It’s a hot summer day in Tehran and mom is asleep in her room. I am eight and tired of playing with Barbie dolls. Outside I hear the namaki, a guy who sells nothing but salt and in return collects dry bread. He shouts, “namaki, namaki” so even those in the middle of their nap can hear him. I hear the wheels of his cart as he pushes it from kooche to kooche, street to street, under the burning afternoon sun. I open the window and look down below; the namaki man is passing by, the front of his cart filled with bags of salt, the back with dry bread. I am scared of him because he wears torn clothes and wanders the endless kooches, shouting in a loud tone. He is a stranger who may have a wife and child waiting for him somewhere. But he means nothing to me. I am just a child in need of a game to break myself away from boredom. The sound of his cart wheels diminishes until I no longer hear him. Mom wakes up and makes tea. I watch her drink it and go back to playing with a Barbie doll that is slim like a model, with beautiful blond hair. But unlike most little girls, I never secretly want to be her. She is just a doll, like the namaki man who is just a stranger selling salt.
But as I sit here today, my Barbie dolls crammed into a suitcase on a shelf, the namaki man miles away in another continent, I suddenly miss them. I miss hearing the namaki’s cart wheels. I miss our kooche and the view from the roof top. I miss the indefatigable construction workers who built block after block from dawn to dusk. I picture these images in my head, these small but priceless memories of the past.
I drink my tea and listen to James Blunt. Iran is too far away now and there is not a single sound that will trace back those summer days when I was a child listening to the namaki, the man who sold salt.