Hedayat’s Neighbor

Gholam Hossein Sa’edi was born on January 14, 1936, in Tabriz and, according to his own words, “fell onto the bricks.” He was the second child of his parents. The first child, a girl, had died at the age of eleven months. From the day he first held his father’s hand and learned the way to the cemetery, he would always visit his sister’s grave, which was small and covered with delicate, orderly bricks. “In my imagination, I always saw her inside the grave, swinging in a cradle, even though neither I, nor my brother who came after me, nor my sister who was the last child of the family, had a cradle. Our cradle was the feet of our mother or grandmother.”