think: what if I end up like her at twenty?

The colonel’s wife — I had only seen her once or twice. She was young. The kind of woman who, in Iranian films of the 1990s, always played the second wife of an older man: thin, long-faced, with dark eyes and brows, dressed entirely in black. The kind who came from a poor rural family and married an older man to save them from poverty.

Her gaze was always lowered. She would greet the women of the street and go inside. Quiet. Modest.

Now she was dead. They said the colonel had killed his second wife.

Standing in the courtyard, the air no longer had the softness of morning. The sun was out, and a sense of unease hung everywhere. I thought to myself: maybe they’re acting. Like the night they announced Mr Habibi’s death.

Maryam Khanom was sobbing. My mum, quietly wiping her tears and sniffling, said to the neighbour: when someone’s time has come, no one can stop it. Haven’t you heard about the woman who shut every door and window out of fear of a wolf? A fly found its way in and, by God’s will, turned into a wolf and devoured her.

To this day, when I see a fly, an unnameable fear rises in my chest.

After they took the frightening colonel away, the police dispersed the neighbours and told everyone to go home.

The complex’s buildings were thirty or forty years old, built during the Shah’s time for workers, engineers, and factory managers. Their kitchens were small, and residents had enclosed the kitchen balconies with glass to extend the space.

The north-west corner of the colonel’s kitchen was visible from our bedroom.

The women gathered below his balcony, staring up at the fourth floor, saying the poor woman’s soul would wander there that night.

The soft morning air had given way to the heavy, sticky air of evening. Fear grew in my heart like a creeping plant. I would steal glances at the dark window of the colonel’s balcony, searching for the poor woman’s soul.

The news spread everywhere. A retired colonel in the orange block had killed his wife. The forensic report said the woman had lost consciousness after hitting her head against the wall, and the frightened colonel had assumed his black-clad wife was dead.

My mum said no one knows God’s wisdom. I thought: why would God bring someone into the world only to arrange for them to leave it in such a terrifying way?

In the complex, for the residents’ convenience, large schools and a nursery had been built — beautiful, by the standards of thirty or forty years ago. Our nursery was called Laleh (Tulip). We lived in district three, and Laleh nursery was in district six. The greatest victory of my life was when my mum and Mrs Nurmand took me and Roya there for the first time. The children were crying, unwilling to be separated from their mothers. My mum, full of excitement, held my hand and stood beside me. I let go of her hand and said: you can go home now.

That afternoon, earlier than agreed, I took Roya’s hand and we walked home together. My mum and Mrs Nurmand had nearly gone mad with worry when they realised we weren’t at the nursery. The reward for our first day of independence was a thorough telling-off for our recklessness.

The news spread everywhere. The mutilated hand of the black-clad woman had been found in a bag beside Laleh nursery. The rest of her body had been hidden in different parts of the estate.

The frightened colonel had thought the woman was dead. In the middle of the night, after Nahid Khanom and the others had finally gone home to prepare late dinners for their husbands, he had dragged her down to the shared basement. He had dismembered her and hidden the pieces across the complex.

We never found out how the police discovered it, or what happened afterwards.

And I — on another continent, in another country, twenty years later, in the cool air of six in the morning in mid-September — think of the frightening colonel, who was spared execution and sentenced instead to life in prison.

Shideh

September 2023

London

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