in a light-ocher dress, walking with Ahmad as if they had planned the color harmony; her sister unable to hold back her happy tears; her grandmother walking proud; Khan, sitting in armchairs with the elders from Reza’s family; and all the new faces, smiling at her, congratulating, shaking hands with Reza, putting their hands on their chests and half-bowing to her. Beside her, Reza seemed in control of his feelings. He shook hands with everyone smiling an elegant smile, neither too eager nor too brief. He did not seem nervous. That gave Lalah relief and reassurance; she could follow him and she would be fine.
When the time came, Ahmad and Homa stood beside one another behind Lalah, next to the groom’s parents, wearing smiles that made them look like a happy couple. Ahmad found himself flooded by memories revived by Homa’s perfume. When the mulla prepared the marriage contract and read it out loud to the couple and friends and family standing in silence, Ahmad did what Homa had done in that small postpartum room: he slipped his hand into hers. Homa did not pull her hand away. Ahmad felt her fingers close around his, tight like in those early years. He could see Lalah behind the white veil in the mirror, her large mascaraed eyes, her slender nose, her beautiful face, although a little hazy, as if through a fog, and he knew that she had not seen her parents’ hands.
Just over the heads of the seated couple, Ahmad looked at Homa in the mirror, stared at her until she turned her eyes and looked back at him without shying away, and it was at that moment when Ahmad told himself, That’s my wife. After the mulla pronounced the couple man and wife, Ahmad took out his notepad and wrote.
I have kept our home like it was.
Homa looked at the paper for a few moments. She took a tissue from a nearby table and dabbed at her eyes before tears slid down her mascaraed eyelashes. Then she lifted her face and looked at Ahmad, unable to say a word. Ahmad could not interpret the look on her face. Finally Homa’s lips quivered and a tear came down, leaving a dark trail on her cheek. “I found someone else, Ahmad.”
Ahmad turned around and strode outside to lose himself in the craze of the wedding. In the neighbor’s yard, he filled cup after cup with the bitter fluid. He danced with his daughters in the circle of guests and the few tears that fell on his tie everyone thought were of happiness. Then he held his son-in-law’s hand and motioned for more upbeat music. Although banal and sloppily put together, the words of the song churned in his head, seeking but failing to find a way out. He danced with Reza and cajoled some of the other guests onto the floor. Fingers snapped, hips gyrated, foreheads beaded with sweat. Ahmad pushed through the circle of dancers to Khan and careened his wheelchair into the middle, whirling the old man around on the back wheels. Khan waved his cane in the air and twitched his mustache by pouting his lips. He whooped and clapped his hands and when Ahmad turned to take him back, he threw his hand up and shouted, “No, no! More, more!”
When his wet shirt stuck to his body, Ahmad sat at an empty table, wiped his neck and forehead, and watched: a young man danced as if he was doing jumping jacks, boys and girls kept bouncing up and down on the floor, people were in conversation across the garden, a lascivious, old man tried to flirt with a girl in her twenties, and two naughty little boys plucked from the walls the little bright poems and shoved them into their pockets, from which rays of light shone. He felt a tap on his shoulder and turned around to find a man standing by his side. It took Ahmad’s tired eyes a few seconds to focus on the bearded face and recognize his old friend in a smart, white suit and trimmed hair combed back.
“The whole neighborhood has been talking about the wedding of the poet’s daughter,” Salman said in answer to Ahmad’s questioning looks. “Word gets around, my friend.” He pulled out a chair and sat down. “I missed you, brother.”
Ahmad slung his arm around Salman’s neck. Sitting at that metal table, surrounded by oohs and aahs from the dance floor, the two men scoured at the