A Sweet Shine Dream

Iran Theater-Ali Akbar Abdolalizadeh: I see my mother from the balcony facing the courtyard. Near dusk on a hot summer's day, she splashes water on the semi-warm mosaics.

She throws rugs in the yard. Abbas Agha, who is less than ten years old, is helping mom. The smell of wet soil spreads across the ground with the heat of the day and hits into my face, and immediately after that I feel the cool air on my face.

My mother comes and goes and I  watches her; she's like a butterfly that the world has always owed her. I also knew it on the balcony during my childhood.

Iftar flower tablecloths are spread,  sisters bring vegetables, cheese, dates, watermelons, zulbia,  and dinners. Now is the time for boiling oil samovar with teapots, trays, cups and sticks. Samovar and pouring tea is mother's job. No one should touch the samovar.

Bread arrives too. Everything is wrapped in whiteness of childhood memories but vivid and vibrant. Everyone is sitting around the table from the second floor balcony on the patio, it's all magical. A lively crowd like an oil samovar next to a table. Azan's voice on the radio completes this charm.

Now one mother calls her children one by one, as she always calls them to the table. Everyone has come, but the mother seems to love it. The mother is a single child, like Baba, so she wants to get together. I still watch the family gather on the balcony via hammered, hand-made iron fences,. And I remember the mother in that long blue flower dress that smells pomegranate. It's a pomegranate itself, a butterfly that is Pomegranate.

Now she calls me; the youngest child of those days ... "Ali Akbar" ... "Ali Akbar" ... the sound rings in my ear .... I like her to call me. It is only the mother who utters my name perfectly ... The kids point up, eyes up again, I’m there again ... My mother heads up to the sky ... she says with a little bit of caution ... "Ali Akbar". .. I pull myself back not to see me and she calls again. "Ali Akbar" ... "Ali Akbar" ... she knows that I like her voice ...  her frowns and huffs and reconciliation and kisses again ... knows I want to hear her again.

I can't stand it anymore. I run the entire width of the room to the wooden door and then to the big stairwell ... I go down the first stairs and the stairs again to the lower corridor ... yes, yes.

The hanging light from the ceiling annoys my eyes ... I soon wake up ... The sunlight on the curtain of the room ... The sweet dream of the past was gone, I wish I wouldn't wake up ... I wish i would live in the same day I was living there on the balcony in that holy month , what a strange feeling it is to be away from childhood ... Thank God, today I go visit mom .... My mother's eyesight diminishes and she walks hard, but there is a chance I still see her, like the kids, put my head on  her lap to cuddle my cheek and says"Ali Akbar" ... "Ali Akbar".