In the chap­ter “Ban­dar Abbas, Iran,” the nar­ra­tive begins on Sun­day, July 3, 1988, with a woman embark­ing on her first air­plane jour­ney. Although finan­cial con­straints were not the rea­son for her pre­vi­ous lack of fly­ing expe­ri­ence, she reflects on the hard­ships around her, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Tehran, where many fam­i­lies strug­gle to make ends meet, sell­ing off their belong­ings just to sur­vive. She recounts how des­per­ate men and boys wait in long lines to pur­chase baby chicks and how women resort to risky behav­iors in an unsta­ble socio-polit­i­cal land­scape, illus­trat­ing the dire cir­cum­stances that per­vade every­day life.

On her first flight to Ban­dar Abbas, the woman feels a mix of anx­i­ety and relief as she set­tles into a half-emp­ty plane and observes the mun­dane rit­u­als of air trav­el. Despite the com­forts offered dur­ing the flight, her thoughts are cloud­ed, marked by mem­o­ries of fear and vio­lence preva­lent in her home­land. After a sec­ond flight trans­fer to Dubai, she encoun­ters a bustling scene in her new sur­round­ings, con­trast­ed against her reflec­tions of the polit­i­cal unrest back in Iran.

As the flight pro­gress­es, the wom­an’s inter­nal dia­logue speaks to her desire to escape from the hor­rors she has wit­nessed. A sense of calm wash­es over her as the plane takes off, dis­con­nect­ing her momen­tar­i­ly from the ter­ror and sor­row pop­u­lat­ing her mem­o­ries. The qui­etude of the air brings a brief respite from the hor­rif­ic real­i­ty on the ground, where moth­ers are informed of their sons’ mar­tyr­dom and fear looms large.

Despite the weight of guilt that accom­pa­nies her depar­ture, she urges her­self to embrace pos­si­bil­i­ties for the future—a feel­ing she has not expe­ri­enced in a long time. Gaz­ing at the hori­zon filled with shades of blue and dis­tant islands, the woman clings to a frag­ile sense of hope, reflect­ing on the nature of opti­mism in a world where her fam­i­ly and friends remain entrenched in despair. This chap­ter encap­su­lates her tur­bu­lent emo­tion­al land­scape as she seeks lib­er­a­tion from her past while rec­og­niz­ing the bur­dens she car­ries with her.

Wait­ing ai