The Darkness at the End of the Tunnel

By Sharam Rainfall

The Darkness At The End Of The Tunnel… is a book that was born out of pain and is dedicated to all those who have tasted loneliness. To those who saw the darkness and the light within the darkness….To those life has passed by and left behind. To the lonely stranger who walks in a rainy town. To the woman who sits by the window for days, anticipating the return of her love. To the man who saw his beloved in the arms of another and remained silent. To those who were misunderstood and found themselves on a lonely island amongst the crowd…To those who sat long nights in a cold, dark room and didn't have a single soul in the whole world. To those who embraced themselves at nightfall, with cold sheets, wrapped in silence. To those hearts in which the candle of love still flickers.

To all those, “The Darkness” is the light of all dreams, the longing, the desire and the yearning. Because only through the greatest loneliness, suffering, pain, and absence, only through the deepest valley and the darkest darkness, can you arrive at the footsteps of the greatest love of all…


Sharam Rainfall

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796071436

Sharam Rainfall

Sharam Rainfall was born, he is alive, and he will surely die. Sharam Rainfall takes us on a journey through the divine mystery: the universality of pain. “The Darkness at the End Of The Tunnel” captures one man’s search for a safe harbor… a place of peaceful eternity away from the limits of a man-made mind. This soliloquy of sadness honors the complexity of our dualistic human experience. It speaks to the power of grace and understanding, perseverance full of love, and the unequivocal embrace of the unknown. - Andrea Vielma, MA LMFT, Founder of Alma Vida: Igniting Human Potential

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Copyright © 2019 by Sharam Rainfall.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Front cover design: Golan Nuchian

Rev. date: 12/04/2019

Xlibris

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CONTENTS

1. The End (Introduction)

2. The Button

3. Narrow Bridge

4. The Jewish Jesus

5. Temez, Five Years of Humiliation

6. Thoughts at Night

7. Neighborhood of Shacks

8. A Day in a Life

9. The Window

10. The Sea in Winter

11. Mikveh Israel—Two Goodbyes

12. Do Not Belong

13. Annaise

14. Birth and Death

15. Eron

16. The Basement

17. In the Army

18. Hidden Paradise

19. The Mafia Man

20. Dinna and the Hours in the Darkness

21. Memories of a Foreign Land

22. The Time Machine

23. Another Defeat

24. The Return

25. Three Women

26. Movies and Psychoanalysis

27. Summer in New Jersey

28. The Last Stop

29. A Walk in the Snow

30. A Letter to a Friend

31. The Death of Love

32. The Lonely God

33. The Melancholy Heart

34. The Man

35. The Beginning (Conclusion)

36. God’s Laughter

I extend my deep gratitude and appreciation to all the wonderful people who helped and encouraged me to bring this book to life. You will always be in my heart.

—S. Rainfall

I want to extend my sincere gratitude to:

Jubilee Slivkoff

Caren Rosenthal

Lana Bass

Diane Meyer

For helping with the translation of this book to English.

The End (Introduction)

Sadness is limitless and has no boundaries, and what we call joy is so short and so mortal. Politicians deal with the world of power and manipulation, economists deal with numbers of the stock market, and astrologers deal with the meaning of the stars. Historians focus on the ridiculous cycle of events, scientists on the discovery of the secrets of God and the universe, archaeologists on far distant and disappearing worlds, prophets on Judgment Day, critics on being important in their own eyes, and judges on what we call justice. But I, I have a desire to write about love, sadness, suffering, misery, pain, and loneliness.

One time when I was at a summer camp in New Jersey, I saw sadness. I saw loneliness in its deepest form. Sitting on the bank of a small lake, surrounded by a tall, dense forest, a delicate rain fell upon and kissed the water. I was surrounded by stillness, absolute silence, and wonder. I sat there an hour, or maybe three. I cannot be sure because time lost all meaning. I thought of myself as the only person in the world, drifting like a dream into the water. Those moments were small droplets of happiness, and they passed.

Another time, at night, the skies appeared dark, ominous, and threatening to burst like they knew what was coming. After I saw the one I loved with the one she loved, I cried and cried. When dawn broke, the well of my tears ran dry. I was a young boy then, but now I am too weak to cry.

Once when I was in the military, I found myself alone in a small depressing room in an army camp in the north of Israel. It was winter, and the rain came down without pause. And I sat down in that room and asked God to take my soul. And that night passed too.

Everything passes, or maybe we just imagine it so. There is nothing now that wasn’t before. Everything repeats itself, and anything that will be has existed already. So, what is the meaning of anything? Is wisdom more important than ignorance? Is beauty more important than ugliness? Is sadness of less value than joy? Everyone, Caesars and kings, the beggars and the homeless, the lovers and the lonely drifters, the rich and those whom we call the poor, the beautiful and the graceful, the powerful and the rulers, all of them—their days are numbered, because everything passes, and nothing passes, and everything is nothing before God. I know the wise and the dull alike will arrive at the place where God is.

I write these words at work. In front of me there flows a river, wondrous in its beauty. From where I stand looking out of the window, I see it flowing until a line of tall pine trees cuts across the horizon. A man stands there, looking at the water, with his hands in his pockets. A short distance from him stands another man. He is alone too, but after a few minutes, a beautiful young woman approaches him. They fall together in each other’s arms. The water flows without pause. The lovers stand there for a while. I stare at them in silence, and I know that there is no sound louder than the anguished sound of silence.

One afternoon when I was sitting in the back of the bus on my way back from the sea, a couple returning from their day at the beach got on the bus at one of the stops. Since the bus was crowded, the couple came and sat next to me. The beautiful, nice-figured young girl sat beside me. As she sat down, the towel covering her legs fell to the side and revealed her beautiful golden thigh. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, and I tried to look through the window at the senseless view of stores, cars, and people rushing here and there. But my eyes took me again and again in the direction of the leg of the beautiful girl sitting next to me. At some point, her boyfriend noticed, reached over, and covered her nakedness with the towel. As he did this, he sent me an insulting and wounding glance. I felt embarrassed, and wished I could be buried in the bench I was sitting on. A few stops later, the couple got off the bus, with their bodies wrapped around each other, and went along their way.

Today when I was bored with everything happening around me, I glanced at the newspaper and something caught my eye. The paper was open to back page, and I read a small column about a man who died while sitting on the subway in New York. Apparently he was dead for five or ten hours, and while dead, he traveled back and forth through hundreds of stations on a back bench, and nobody paid attention to his existence there. Or maybe nobody cared. Who knows? The reality of what occurred is beyond our knowledge. And this reminded me of another chapter in my life when I was on one of the upper floors of a Los Angeles area hospital. On the street below lay a completely shattered corpse. It seems this anonymous (to me at least) man jumped from that building and rid himself of this world. And what was sadder to me than the tragic ending of the dead man was the fact that the people in the street passed him by, back and forth, without stopping for a second, even out of curiosity. I was left wondering if people jump from these same buildings every day until these events become regular, boring, and repetitive. Who knows?

Time does not exist. I wonder sometimes if my childhood days were merely imagination and illusion, or maybe just a foggy memory of a dream upon arising in the morning. Life is long, very long, and when I think about what I have been through from the dawn of my first memories, it seems to me like hundreds or thousands of years have passed. Today when I was standing in my kitchen in a dream state, my two-year-old daughter came to me and gave me a strong embrace. Suddenly, the empty space in my chest filled with sadness, and it was difficult to breathe. After all, I should have been happy that such a loving spirit was standing next to me. But as I said, instead of that, I was filled with sadness because I know everything is temporary. She will grow up and fly away from this nest, in the way of the world, and nothing will remain of this event.

In the afternoon, my two-year-old daughter and I leave the apartment. I’m driving my old VW Bug toward my six-year-old daughter’s school. The trip drags on, and I don’t know what to do. On my way, I pass by a creek next to my house. The water in this creek is stagnant, unmoving. This creek was once full and flowing, but the world changed. Progress caused the town planners to build neighborhoods and buildings around the creek, and somehow, they blocked the source of the water. And now, as I said, the waters of the creek are silent. On the other side of the creek, I see huge, luxurious homes in which anonymous people live. Anonymous because, although I have been living here for almost a year, I have never seen any of the tenants or even a child in the yard, playing with his friend. Everything looks deserted, like a ghost town. Maybe rich people are too busy to sit in their yards or send their children out to play. It’s a mystery!

Now I am driving and passing by a river stunning in its beauty, the same river on whose banks the restaurant where I work is located. In this moment, various feelings pass through my mind. The river reminds me of love, nature, stillness, simplicity, innocence, heaven in the soul. Next to the river, on the freeway where I am traveling, cars rush here and there. Every person is on the way to their own business and interests. Everyone is rushing, but to where? Haven’t they heard of death?

Across the river, I exit the bridge and stop at the red light. By the light, as usual, are several beggars. They beg in packs. Two are standing and begging, and two others are lying down behind the roadside bushes smoking. After a while, there is a changing of the guard. These beggars have neither home nor cars; they don’t have plans for the short or long term; all they want is to satisfy their hunger and to smoke cheap cigarettes one after the other. Beyond that, they don’t have any hope, dream or challenge, and I, in some ridiculous way, am a little jealous of them. I have a place to sleep at the end of the day. I have kids and work, I have electricity, water and rent bills, but I don’t have what they have. I don’t have the feeling of a person who has no goal beyond his very basic needs.

When I arrive at the schoolyard, I see my six-year-old daughter standing next to a wall, looking here and there, wondering why I am not already there to pick her up. My heart suddenly fills with an old memory and yearning for my childhood. In those days, I used to arrive home from school and find it deserted. There was no other soul to greet me. And so, as days passed, I would not even bother to go home. I would throw my school bag behind some bush and wander the streets until the hunger that had been gnawing in me for hours became unbearable. Then, without a choice, I would return home. I will write in the next chapters about this period in my life.

I drive back in the direction of my home. At the light, the guards have changed, but the sign asking for help is the same. When we arrive home, my daughter asks me to stay in her room and play with her and her toys. I agree immediately, but some far and unclear memory pinches my heart and chokes my throat.

The afternoon passes and evening comes, like the millions of evenings that came before it and the million years that will come after it. Really, everything is meaningless and illusory. In the evening, I put on my coat and go out into the street. I don’t have a goal or anywhere to go. I wander in the streets like a drifter. I light my pipe and inhale the smoke and walk. After a while, I feel hunger and thirst, and I head to a deserted bar on Sixth Avenue. Inside, the light is dim. Next to the billiard table, four guys, neglected in their appearance, play and smoke. An ugly man sits at the bar, his body covered with tattoos, and he sips from a tall glass of beer. In the right corner sit two young women. One appears to be from the Far East, and the other, a blonde, looks like a local girl.

And so I sit at the end of the bar and order myself a beer. A few minutes later, a man about thirty-five years old, with dirty clothes and a filthy face, enters the room. Of all the available places to sit, he chooses the seat next to me. Slowly but surely, he starts to bother me. He’s half drunk and talking nonsense. That doesn’t bother me, but he’s talking with his face about two inches from mine. And as much as I try to draw away, he gets so close that I can smell his stinking alcohol-and-cigarette breath. He is trying to explain to me that if I am looking for a woman and I want to fuck, he knows someone he can set me up with. I tell him as politely as I can that I’m not interested. I explain to him that I just want to drink my beer in peace. But he won’t let go of the subject. The two girls on the other side of the room don’t pay attention to me or the stinking mouth sitting next to me. The four men are still playing pool, and the bartender exchanges some words with the tattooed man sitting at the bar in front of him. It looks like no one can rescue me.

After that, the stinking mouth starts explaining the same thing as before, but with hand motions. With one hand he is creating a circle with his thumb and forefinger, and with his disgusting tongue, he licks the circle and smiles. His mouth reveals four or five missing teeth. Finally, I give up on finishing my beer. I stand up and go out into the street again. Now the street is almost empty of people. The street lights change from green to yellow to red in an orderly manner, but no car passes. I feel a little more at ease, and even good, when I am by myself. The company of people pressures me and evokes in me a feeling of discomfort and possibly suffocation. I avoid the company of others as much as I can.

I heard once about a famous pianist who, in the last years of his life, refused to perform for or meet people. He lived at a remote ranch with his house pets and his piano, which were his only friends. Every few days, at his request, a local merchant brought him his daily foodstuffs and necessities and left these outside his door. He sat in his house day and night, playing the wonderful works of Bach. I bought a few of his recordings, and as I listened, my heart filled with indescribable happiness. A long time ago, I played some magical and heart-trembling Bach pieces. Today, I cannot play anymore.

When I arrive home, it’s already past midnight. I change my clothes and go to the room of Heely, my two-year-old daughter. She is sleeping like an angel. Her face is soft and beautiful beyond measure. I cover her small body with a blanket and kiss her forehead delicately. She opens her eyes for a moment, looks at me, smiles, and goes back to her world, the dream world of a small and pure child. After that, I go to the room of Talya, my six-year-old. She looks exactly like me, and in some way, I relive my childhood through her life, but with one big difference: I am trying to do everything so that her childhood will be totally different from mine. I cover her also with a blanket, kiss her forehead, and leave. I get into my bed, and there sleeps the mother of my two girls. I stare at her for a long time and listen to the sound of her breathing. And I should be very happy. But something will not allow me any rest. I have a great desire to break, to destroy, to be alone, to be a hermit, to be lonely, single, deserted in a distant place, without father or mother, without wife or home. Maybe then I will find true rest.

The next day when I find a spare moment, my eye alights on a Hebrew poetry book by David Fogel. I don’t know anything about him, his personality, or his life. I don’t know when he was born or when he left this world. (Does that have any real importance?) I open the book and flip through a few of his poems. One in particular catches my eye:

Dark autumn days

on the metropolis hangs a heavy sky, painful a lifeless rain without a goal hovers dim droplets on the window pane, lost

in an ancient wild forest

an entombed cave, black

alone I will reside comfortably like a frightful gray bear deserted and friendless wrapped in slumber, lying in hiding my heart will dream an invisible dream until the Spring will bloom

(translation from Hebrew)

When I read this poem, my heart fills with a happy sadness, full of yearning. God, how beautiful is your world when someone can describe with such beautiful words exactly how I feel! After all, this poet is from a different generation, a different world, a different country. And still, how close I feel to him. With feelings, sadness, beauty, there is no age, country, religion, or time.

I continue to browse through the book. I get to a part in the book where there are no poems, only critiques by a man named Aharon Komem. First, I wonder why something that comes from the heart, whether it is in music, poetry, or painting, needs an interpreter or a critic. I am not a poet, not even an expert in the Hebrew language, yet the poems of Fogel touch and play on the strings of my heart, and make me emotional beyond any explanation. With a sick curiosity, I read the critic’s inflated words. Apparently, if you are not clever enough to understand his bombastic expressions, you are not smart enough to enjoy poetry.

He writes about one of the poems:

On the second and fourth line of the poem, Fogel demonstrates an unforgivable neglect. This is a poem from a third- or fourth-rate poet. He drags a line into the poem from a place of humor for the sake of the rhyme.

If he had written that none of the poems in the book touched his heart or evoked any kind of emotion or yearning, then I would understand and respect him. But when I read the fake and inflated lines of self-importance of this expert in poetry, I wonder how it could be that in our world there are people who still haven’t heard about death. After all, compared to death, everything lacks importance. Even the beggar, the rich man, and the man who wears his fame like a crown, who thinks he is the center of the universe—all will perish in the end. Where does this stupidity and arrogance come from? How can a man believe that just because he received a certain university degree, he can judge a poetic creation in which someone else invested his entire heart and feeling? In our world, there are many small people, but only a few, in their greatness, know that they are small. What is most unbearable are the critics’ columns in the newspaper that the masses read and, based on the opinion of one person, decide which book to read or which movie not to see.

I remember one critic in particular whose self-importance drove him insane. I know him very well because he was one of my professors at the music college in Tel Aviv where I studied for three years. And because I was his student, from time to time, I read his columns critiquing classical music. This critic, who had a great command of the Hebrew language, would steadily and systematically write bombastic words maligning the work of Zubin Mehta. In my opinion, his words bordered on hatred. I can only conclude that my professor’s critiques bore no relation to Zubin Mehta’s work. I believe he was obsessed with achieving status, fame, and self-importance, by publicly criticizing such a famous conductor as Mehta. But wise people say that silence is as sharp as a sword. I never heard the maestro engaging in any conversation or debate with this professor/critic. Like they say, The dogs are barking but the convoy keeps marching forward.

Day after day, the sun rises and sets, and it seems to us that life has some kind of meaning. People make plans for the future, save fortunes, cheat, lie, and sell themselves out for materialism and fame. It seems that the future doesn’t exist at all. It is just a mirage. In this hour, thousands of babies will be born, and thousands of people will rid themselves of the burden of this world.

It is two o’clock in the morning. Silence hangs in the air. Beyond my window is absolute darkness. Now and then, a lonely cricket sighs, waiting for morning. Outside, it is calm and quiet, and in my heart, there is chaos and war. I live my life moving among three different states of mind. One is filled with memories and photographs that have been carved in my brain. Another is a state of daydreaming and imagination. And in between these two states, there is yet another, a gray monotonous reality.

Once I saw an interview with a famous Hollywood director who had a blockbuster movie, and everyone was praising and admiring his talent and success. And he was asked, In light of your tremendous success and all this admiration, are you happy? The director paused a long moment, his expression changed, and his eyes narrowed, and he replied, If I were to add together all of the moments in my life in which I was truly happy, in the best case it might sum up to about eighteen seconds.

People ask each other daily in greeting how the other is doing. And although everyone usually answers shallowly that they are fine, the reality is eighteen seconds. We wake up every day to our daily work, convincing ourselves that we feel good, pursuing our occupations that create our income. But the truth is that everyone is waiting patiently for the end of the day so that they can go to a different place. I’m talking about the simple worker who stands for eight hours in front of a screwed-up, noisy machine and asks himself thousands of times if this work fulfills his childhood dreams. Is this what he wished for, back then? And I’m talking about the doctor who lives his entire life with fame, prestige, and wealth. Even he, more than the simple worker standing in front of the machine, hates the moment when the door opens and the first patient enters his clinic. In my lifetime, I have met many doctors of all kinds, from family doctors to famous surgeons. I never met one who was happy with his choice. Because after all, who can be happy working in a hospital that smells like vomit and feces and medication? Who can be happy spending half his waking life among sickness and death? I wonder how many people would choose to become doctors if the salary of a doctor were equivalent to the pay of a factory worker. And if being a doctor did not include prestige and wealth in our society, how many mothers would want their children to pursue this profession?

When I’m not in the state of mind where everything is repetitious, gray, and ordinary, I am usually wandering from one memory to another. Every note in the works of Bach, for example, carries with it a private memory. Every scent takes me back thirty years to a small alley from my childhood. Everything is so wrapped in fog and melancholy that I wonder if any of it ever really happened. The scent of oranges takes me back to the orchard next to my family’s shack in the immigrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Kfar Saba. In this orchard, I spent more time than at home because in some ways, I didn’t have a home. When I entered that orchard, I imagined that I left behind the depressing reality of my ten-year-old boyish world, and before me opened a fantasy world in which I could be anything I dreamed.

Of my three states of mind, I love dreaming my daydreams most of all. Often it is the same dream but with variations. In my sweetest daydream, I live in a cabin in a forest, on the bank of a rapidly flowing creek. The water is cold and pure, and I can see the bottom clearly. I wake up every morning and swim in the creek for an hour. The only sounds I hear are the beautiful songs of the birds and the flowing water. After swimming in the creek, I go back to my cabin and prepare myself a cup of tea, and fill my pipe with tobacco. I drink and I smoke. After a while, I take care of my animals. I feed the horses, the cows, and the goats. When I finish these tasks, I go to the vegetable garden behind the cabin, and I weed among the tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, and onions. Then I pick a few tomatoes, cucumbers, and an onion, and prepare myself a meal. All the while, I’m surrounded by a beautiful silence. I don’t have a TV or a radio. I don’t subscribe to a newspaper, and I don’t have a telephone. And so there is no possibility for anyone to disturb my peace of mind. After my meal, I take my guitar and sit on the porch overlooking the creek and play one of Bach’s preludes. In this way, noontime arrives, and I nap lightly with a smile on my face. In my sleep, I don’t dream any dreams, because I am already living in a dream.

I wake up in the afternoon, content in the knowledge that, since morning, I have done only the things I wanted to do. Again, I go to the creek and swim, something I like more than almost anything else. I have only one simple and easy thought in my mind, a thought that does not worry me at all: what to prepare for dinner. I don’t have any plans or noble goals or challenges. There is no mountain I aspire to climb. I don’t have any fortune hidden in a concealed place that I need to worry about. The future does not exist, and therefore, I do not need to make any plans. I throw my small net into the creek and catch one fish; that is more than enough to sustain me. After I clean the fish, I prepare a small fire, cook the fish, and sit on the ground and eat slowly. I have no place to hurry to. Day is dying in the west, the air is crisp and clean, and the water flows by in front of me. I feed the cat and dog sitting next to me, and after dinner, I play a few songs by Jim Croce and Shalom Chanoch. In this way, the evening passes, and I am alone and happy. I have no one to talk to; therefore, I don’t get bored. I have no expectation that someone might come to visit me; therefore, I’m not disappointed. I add more wood to the fire and sit, my pipe hanging from the corner of my mouth.

And now I have a few choices, each of them equally wonderful. I can read a book, compose a new song, or listen to Bach. I decide to listen to the Chaconne by Bach, which makes my heart tremble. The day is approaching its end, or perhaps it is just continuing into a magical, endless night. And tomorrow, another day like this one awaits me.

In my youth, I thought that it was more important to be clever and sophisticated than to be a simpleton. And now, after many years of trying to be like the clever ones, I understand that being simple is equally important, if not more so. In the same way that death is more meaningful than what we call life, sadness is tremendous and a thousand times deeper than some shallow and temporary joy. The bad, or what we refer to as bad, is necessary for the existence of good. And every shade of color exists because there is another color that contrasts with it. Otherwise, how could we recognize wisdom if foolishness did not exist?

I was old in my youth, and now I’m older. It seems that I have lived thousands of years already, and I’m still alive. And during this lifetime, I have died numerous times, many different kinds of deaths, and I’m still alive. Life is a strange illusion. How ridiculous and funny it is to plan things, to raise children, amass a fortune, seek treasure, build a point of view, believe in something, get angry or laugh, love and be rejected, or to feel jealousy! How ridiculous it is to define a challenge or a goal! How ridiculous to want to be loved or respected, to become a king or a beggar! How ridiculous to desire fame or a good reputation! All these things are ridiculous in their lack of meaning in the context of life. And I, the person writing these lines, have lived all these ridiculous things. In the same way that life is a dream and an illusion, man is at the most a joke that, in the best scenario, brings a satanic smile to the face of God.

The Button

I feel the need to write about my life the way it happened: the suffering, loneliness, pain, sorrow, and through being misunderstood everywhere I’ve turned. Wanting to write about my life does not include a desire to be a poet or a novelist delivering contrived or clever turns of phrase, or breathtaking tales. This need is a pure and honest attempt to write the naked truth without concealing anything. What I write here I bring from the depth of my heart and the well of my memories that for many years urgently longed to be set free, and although I tried for many years, I can no longer deny or ignore their release.

I travel in time to my earliest memories, or more accurately, the memories that still rise in my consciousness and will be my companions until the day I cease to have remembrance. My first memory is also my first memory of being deprived of love. I was maybe three years old. The light in the room was a shabby, dingy yellow. My mother was lying beside me, trying to put me to sleep, but I knew even then that falling asleep would mean I would lose her. I held the button of her sweater with all my might while pleading with her not to leave me. She was not there when I woke the next morning.

From the single photograph that still exists from my childhood, I see that I was a scrawny child with black eyes and black hair. From the same picture, I observe the way my sister and brother looked as they stood flanking me, my sister who is eight years my senior, with dark features like me, and my brother who is four years older than I am, with light skin and hair. My sister and brother are beautiful like child models. I am not entirely sure when this photo was taken, but we all were dressed formally and look well taken care of.

I was born in Tehran, and until I found my birth certificate at the age of twenty-five, I had no idea of the date of my arrival in this world (not that this detail has any true meaning to me). When I was twenty-five, I found my birth certificate among some pictures and documents my parents brought with them from Iran. It had a Persian date and the signature of the interior officer named Nurolla Samimi. There is a drawing of a lion and a sun on the front cover, and on the last page, there is an empty line for the date of death. The first time I noticed that, I was filled with horror, thinking how a place was saved on the certificate of birth for the moment of death. Over the years, I learned how these two events are correlated and codependent; they are inseparable. In any case, I found out that after my birth, my mother went into a state of shock or severe postpartum depression. Did this have something to do with the fact that I was not planned, an accident? It is possible.

There was a time I thought how wonderful it would be if a human could be born old, say at a hundred years of age, then when he is old and experienced, he would grow younger, facing his middle age and finally childhood. Why did I find this idea appealing? First, I assumed a man can be optimistic knowing he will part from this world when he is young and still has his full strength. Second, I thought an old man could use all the wisdom of his life right from the beginning. It is obvious this can never be possible, and I am not only talking about the physical limitation, but the fact there is no way a man can acquire knowledge and wisdom without experiencing pain and suffering.

I want to write about what rises in my memory from my childhood, a time that seems many ages distant, greater than the decades that have elapsed. All my memories are set against a sad background because I was born into a sad situation. In the first years of my life, I was not aware of the details of the misery in which my family existed, but I am convinced that my soul and spirit consumed that atmosphere, which shaped my life and personality until this very day, and maybe until eternity passes away.

I’ll start by explaining the way my parents met. My mother, her twin sister, and their three brothers lived with their parents in a complex of condos, which were built around a circular common space. Five or six families shared one central yard. This kind of arrangement was very common in Iran in those days. My mother’s mother, my grandmother, of whom I have no recollection, was a hard and bitter woman. She raised her five kids with the value system that considered material success as the highest priority. While the three boys in the family were groomed to be men of business, the two daughters, my mother and her twin sister, were raised in an atmosphere of fear and isolation. Throughout all their childhood and adolescent years, they were locked in the house, not allowed to go out, or have friends of the same age. Their world was fully contained within the home, and the only glimpse they had of the world outside was the view from the rooftop. Rarely could they play in the common yard. This is the backdrop against which my parents met for the first time. Judging from the few photos of those days, they both were very good looking. My mother was a beautiful woman with dark eyes and long, wavy black hair. My father had a handsome and respectful appearance, and everyone who met him was struck by his charm and grace.

One day my father went to the area in which my mother lived, and he caught sight of her. Could it be he fell in love with her at first sight? In any case, she captured his interest. He inquired about her and soon asked her parents for her hand. A very short time later, they were engaged. They got permission to go out a few times, closely chaperoned by one of her brothers. Before long, they got married, and that was the moment everything started to go wrong.

Although I want to write about my father’s life and death in length in another chapter, I must briefly mention his failed attempts to succeed in business. Anything he tried became a painful disaster. For a while, he had a small table in a very crowded bazaar in Tehran, then he was a partner in an appliance store with two friends—they were not friends. Once, he bought a commuter bus to transfer passengers between Tehran and Isfahan. The bus spent much more time in the repair shop than on the road. Then he bought a store selling fabric in another busy shopping street in the center of Tehran. He managed that store for a few years, but his financial situation continued to sink and eventually sank into bankruptcy.

The feeling and the atmosphere in our home was gloomy and sad. A thick stench of distress and helplessness permeated every corner. In an attempt to survive, I repressed much of this time to the recesses of my memory. I believe I observed and I was influenced deeply and dangerously by this dismal fog; the things a man tries to suppress are more harmful than the things he remembers.

A lingering memory from those sad days was when I was about five years old. One evening, my mother took me with her to visit one of her brothers’ families. These people were rich, or so it seemed to me by comparison to our circumstances. In that house, you could find things my family could only dream of possessing. As I was a young child, my attention was caught by the large number of toys scattered throughout the house. I was drawn to one toy bus or truck because I simply did not have any toys at home. The only thing I did have was my imagination that had the power to transform my father’s shoes into a pair of ships or houses or cars. I began to play with that real toy. I was just a hungry and deprived five-year-old who wanted to play. My mother found my natural behavior shameful and embarrassing. She yelled at me not to touch anything and not to play with the bus. I took that very hard. I did not cry and did not say a word, but right then, I started developing my low self-esteem and lack of self-respect. If a five-year-old must be ashamed of his desire to play with his cousins’ toys, then something must be wrong with his—my—personality. I vividly remember this painful incident, and maybe it is not a wonder why to this very day, I have difficulty enjoying the simple pleasures that life offers.

I want to write and write for I feel the words are flowing through my fingers, yet the necessities and obligations of day-to-day life force me to pause so I can go to work. In my soul, I am still that four-year-old child in almost all aspects. While I relive moment after moment of my memories, I must at least behave as a responsible adult.

I arrive at the bar where I work as a server. The place is located inside a nice hotel on the banks of a spectacular river. When I enter, the bar is still relatively empty, but slowly filling with all kinds of people. I enjoy my job maybe because the time I spend in this place enables me to observe the lives and behaviors of other humans. Here, I see a woman in her forties whose thick layers of makeup accentuate how wrinkled she is. And there, a group of drunks around a table speak loudly and, from time to time, burst into uncontrollable and meaningless laughter. Is it happiness or is it the wine that brings animation to their veins? Here, a couple sits together. The woman wears a dress, which reveals more than conceals. She is with a gray-haired, middle-aged man, unable to disguise the belly years of drinking beer has provided him. Now the bar is getting busier, and there in one of the dark corners sits a lonely man. He does not laugh nor speak to anyone. He is one of the regulars, so I bring him his usual drink. He is not a man of words and silently accepts his drink. I, who have always been the friend of all the lonely people in the world, understand him and respect his silence.

The band is now playing stupid songs loudly, and the volume increases as the evening advances. It reminds me of bands like the Rolling Stones, who have been playing the same simple, meaningless music for the last forty years, drawing a hundred thousand devoted fans to their concerts while maybe twenty people show up to listen to a guitarist who plays compositions by Bach. Now about thirty people are on the dance floor—is that dancing? Every man has his way of running from reality, or more correctly, disguising it. One loses himself to wine to the point of oblivion and another jumps around to a noisy song, and they tell themselves they are happy. Is there really a happy man in this crowded bar? The man in the dark corner waves to me to bring him a fresh drink. Where he sits is now darker, and there is no one next to him—not a man nor a woman. He does not dance, and I am the only one who approaches him. I put his drink in front of him, and as I do, I see, despite the lack of light, the expression on his face and in his eyes. He looks like an ancient sculpture and, like me, observes the laughing, talking, dancing crowd. It is already one in the morning, and the place begins to empty. The happy clowns have deserted the dance floor. The band packs up their guitars and speakers. The woman with the thick makeup is gone and the room grows quieter now. My lonely friend gets up and leaves to go to sleep by himself in a cold and empty bed in a gray and gloomy room.

I will resume my story about my childhood. I find myself at the edge of a sidewalk with thousands of people on a very busy street in Tehran. The police have put barriers all over the city. In front of me passes a carriage elaborately decorated with gold and vibrant colors. The Persian king and his wife Farah are within. Sitting across from them is their two-year-old son, the heir to the throne. The Shah looks pale and different somehow from the way I remembered him from the photos that hung in every public office and private home in Iran. He sits motionless, almost like a statue. The crowd was cheering and clapping enthusiastically, but he did not move or acknowledge the adulation. He looked upon his subjects from the height of the royal carriage. Twenty-five years after that day, he died exiled from his homeland, defeated and alone. God, before your greatness there are no kings or Caesars, and no poor or rich. We all stand naked before you. This thought awakens feelings of pity in me every time I encounter a man that holds a high position, takes himself seriously, and forgets that he too, like all humans, will perish.

While I was writing about seeing the Persian king, I realized I have met and exchanged words with a few high-level politicians and important people in my lifetime. There is little significance to this fact, but I thought to mention these events here nevertheless. My encounter with Menachem Begin left me feeling emotional. At the time, I was in my late teenage years and worked as a bellboy in the Sharon hotel in the city of Hertzelia. I would stand at the front entrance to the hotel and open the door for the hundreds of people entering and exiting. Most ignored me. One day, many years before Begin was elected prime minister of Israel, he came in through the main entrance where I was standing. I was excited and nervous. There, in the flesh, a man I greatly admired stood before me. Although I wordlessly opened the door for him, he started talking to me. He asked my name and where I was from. He was interested to know whether I was happy and satisfied with my job. With him there were two well-dressed men who waited a few feet away from us. I was standing and having a relatively long conversation with a man destined to be one of the most admired leaders of Israel. When we parted, I said, Mr. Begin, never give up because you will be the prime minister. He smiled, shook my hand, and left.

Another famous man I admired was Ariel Sharon. He and his guards stood in the center of a circle of thousands of people in my immigrant neighborhood in the suburb of Kfar Saba. Of all the people there, he approached me. We exchanged a few short sentences, and what I remember most is that he asked me not to compromise on the way, or something to that effect. I was so nervous at that moment I felt my heart pounding in my chest. In the same election rally, I recall debating political views with a high-ranking member of the Labor Party who kept saying that we, the people on the right side of the political map, don’t understand. It is impossible to argue with someone who claims right from the start that you don’t understand.

I met Yitzhak Rabin in the army district in Tel Aviv while serving as a soldier in the Israeli army. He was sitting in the back seat of an army vehicle. His car stopped at a light right in front of me. I waved to him with all the love and admiration I always had in my heart for this great man. I will forever remember his gaze directly into my eyes, yet he did not react. I felt a bit embarrassed but of course understood his reaction.

I met Ehud Olmert, on a Jerusalem street while he was a minister in Menachem Begin’s government, long before he became a prime minister. I approached him and started a conversation about some political current issues of the time. He was friendly and very down to earth in his reaction. We parted shortly after, while I wished him well.

The encounter I regret was Shimon Peres. At that time, I was working at a place called Kalm next to a beautiful parklike place outside of Kfar Saba called Beit Berl. He came one evening to deliver a speech to members of the Labor Party since the place was a kind of headquarters of his political party. I got caught completely off-guard finding myself face to face with him. It seems he was surprised too, especially because I did not say a single word to him. It seemed he wanted to say something, or at least a simple hello, but I turned my back on him and walked away. If I could turn back time, I would embrace him and tell him how precious he is and how grateful we all are for his service to the state of Israel and the Jewish people. I would tell him how incredibly his wisdom and contribution are valued. But I was blind then and I walked away.

I was six years old, lying in bed, and I heard my parents speaking through the thin wall that separated my room from theirs. My mother said something that has since escaped my memory. Then I heard my father asking God to be merciful with him this night and take him out of this world. He then asked that the ceiling would collapse to bury him and put an end to his sufferings. My childhood passed this way, breathing the air through this gloom and depression.

When I was six, I was sent alone to a summer camp that was organized and funded by the Jewish agency in Iran. The camp was in a mountainous area north of Tehran. There was a rapidly flowing creek through the camp, although it was not the rainy season. In the center of the camp was a huge tent, which served as the dining hall and was also used as a place of worship. We prayed as a group three times a day in that tent. I felt extremely lonely and ready to burst into tears at any moment even though I was surrounded by other children. I did not have anyone to talk to or to whom I could turn. All my thoughts were of returning home to my parents. I find this strange because I also felt out of place at home.

Several days passed this way, and one morning, my parents came to visit. Why, out of all the many children who were there, was I the only one whose parents came to the camp? I have no idea now. This memory is carved so deep in me that I can recall in detail those moments. It was early morning, and all the campers and counselors were standing in that tent facing east for the morning prayer. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw my parents standing a hundred feet from me. Although we were conditioned to believe it would be a sin to move during prayer, I had only a single thought in my head—how fast I could run to where my parents were standing. I left the line of praying children and ran toward them while I burst into tears. My mother was wearing a dark-blue dress decorated with pink and purple flowers, and my father wore a suit. I figured the safest thing I could do was to grab my mother’s dress with both hands like a man who clings to a piece of wood in a dark and stormy ocean of loneliness. Two strong counselors tried to pry me away from my mother to take me back to the camp but without success. It won’t be wrong to say a hundred strong men would not have been able to pull me away from my