A gunshot, far away. Then another, close. And thus ceases the ceasefire.

The woman stands up, and walks toward the plain green curtain. She pushes the mattresses aside, but doesn’t open the curtain. “So I’ll have to stay here. I’ve got a whole night to myself, to talk to you, my sang-e saboor. Anyway, what was I saying before that stupid mullah started screeching?” She makes herself focus. “Oh yes, you were wondering where I could have gotten all these notions. That was it, wasn’t it? I have had two teachers in my life-my aunt and your father. My aunt taught me how to live with men, and your father taught me why. My aunt…” she opens the curtain slightly. “You didn’t know her at all. And thank God! You would have sent her packing straightaway. Now I can tell you everything. She is my father’s only sister. What a woman! I grew up enveloped in her warmth. I loved her more than my own mother. She was generous. Beautiful. Very beautiful. Big hearted. She was the one who taught me how to read, how to live… but then her life took a tragic turn. They married her off to this terrible rich man. A total bastard. Stuffed with dirty cash. After two years of marriage, my aunt hadn’t been able to bear a child for him. I say for him, because that’s how you men see it. Anyway, my aunt was infertile. In other words, no good. So her husband sent her to his parents’ place in the countryside, to be their servant. As she was both beautiful and infertile, her father-in-law used to fuck her, without a care in the world. Day and night. Eventually she cracked. Bashed his head in. They threw her out of her in-laws’ house. Her husband sent her away, too. She was abandoned by her own family-including my father. So, as the ‘black sheep’ of the family, she vanished, leaving a note saying she had put an end to her days. Sacrificed her body, reduced it to ashes! Leaving no trace. No grave. And of course, this suited everyone just fine. No funeral. No service for that ‘witch’! I was the only one who cried. I was fourteen years old at the time. I used to think about her constantly.” She stops, bows her head, closes her eyes as if dreaming of her.

After a few breaths, she starts up again, as if in a trance. “One day, more than seven years ago, just before you came back from the war, I was strolling around the market with your mother. I stopped at the underwear stall. Suddenly, a voice I know. I turned around. There was my aunt! For a moment I thought I was seeing things. But it really was her. I greeted her, but she acted as if she hadn’t heard, as if she didn’t know me. And yet I was absolutely, one hundred percent sure. I knew in my blood that it was her. So I managed to lose your mother in the crowd. Began trailing my aunt. I didn’t let her out of my sight, all the way to her house. I stopped her at her front door. She burst into tears. Gave me a big hug, and asked me in. At the time she was living in a brothel.” She falls silent, giving her man, behind the green curtain, the chance to take a few breaths. And herself, too.

In the city, the shooting continues. Far away, nearby, sporadic.

In the room, everything is sunk in darkness.

Saying “I’m hungry,” she stands up and feels her way into the passage, and then into the kitchen to find something to eat. First she kindles a lamp, which brightens part of the passage and sheds a little light into the room as well. Then, after the slamming of a few cupboard doors, she returns. A hard crust of several-day-old bread and an onion in one hand, the hurricane lamp in the other. She sits back down near her man, by the green curtain, which she pulls aside in the yellowish lamplight to check that her sang-e saboor has not exploded. No. It is still there. In one piece. Eyes open. Mocking expression, even with the tube thrust into the pathetically half-open mouth. The chest continues to, miraculously, rise and fall at the same pace as before.

“And now, it’s that aunt who has taken me in. She likes my children. And the girls like her, too. That’s why I’m slightly more relaxed.” She peels the onion. “She tells them loads of stories… as she used to before. I grew up with her stories, too.” She puts a layer of onion on a bit of bread, and shoves the whole thing into her mouth. The cracking of the dry bread mingles with the softness of her voice. “The other night, she wanted to tell a particular story that her mother used to tell us. I begged her not to tell it to my girls. It’s a very disturbing tale. Cruel. But full of power and magic! My girls are still too young to understand it.” She takes a sip from the glass of water she had brought to moisten her man’s eyes.

“As you know, in my family we were all girls. Seven girls! And no boy! Our parents hated that. It was also the reason our grandmother told my sisters and me that story. For a long time, I thought she had invented it especially for us. But then my aunt told me that she had first heard that story from her great-grandmother.”

A second layer of onion on a second crust of bread.

“In any case, our grandmother warned us in advance, by telling us that the story was a magical tale that could bring us either happiness or misfortune in our actual lives. This warning frightened us, but it was also exciting. And so her lovely voice rang out to the frenetic beating of our hearts. Once upon a time there was, or was not, a king. A charming king. A brave king. This king, however, had one constraint in his life-just one, but of the utmost importance: he was never to have a daughter. On his wedding night, the astrologers told him that if ever his wife should give birth to a girl, she would bring disgrace upon the crown. As fate would have it, his wife gave birth to nothing but girls. And so, at each birth, the king would order his executioner to kill the newborn baby!”

Lost in her memories, the woman suddenly takes on the appearance of an old lady-her grandmother, no doubt-telling this story to her grandchildren.

“The executioner killed the first baby girl, and the second. With the third, he was stopped by a little voice emanating from the mouth of the newborn. It begged him to tell her mother that if she kept her alive, the queen would have her own kingdom! Troubled by these words, the executioner visited the queen in secret, and told her what he had seen and heard. The queen, not breathing a word to the king, immediately came to take a look at this newborn with the gift of speech. Full of wonder yet terrified, she asked the executioner to prepare a cart so they could flee the country. At exactly midnight, the queen, her daughter, and the executioner secretly left the city for distant lands.”

Nothing distracts her from her tale, not even the shots fired not far from the house. “Furious at this sudden flight and determined to see his wife again, the king departed in conquest of foreign lands. Grandmother always used to pause at exactly this point in the story. She would always ask the same question: But was it to see his wife again, or to track her down?”

She smiles. In just the way her grandmother smiled, perhaps. And continues:

“The years went by. During one of these warmongering trips, the king was resisted by a small kingdom governed by a brave, fair, and peaceful queen. The people refused the interference of this foreign king. This arrogant king! So, the king decreed that the country be burned to the ground. The queen’s advisors counseled her to meet the king and negotiate with him. But the queen was against this meeting. She said she would rather set fire to the country herself than attend the negotiation. And so her daughter-who was much loved by the court and the people, not only for her remarkable beauty but also for her outstanding intelligence and kindness-asked her mother if she could meet the king herself. On hearing her daughter’s request, the queen seemed to lose her mind. She began screaming, cursing the entire world at the top of her voice. She no longer slept. She wandered the palace. She forbade her daughter to leave her bedroom, or to take any action. Nobody could understand her. With every day that passed, the kingdom sank a little deeper into catastrophe. Food and water became scarce. At this point the daughter, who could understand her mother no better than anyone else, decided to meet the king despite the prohibition. One night, with the help of her confidant, she made her way to the king’s tent. On seeing her heavenly beauty, the king fell madly in love with the princess. He made her the following offer: if she would marry him, he would renounce his claim to the kingdom. The princess accepted, somewhat entranced herself. They spent the night together. In the early hours, she made her triumphant way back to the palace, to tell her mother about this encounter with the king. Luckily, she didn’t admit that she had also spent the night in his tent. When she heard her daughter had so much as seen the king, the queen succumbed to absolute despair. She was willing to face any ordeal life could throw at her, except this one! Overcome, she howled, ‘Fate! Oh cursed fate!’ and fainted. Still understanding nothing of what was going on inside her mother’s head, the daughter spoke to the man who had been at her mother’s side throughout her life, and asked him the cause of the queen’s distress. And so he told her this story. ‘Dear princess, as you know, I am not your father. The truth is that you are the daughter of this swaggering king! As for me, I was only his executioner.’ He told her everything that had happened, finishing with this enigmatic conclusion: ‘And this, my princess, is our fate. If we tell the king the truth, the law decrees that all three of us shall be sentenced to hang. And all the people of this kingdom shall become his slaves. If we oppose his intentions, our kingdom shall be burned down. And if you marry him, you shall be committing the unpardonable sin of incest! All of us shall be cursed and punished by God.’ Grandmother used to stop at this point in the story. We would ask her to tell us what happened next, and she would say: Unfortunately, my little girls, I don’t know how the story ends. To this day, nobody knows. They say that the man or woman who discovers the end of the story shall be protected from hardship for the rest of their life. Not fully convinced, I would object that, if no one knew the end of the story, how could anyone tell if an ending was right? She used to laugh sadly and kiss me on the forehead. That’s what we call mystery, my dear. Any ending is possible, but to know which is the right ending, the fair ending… now that is the preserve of mystery. At that point, I used to ask her if it was a true story. She would reply, I told you, ‘Once upon a time there was, or was not…’ My question was the same question she, as a young girl, used to ask her own grandmother, and to which her grandmother would reply, And that is the mystery, my dear; that is the mystery. That story haunted me for years. It used to keep me awake at night. Every night, in bed, I would plead with God to whisper the end of the story to me! A happy ending, so that I could have a happy life! I would make up all kinds of stuff in my head. As soon as I came up with an idea, I would rush to tell my grandmother. And she would shrug her shoulders and say, It’s possible, my dear. It’s possible. Your life will reveal whether you are right or not. It’s your life that will confirm it. But whatever you discover, never tell anyone. Never! Because, as in any magical tale, whatever you say may come to pass. So, make sure to keep this ending to yourself.”