Negar stood by the window, watching the rain. Autumn had soaked Tehran, the streets slick, the sky a uniform gray. She placed her hand on the glass, felt the cold. The window was cold, like so many other things.
Three days had passed since she arrived at this apartment. Three days, and the suitcase still sat in the middle of the room, unopened. The same large black suitcase she had carried with her from Toronto. Still closed, as if Negar wasn’t sure she would stay. As if one foot was still on the plane, ready to flee.
She looked at the suitcase. The straps were still fastened, the airport tag still attached. The date was from three days ago. As if it were only yesterday, as if it were a century ago.
At the airport, she had taken the suitcase off the carousel, this same black suitcase. She walked toward the exit, hoping in her heart that someone would be waiting for her. Her uncle had promised to come. Uncle Mahmoud, the only person who still called her after all these years, who still asked how she was doing.
But her uncle hadn’t come. She waited ten minutes, thirty minutes, an hour. Then his message came: “I was busy, dear. Take a taxi yourself. I sent the address.”
Negar read the message. She felt nothing. Neither upset nor angry. She simply typed back: “Okay, Uncle, don’t worry.” Then she took a taxi and came to this apartment.
The taxi drove through the rain. The windows fogged up, the driver played a melancholy song. Negar looked outside, at streets she couldn’t remember. She had been gone about twenty years. Everything had changed, or perhaps she had changed, perhaps both.
She arrived here, placed the suitcase in the middle of the room, sat on the couch, and stared at the wall. She stayed like that until night fell, until the rain started, until morning came. Three days passed like this. She would get up, go to the window, come back and sit down, then get up again. The suitcase remained, closed, as if waiting for Negar to decide whether to stay or go back.
Go back where? To Toronto? To that small apartment in the Latin Quarter? To that repetitive life, those sleepless nights, that sense of emptiness that followed her wherever she went?
No. It was too late to go back. Or perhaps it had never been time.
Negar took her hand off the glass. She looked at the suitcase. She needed to open it. She needed to take out the clothes, put them in the closet, decide she would stay. At least for a while.
But she couldn’t. As long as the suitcase was closed, she could tell herself she was a traveler, that it was temporary, that maybe tomorrow she would go back. As long as the suitcase was closed, she didn’t have to face the fact that she had no place called home.
Neither Toronto was home, nor Tehran. Nowhere.
Twenty years ago, at Mehrabad Airport. Negar was twenty-two, a small suitcase in her hand, a ticket in her pocket. Her mother had come to see her off, with teary eyes and trembling hands. Negar hadn’t looked at her mother. She simply said “goodbye” and left. From that day until now, she had not seen her mother. Only a few phone calls, a few photos, a few messages. Then gradually the calls diminished, her mother became ill, they took her to a nursing home, and Negar still had not returned.
She stood up and walked toward the suitcase. She knelt beside it and placed her hand on the zipper. She paused for a few moments. Then she pulled the zipper. The sound of it opening echoed in the silence of the room.
The suitcase opened. The clothes were crumpled together, musty, wrinkled. A few books, a few notebooks, a framed photograph of her mother that she had placed in a drawer years ago and had now brought with her.
Negar picked up the photograph. Her mother was young in the picture, forty-five years old, with long black hair, a smile. The same smile Negar couldn’t remember when she had last seen. Perhaps that day at the airport, perhaps earlier.
With her finger, she traced the glass of the frame, over her mother’s face. Then she set the photograph aside on the floor.
She stood up and went back to the window. The rain still fell, steady, unending.
Tomorrow she should go see her mother. Ten years had passed since she last saw her. Ten years. Perhaps her mother would not recognize her, perhaps she had forgotten she had a daughter who went to Canada and never returned.
Negar placed her hand on the glass. It was cold.
