On a sunny Tuesday afternoon I’m listening to the soft, seductive voice of French singer Carla Bruni. I have no idea what she is saying and yet I am intrigued enough to repeat the same song over and over again. I like the way she pronounces each syllable, each word. French is a beautiful, fascinating language. I find it soothing, charming, sexy. Sometimes I secretly wish I were a French girl. I am Amélie Poulain, skipping rocks in the river, collecting oddly shaped stones, making people happy. Then I fall in love with a handsome French man and we live happily ever after in Paris…

I step out of the car and immediately smell a familiar, yet surprising sweetness; chocolate. We are welcomed into Leila and Hooman’s Pennsylvania home, just a couple of blocks away from the Hershey Chocolate Factory. On our way we passed a small farm with a dozen cows, reminding us that we had entered a farm town. So I didn’t expect buildings and in fact saw none. Leila and Hooman’s town house is small, with a tiny doorway, two rooms and a small living room. I love your house! I exclaim to Leila. On the balcony we drink tea from little cups that came all the way from Tehran. There is a nice breeze but the temperature is almost 90 degrees. I don’t know if it is because of the smell of chocolate or knowing I’m away from home, but I’m too happy, almost unreasonably. But that’s how a good life should make you feel, right?
Inside the Chocolate Factory I buy different kinds of sweets. Hershey’s Kisses are packaged in various ways and I’m happy to give them away as gifts. I’ll give one to H, I decide. He loves chocolate.
The day ends quickly, but sweetly. It’s delicious, this world of chocolate. We pass Chocolate Avenue and head back inside their home. They treat us with more tea and we drink passionately. We talk of American life. Why it’s beautiful and tragic at the same time. For now, Leila’s American life isn’t a pretty picture. She misses her parents, her home, her old life. No matter how delicious Mr. Hershey’s chocolates are, they lack the sweetness of her mother’s homemade apple pie.
In America, I have learned to indulge, appreciate, ferociously devour life’s little sweets. I have learned to be excited over a piece of chocolate, over a little avenue called Chocolate. In America, I have fallen in love with myself, my creations, my imaginations, my ability to comprehend comedies, like those of our everyday life.

Can you show me a cocktail dress? I need one for my wife. Sure, I say, right this way. I show him a plain, sleeveless dress. No, something less lesbian, he says. I chuckle and point out another dress. This might work; I’ll have to go get her.
He never came back. It is very rare for customers to come back once they’ve left the store, even if they say they will. So this is my job. I greet strangers, quietly shouting the hated phrase, hi, how are you? Or can I help you find anything today? Or what size are you looking for? Or let me check in the back for you to see if we have any more. Blah blah blah. Sometimes I hate greeting them. I want to leave them alone. Give them their privacy so they can decide on their own. Before this job, I was always annoyed when sales people said hello. And now it is my job to annoy people. But I have to say that there are some who smile back and ask me how I am. They even ask for my opinion and allow me to show them what we have in the store. I find interesting people. I meet women who like a dress but don’t buy it because their boyfriends don’t approve. I meet women who try 10 different things and leave the store empty handed. I meet women who let me pick everything out for them. I meet angry people who ignore me when I say hello and people who politely smile but walk away immediately. It’s a strange world, the world of buyers. People are fascinating. They have methods. Some are pickier than others. They find a little spot on a pair of pants and refuse to buy it. But I love my job. I love being helpful. I like opening the fitting room doors, getting to know my customers, their habits, their likes and dislikes. Today I was ringing up a family of four from Montréal. They spoke French and I had to ask if they came from France. No, we’re from Canada, the dad says. I’ve been to Toronto I say. I love French, I add. Do you speak Spanish? Well, I’m taking it as a class, I say. Spanish and French are very close, the dad says. Yes, I know. I’m excited by this family because they speak perfect French and they remind me of my good times in Europe. I wish them a good day and watch them leave.
Have a nice day, I dutifully say and smile. I don’t think I’ve ever had to smile so much in one day.

We cross the street, passing a beggar whose body is paralyzed and is listening to classical music that comes out of a little radio. I’ve seen him before, in the same spot, listening to the same beats, hardly blinking. I’ve always wondered what life means for us. And now as I pass this man, this man who has given up on living and is only breathing with Mozart and Bach, I wonder what life means for those like him, for the beggars and the poor. What does life mean for the woman I see sitting on the curb, always holding a cup and shaking it as people pass by? Did they have dreams once and what made them give them up so easily? Isn’t America the land of dreams? Isn’t America the heaven we all prayed for? Surely they must have learned at some point in their lives that here in this land they can hold a job, at least a mediocre one to start with, make some money and find a cheap place to live in. Surely they didn’t dream of begging on different corners with plastic cups and cardboard boxes. Did they?
It seems as though the orchestra of life has failed this poor beggar; the only orchestra that he lives with is that of Mozart’s. Maybe it is in this symphony that he feels his heart beating.

The tables are set. The glasses filled with ice and water, the music just the right volume, the waiters ready to take orders from perfect strangers. There is something unique about the atmosphere of a restaurant. A special bond is formed between the waiters and the diners. The waiters know how to follow orders and the diners know exactly what to order. But there are a few who don’t know what to get, those are the indecisive group who always depend on someone else to make decisions for them. So they hesitate when the waiter asks if they’re ready. They slowly and shyly order something that caught their eye or was easy to pronounce and let the waiter do the rest of the talking. And that’s how they form a bond; whether they’re aware of this fact or not, this simple intervention brings them close. The waiter has crossed a line and is now one step closer to the person he is serving. He may overhear conversations as he serves the food, he may learn a few things here and there and if he is doing a especially good job, he may even be invited to reveal pieces of his personal life. He will be a person to share a laugh with, a friendly, welcomed intruder.

You ask why I enjoy riding the bus. I’m going to tell you why. Inside a bus one can find all types of individuals: the poor, the rich, the middle class, the cultured, the uncultured, the loner, the book reader, the music lover, the demure, the outrageous, the rebel, the alcoholic, the dreamer, the loyal, the disloyal, the brave, the weak. Today I encounter a young man with an odd, impermanent tattoo on his left arm. He looks angry or maybe his natural features falsely depict anger on his face. He might even just be naturally careless and indifferent to what goes on around him; he is almost an older version of Holden Caulfield in Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. Both as an observer and a writer, I have the power to classify these people into groups. I can categorize them in anyway I like. I can judge them based on physical appearance, give them names, or make up and change their stories. Like the woman who is sitting in front of me looks sad. Her daughter called her this morning, informing her of another miscarriage. The woman is therefore sad and feels sorry for the grandchild she has lost. Or the girl standing next to me with the white shirt is going to work. She doesn’t care too much about looking glam and fabulous, but she does have a knack for keeping her nails meticulously polished, painted and edged. Sadia used to tell me she makes up stories for people who ride the bus. She says that is her favorite thing to do. I don’t exactly follow her path, but I look for inspiration, something to write about later on. I look for people who look interesting, amusing, different and entertaining. I don’t always meet them but on a crowded bus of workers and those with no lives, one should never underestimate another’s potential for a possibly remarkable life story.

There is one picture in my mind that I can never forget. I took it during my visit to Iran four years ago. We were at the national cemetery, the biggest one where almost everyone gets buried. I visited the grave of my grandfather and his beloved children who were killed during the revolution. I looked at the cold tombstones, those lonely, sad tombs that were drenched in dust. My grandmother watered them, placed flowers on each stone, then touched them with her wrinkled hands and mourned inside. Moments later my brother took me to the other side of the graveyard where the sinners and counterrevolutionaries were buried, their tombs destroyed and abandoned, almost unidentifiable. A woman in a black chador that signified not Islam but power was among the tombs, hidden in between the tall, yellow grasses. She was still, kneeling down, silently grieving. We shot a picture of her. The day was peaceful, quiet, yet fogged with a heavy air, like a dusty cover of a book that has been neglected by its owner. Was she crying? For whom was she mourning? How many had she lost? And what had been their crimes or did that even matter? In a country of contradictions where rules never make it into books, nothing has to be defined. Not even the reason of your death. We left the scene as quietly and inconspicuously as we had arrived. My mind was still on her. She had been betrayed by the land that promised her protection against Satan and the forces of evil, but not against inhumanity or the depravation of her individuality. With that veil and the silent tears, had she become the ideal woman and could she cover her injuries, her wounded heart as perfectly as she covered her body with the veil?

I remember my school teachers vividly in the Islamic Republic of Iran; their faces have yet to leave my mind. Mrs. Haghighat used to read to us passages of the Holy Quran every morning before we started class. It was a routine we did everyday, like bell work or warm up. She wanted us to hear and listen to the magical words of the book. She wanted to help us be good Muslim girls, proper, mannered, obedient. And I tried to be more or less that girl, the shy, respectful, good child. I prayed five times a day dutifully but not because mother told me to. In fact no one in the house forced me to what the outside world was telling its people. I covered my hair as I entered the fourth grade because I was being reprimanded by others. When I told mother of my decision, she neither applauded nor criticized my action. So I assumed I was doing the right thing. I remember Mrs. Mojarad who told us about the burning fires of hell and the birds and gardens of paradise. She taught and we learned and did what we were told to do. I was left to believe what I was told. I accepted the heaven and hell that was so distinctly described, like an irrevocable answer to a complicated equation. I accepted that if I showed a strand of hair I would go to hell and all of my hair would be cut off.
That was then, when my world was made up of women veiled from head to toe who believed in an idealistic paradise that none of them had actually seen. That was then when we would gather in a small room as a class of fourth graders, listening to stories of prophets and their sacrifices while our teachers encouraged us to mourn and cry.
And now…I’m a sinner I suppose. I write of forbidden realities don’t I? I write of my personal affinities and dreams don’t I? I am an independent thinker, am I not? According to rules of that other world, am I not then a sinner, a betrayer? In that world, isn’t thinking a crime? Isn’t defining your own rules of life a crime? Had I been in that world, I would have been jailed. Perhaps executed. Like so many others, like so many writers who lived on writing and died for it with a single bullet that came like an abrupt period at the end of a sentence.

I’m walking up a flight of stairs into the open sun. The sun rays hit my eyes and I am forced to shut them for a brief moment. In this moment I embrace the vastness of where I am and the emancipation that comes with it. Suddenly and desperately I want to melt with the sun. Melt and become nothing. I want to be light, weightless. My body is suddenly unbearable and heavy and I think I might fall.
In the few moments I have left before I enter the mall where I work, I contemplate about who I’ve become. Again and again I’m struck by the image I had six years ago and the one I hold now. I feel liberated from a world I wasn’t exactly a prisoner of, but one that would have become a prison had I stayed.
But the past is the past. Now, on an early morning hour of a cool Friday, the sky is so limitless, so vast that I can’t help but feel powerful. There is no one else here but me. I have a bag on my shoulder, walking to the beat of the music that is faithfully playing in my ears. The day is beautiful and I feel free. I’m loving it. It being all that defines the dream, the pure, tangible American dream.

The watermelon skin has added more weight to the normally light-weighed trash bag, making it unusually heavy. I throw the trash down the dark trash chute. Empty handed I walk back to the apartment, throw the keys aside and go straight to the kitchen where the tea pot awaits my arrival. It’s that time of the day where I must have my afternoon tea. My only relaxation of this lazy, unproductive day depends on a cup of hot Earl grey tea. But on this ridiculously boring, pathetic summer afternoon, I want to indulge myself with a piece of Leonidas Belgian chocolate, a single, authentic taste of heaven right here where I sit and think of all the things I want.