After Hours

37. Tragedy

Che daste gol be âb dâdi?

What did you do wrong?

What did you mess up?

The literal meaning to the Persian phrase translated to 'what flower bouquet did you give to the water.' The tale behind the famous idiom goes something like this. There is a young man who has a reputation for causing bad things to happen. One day he falls in love with a beautiful woman and she falls in love with him, they decide they want to get married. However, because of his status, her family refuse their engagement.

She is to be engaged to someone else.

As an outcome of the upsetting news, the heartbroken man leaves town to avoid the upcoming wedding. Along his journey, he picks a bouquet of flowers and throws them into a river. Further down the river, children are playing. Catching sight of the floating flowers, one of the children, a relative of the soon to be bride, carelessly reaches in and tries to grab a flower.

The story turns into a tragedy when the young child falls into the river and drowns. Her body is recovered, and returned to the family. The wedding festivities in the village are quickly replaced by the sadness of a funeral. Many days pass and the broken man returns to village. He is shocked when he hears about the devastating incident, and unable to keep the guilt to himself, he confesses to the unintentional death.

The villagers respond to his confession by declaring; 'so you're the one who gave the flower bouquet to the water.'

"Che daste gol be âb dâdi?" The sigh was audible enough to reverberate throughout the entire car.

She didn't know where to start, for instance, the flower bouquet she had given to the water was far from resulting in death. It was nowhere near as bad as a catastrophe, but terrible enough to make her reevaluate the impact of her horrible actions.

There were no words to describe how Rainy Love felt.

Looking across at the rearview mirror, her reflection stared back at her. She could see the bags forming beneath her sunken eyes, the lack of sleep was catching up with her.

She could remember being a troublesome child and being asked that very question by her parents on a daily basis. And every single time, she had an excuse to give them.

But, at that moment, she couldn't think of anything.

The night was nearing an end, the darkness from the outside was pouring in through the tinted windows. Her grocery shopping had been packed away in the boot of her beat up car, aware of the fact that she needed to refrigerate some of the items before they went bad, she couldn't bring herself to get out of the car.

Squeezing her eyes shut, her hands tightened around the steering wheel in a firm grip.

She needed to get it off her chest. No, she had to.

Rainy opened her eyes, letting go of the wheel. She sucked in a deep breath while smoothening down her wild hair in the mirror.

She unlocked the door shakily and pushed it open, the keys that were in her pocket jingled as she got out and shut the door behind her. Cobbled stones and the long pathway came into sight. The night sky was clear, void of any stars with a gentle breeze causing the trees to rustle. The concrete was old and pebbly; broken and jagged from countless soles travelling the same path. Her feet made their way towards the door in short quick strides, it was big, royal blue and had the bold number '11' on it.