The woman turned around to look at the long, wide alley. Even the trees looked different from the ones found in poor neighborhoods. She muttered, “nineteenth,” and rang the doorbell.

• Who is it?
• Ma’am, do you need a housekeeper?
• No honey, I’m the housekeeper.
• Please, I need a job. I rang every doorbell in the alley, but nobody…

She heard a click from the intercom. She rang again; and waited. Nobody answered, so she ranged the bell once more. The green light next to the camera turned on, and she realized she was being watched by the homeowner or the housekeeper.

• Lady, for heaven’s sake. I have three hungry kids back home. I am not a beggar; I’m just looking for work. Please, for the love of God. I can clean you doorstep.

The light turned off, and the woman sighed deeply. She was so weary that she couldn’t manage to shed a tear. She felt drained, and leaned against the wall. She felt saddled with the burden of the entire city. Her back was bent. She sat there on the square paving stones with an inch of grass in between them. Her mind vacant, she heard plastic slippers squeaking along from the huge yard next door. She gazed upon the gigantic white door across, then traced the door up to the sky; as if the people living in these houses were taller than her neighbors and needed such huge doors and steps. She tried to imagine how life could be in such a house; “What do you think they are doing?”  She pictured herself and her three kids in a massive hall, having kebabs on a red carpet with a bear pattern. When was their last meal? As she remembered her kids and struggled to stand up, she heard the door open. She jumped up, fixed her Chador and scarf on her head, and looked at the door impatiently. A woman, perhaps a housekeeper, scowled at her like she was a pile of excrement surrounded by a swarm of dancing red-eyed flies. She gave her a plastic bag:

• Consider this the last time you ring the bell. You rang ten times and woke up the lady’s daughters.
• I am not a beggar; I’m just looking for work.
• Work? Do you think work grows on trees around here? Do you know how many people I had to know to find work? I’ve been serving them for twenty years. Who are you, anyway? What are you? What do you want?

She held the plastic bag up by its neck like a rooster, and threw it on the ground, then gave her a dirty look and slammed the door. She heard the fading squeaks of her slippers, her footsteps on the stairs, and a door opening and closing. The woman stood still, with her hands glued on her Chador around her waist. She looked at the plastic bag and saw a packet of frozen minced meat and some apricots and cucumbers. Her head started to spin, and she leaned her hand on the white marble to prop herself up. The stone’s pleasant cool penetrated into her burning soul. Her chin trembled and a fountain of tears sprang up. She took the plastic bag and headed back home with heavy steps with her sore, seemingly bastinadoed feet. She counted her steps from one house to another. Thirty-six, thirty-seven, and thirty-eight. She decided to ring the bell and uttered, “The twentieth.” Before she rang the bell, she heard welding from the yard. She remembered Rahim and her hand froze in the air. One day, he had come to propose. He knelt before her father and asked:

• I was an orphan. I want her because we can commiserate. I am literate enough to provide for her, and strong enough to take care of myself. I am honorable enough that she won’t have to worry about anything as long as I live.

They got married two days later. She fell for Rahim the moment she offered him tea[1] and saw his stained white socks. Rahim said:

• Jana[2], I changed, but forgot my socks.

He always called her Jana. Then, Ameneh, and Ala were born, and their house was robbed on the day Atiyeh was born. Everybody said she was bad luck. Rahim said:

• Fuck ’em. They are the ones who bring us bad luck. We will name her Atiyeh (God’s gift) so everyone knows there is no such thing as bad or good luck.

Before they even got Atiyeh’s birth certificate, Rahim fell off a scaffold and died. There was a melody to welding, just like Rahim’s voice. She had nothing to worry about as long as he was alive. He was a man. The man. Now he was gone and couldn’t see his sweet Jana begging for a living. She dropped her hand, and down went the plastic bag. She bought some aluminum phosphide pills and returned home.

A child was dragging his father to a greengrocer:

• Dad, Dad, will you buy me some apricots?

Another child with his head on his father’s shoulder turned around to his brother:

• Dad, apricot, I want apricot!

The man stared at the apricots, arranged meticulously in the shape of the Pyramids. “Do not Touch!” He hesitated for a few seconds, which seemed to go on forever. He thought about all of the “I’ll buy laters” that he had fed his children. He put down his child and said:

• Stay with your brother. I’ll go get some.

The boys gulped and followed their father with their eyes. The older brother held his little brother’s hand. Their father stumbled inside. He had folded down the back of his shoes, and his cracked white heels looked to be covered in chalk. His children recognized him with his cracked white heels.

• Sir, how much for apricots?

The clerk checked him, and frowned at his foul sweat:

• Bro, get back. You stink to high heaven.

He then told him the prices of three types of apricot and realized that he could afford none. He put his hand in his pocket and showed all of his cash to the clerk:

• How many large apricots can you give me for this?

The store assistant took the money:

• Jeez! Man, this is nasty! How many do you want? Do you want them for your kids? Go take a few.
• No, just give me my money’s worth. Not like this.

The store assistant smirked:

• For your money, I’ll have to cut a big one into four pieces, eat three pieces, and give you the last one. Don’t be stubborn. Take some for your kids. Come back with the money whenever you can. And take your money, too.

Then he took his checkered red and black cloth to clean the counter. The man left the cash on the counter. He hesitated for a moment, looked back at his children, and took two large apricots as he left the store. He stumbled out as if his shoes were set in concrete. The clerk hollered:

• At least wash them! There’s the tap! Oh! They ate them already!

He shook his head in pity, sprayed the glass on the counter, and wiped it with the cloth.

The man walked with his children until they reached the ring road.

• Kids stay here; I’ll be back in half an hour.
• Dad, will you be buying some apricots again?
• I will, son.
• Buy ten, dad.

His pace became brisk, for now he had a destination. The boys were standing next to the road under the July sun. Their eyes were following not their father, but two kids sitting in a passing black BMW-X7. The woman on the passenger seat said:

• I have some shopping to do from Mr. Saeed’s store. We’re out of fruits.

The man shook his head and looked at his children through the mirror. They were lost in their tablets and had headphones on. He stopped for the red light, and pursed his lips:

• They never look up and out! Gaah!

He was still transfixed on the mirror, and he suddenly turned around and exclaimed:

• Dana, did you see that?

The woman looked back and asked:

• What happened?

The man lowered the volume on the stereo.

• I think somebody fell off the bridge.
• Oh God! Do you mean he committed suicide?
• I’m not sure.
• Could it be a plastic bag or something?
• I couldn’t see exactly, but I think I saw a man jump off.

The light turned green. The man honked for the car in front that was distracted by what had happened five hundred meters away, trying to figure it out. The cars set off to their destinations like school kids returning home.

They got home and the woman told her housekeeper:

• Safiyeh, bring the fruits from the car and wash them, it’s a scorcher today. They must have withered already. I’ll go put the kids to sleep.
• Ma’am, why do you make these poor things to sleep every afternoon? They would sleep if they were tired!
• Afternoon nap enhances kids’ IQ.
• Alright then, I’ll take them and read for them instead of shout. Kids, daddy’s room, on the bed, all three of us together.

The kids shouted:

• Yaaaay!
• No outdoor clothes on our bed.

The kids stripped naked in the room and jumped on their parents’ gilt and wood-carved bed in their white panties. The man held his children in his arms, and all three of them lied back on the big, comfy pillows and sunk into white sheets. One of the kids buried her face into the pillow and took a deep sniff:

• It smells like a peach.

The other kid followed:

• Nope! It’s not a peach. It’s an apricot.
• Okay, kids. Quiet now, or there won’t be a story. Then your mom will come, and you’ll have to close your eyes after a spanking.

The man opened a book.

• What is the story?
• He hasn’t said it yet!
• Hansel and Gretel.
• What is that mean?
• They’re the name of the woodcutter’s children. Once upon a time. A great famine befell the city.
• Daddy, what’s a famine?
• It means that people had nothing to eat.
• Stop talking in the middle of the story.
• Kids, I’ll have to call your mom if you don’t keep quiet. Now listen: The woodcutter and his wife could not feed their children, so they abandoned them in a great forest.

They heard the doorbell. Dana went to the room and looked at his husband and their kids. She smiled and closed the door. Safiyeh answered the door, then returned to the kitchen and continued to wash the fruits. The woman went into the kitchen:

• Who was it?
• It was a beggar ma’am.
• Why did you turn her down? You should have given her something.
• No, ma’am. They’ll remember the house and keep coming every day.

The doorbell echoed in the house again. Safiyeh left the kitchen with her hands still wet, and saw the woman in Chador on the screen. She turned around, returned to the kitchen, and continued washing fruits. The doorbell rang again, and Dana lost her temper:

• Safiyeh? Don’t you see that Davood is trying to put the kids to sleep? Why won’t you answer the door?
• It’s the same beggar.
• I told you to give her something. Then, turn off the doorbell so that kids sleep for at least half an hour so they can digest the food.
• What should I give her, ma’am?
• some meat and rice.

Safiyeh grinded her teeth and pressed the camera button to see if the woman was still there. She returned to the kitchen to take out a meat packet from the fridge and was joined by Dana.

• Safiyeh, give her some fruits as well.

Safiyeh threw in some apricots and cucumbers like she was throwing crumpled paper into the trash. She grasped the plastic tote bag from the neck and went to the door.

[1] Iranian’s serve tea when the groom and their family goes to bride-to-be’s house to ask her hand in marriage.

[2] Term of endearment