Dull thuds of thrown dough lifelessly bounced around, ricocheting off the brightly tiled walls through the hanging cast iron, even menacing the smoldering flame in a clay oven with its suffocating, ceaseless rhythm. After a measured time, the irritating scraping of rock against metal would rupture the cacophony. There were pauses, naturally, to readjust and reassess. The rustling of objects made its own kind of song: a knife against wood, the fabric of a sack ripped open, a suppressed sniffle.
This routine persisted for a long time. “Too long,” hushed friends would whisper in that doorway.
“Poor thing.”
“It’s too much.”
“Not again.”
There was a ghost here—a memory trailing the woman's movements, step by step, knead by knead. The walls would witness this ritual twice, some two decades apart. The sole discrepancy was how flour now caught into the lines on her face. Grief for Firouzeh was a fitful thing she sought to delay. Feeding Fazhali twice over wouldn’t bring him, either of them, back, but the tears wouldn’t come yet.
When they did, and they would, at least the wails would be muffled by counters stacked high with breads and pastries.
Just a little story on Firo from the past <3