Translated from the Persian by the author

“Where did I put those damn acetaminophen pills?”

I yank the kitchen drawer so hard it comes off its rails and spills across the floor. Reza rushes in, horrified.

“Jesus Christ, are you crazy? You could’ve cut your toes off.”

I just stare at him. He stares back at me, mouth hanging open.

“The acetaminophen…” I say.

He swallows, pulls himself together. “Same place as always. Next to the juicer.”

How could I have forgotten?

I walk over to the counter and grab the blister pack. By the time I turn around, Reza is already kneeling beside the drawer, hurriedly stuffing the forks and spoons back inside.

“You don’t have to—”

“You need to drink a full glass of water with it.”

Pity has completely taken over his face. I turn toward the sink and fill a glass all the way to the top just to reassure him.

“Is it really that bad?”

A lump rises in my throat. Like a clogged drain, I want someone to press a plunger over my mouth and keep pumping, harder and harder, until my heart bursts out through my nose.

“Yeah. It’s horrible. Feels like half my head doesn’t belong to me.”

Now that the drawer is back in place, Reza walks toward me.

“These headaches are migraines. My mother used to get them too. She’d tie a scarf tight around her head and sit in a dark room until it passed.”

“You a doctor now?” I snap.

Last week, I asked for a sign, and the answer was favorable. Even Hafez’s omen this morning had promised good news:

Mojdeh, O heart, glad tidings—for a Messiah-breath is coming.

I told myself tomorrow would finally be my day. I’d show life it couldn’t shit on me whenever it pleased.

I take a sip of water and swallow the pill. Then, deliberately, I leave the still nearly-full glass on the kitchen island where Reza can see it before collapsing onto the couch in the living room.

“You want me to leave the TV on, or turn it off?”

As if I haven’t heard him, he walks away toward the bathroom. The sound of hot water fills me completely. I can almost feel the lukewarm drops jumping across my scalp.

Reza stands by the window, drying his hair, staring at some indistinct point outside—as if I don’t already know there’s nothing beyond that window worth looking at long enough to transfix a person like that.

Still gazing out, he says, “Want me to order pizza?”

I feel a sudden urge to be tender. I walk up behind him, wrap my arms around him, and say, “I’ll throw something together. We can eat at home.”

I’m clearing the dinner spread with my right eye shut against the pain. The nausea is unbearable. Reza watches me from the corner of his eye.

“Keep torturing yourself with these headaches. Let’s see where it gets you.”

I say nothing.

He presses his lips together and starts drumming the TV remote against the table.

“Stop that. It’s grating on my nerves.”

He tosses the remote onto the couch and heads toward the bedroom.

“Tomorrow… tomorrow’s my day.”

I look at the clock. Exactly 11:40. In twenty minutes, it will be tomorrow. And in eight hours and twenty minutes…

“Aren’t you coming to bed?”

“Let me clean up the kitchen first. I’ll come after.”

The dishes are done. I switch off the kitchen light and sit down on one of the breakfast chairs. I squeeze my eyes shut and tie a dish towel tightly around my head. By now, Reza has probably fallen asleep. And even if he hasn’t, I’m sure he won’t get up and come into the kitchen to find out why I’m taking so long.

I think about Reza’s mother.

About whether she, too, had once stood against the whole world.

How many times she had sought a sign.

And how many times it had come back favorable.

In the darkness, I glance at the stove clock. 12:10.

Quietly, I grab my towel and slip into the bathroom.

Steam and the smell of soap hit me. I gag. Reza has left the exhaust fan off again.

I picture Reza’s mother sitting in the corner of a public bathhouse, perched on a marble platform where no one will notice her. She’s staring at her palms, retching. She must have been pregnant with Reza then; those damned headaches must have taken hold of her, too.

If Reza were here, he’d probably say: “Untie that wrap from your waist and bind it around your head!”

If Reza were here…

A few knocks land on the door. Reza cracks it open and asks, “You okay?”

“Sorry, did I wake you?”

“No, I just drifted awake and saw you weren’t there.”

Now, I’m sitting on Reza’s lap as he dries my hair. It must be past one in the morning. I think he feels a sudden urge to be tender. He’s holding me, surely the same way his mother once held him between her knees in the public bathhouse, washing his hair until it squeaked clean.

His mother must have wanted tenderness, too.

“Shall I make some tea?”

“Yeah. Sleep’s gone anyway.”

Car horns, whistles, and shrieks of laughter drift in from outside. At this hour, a wedding procession must be snaking through the streets.

Reza grimaces. “As if it’s not two in the morning. See? What if somebody’s sick?”

But I wasn’t sick.

I saw myself and Reza sitting together in the backseat of that jade-green Mercedes on our wedding night, with his uncle Morteza behind the wheel. We didn’t even have a car of our own. Not even then.

“Don’t you have work tomorrow morning? Why aren’t you going to bed?”

“Yeah, I should. Lucky you—you can sleep till noon.”

No, I couldn’t. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t.

I watch him disappear into the bedroom. Then I lower my head onto the table, whispering Hafez’s omen to myself:

Mojdeh, O heart, glad tidings— for a Messiah-breath is coming.

Only six hours left.

Meaning six hours for us to sit with Reza’s mother on the marble platform of the bathhouse—for me to wash Mojdeh’s and Masiha’s hair, and for her to retch. For me to retch, and for Reza’s mother to pull clots of blood and burnt flesh from her womb.

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