shawgaar 3

     It's about six  in the evening.The telephone rings and a number appears on the screen which shows someone is calling from Iran.Easy to recognise the number, my uncle's, who is about sixty-five and retired in 90s.I stare at the phone as I'm speaking to my guest and trying to keep on the conversation without interruption.He suggests me to answer the phone, I refused.

     Soon after, some nostalgic memories begin to flow in my thoughts,remembering a period of two month time when I was staying with my uncle in another city, pretending making up my failure in the school's exam, but I didn't properly.

     From the very first day I arrived the city, I started to discover all the interesting places, parks with playgrounds,cinema,bookshops and cafes. My uncle was treating me with utmost kindness. He offered me some money which seemed a lot to me.I spent all the money in two or three  days and then I realised it was my packet money for a week !

      I didn't practise my lesson but I found some friends,a shopkeeper who was telling old stories about the city when I was drinking my Pepsi sitting on a dirty stool in his shop. A young smart man working at a small shop who I thought he was a writer or a poet,he wasn't actually but I enjoyed his talking on contemporary literatrue.

     I was looking for a valid card phone on the table to call my uncle back when he rang again and I answered. He was trying to speak loudly and pleasant, I tried to play the same .It was Yalda,the longest night in the year and people celebrate as a custom.My uncle was teasing the celebration of Yalda as he used to do with many other traditional ceremonies.He is a kind of person who has lived between his traditional view of life and the reality of the change for ages.

     He asked me if I return home soon and I said yes, in the next a few months.Then, I thought that I had missed him so much.

    

     I haven't  seen my uncle for about five years.