When the Ayatollah was killed, Father was resting in a chair. When he found out the Ayatollah was killed, it was because of the outside shouting of his neighbours:
«!The Supreme leader is dead !I can’t believe it !The Supreme leader is dead»
When Father first heard the Ayatollah was killed, he couldn’t believe it himself. Why were the neighbours shouting this? Were they on drugs? He just couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t make out if it was truth or fiction.
Then he thought, if the neighbours of all people were saying it, it had to be the truth.
When it became clear in his mind that the Ayatollah was in fact dead, Father wished he had a cigarette to put into his mouth. Father hadn’t smoked since he was a teenager. And it was only because his brothers were putting pressure on him that he even did it. They were village boys, and everyone except him smoked, so he tried it, hated it, and no matter how many stresses he faced, Father chose to never smoke again.
Until the man who had changed his nation’s history for the last fifty years died of nowhere.
Then Father craved a cigarette.
It wasn’t even that he was stressed. It was that he was confused. What had made the United States and Israel attack so suddenly? Was it the protests? But if it were a result of the injustice facing normal human lives they would have done something months ago. And anyways, even with the Ayatollah gone, what did that mean for regular Iranians? Was the regime going to change, or was the Ayatollah going to be replaced by someone far worse?
There was too much happening and it all made no sense. Schoolchildren were being killed by missile strikes, foreign countries in the gulf were having their infrastructure bombed. Even in Tabriz itself strikes have happened and people died and the electricity went off and never came back.
But unlike the people in the adjoining houses Father does not dare to go out, no matter how hot it gets in his home, no matter how lonely he feels in this turbulent time, because he’s afraid that if he’s on the wrong street at the wrong time, he would get caught up in an explosion.
And so Father remains there, his body pinned to that chair in the room furthest from the window, the study, in between the kitchen and the room where the television is usually on.
When the Ayatollah was killed, Father was in the darkness trying to enjoy the coffee his wife had made for him to help him survive the night.
Now it’s clear the Ayatollah is dead, but Father has not lifted himself up from the chair, even though he is sleepy, even though his wife is calling him to bed, because his legs are not able to move, and he does not understand the cause of it himself.
