I have arrived.
The rain hadn't stopped yet, but it wasn't too heavy. It was drizzling, just enough to make the world resemble a memory. The kind of rain that softens edges and blurs distances, turning the familiar into something dreamlike. I knew this kind of rain well. It has a name for me: border rain, the rain of the boundary between imagination and reality. Because always in this weather, I am in the real world—sitting on the couch with a cup of tea by the window, warm and dry—but my memories, mixed with vague fantasies, are running in the rain outside. They are getting wet. They are splashing through puddles. They are young and alive in a way I no longer am.
"My dear Nooshin, the cheerful, always smiling girl, welcome!" Ada said
Ada's voice pulled me back. I was standing in her hallway, my suitcase still in my hand, rainwater dripping from my coat onto the tiles. She embraced me before I could put my bags down, and her arms were warm, firmer than I remembered.
I gripped my teacup tighter to warm my hands. I stared at Ada's face. Her smile truly gave me a sense of peace, as much as the warmth of the cup. But this time, something seemed to be missing. A connection was severed, one I couldn't understand. It was like hearing a familiar song played in the wrong key—all the notes were there, but the feeling was different. The fireplace was on, the house lights were warm, but you felt a coldness that was indescribable, as if a very narrow door had been left ajar somewhere in the depths of the building, and a draft was slipping through, reaching every room.
I was truly happy to see Ada. After a 48-hour land journey from the capital of Iran to the capital of Turkey—through mountains and plains, through border crossings where soldiers looked at my passport for too long, through bus stations where the coffee was bitter and the waiting was endless—the best gift I could receive was seeing her face. We had been friends for ten years. Ten years of phone calls and visits, of shared meals and shared silences.
In the past, she was a very social and warm heart woman. Her house was always full of people, her table always set for guests she hadn't yet invited. Today, she hadn't lost any of her intelligence, wit, or beauty, but she seemed a bit more withdrawn. Her hair was still that beautiful shade of red—like autumn leaves, like sunset—but she wore it tied back more often, as if she didn't want it to draw attention. If I wanted to describe Ada in one word, it would be that kindness was her essence. Not performed kindness, not strategic kindness, but the deep, exhausting kind that gives without counting the cost.
I learned Turkish from her. She taught me the soft sounds, the round vowels, the phrases that have no direct translation into Farsi. We had many good memories together: nights spent cooking in her old kitchen, mornings when we walked along the Bosporus and she pointed out her favorite buildings, afternoons when she told me stories about her childhood in a small town I could never quite picture.
Always thinking of Ada made me laugh. It made me remember good smells—cinnamon and cardamom, frying onions, fresh bread. It made me crave delicious food and Sütlaç (Turkish sweet), that creamy rice pudding she made better than anyone. Sometimes, I would exaggerate the taste of Muhallebi (Turkish sweet) just to have an interesting story to share and reconnect with Ada, because the only interesting topic for her was kindness. Not gossip, not complaints, not the ordinary cruelties of daily life. Only kindness. And of course, I was always worried about this extent of her kindness, because the real world was never that kind to her. It had taken her husband, her money, her peace of mind. It had left her with this house and these animals and a silence that grew heavier every year.
Ada always thought she could create change with kindness. She believed she could open a hole as big as a crater in stone with a single drop of water, if she just kept dripping long enough. I'm not saying it's impossible. But it wears a person out. It hollows them from the inside. And exactly the pains of the past years had taken a lot of energy from her. I could see it in the way she moved—slower than before, more deliberate—and in the way she sometimes stared at nothing, her teacup cooling in her hands.
This time too, she was kind, but a little different. As if she was more isolated, more fused with the safe space of her home. She no longer seemed to want to go outside. When I mentioned the garden, she shrugged. When I suggested a walk to the town center, she changed the subject. The house had become her world, and she seemed to prefer it that way.
"Tell me about the journey," she said. "I think it was very hard."
"I came from Iran by train," I said. "I like traveling by train. I could sleep, walk, order drinks, and watch the scenery speed by. But alas, from Van to Ankara…" Nooshin said
"By bus?" she guessed.
"Yes. By bus. I came by bus. Would the journey never end? Every time I closed my eyes, I thought, surely we must be close. And every time I opened them, there was more road, more mountains, more grey sky." Nooshin said
"Could you rest?" she asked.
"I don't have trouble sleeping. The bus was like a cradle for me. Because I was like that before—I'd sleep just like that, anywhere, anytime. I'd sleep and sleep. But the problem was, every time I woke up, the road was still continuing. Every time I fell asleep, it felt like I had slept for years, but after waking up, I'd realize I had only moved twenty kilometers. As if time on the bus was different from time everywhere else. But I finally arrived, and I'm so happy to have you." Nooshin said
My emotional surge—the relief of arrival, the exhaustion of travel, the joy of seeing her face—unconsciously turned into a teardrop that fell into my cup. Ada saw it. She came toward me to hug me. It happened so fast that I couldn't do multiple things at once: control my emotions, drink my tea, get up from my chair, and respond to her embrace all at the same time. My brain wasn't designed for that much simultaneity. So it unconsciously omitted one task—the most unimportant one.
The cup fell from my hand.
It shattered on the wooden floor with a sound that seemed too loud for such a small object. For a fraction of a second, it felt like the house breathed. Not metaphorically. Not as a figure of speech. The walls seemed to expand slightly, then contract. The air moved. The fish in the aquarium moved as one, a single mass of silver and gold, pressing against the far corner of the glass. Ada's cat—Loki, black as charcoal—raised all his fur, his back arching, his tail doubling in size. Her dog—Odin, also black, with a small white heart on his chest—let out a short, sharp howl and remained motionless, staring at the large mirror facing the aquarium. And the teacup, shattered on the wooden floor like a poison, began to stain the wood. The color of the floor was changing, darkening from honey-brown to something almost black.
I was both startled and embarrassed. My face burned. I quickly grabbed a napkin from the table and knelt down to clean the mess, but Ada—as if wanting to protect something, as if the stain itself was dangerous—faster and more panicked than me, grabbed the blanket from the couch and threw it over the spilled tea. She covered the stain like someone covering a wound.
I was shocked by her strange and swift movement. She wasn't like this before. She used to take things easily, with a laugh and a wave of her hand. "Accidents happen," she would say. Now her hands were trembling.
"You know, Nooshin," she said, her voice tight, "I don't know why the parquet floor of this house is like this. Sometimes, certain things turn it completely black. And then it doesn't go away. That part stays black forever."
Ada fully understood my embarrassment. She kept trying to take away my shame with her hurried words, her nervous reassurances. But I had really messed up from the start. I kept thinking she was saying to herself, "This clumsy girl has come not only to ruin my house but to disturb everyone's peace."
Everything was cleaned—the blanket was removed, the fragments of the cup were gathered, the floor was wiped—but she was right. A black stain remained on the floor, the size of my palm. And it seemed a new cold was emanating from it, a chill that rose from the wood and settled in the air.
"Ada, I'm so sorry," I said. "I didn't think tea would do this to your house. Just tell me, what else ruins your house? I'll be careful."
"Really, Nooshin, I don't know myself," she said, waving her hand as if it was nothing. "I just clean up any liquids that spill quickly. It's not always like this; it happens sometimes. But don't be so upset. It's not your fault. Forgive me for giving you this feeling of shame."
Ada was so kind that she apologized again for my mistake. The weight of her kindness made my own shame heavier.
Suddenly, Loki tried to change the atmosphere. He jumped off the back of the couch and landed gracefully between us, then rubbed against Ada's legs, purring loudly. Odin joined him, the huge dog nuzzling the cat with surprising gentleness. Both animals intertwined with each other, a massive dog and a fat, strong cat, and they slightly changed the mood of the space. The tension broke, just a little. But the fact that they had sensed this issue—the fact that they were trying to manage the emotional temperature of the room—was a bit strange, looking at it from a human perspective. Animals shouldn't be that aware.
"Your room is ready," Ada said, her voice back to normal. "Come with me."
Faster than us, Odin—Ada's completely black dog, with that small white heart on his chest—moved up the wooden stairs inside the house. His claws clicked on the wood, a rapid, cheerful sound.
"Odin is always like this," Ada said, following him. "Just think about going upstairs, and he's there faster than you."
The connecting stairs were so small and narrow that only one person could go up at a time. The walls on either side were close, and the ceiling above the stairs sloped, forcing you to duck your head slightly. After Odin, Ada went. Then me. Then Loki, bringing up the rear. There weren't many stairs—maybe fifteen in total—but on this staircase, time seemed to stretch. Each step took longer than it should. The air grew thicker with every upward movement.
The picture frames on the stairway wall caught my attention. There were several of them, arranged in a neat row, each with a small brass label underneath. A photo taken on a beach—white sand, blue sky—but there was no sea in the photo. Just the beach, empty. A restaurant scene—tables set with white cloths—but no one was eating. The plates were empty. The glasses held no wine. A birthday party—a cake on a table—but the cake had no candles. A woman was leaning forward, her lips pursed, blowing at nothing. A train station—perfectly detailed, with rails and benches and people and even steam rising from an invisible engine—but there was no train. The tracks went on forever, leading to nothing.
The appearance of everything remained, but the main feeling had been removed. Stranger than that, none of the characters were looking at the camera. Their eyes were averted, looking off to the side, or down at their hands, or at something beyond the frame. As if they were refusing to acknowledge the person taking the picture.
"Don't pay too much attention to them," Ada said over her shoulder, "especially when the stairway light is off."
Without me asking why, she continued.
"Sometimes I think they read the things they are missing from me." And then she burst out laughing. "Don't be scared, silly! I was joking."
But her laugh was too quick, too loud.
We reached the second floor. Odin kept going from room to room, his nose to the ground, but next to my room, he paused for a moment and just looked. His eyes were dark and calm. Loki, motionless and silent, stared into my room from the doorway. I knew this silence of cats. When they stare too intently at something, their hunting instinct is activated. But what was he hunting? There was nothing visible in the room except a bed, a desk, and the six small paintings on the wall.
Ada said in a loud, drawn-out voice, "Welcome!"
She was trying to make everything seem normal—her tone was bright, her smile was wide—but it really wasn't. The animals were too still. The air was too heavy.
I paused and said, "Are they waiting for my permission to enter the room, or do they see something we don't?"
"They are very polite children," Ada said, "but it's better not to create scary fantasies for ourselves." She gave a small, mysterious laugh. "Now it's better you rest. You've had a long journey. I'll call you for dinner."
The atmosphere of the room was so heavy and calm that I both wanted to stay there and didn't. It felt like I needed time to understand that much peace—to adjust to it, to let it soak into my bones. I had been in survival mode for so long that stillness felt like danger.
I had remained in survival mode for years. After the war, after everything I had seen, my body and mind had slowly adjusted to a state of constant alert. It was as if there was always a danger, always something to watch for. I tried to focus on the present, on the comfortable bed and the soft light, but my brain wouldn't issue a permit. My mind was constantly searching for a safe place—a corner of the room without shadows, a moment without the possibility of threat. But something was strange about this house. It was as if this place wasn't what it showed. The peace was too perfect. The calm was too complete.
I needed to sleep. But post-trauma insomnia—hyper—vigilance—had cut me off from rest for years. Insomnia is terrifying. It's not just the inability to sleep; it's the fear that sleep will never come again, that you will be trapped forever in wakefulness, watching the ceiling, listening to the silence.
I lay down on the bed. The sheets were cool and crisp, smelling faintly of lavender. I calmly tried to scan the entire room with my eyes, memorizing the placement of every object, every shadow. The room was excessively tidy. The bed was perfectly made. The desk had nothing on it except a lamp and a small vase with a single dried flower. The six small paintings on the wall each seemed to have a separate subject—a tree, a river, a mountain, a house, a bird, a cat—but together they told a story I couldn't quite follow. They were related in a way I couldn't articulate, like fragments of a dream you almost remember.
My trick to fall asleep was always to think about my wishes. I would make a list in my head: places I wanted to go, books I wanted to read, people I wanted to see again. The list was long—so long that I usually fell into a deep sleep within the first few minutes, exhausted by the sheer weight of my own hopes.
Knock.
I tried to ignore it. I squeezed my eyes shut, forcing sleep upon them, commanding my body to relax. But this time, the sound was not a knock on the door. It was the sound of a door opening. Quietly. Slowly.
I stared at the door in horror, my heart pounding.
"Loki, is that you?"
Cats don't need permission to enter. And as a courtesy—apparently—he had knocked on the door just to announce his arrival. A single, polite tap.
He entered quietly, his paws making no sound on the wooden floor. He jumped onto the desk next to the bed, exactly under the paintings, parallel to the painting of a cat on the wall. He sat there, staring at me with eyes that gleamed in the semi-darkness of the room—green marbles catching a light that didn't seem to exist.
I took a deep breath and grumbled, "I had just convinced myself to sleep with great difficulty. How long are you going to stare at me?"
He yawned, showing small white teeth. Then he stared at me again. But slowly, his face began to fade. I was squeezing my eyes shut, trying to force sleep to come. Was I actually falling asleep, or was Loki really evaporating? A thin wisp of smoke began to swirl in the room, rising from the desk where he sat, curling toward the ceiling.
I had come from war. Sudden noises and smoke threw me right into the middle of my traumas. I sat up, gasping. I went to the window to open it, to let the smoke out, but the rain outside had become heavier, lashing against the glass. My bed was right next to the window; if I opened it, my bed would get wet. So I turned toward the door instead and opened it.
The hallway was completely dark. And Odin, upon seeing me, suddenly started running toward Ada's room, his claws skittering on the wood.
A faint light flickered from under Ada's door. I followed Odin. I pushed the door open gently and looked inside. Ada was lying on the bed, her eyes wide open, staring intently at her curtain. It was as if she was watching the most famous movie in the world on a closed screen. Her face was expressionless, her breathing shallow. She was hypnotized.
Following Odin's gaze, my attention was drawn to an open notebook by the bed. The pages were covered in short lines, drawn one after another, like tally marks. As if someone in this house was counting down time in anticipation. But what was Ada waiting for?
Suddenly, a voice came from down by my feet. Something soft rubbed against my ankles. A whisper, barely audible:
"The one who saves everyone."