Drenched green fields; wet, gabled roofs over half darkened windows with half drawn curtains; cows munching here and there; the cloudy autumn sky, emerging now and then among the trees along the tracks, extending like a bright umbrella above the fields; stations, empty of bustle save, one or two waiting as exhausted shadows in the corners; filling up and vanishing from the window frame. Shahla was somehow quite pleased to be on the way back to Schultzstrasse.

Tomorrow morning there is hospital again and in the late afternoon she will be back in her little flat on the 7th floor, sitting in front of the window, drinking her warm coffee slowly, watching the green silence of the park down there along the Elbe and the drip drip of people with their dogs. Is there anything else?

Returning to the flat and the city where she had spent the last 10 years of her life, made her feel more spirited than usual. Shahla was searching for something. She took Shahram’s letter out of her bag again.

From now (end of September) on we’re speeding towards the shorter and darker days and then until April everything will be gray. The streets will swell with movement, pleasure and even a whisper of soul, until New Years, and then…! For the next three months people are buried in themselves, sullen and isolated again, until the short spring comes, days grow brighter and warmer and a smile breezes by…

“What a life!”

“… In the past year, that we’ve been out of touch with each other (it’s what you wrote), there is nothing to speak of, nothing to see. Everything sleeps. Day and night are almost the same here. No matter! My calendar is the white hair on my pillow every morning. The things you write about the past seem like a dream. The years of achievement! Don’t make me laugh. In children’s playroom the world is one out of three hundred and sixty five dreams, but beyond this window there is no spring any more. There is no more time for us to wait for Mehdi, the Imam. No rider will appear down these furrows of snow …”

The train drove slowly onto the boat. Pegah, with her new doll in hand, was standing there, ready to go on board.

Baby, please! Keep your energy for days like mine. There are the same people on deck, sitting in corners, pouring things into their stomachs and thinking their lives had changed.