It wasn't your fault
It wasn't my fault either!
By my mother's life
It wasn't suicide either
I rang
By mistake
He opened the window instead of the door
I said you have a letter from Shiraz
Instead of the stairs
A mistake
He flew out the window like birds.

I was reading the poem "Postman's Mistake" by Sara Mohammadi Ardhali when suddenly a message from you ding-ding on WhatsApp. My lips parted with laughter. I couldn't believe that after a long time of distance and ignorance, you had written and sent me a story. The same manuscripts that you wrote weekly and non-stop during the heyday of Facebook. Your own stories. The ones that we used to read with enthusiasm and would hold on to for a long time, encouraging us to pin our own stories to it and leave a memento under it. I spread my wings and was very excited. You sent me a special story to read. I took flight and decided to write you a letter with the intention of killing myself. You know what! Before the world and everything in it was infected with the cowardly coronavirus, we would meet every now and then in the corner of a cafe and talk about everything. Only after meeting, in our own privacy, would we write about that part of life that was unspeakable and had to be written and that had to be written down and shared together. But these days, there is no time to meet. Words have piled up. Things to say, hear, and write have piled up. Only one letter can carry the burden of so many words and speeches and deliver them to you. So I am writing you a letter, simple and sincere.

What is hidden from you? In mid-September, we were busy with internal meetings at our workplace for several days. Meetings during which we were supposed to decide to hand over the business that had been started a year and a half ago. To be honest, from March of last year until now, we, like other businesses, have been affected by the recession and the plagues of the coronavirus and are in the process of being destroyed. Our income and expenses are not the same and we are unable to provide the materials we need and even our current expenses, and the burden of all responsibility is on my shoulders alone. I have maintained it with tooth and nail so far, but now I have come to the point where I have to step under everything and put my foot in a shoe that says, "I don't want it anymore, either we sell everything at a loss or take my share and go work at Snap with my motorbike and car, I'm tired." It took a few days for all of them to convince me that I have no choice but to resist and that I have to survive in any way, even if it means defining unrelated projects, I have to get through this period. Finally, I was satisfied and looked to the future optimistically again and started sending pulses of enthusiasm, confidence and hope to all of them, but the very next day when we were supposed to go back to work like human beings and stick to ideating and producing, our printer head burned out, and that too in the midst of the dollar exchange rate and lack of money. Nothing else... I won't tell you... We were left with completely blurred horizons in which nothing could be seen. Meanwhile, one day when I was tired of all the elements of existence, I called Sadeq, who is the mastermind of my close circle of friends, and asked him to come to us for a little consultation. We started with the most avant-garde ideas in the world of marketing to defining new products, and one after another we faced challenges that were not practical. Throughout the entire meeting, there were only cigarettes and tea - of course, tea with rose water, the rose water that Abbas had brought me from the cash register to sell to him - and suddenly the discussion turned to poetry and literature, and then to movies and TV series, and we came to the idea of ​​robbing a bank, and we joked about it. Sadeq was busy presenting a detailed and detailed proposal when I jumped in the middle of his speech, "Hey, Dad, you don't want all this nonsense! Tell me what resources you have so I can tell you how the plan will be implemented." When I finished my sentence, Sadeq got angry and got up from his chair and said in a sharp and angry tone, "I won't get involved in a project that I can't talk about for hours." I don't know if it was the effect of the rose water or Sadeq's idea that he was talking to us for hours about an imaginary project or what! But whatever it was, I suddenly burst out laughing. I laughed so hard that every living thing within a five-kilometer radius burst out laughing at the sound of my laughter. In the meantime, Roshan passed by us once or twice with a smile, and I was going to accept his charity, saying, "You are my Imam. It's true that you talk a lot, but you also work. Sadeq is supposed to only talk from morning to night... We're going to be helpless... I don't want to at all... I was wrong... and I kept laughing, as if my heart and intestines were rising.

In mid-August, Amir Hossein fell while playing with his skateboard and broke his wrist. I won't tell you much, in short, the doctor said that his hand should stay in a cast for a month. We said that it would be fine (with a smile and a tone of "His Majesty"). After a month, I showed up at the hospital clinic that I had previously been assigned, according to the appointment schedule, but to my surprise, 130 people were in line before me, and of that number, only 10 were forced to wear masks. There was no news of compliance with protocols, and there was a strange crowd. I also got involved and cursed the hospital, medical staff, health advocates, etc. from top to bottom. Then I took Amir Hossein's hand and we left the hospital. I decided to take him to another hospital, but on the way, I realized that our Iranian health insurance booklets had expired the day before and I didn't have enough money, so I gave up on going. I took him home and went to work myself. When I returned at night, we went to the nearest fire station together and I said to the station manager, "Sir, this child's hand is stuck in the plaster, please take it out." The servant of God, laughing loudly, went and got a cutting tool and opened the three plaster whistles. You may not believe it, but even now, as I am writing this letter to you and reviewing the incident in my mind, I am laughing at my own work.

I hope that the world is in your favor, Masoumeh, and that you spend a happy life with your family. Especially kiss your son, Mohammad, for me and remember these days of your child well. We are growing up and getting older, following in the footsteps of our children. It seems like there is a fierce competition between the children growing up and us growing old. From a certain point on, it seems like the earth is spinning faster around itself, for example, three times a day, and we are forced to find ourselves in situations that we are not yet prepared for.

For example, just a few nights ago, when I came back from work, I found Marjan's house sad and depressed. I inquired and found out that he had noticed blood-like discharge on Mobina's clothes, then he had gone to the pharmacy and bought her the smallest size sanitary napkin, and then they had talked to each other like the mother of a girl. I don't know what he said to Mobina! I never asked, but he himself was not feeling well, as if he couldn't believe it and was surprised by our daughter's growth and maturity and sometimes cried. While he was telling me all this, he expressed several times how much he missed being a girl. He was complaining about the height and stature of the girl's singing and the speed of the spinning wheel. Masoumeh, you won't believe it, my daughter, my ugly duckling, is turning into a beautiful swan, and I, unlike Marjan, was so excited and surprised that night. So much so that I didn't even pay attention to Marjan's frequent eye and eyebrow raising, meaning "don't touch her, my child, she's embarrassed," and I hugged the little girl and squeezed her tighter than ever, so that I could feel her heartbeat through two unripe lemons, and I caressed her face to face as much as I could, and whispered in her ear the words of a girl's father. Words that would reduce her shame and embarrassment and make her look at her father as the most intimate person on earth. First, I started with jokes and laughter, a taste of death, offering charity, and expressing love, and then I called Amir Hossein and took the pose of the school's educational instructors and went to a detailed pulpit for both of them. From religious law, customs, and ethics to observing hygiene and ways to take care of their bodies, I told them everything that was necessary for both of them. The burden of all the words my parents had not said to me and the false teachings of my traditionalist teenage days weighed heavily on my shoulders, but with the utmost patience and calmness, I handed them over to my children, so that nothing else remained until their wedding and groom's night.
You see, Masoumeh! You see how the level of a person's worries can change overnight! You see how the wheel shows off its speed to me! I am still amazed at the fundamental weakness of your being, how it takes something from a person and gives him something else, how it takes away the joy of playing and joking with children and instead gives you the boredom of wandering around with boyish pride and unwavering hugs and girlish smiles.

Masoumeh, forgive me if I have been long-winded. I have not said many things to you yet. The same things I listed and promised to write, but let there be an excuse to meet. For conversations between cigarettes and coffee in the cafe. For after the dark days of Corona. If death allows and the opportunity to meet is possible, remind me so that I can tell you the story of the days without mobile phones and the engineer's miracle, the story of Amir Hossein's internship in my own office, the story of my contracting Corona during the Farvardin holidays, the story of Aunt Sediqeh's death, the story of the extension of the house rent, the story of Soheila becoming a yachtsman and Ali's fantasy prejudices, the story of forbidden love, the story of Roshan's frequent hand washing with alcohol during meetings, the story of buying a plastic wireless phone from Imam Moqvaei's website, the story of the misery and hardships of a servant of the Razavi court in Muharram 1300, the story of Master Ali Salimi who sings the song Ayriliq to me every day, and hundreds of other stories that I don't know when will happen. Stories that, with joy and laughter, like the game of snakes and ladders, go to the highest place on the board, the house next to the last, and when I get bitten, it throws me to the bottom of the board of life. These days, I laugh more lightly and easily. There is laughter hidden at the bottom of every story. This weak-founded world and the sacrifices of people for survival are funny to me. In an era when no one knows whether they will be alive in two weeks or not, why shouldn't I laugh when writing this letter!

There is no more boredom except your distance.

Take care and stay healthy.

Hoping to meet
Majid Parastash
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