The relentless tick-tock of the clock shatters the silence in the room. Your hands move, writing, but your ears are attuned only to that sound. A dullness clouds your head; you’ve lost count of how many sleeping pills you swallowed last night, the remnants of their hold still clinging to you. Since morning, you’ve been seated at your desk, pouring out thoughts onto paper without feeling fatigue, trying to unburden your mind. You set the pen down and glance at the clock on the wall—it reads 2:25. Rising from your desk, you decide to make coffee. You despise the instant kind that only requires boiling water. It lacks the true bite of genuine coffee. So, you grind the beans, heat a small amount of water in a little white kettle, let it steep, and slowly pour it over the grounds. Once the brew is ready, you return to your room.You take a sip, then place the mug on the desk. You lie down on the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling and the light fixture hanging from it. You survey the room. The silver curtains are still drawn shut. Very little sunlight manages to pierce through, casting a faint reflection onto the bookshelf, giving that corner a unique, muted beauty. The painting of white birds in flight hangs on the wall. Sometimes, you wish you were a bird, able to take flight toward another land the moment sorrow began to weigh you down—to escape everything that hurt you, to fly to a place where breathing itself felt like living. But no. You are human. That is an impossible, unreachable fantasy. As a human, you break, you weep, you smile, you get wounded, you become attached, you love, you fail, and you surrender. Despite all of it, you are forced to continue on your path, your journey—even if you choose to bring this story to an end. What a creature the human is, enduring the accumulation of all sorrow, defeat, victory, and the relentless battering of fate.You check the clock again; it’s 2:40. It’s Tuesday, and you must be ready to leave in a few minutes. If it were up to you, you would never agree to go, but life sometimes compels you to do things against your will. Things haven’t gone well so far; let this obligation just add to the pile.You finish the rest of your coffee and stand up. You pull the long, black Chapan[1]—that reaches past your heels—from the wardrobe and put it on. You wrap the green scarf around your head. You grab your black mask and your bag, and step out of the house. Reaching the bus stop, you wait for a taxi. Inside the cab, you stare out the window. You look everywhere, but your mind is preoccupied. Single-story houses, shops, and trees line the route. It’s the season of falling leaves, yet it’s only early autumn; some green still clings to the tall, steadfast trees that haven’t yet surrendered to the fall winds. But inevitably, the leaves will fall. The end of every green story is yellowing and departure.The taxi speeds past farmland, now bare save for the soil. Between the tall and short trees, you see sculpted statues. You look toward the sturdy, high mountains—Salas and Shamama—which remain standing amidst the peaks despite terrible collapses, still carrying and transmitting that ancient history within their chests. The taxi rushes by, but the image of the Buddha and the caves remains etched in your mind for a moment. Looking at those caves, you think of the people who lived there, two millennia ago, in that ancient time. You wish you had been born in that era, living side-by-side with peace, love, and sincerity. Traveling freely, driven by love, rather than facing the constant cutting at your own roots in this modern time. The scene quickly fades, and you move away from the Buddha. Traffic in Mirhashem Square briefly halts the taxi, to see the passengers, before permitting movement again. After paying the fare, you step out and turn left from Elkhan Circle, heading toward your destination: the psychologist’s office. Just as you are about to knock, the door opens from inside. The person stands directly in front of you. You study him. You think you haven’t seen him here before. He appear to be around 25, with curly hair and a relatively long, black beard, wearing a cream-colored shirt and trousers, topped with a black vest. You have no idea why he would be here, but you secretly hope no one seeks this place out due to profound grief. You step aside to let him pass, then enter.Dr. Sepehr sits in the middle of the room, dressed in a dark suit and a blue pullover. Sunlight streams through the window, illuminating his desk. You sit on the chair opposite him, clasping your hands together over your knees. After greetings, the doctor asks, “How was your past week? Were you able to improve your state even a little with the exercises?”The cycle of questions and answers begins again—words and phrases that are neither comforting nor helpful. You only end up recounting everything you have endured, which only makes you feel worse than before.“No,” I reply, “none of it helped. How can two simple exercises possibly make a person better?”The doctor removes his glasses and sets them on the desk. He takes a sip from the glass of coffee on his desk. A few minutes of silence descend. You turn your head to look at the clock. It shows 3:20. You think about the forty minutes you are obligated to spend here. Your breath catches; you close your eyes, take a deep breath, and let it out.The doctor continues, “Look at yourself Niyayesh, at the precious, minute details of your life. Don’t any of those things bring you back to life? Doesn’t loving any of them give you hope for living?”This time, he doesn’t ask you to express what is tormenting you or inquire about past experiences and painful emotions.You gather your thoughts and respond, “Of course they do, but I don’t have the strength to go on anymore.”Your legs feel weak for the journey ahead. Life, this forced necessity of breathing, makes the path feel narrow. Sometimes life becomes so harsh you wish you could hold your breath and escape the prison of this existence, to take flight.The doctor says, “Close your eyes.”You slowly close your eyes, striving for just a moment of release. The doctor continues, “Now, I want you to imagine you are in a hospital, surrounded by patients who have only one desire: complete health. But you have that. Or imagine you are in prison, seeing people who long for just one moment to step out of those four walls and walk in the open air, to breathe, but you can breathe. Don’t let the external barriers stop you; if the doors are shut on you, your lofty thoughts are still soaring, and no one can lock them. Don’t stare so long at the closed door that you fail to see the open ones and miss the opportunity. Or picture a cemetery, filled with people who no longer have the chance to be with their loved ones, but you do have that chance.”The psychologist continues, “Now, open your eyes.”You open them, wanting, for the first time, to see the half-full glass.The doctor puts his glasses back on and continues, “What are they? The reasons that give you hope for life? Think about what you have and answer me.”You think hard about what you possess that gives you a reason to keep living. You say, “My parents, my brother and sister. If I can’t keep going for myself, I can do it for them.”“Family,” he says, “even if you don’t ask, they are a part of you. They stay with you. Sometimes, to continue living, you don’t need grand, unattainable dreams. Sometimes, a single word, a smile, the presence of one person, being grateful for your blessings—that gives you hope. Sometimes, you don’t absolutely need to have everything to be content and keep living. Just enjoying what you have is enough to give you hope for life. Stop yearning for what you lack; enjoy what you have. Life isn’t worth spending on regret.”The doctor spins his pen between his fingers and continues.“Even if just one thing gives you hope, keep going. Living requires more courage than dying. You don’t want to be a coward, do you? You must be brave. If you were a coward, life wouldn’t have piled so many problems on you. You are brave, and you must allow that strong, powerful self to overcome these difficulties. Life doesn’t grant everyone a chance to shine, but your life has chosen you to become stronger through its challenges.”You nod in agreement. The session time is up. You prepare to leave. He says again, “For tonight, I need you to write a list of everything you love and everything that gives you hope for life. Even if it’s something small, prepare it and bring it to the next session. You can come tomorrow at this same time; we’ll move the session up from next week.”It is 8 PM. You intend to write the list, lying in bed. You pick up your mobile and notice the scars on your wrist, and once again, the memories of that night flash before your eyes.One Month Ago

You open your eyes. Sunlight has already reached the middle of the room. Your head is spinning. Your body lies heavy and loose on the bed. You reach for your phone on the bedside table and check the screen: 11:00 a.m., Monday, the 5th of Shahrivar.

It has been months of this drifting, this life without structure. You wake up late, lock yourself away in a corner of your room, and spend your days there. You feel no strength left to keep going. You glance at the calendar. It has been four hundred and forty days since you last stepped into the place you used to call your dream. You say it to yourself again: four hundred and forty days since you really lived, since you stood in the place you had reached with blood, effort, and stubborn hope. A place that belonged to you, that was taken from you. The home of your goals. You cannot go back, and the best years of your life are passing while you are trapped, doing nothing, like an innocent person waiting quietly for execution.

You pick up a pen and draw another cross over today’s date. Another black day. Your thoughts run wild, and you cannot stop them. Exhausted, you sit at your desk, take out paper and pen, and start writing a letter to your sister. When you finish, you slip into her room and hide the letter under her clothes, somewhere she will not find it too quickly. That way, if death changes its mind and leaves you behind, you can retrieve it before Nadere ever sees it.

You go to the kitchen and think about how your story might end. Which way, which method, which final line. Your hands are shaking and in the quiet you keep repeating to yourself: suicide, suicide, there is no other way left. You open the cupboard and choose a sharp knife, one that will not take much effort. You wrap it in your sleeve so it cannot be seen and walk back toward your room.

At the door to the sitting room you stop. You hear your mother talking with the neighbor, telling her you are still not awake and worrying over why you sleep so late. You do not step inside. You do not want your mother to see that you are up. You go back to your room instead, close the door, and sit on the bed. You set the knife on the table, pull your knees up to your chest, rest your head on them, and try to steady the shaking in your hands and feet. You cannot calm down. A strange, empty laughter slips out of you, the kind that makes you feel like a madwoman.

You pick up the knife again and bring it close to your wrist, thinking about the end of this life. You do not cry. You do not hesitate. You think only one word: suicide.

When the thought of suicide takes over, it fills everything. All that remains is the question of how. In this part of the world, you have to be tough, almost indestructible, just to survive what life places in your path. To endure all the ways you are buried alive in modern times.

You press the knife against your wrist and begin to drag it, slowly, toward the vein.

And then you do not know what happens.

Your head aches. You feel as if you are waking from a heavy, drugged sleep. The smell of medicine hangs in the air. You manage to open your eyes and look at your hands. Both wrists are wrapped in bandages. Memory returns in fragments. You realize why you are lying in a hospital bed with an IV tube in your arm. You think to yourself: I survived again. Death ran away. A single tear slips from your eye.

You look around the room. No one is there. You pull out the IV and get out of bed. At the door you hear voices and pause to listen. The doctor is talking to your sister.

“Why did she do this to herself?”

Your sister, still in shock and crying, answers through her sobs. “I don’t know, doctor. She wasn’t well last night. I asked what was wrong, but she didn’t say. She always keeps her sadness inside. She never wants to talk about it, not even with me.”

“You need to watch her more closely,” the doctor says. “She has tried once. It is possible she will try again. If you can, persuade her to see a psychologist.”

“You mean she might do this another time?” Nadere asks. “I will try my best.”

“Yes, it is possible. She could wake up at any moment. You should go in to her.”

When your sister opens the door, she finds you standing behind it in the hospital gown. She does not say much, just asks how you feel.

“Thank God you woke up. You scared us so much,” she says and pulls you into her arms.

“Can we go home?” you ask. “I can’t breathe in here.”

“But you just regained consciousness,” she protests. “They’ll probably keep you tonight. They only let one family member stay with a patient, so the others went home.”

You insist that you feel fine, that nothing hurts. In the end she has to speak to the doctors. The two of you go home together. Your attempt to put a final period on your story failed. When even death refuses you, it feels as if there is nowhere left in the world to go.

At home everyone is waiting. Shocked. Frightened. We never know each other’s worth. Only when someone is on the edge of leaving, when their time almost runs out, do we suddenly realize how dear they are. That is when they become precious, when their life becomes something we cling to. And by then it is so late. A whole lifetime slips away and at the very end we understand how valuable it was. If only we cherished each other and loved each other properly from the beginning.

Nadere comes into your room. She wants to sleep there with you. Maybe fear is forcing her to stay close, fear that you might try again. When someone decides to end their own life, death itself stops being frightening.

“At the moment you tried to end it,” she asks, “didn’t you think of anyone? Not yourself, not your life, not me, not our parents. Not even our brother?”

“I did think of everyone,” you answer quietly. “But there was one thing that pulled me more strongly than all of that. Suicide. Ending it.”

You drink some water and then ask, “Would you have been sad if I’d died?”

She comes closer to the window, takes your hands in hers, and says, “Of course I would.”

You repeat it in your mind: of course she would. Then another voice inside you calls it a lie. You tell yourself no one would truly be sad if you vanished. No one would cry. There is only you and yourself. No one else.

“If that’s true,” you ask, “then in these three years when I was drowning in pain, why did you never ask how I was, not even once?”

“You were sad?” she replies. “You never said anything. How was I supposed to know?”

“Yes,” you say. “That is exactly it. The people closest to us are the ones we forget. We get used to their presence. We forget to notice their joy and their sorrow. We forget to ask how they are, forget to put a smile on their face, forget to be their reason to feel okay when life gets heavy. We get so lost in our own chaos that we forget our loved ones need us, beyond money, beyond daily needs. They need to hear ‘I love you.’ They need to be reminded they matter. They do not just need our bodies in the room. They need to hear, ‘You are important to me. You are not alone. I’m here and I will stay.’ They need to know their existence gives us strength, so they don’t sit quietly with their grief and feel alone even while we’re beside them.”

She hesitates, then asks, “Do you want to share it with me?”

“Share what?”

“Your sadness. Your pain.”

You tell her that by now you have grown used to it, that you’ve learned to live with it. You have learned to stand up and fall down with your own wounds. Talking about them feels pointless. Nadere falls silent.

You lie down and stare at the ceiling. After a while she says, “I know it is hard for you, but would you consider seeing a psychologist? I know I might not be able to heal your pain, but a psychologist might help you find a way forward.”

“It won’t help,” you say.

You pull the blanket over your head and close your eyes, trying to force yourself to sleep.

The night passed. Nadere keeps insisting that you should see someone. People regret most not the things they did, but the things they never tried. As a last resort, you agree to go. At worst, nothing changes. At least the attempt will not harm you.

After asking around among friends and colleagues, Nadere finds Dr. Sepehr and makes an appointment.

One afternoon at three o’clock you go with her to his office. That is where it begins: the first time you share your most painful feelings with another human being. The aches you never admitted even to your sister are dragged into the light here, in the hope that there might be a cure.

There is a soft knock at the door, and you pull your gaze away from the scars on your wrists. Nadere walks holding a plate of fruit. Her hair is loose, falling over her shoulders. You sit up in bed while she comes to sit next to you. She offers you fruit, and you take a red apple. As you bite into it, she asks, “How are the sessions going?”

“They feel like hanging between life and death,” you say. “We’ll see who wins in the end, me or life.”

“You will win,” she answers. “When life wounds you, it also teaches you how strong you can be. These scars are what make your steps stronger than before. You learned how to lose before you learned how to win. That way you don’t truly lose anymore.”

“But continuing is hard,” you say.

She lifts an envelope in her hand. You recognize it instantly. The letter you wrote to her, meant to be found after your death.

“I read this,” she says. “I know these are hard days, and not just for you. All of us are struggling in our own ways. We all break. But courage is in continuing. Do you know why diamonds are so bright and so valuable? Because they endure pressure. They survive harsh, painful stages before they shine. If everyone chose death at the first sign of limitation, there would be no one left, no one successful, no one at all. You are at your own diamond stage. You have to endure it. When your patience runs out, cry, scream, sleep, do whatever you need, but keep going, Niyayesh. Promise me you will not think about those things again.”

“I promise,” you say.

She hugs you, yawns, and says she is tired. She lies down on your bed and quickly falls asleep.

After she drifts off, you go to your desk. You pick up your pen and start writing the list the doctor asked for. When you finish, you read your letter again.

My dear Nadere,I don’t know how you will feel when you receive this letter after my death, but please don’t be sad and don’t cry for me. Since last night I have felt strange. My head spins and that sentence keeps flashing before my eyes, boiling my brain: “A woman’s voice is shameful.” Then came the message saying not to return to the course from tomorrow, and that piled on top of four hundred and forty dark days. The only place where I still felt I existed, where I still felt I was learning, has been taken away. All the doors closed and the hope I had disappeared. I feel this life is no longer worth fighting for. Every path I step onto ends in a wall, and fate keeps writing me badly. I made it this far, but I no longer see the strength in myself to go on. I have seen and experienced enough. Here, you live a kind of modern burial alive. You are neither alive nor dead, caught somewhere between an unclear fate and endless sorrow. Every time I try to start again, life pushes me back down. I have survived to this point and these twenty years of breathing are enough for me. I don’t want those forced breaths anymore.I wanted to be strong too, not to shake with every wind, but no matter what I do, every day life pours a new sadness into my cup and makes endurance harder and harder. I wanted to reach the dreams I had arranged for myself, but my patience has been used up. I cannot bear it. Here is where I broke and surrendered.I hope instead of crying for me, you will smile, because I will leave this prison at last and find peace.

Niyayesh

The sessions continue every week, and today you are on your way again. You feel a little lighter than before. You repeat Nadere’s words in your mind as you walk. When you arrive, Dr. Sepehr sees the slight change in your face and gives a small, warm smile. His efforts and his words have not been wasted.

You take the list out of your bag and hand it to him. He unfolds it and starts reading. It has only one line.

“I will fight for my healing and keep going.”

He smiles and says, “No one in this world is better for you than you. Do not take away your own right to live, even if in all the noise of life you spend your whole lifetime just breathing and only truly live for one single day.”

[1] Kind of a coat