I was born just twenty years after my father; on a snowy winter night, exactly at midnight. My mother used to say that on that night, heavy snow had fallen. The snow on the roof had piled up like a tall hill, and people had created tunnels through the snow to move between houses. I remember this scene myself; I was about four years old, and the snow was so deep that my father couldn’t do any work with it. He would gather the snow around the house into piles like mountains; it was worse than Siberia.
The same year I was born, my father fell from a tree; I was about eight or nine months old at the time. I have a very faint memory of that incident, just a ghostly image in my mind; I don’t remember other details. My mother used to say that when your father fell from the tree, as he was descending through the branches, you were constantly kicking and making noise as if you were tied to his back with a sheet. Around that time, my father got sick; he had severe bloody diarrhea, and he wasn’t getting better. He made a vow to go to Mashhad for pilgrimage and healing. It was winter, and people had gathered for his funeral in the village graveyard, which was on the way out of the village. At that time, it was customary that when someone went on a pilgrimage, people would gather for the funeral. On that day, my uncle had me on his back and was taking me. Even though I was just one or two years old, I remember those scenes vividly. I was wearing colorful knitted socks, and my legs were hanging behind my uncle and swaying. People were walking one after another on a long snowy path towards the graveyard, and I remember all of this.
In the absence of my father, it seems I missed him a lot. My mother used to say, “In the afternoons, you used to lie down in front of the door to watch outside. Once, you asked, ‘Doesn’t our calf miss my dad?'” My father’s journey took about two months. When he returned, there was still a lot of snow, so much that he had to come back through the Burqan route; all other roads were closed. On the day of his return, people gathered again, this time for a welcome ceremony. A lady named Zahra Khanum had offered to carry me. After lunch, she tied me tightly to her back with a sheet, and we set off with the crowd. As we walked a bit, I saw everyone was walking, and I was the only one on someone’s back. I thought of kicking and screaming in the local dialect, “I’m stuck, I’m stuck,” meaning to put me down. My mother told her to let me down when we reached a level spot so that I could walk a bit. That happened, and a little while later, Zahra Khanum put me on the ground. It was noon, and the sun had melted the snow heaps; my first step, not the second one, was when I fell into a small puddle of water, and my whole body got wet, although the water wasn’t deep. She picked me up again and…