Heartbeating snow

Chapter 4

Everywhere Xin looked, his eyes were lost in some breathtaking detail. The beauty of such an unfamiliar city seemed all the more astonishing when he considered that, had it not been for the strange dreams of Arash, whose calls he had been hearing even more since he had stepped off the plane, he would never have visited the city.

It was definitely him, Arash, strange as it sounded, that he had been hearing in his head, and it was only now when he was under the blue skies of Tehran that he could confirm it. It was only his second day in Iran and, for Xin, everything he was experiencing was somehow magical, even if he couldn't explain it to himself. But however, he wasn't scared.

Unlike his father, who had always been a cold, pragmatic and calculating man, his mother had always been a woman with a very strong spirit. Religious traditions and social norms were never enough to stop her from telling her son about the power of feelings, and how magical could be something as simple as the passing of the seasons.

«Beyond cold, the snow is alive too, Xin. Touch it...» he reminded her.

Longing struck him just as he was walking along the Laleh-Zar, intoxicated perhaps by the nostalgic, old-fashioned air of the buildings' facades, and her gaze, at those times of the past, when his mother would see him with a smile in her deep black eyes, invaded his mind. Xin kept walking and taking taxis back and forth, and, unable to help remembering Dishi every now and then, (hearing from the driver that such-and-such building facade belonged to the city's first cinema, for example) it wasn't, however, until Xin fixed his gaze far beyond the city, on the slightly white tips of the Alborz mountain range surrounding Tehran, that a heavy sigh escaped his lips, and his mother, as well as Arash and Shirin, regained the open spaces of his head.

If inside his dreams Xin could feel the place calling out to him, then now that he was there, amidst its stone streets and tiled buildings that looked like works of art amidst the heat, the bustle of walkers and the bustling motorbikes, now, he'd also feel a terrible melancholy filling his eyes with tears and his heart with sadness. And the fact that he felt at home so far from home only made the situation worse.

He couldn't help visualizing his mother as a little inhabitant of some old photograph, with the smile of a dreamy child, enjoying all that scenery. And he could see her laughing with him and holding his hand as they strolled through the corridors of the Golestan Palace on their way to the bazaar, as if the roles of mother and son had been exchanged over the years.

«It's like being part of the 'One Thousand and One Nights' that you read to me as a child...».

When he entered the great bazaar of the city, which was bright, colourful and fragrant, Xin felt like he was travelling back in time through the silk road or the very cave of Ali Baba and the forty thieves. There seemed to be everything in the place, and the further Xin walked, the more things he saw and found. From the most modern to the most ancient things, such as chandeliers, huge paintings, furniture, fabrics, Persian carpets with beautiful embroidery, spices, incense, musical instruments...

"This way, boy, this way," shouted a man nearby, snapping Xin out of his trance. "We have many nice things. Lots of things."

"Thank you, but don't worry..."

"Special offer, special offer. We have many offers, many," the man continued as if nothing as he tossed silk scarves and necklaces at Xin. "All very nice, on sale."

The fellow smiled, parading a row of incomplete but very enthusiastic teeth, as he laid a hat on Xin's head.

"Aaahhh, very nice, see," he exclaimed at last. "It's on sale."

Xin couldn't help but smile a little, infected by the man's enthusiasm. His dark eyes were unknowable to him, but his ruddy skin reminded him of Arash's.