īn yek fasl-e dīgar ast Persiska (Farsi) 2025

“There was noise downstairs. They had opened the door and come in. Emad was lying on the couch. He shifted slightly and noticed the hole in his sock. He had been restless since midnight. He heard someone say, ‘Turn down the heat under the halim!’ They had their own key. Emad had given them the spare key to the apartment. They would unlock the door and enter his place as if it were their own. The key was kept by a young man with henna-colored hair who arrived earlier than everyone else in the morning.

Emad wished he could stay on the couch and roll over again. The group had nothing to do with him. He liked this new group; they seemed pleasant enough. They had signed a contract a week earlier and were supposed to stay for a month. The people in this group never threw cigarette butts on the ground, and that made Emad happy. He had no problem with smokers—as long as they did not flick their cigarette ends onto the floor. Downstairs, several large sheets of brown paper were taped to the walls with the message: ‘Do not throw your cigarette waste on the ground.’ But most people ignored it, tossed their cigarette butts wherever they pleased, and this infuriated Emad.

He pulled one slipper out from under the couch and slid his foot into it. He pulled up his pajama bottoms, picked up the kettle, and stepped out of his room. The bathroom was next to his door. He filled the kettle from the tap in the bathroom and returned to his room. Inside, he had a small refrigerator and a two-burner tabletop stove. He had placed the stove on a table by the window, and the telephone sat on top of the refrigerator. In the middle of the room stood a dining table with two chairs and a radio. At night, he would turn the radio on so he would not have to hear the sound that echoed inside his head. He would sit on the couch and drink until his eyelids grew heavy.”