I Will See You Soon

Perhaps you will cry when you read this, but they will be tears of joy, because… I will see you soon. We will walk a little way together… and say nothing. We will come to a stream by the curb, with no crumpled bag or soaked doll in it, only smiling fish of every color… We will walk streets where there is no vendor’s spread in front of any shop… or, better yet, no street vendors at all. We will reach an intersection where flowers of every color dance in the boulevard’s restless wind, and no child stands there, flowers in hand, pleading with you to buy one for someone you love. We will see people who look you in the eye and smile, the sunlight painting their cheeks in a way no artist ever could… I will see you soon. In a teahouse whose famous herbal infusion is for celebration, not relief from exhaustion. Life will be sweet enough that no one comes in worn down by it… We will see city walls covered with painted butterflies in flight, with no advertisements for the sale of a kidney, an eye, or a body… Look closely and there won’t even be a trace of glue from those notices. The walls will be lovely to look at, with no need to paste anything there… We will sit in a corner of the teahouse. Friends will tease each other; backgammon dice will rattle; people will laugh and the ever-boiling samovar will bubble. But no man will be shouting into a phone… There will be no need to raise his voice. Hope will be high in people’s hearts, but loud voices will have no place there… You’ll be surprised to hear nightingales and mynas singing, yet see no bird in a cage wherever you look. There will be hens and parrots, mynas and nightingales, even vultures… but no cages. I will see you soon. We will visit a tailor’s shop full of colorful cloth. What does it matter whether it is gauze or silk? There will be green, white, and red, but no black cloth… Or if there is, no one will want it anymore. We will see plane trees along the road, and trash cans too. There will be trash, but we won’t see anyone bent over inside those bins. We will see someone bend down, though: an old gardener, smiling as he leans in to smell the flowers he planted. A little farther on, we will reach a newsstand. To be honest, it will sell cigarettes and lighters too, maybe a packet of chocolate. Curious, we will read the newspaper headlines… Persepolis and Taj face off at the 250,000-seat Shahyad Stadium… Prime Minister Visits Tesla Factory in Varamin… Airbus Unveils A410, a 1,000-Passenger Intercontinental Aircraft Ordered by Iran’s Royal Government… World Leaders Prepare to Arrive in Iran for the 2,500-Year Celebrations… Iran’s Economy No Longer Depends on Oil… Assembly of Gulf States to Meet on Kish Island… By Order of Reza Shah II, Free School Meals Will Return… Contract Workers to Receive Permanent Positions… Toman Overtakes Dollar on Currency Markets; Iran’s Toman Becomes World’s Second Most Respected Currency… Iranian Passport Ranks First Alongside Singapore’s and the UAE’s… I will see you soon… and I will tell you: You… Are… Free… You… Are Iran… Long live Iran. Long live the Shah.