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four in the afternoon, Zeynab awoke froma nap and sat upright. “I had a terrible dream,” she announced cheerlessly, but did not elaborate.
    Around sunset, a telephone call came from the young man, the employee of Ghods Department Store. He wanted to talk to Zeynab. Mother, like someone suddenly awakened from a sleep, was dazed and confused. She stared at me quizzically. From outside there were sounds of shouting and sporadic gunfire. I felt the onset of an anxiety attack and tried to collect my thoughts. Mother hurriedly drew the curtains tight and locked the front door, her face contorted with worry. Zeynab took the receiver and listened without saying a word. She seemed wan, and a bitter, defiant look came over her face. Her eyes lost that childlike impetuosity, looking more like those of a mature woman crushed under the weight of experience. She handed the receiver to my mother and said blankly, “I am leaving.”
    As she went to fetch her bag, the man explained to my mother that his brother had decided to marry Zeynab. Their mother, a pious woman, he remarked, would like to keep her for a while. He added that, God willing, we would be invited to the wedding.
    â€œWonderful, congratulations,” intoned Mother reflexively. “Every young girl must marry someday.”
    â€œEasy for you to say,” said Zeynab, almost disgustedly.
    â€œListen,” I told her urgently. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to. Wait, my brother knows the Committee chief.”
    â€œWhat Committee?” she said sneeringly.
    â€œSo,” I spat out, hurt and angry, “all that talk of a marriage and the department store employee is another one of your fabrications, huh?”
    â€œWhat difference does it make?” she replied coldly, as she moved toward the door. “Unlucky folks are unlucky wherever they go.”
    At the front door, she turned and gazed in my direction. “In my dream this afternoon,” she said, “I was in heaven, when a hand reached out and grabbed my hair and said I didn’t belong there. I belonged in hell. I knew right there and then that I had to go.”
    I wanted so badly to stop her. I wanted for once to do something from the heart, something fantastic and irrational, but was immobilized with indecision, not able to find the courage to act.
    â€œWhat do you think,” asked Mother. “Was she telling the truth?”
    GOLI TARAGHI is a well-known and widely read novelist in Iran. Her works have been translated into several languages. Her latest collection of short stories, The Pomegranate Lady and her Sons , was recently published in the United States. Born in Tehran, Taraghi was educated in Iran and the United States, and presently lives in France.
    1 These so called committees were created in the course of the revolution to orchestrate demonstrations in urban neighborhoods against the former regime. Later, they were unofficially in charge of enforcing civil laws and Islamic standards of social conduct.
    2 An agricultural region in central Iran.

Mermaid Café
    Mitra Eliyati
    ONE BY ONE all the taverns and cafés in our small seaside town were shut down. The only one left was the Mermaid Café. Now a crowd of angry townsfolk was gathering in front of it. I was there with my buddy, Sohrab, waiting to see if the mob would attack the café. We thought we would rush in, and rescue the mermaid by lifting her off her perch above the doorway and running out the back door.
    From where we were, we could hear her melancholy song. She was singing with such sadness it almost made me cry. The light from the naked bulb hanging over the door glistened off the slicked-back hair of the guys leaving the café.
    Uncle Yusef had promised to take me to the Mermaid Café if I got high grades and finished top of my class. This never happened, because my father disapproved of the idea. “Not a place for kids and such,” he had