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I walked past the old garden

where childhood waited,

where a stream once hummed

from the mouth of the wall—

cold, clean, qanat-born.

There was a bed of wood,

not meant for dreams but shade.

Ostaa Nasrollah,

his name spoken like prayer,

slept on his takht beneath the fig tree,

one hand near the earth

as if listening for roots.

He was old the way trees are old—

with a back curved like the bow of time,

dressed always in the same dark brown coat,

faded from summers and dust.

His trousers hung loose around his legs,

soft with years and walking.

He moved slowly,

each step a story too quiet to tell.

When he rose from his takht beneath the vines,

it was as if the garden shifted with him,

leaves adjusting to his rhythm.

I remember watching him disappear

into the thick background of the garden,

past the grapes and mint,

beyond the fruit crates

stacked in careful disarray.

There was a tangle of bushes,

dense, untouchable,

where sunlight broke into green shards—

and I never knew what lay behind them.

My mother held my hand.

I was not to wander.

That part of the garden

belonged to him

and to mystery.

We bought grapes with silence.

Peaches with trust.

My mother, young.

I, too small for the current.

Slippers on my feet,

not allowed in the water—

not since the pool

and the fear that swallowed me.

I still remember the taste of panic,

my sister’s hands

pulling me from the blue depth,

her anger wrapped in love,

my lungs refusing the pool’s bitter drink.

But in the garden of Ostaa,

even the water seemed gentle—

streaming left to right

like time itself,

never pulling, only passing.

Now I water my own garden

with memory.

But nothing tastes

like those first harvests

from my childhood garden,

where time still ripens

in the shade of love.