He was squatting on the edge of the bench, and gesturing with his henna-dyed hand, saying, “Yesterday I went to Morgh Mahale to see my cousin; he has a little garden there. He was saying that last year he sold his apricots for thirty tomans. This year they were frostbitten and all the fruit fell off the tree. He was in a terrible condition. And his wife has been bedridden since Ramadan. It’s been very costly for him.”

Mirza Yadellah adjusted his glasses, sucked his pipe with an air of relaxation, stroked his greying beard, and said, “All the blessing has gone out of everything.”

Shahbaz nodded in agreement and said, “How right you are. It’s like the end of the world. Customs have changed. May God grant much luck to everyone – twenty-five years ago I was in the neighbourhood of the holy city of Mashad. Three kilos of butter for less than a rial, ten eggs for a rial. We bought loaves of bread as tall as a man. Who suffered from the lack of money? God bless my father – he had bought a bandari mule, they’re fast and small, and we would ride it together. I was twenty years old. I used to play marbles in the alley with the kids from our neighbourhood. Now all the young people lose their enthusiasm easily. They turn from unripe grapes to fully-fledged raisins. Give me the days of our youth. As that fellow, God bless him, said:

I may be old, with a trembling chin,

But I’m worth a hundred young men.”

Yadollah puffed on his pipe and said, “Every year we regret the last year.”

Shahbaz nodded. “May God grant his creatures a happy ending.”

Yadollah assumed a serious expression. “I’ll tell you, there was a time when we had thirty mouths to feed in our house. Now every day I worry about where I’ll find a few rials for my tea and tobacco. Two years ago I had three teaching jobs, I earned eight tomans a month. Just the day before yesterday, on Aide Qorban,* I went to the house of one of the wealthy people where I used to be the tutor. They told me to bless the sheep in preparation for the slaughter. The ruthless butcher lifted the poor animal up and threw it onto the ground. He was sharpening his knife. The animal struggled and pulled itself up from under the butcher’s legs. I don’t know what was on the ground, but I saw that the animal’s eye had burst open and was bleeding. My heart was bleeding. I left on the pretext that I had a headache.