1. Darkness and Unfinished Names
The house was silent. Not the kind of silence that calms a person; the kind that makes small sounds louder. The sound of the refrigerator turning on and off. The sound of a car passing on the street below. The tick-tock of the clock on the wall.
Negar was sitting at the desk. Her laptop was open, but she had been staring at the screen for nearly half an hour without writing anything. The cup of tea beside her had gone cold.
She picked up her phone. She had a few unread messages. One from the university, about tomorrow’s meeting. One related to her mother: a short message from the nurse summarizing her mother’s condition in one line. Negar didn’t open the message.
She put the phone on the desk and closed her eyes.
The names came again. Mother. Iraj. Farhad. Three students. The good life. Not being happy. Everything seemed connected, but she still didn’t know how.
2. Formulating a Restlessness
Negar pulled the laptop closer. She opened a new file and wrote:
“Why might a person not have a bad life, but still not enjoy it?”
She looked at the sentence for a few seconds. Then she wrote below it:
Hypothesis one: Work.
Maybe she had taught for years, researched, written articles, answered students, but she herself no longer knew why.
Hypothesis two: Relationship.
Maybe the issue was a person who wasn’t beside her. Or a person who was. Or maybe there was no one at all.
She paused for a moment. She deleted the word. She wrote again:
Hypothesis three: Mother.
This time her hand stayed on the keyboard. Mother. A face that didn’t know its own name. A hand that was still warm. And that name. Iraj.
Negar quickly deleted the word. But the question wouldn’t leave the screen.
3. Thirty-Something and Finished “Later”s
She leaned back in her chair. Age? Maybe that was the issue. Thirty-something. The age when you could no longer defer everything to “later.” At twenty, the future was ahead. At thirty, it could still be the future. But now?
Negar looked at the clock. It was thirty-seven minutes past midnight. She gave a faint smile. “What difference does it make?” Her voice echoed in the empty room and faded.
She wrote again:
Success? Maybe when a person reaches what they wanted, they finally realize they didn’t want it. Maybe success was just a list: a good job. A good income. A house. Respect. Knowledge. Independence.
She had it all. Almost.
So why was something missing?
Negar stared at this sentence for a few moments. Then she wrote: “If almost everything is in its place, how do you know you’re not in yours?” This time she didn’t delete it.
4. Three Pieces of a Mirror
Psychology. Society. Philosophy. Three different answers to one question. And none of them, when it was her turn, was enough. It was as if each one only held a piece of the mirror, but none could see the whole mirror. Maybe all the theories were correct. The problem was that none alone was enough to explain a human being.
Negar got up from the desk and went to the kitchen. When she returned, her eyes fell on the empty chair across from the desk. For a moment, she saw her mother there. Not the mother in the hospital. The mother of years ago. With the white and blue shawl. With coffee. With Friday breakfasts. With that same sentence: “One day will come when you’ll miss these breakfasts.”
Negar said softly: “It came.”
Her voice broke. She stood for a few seconds. Then she returned to the room. The laptop was still on. The white screen was waiting for her.
5. Staring at a Blinking Dot
She sat down. She started writing again. Work? Not fully. Relationship? No. Mother? Maybe. Age? Maybe. Society? To some extent. Success? Not on its own. She put a question mark next to each word, one by one. Then she selected them all and deleted them.
The screen became white again. Negar stared at it. This time she didn’t analyze anything. Not her mother. Not herself. Not Farhad. Not the past. Not the future. She just sat. She put her hands on the desk and stared at the white dot blinking at the top of the screen. For the first time, she wasn’t angry that she didn’t have an answer.
It was nearly one o’clock. Negar drank the last sip of her cold tea and didn’t close the laptop. She wrote just one sentence. Slowly. With a pause between each word:
“Why might a person not have a bad life, but still not enjoy it?”
Negar held her finger on the key. She thought maybe this very question had been hidden behind everything all these days. Behind her mother. Behind the university. Behind the students. Behind Farhad. Behind that vague feeling she hadn’t been able to name for so long.
But there was still one more question left. Negar looked at the screen. She didn’t write anything for a few seconds. Then, below the first question, she typed slowly:
“What does a good life even mean?”
She turned off the room light. The laptop stayed on. And in the darkness of the house, only the light of the screen fell on her face.
