I am listening to some Art Garfunkel and Red Hot Chilli Peppers when my mother hands me these damp clothes and out-dated papers. "Pour my life into a paper cup, The ashtrays full and I'm spillin' my guts.." "Oh! Oh!" but I'm not much listening to it. Yesterday we took curtains down. Both floors. We hadn't washed them for about two or three years. And we know we do not mention why I were not slightly interested in doing so in those years. This is my grandmother's. The curtains at first floor are for the always locked rooms of my aunt. She now lives in America. In a long, strange journey they went through Turkey, Sweden and settled in America, through the past years. Since she left with her two daughters, the white lace cotton hangings had gone dark and dirty. When you looked at them from the outside of the building, a closer look revealed corpses of many poor little invertebrates lay on the base of the vitrine in foreground of the curtains. The locked doors are not meant to be a mystery. When I was very young I used to find an excuse, say whilst playing with my first cousin, to go into the room. Now and then we may open the doors to took some documents to send to my aunt when she asks. Save for the noroze each year convincing us to wash the curtains, in a month or two my cousin may come to visit Tehran.

The clothing hung on the windows of the upper floor are in small parts so my mother could put up each separately into the small volume washing machine. She has to wash the rest by hand, in the yard. The good, old, vine decorated yard.

I have to admit some matter. That we had gone through sort of a difficult life during past years. And meanwhile noroze seemed to lose all its glory. The glory of painting eggs. Finding that special little red fish. And to count, as a child, all the seven objects that decorate the Seven-Sinn Napery. I couldn't always memorise all of them, and always wondered why we have "Mahi" --Fish-- on the napery while it starts with "M." Today, many of the domestic struggles are gone. And we are not a nice little family, but we are getting to it. And I do not hide my intervention in the matters that caused some real alterations in our family. We changed to improve. My life, sometimes, looks not even half-way normal.

So shall my mind, now that I ask it out of the blue, recalls all the words that start with the sound of Sinn, "S." Seven of them come to the napery; Sekke --coin,-- Sirr --garlic,-- Senjed --oleaster,-- Sabze --grass,-- Samanu --a sort of meal,-- Saa'at --clock,-- Sibb --apple-- Sonbol --hyacinth the plant-- and Somagh --sumac.

And so today it is Friday. I am at home and after I sensibly took a nap I started cleaning the windows. After handing me the wet clothes my mother lefts me. My jukebox, ensuring I'm not to get bored, now plays Benabar, "Monsieur rêverait de creuser une cave à vins, Madame préfèrerait une deuxième salle de bain." And after all is clear, we hang curtains back to the window. Still during the forget came by drowning into misery and adventure, spring smells so strangely good in Tehran that I could hear it with joyful anticipation. I have lost accounts of time and years, but I know I hadn't talked with my father for about a year, when some weeks ago I bought him a bouquet of flowers. I would visit him at noroze again. It took me years to reconcile with my past. Perhaps next year I do celebrate heartedly at noroze. I like it better to celebrate at noroze a brilliant life experienced and a promising day to come.

You know I hate it when my jukebox's battery icon flashes near empty. "Oh! Good!" it is not now.