E - assignment 1

She put a cigarette between her dry lips and glanced at the sky. She was shivering as the cold wind found its way through the thin fabric of her nightgown. It was late as she stood at her discretely decorated balcony in a grey suburb to Stockholm. Although the wind was cold, she was filled with a warm, almost intoxicating feeling insuring her that her agonies were soon to be over.

The stars always seemed distant as she looked at them from her balcony. They were so few and so far away. She tried to remember how the sky used to look when she was younger, and still lived in Iran. Her memory was sharp even though it was many years ago. For a moment she could reminisce how she used to lay on the roof with her kid brother late in the evening, watching the sky for hours while drinking tea and eating fresh apricots. She could almost taste the sweetness of the fruit as she let her thoughts wander back in time. Nothing could ever compare with the sky that embraced Teheran. She remembered that the stars were so close she could almost touch them as she lay beside her brother trying to discover the constellations they had learned about in school. As she thought about her brother she had to fight to keep the tears from leaving her big almond shaped eyes. She didn’t want her mascara to get all messy, not tonight.

As she continued to look at the sky she could also remember how the sky of her past one night changed. How it suddenly turned into a chaotic inferno of fire and smoke accompanied by a loud alarm. The images that every night hunted her dreams making her wake up in a flood of sweat once again appeared. Images of her lying in shuttered glass holding her bellowed brothers limp body, memories of the consequences of war. Consequences that wiped out her entire blood line. She swore silently in Farsi as mascara colored tears fell down her cheeks.

As she inhaled the menthol flavored smoke she couldn’t help looking at the many scars that were engraved to her forearm. The asymmetric white marks worked as a constant reminder of her failures. She couldn’t even manage to end her own life.

She took the last puff of the cigarette and tried to get rid of the feelings of distrust that now started to invade her mind. Tonight she was not going to fail. She lived on the sixth floor and the twenty meters to the ground should do the work. No way could she survive, not this time.

As she sat on the balcony parapet she once again looked at the distant stars. She wondered about her fascination for the night sky. Where did it come from? Maybe she had to be fascinated by it. She was after all named Setareh. In Farsi that means star.

She left no written farewell because there was no one that would care to read it.

As she fell Setareh thought about the sky of her childhood, the sky of Teheran.

Stars are like humans in a way, they are born, they live and they die. Setarehs only wish was to die, she never did...