The Dezashib House
By Shirin Jabalameli
Tehran, Autumn 2018, near dusk
Dezashib Street was quieter than usual, as if the city I had left behind had suddenly drifted away from me. The cold air bit at my face. As I stepped onto the first stone of the courtyard, the house’s atmosphere embraced me, not forcefully, but gently, like a hand placed on your shoulder, assuring you that you were in the right place.
Right away, I realized: this house was different from ordinary houses. It had a “language.” I walked across the courtyard. The blue pool in the center seemed bottomless, its depth serenely calm. The fish, one red, the other white, circled in opposite directions, never meeting. The geraniums were rich, like a mouth hiding an unspoken word.
The shadow of the wall slowly stretched across the water, forming shapes like invisible writing. The shadow’s line on the water felt unbearably familiar, the kind of line you unconsciously want to trace with your finger. I sensed the courtyard was swallowing me, as if it had been waiting for someone to pass through again, to notice it, to remember.
The domed porch above the entrance leaned over the courtyard, as if bowing to ask a question. In that first moment, I felt the house knew me, not by name, not by face, but by the rhythm of my steps, by the thoughts I carried: words I had yet to write. The staircase leading to the cistern had swallowed the afternoon light; the bottom was invisible, yet it invited me in a hidden way.
Simin and Jalal’s house was breathing. Not metaphorically, literally, and each breath could be seen in the trembling of the pomegranate branches and the soft sway of the curtains.
From the upstairs window, the five-pane window, dim light spilled out, like a faint negative photograph: there and yet not. I felt the urge to frame it,not with a camera, but with my eyes, and I did. The curtain had slid to the third pane. Inside, on the desk, the shadow of a woman’s bowed neck appeared, eerily similar to Simin. Not fully clear, not entirely vague. Like someone both present and yet about to be. The wind moved the curtain gently, making a sound like rain in a gutter on a quiet day.
I thought:
“I came to confess… but it seems this house arrived before me.”
She was writing. And her writing was like breathing. The words didn’t flow from her pen, they emerged from the space around her. She lifted her head, looked at the gutter, listened to rain that wasn’t falling but could still be heard. Slowly, she nodded, as if agreeing to an ancient rhythm, and wrote again.
I felt that from the moment I entered, I had foreseen this scene, not having seen it before, but as if dreaming it for years, now pressed onto my forehead like a memory.
A whisper arose in my mind:
If a work is unseen, it dies.
The sentence lingered, like a finger tracing fog on glass: faint but indelible. Sometimes it felt as if the words entered the room before me; yet for months, no sentence walked with me. Whatever I wrote remained unfinished. I stepped onto the porch’s steps and sat down, unintentionally, drawn by some gravity. I felt that if I rushed, I’d leave a part of myself behind.
It was as if the house had spoken:
Before you enter, you must become one with me.
Since the start of last month, I had known I needed to come. I didn’t know why or for what reason. Only Simin’s strange sentence spun endlessly in my mind:
Fine, Simin. Fine. I’ll come. I’ll confess. Just stop whispering this in my head.
Now, seated here, I sensed that confession alone was not my purpose. The porch, the curtains, the dome, the steps, the fish, even the courtyard’s shadows, were calling me, silently, with a presence impossible to ignore.
I closed my eyes. The air I inhaled smelled of ink. Old ink, the kind used to print letters with lead type. I felt a hand brushing aside the hair of my mind to reveal a scene yet to happen.
I opened my eyes and told myself:
You didn’t come to see. You came to listen.
A few minutes later, as I walked around the courtyard, sensing every corner held pieces of the past, a voice from the downstairs room called:
“Excuse me…”
I turned. A man stood at the doorway, smiling as if he had come from the future.
“You’re an artist, right? A painter?”
I froze. My mind spun: Who? Me? What did he say?
“How…?” I asked.
“Please come in. We have a painting. It needs appraisal. We don’t know if it’s by Hannibal.”
I stepped back.
“Me? An appraisal? I’ve never seen Hannibal’s work up close. Why not ask the veterans?”
“Because…” He smiled.
We were waiting for you.
The sentence clicked in my mind like a key unlocking a door I didn’t know was locked, or that even existed. The house seemed to darken slightly, not from dusk, but from the event about to unfold.
With trepidation, I followed him.
The painting stood on an easel. Beside it, a smaller, more delicate study. I instinctively reached for a magnifying glass, it landed in my hand as if it had always belonged to me.
I studied the brushstrokes through the glass. Their rhythm felt strangely familiar, not as something I had seen, but as something I had lived, embedded under my skin for years.
Voices behind me murmured:
“This is Hannibal’s style, right?”
“Seems so.”
I whispered:
“I don’t care about style. Style is surface. The essence is in the rhythm of the hand.”
It was as if the words weren’t mine, decades ago, someone had placed them in my mouth.
I examined the painting, then the study. Between them, like an invisible thread, I saw:
The pull of the line. The trembling edges. The momentum of the first stroke.
These came from one hand, not two. One hand.
Suddenly, I said:
“It’s Hannibal’s work.”
Joy erupted in the room, but I couldn’t smile. Something stirred at the painting’s depths, like a shadow of time.
“What year is it from?”
I turned the painting. It smelled of the 1940s. Not canvas, not earth, not wood. The scent of time.
“The 1940s,” I said, though my tongue felt foreign, as if someone spoke through me.
And suddenly, the sounds of the print shop echoed, not from the room, but from deep within me. The smell of ink, the rustle of paper, yellow light, Jalal’s shadow bending, young Simin, and a man who might be Hannibal or might not, yet more real than any image.
The painting ceased being an “object” and became a door. And the door opened.
Colors unraveled. In a blink, the downstairs room of Dezashib House became Tehran, 1947.
The evening light was the same, but the air different. The air of the 1940s smelled of fresh paper, dusty streets, protest, desire, and yet-to-come defeats.
Among the waves of color climbing the walls and distant sounds, everything became “pure.” Not gray, not white, just… pure, like a calm pool after the wind has passed.
In that gentle silence, two voices formed, not from the air, not from walls, not from the past, but from the colors themselves.
The colors slowly receded, and I was no longer alone in the print shop.
Simin stood by a small green desk, facing me, not angry, not kind, just eyes of knowing. Jalal leaned on the wall, arms crossed, slightly bent forward, waiting to hear a sentence and decide whether to believe it.
The air warmed, or perhaps I was fevered.
Simin spoke first, her voice emanating not from her mouth but from the room itself:
“You’ve finally arrived.”
My breath caught.
“I… I don’t know how I came here.”
“It doesn’t matter. No one knows how they enter the past.”
She smiled briefly:
“What matters is that you came.”
Jalal shifted slightly, frowning:
“And late, too.”
He turned to me:
“You’re always the one who arrives when everything falls apart.”
His tone wasn’t bitter; it was reality seasoned with old-friendly irony.
I said:
“I just… came to confess. Then they asked me to examine the painting. I was only supposed to find the signature.”
Simin nodded softly.
“The signature?”
The word seemed laughable to her.
“My dear… we never sought the signature.”
“Then… what did you seek?”
Jalal struck the table with his palm. Firm, but not harsh.
“The problem is this: no one sees anymore. Everyone only looks. If this work is unseen, it dies.”
Simin continued:
“And we don’t want it to die.”
“Why? Because the painter mattered?”
“Because you matter.”
Silence. The colors behind them rippled like neon lights in the rain. No clear shapes, no clear story, just movement.
I said:
“I’m not… I’m just one person. Not a historian, not a great artist, not…”
Jalal laughed, a dry, short laugh:
“You always say that. I’m just one person.”
Then to Simin:
“This generation is used to making itself small. Ours was too…”
Simin looked me in the eye and whispered:
“But you’re different. You still have something others don’t: sensitivity.”
She stepped closer. The light on her face soft, like a winter afternoon lamp:
“You heard our voice, even if you think you didn’t.”
“What voice?”
“The sentence. The call. The one that brought you here.”
A brief silence lingered. Simin didn’t take her eyes off mine.
If a work is unseen, it dies.
And softly, she said:
“This isn’t a sentence I just said. It’s been my life. And now it must be yours too.”
Jalal stepped forward:
“Know the truth: you didn’t come just to confess or appraise.”
“Then for what?”
“To complete what remained unfinished.”
“Unfinished?”
Jalal pointed to the painting. Simin said calmly:
“Us.”
“Us?”
“All of us… everyone who wrote, built, fought, and burned in that era.”
Simin continued:
“We are all unfinished versions, and now it’s time for someone to continue.”
Jalal interrupted:
“And you are one of those versions. Not complete yet. And that’s good.”
“Why?”
“Because a completed version no longer moves, no longer changes. You still tremble.”
“And someone who still trembles is still alive.”
I felt warmth behind me.
The painting seemed to breathe, or moan, or wait.
I asked:
“What do you want from me?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why bring me here?”
“Because you must know you are not a guest in this house. This house chose you, just as it chose us, just as it chose him.”
She gestured to the shadowy painter, standing quietly behind the colors.
“You are our continuation.”
“Us?”
“We, not as two people,” she waved her hand, “but as a line. A path. A root.”
Then whispered:
“And this line needs someone to carry it forward.”
A profound silence followed, not frightening, like the silence just before sunrise.
Simin stepped back. The colors trembled, as if time itself was folding.
Jalal sighed:
“Our time is ending. You must return. But first… first you must understand.”
He stepped close, close enough to feel his breath, not real, but of words, of ink, of fierce anger and undeniable love.
“No artist is alone. No work is rootless. And you…”
He paused.
“You are not just a continuer. You are a connection.”
Simin finished the sentence:
“And every connection hurts. Strangely. But it’s worth it.”
Suddenly, the world began to dissolve, not break, but dissolve. The colors rose like vapor.
Simin dissolved in light. Jalal faded into shadow. The print shop became tiny points of light and darkness.
The last thing I heard simultaneously:
“Go. But return. We still have work.”
And then Dezashib House. The room. The painting in my hands. And a tremor running through my bones.
I stood in the midst of it. Jalal passed by, looking at me, yet not seeing me,or perhaps seeing me from another angle.
Young Simin sat at the desk, writing something that would later become a great work.
And the painter, like Hannibal, yet not him, stood in the background, guarding the painting. He approached me, smiling:
“Every work must be seen to endure.”
His words were neither explanation nor advice, they were the statement of a natural law.
Then the scene slowly faded. Not all at once, gradually, like dusk through a five-pane window.
Suddenly, everything went dark. I was back in the downstairs room. The painting trembled in my hands.
The house was lit, but dimmer. Or perhaps I was no longer the same person I had been minutes before.
A familiar voice behind me:
“Well?”
I asked:
“How… how did you know I was a painter? Why me? Why not someone else?”
“We were waiting for you.”
Hearing this repeated sentence struck the final blow. No explanation was needed.
The house had chosen. Simin had chosen. Jalal had chosen. Perhaps even Hannibal.
I stepped outside.
Dezashib Street was silent.
But behind me, I felt something following. Not a shadow, not the air. Not inspiration.
A pair of eyes. A gaze like someone acknowledging you, not just as a visitor, but as the continuation of a line.
For the last time, I turned to the five-pane window. Simin looked up. She met my gaze, not as an image, but as someone who wants to speak.
She didn’t speak.
But I heard:
You are one of the unfinished versions. Our continuation. Not a guest of the house.
My breath caught. Tears gathered in my eyes. Dezashib House was no longer just a house. It was a corridor to the past, to the future, to art, to the invisible line passed from one artist to another.
And now, it was my turn.
I stepped forward.
Dezashib Street was quiet.
But behind me, it was as if a line was drawn.
I moved forward, and an invisible line trailed behind me; it knew where it must end… but not yet.
THE END
Author Bio: Shirin Jabalameli is an emerging writer from Tehran, Iran. She writes literary fiction with a focus on memory, history, and surreal experiences, and her work has previously been shared in online workshops and private readings.