I've seen the future, brother: it is murder

Segment One

The shades come down and the room begins to darken for the final time. The light fades from a man's prematurely aged face, firm and frowning. The man locks the door and moves slowly along the terrace, thinking of his wife; the woman is lying prostrate in the corner of an aging apartment, eating cheese and slapping herself with a tasbih. "Ferdowsi Ferdowsi, it's my fault my fault my fault." Ferdowsi wishes that he could console her; he wishes that he did not loath her. He turns away from his thoughts, away from the ninety-nine bruising beads, away from the great bruise in her stomach; Ferdowsi wishes not to remember.

Ferdowsi chooses to walk the long way to the apartment, through the tattered neighbourhood south of the subway line. Along the way he sees a blue girl with ashen skin and pink ballet shoes strung around her shoulders slouching along a set of stairs. Ferdowsi vaguely understands the melodramatic nature of young girls but he speculates upon her sadness anyhow; is it that she cannot elegantly perform a chassée in front on her more advanced peers? Ferdowsi's thoughts quickly return to him memories of which he wishes not to remember. He is now thankful that the girl will only remain in his vision for a short while longer.

"Please, sir."

Ferdowsi is startled. He stops and turns towards the girl and meets her puffy, bloodshot eyes.

"Please, it will be dark soon."

Ferdowsi looks away; a tear escapes from his eye and it moves slowly along his cheek, over the crevasse of his upper lip, and into his mouth. The salty taste reminds him of his boyhood days along the Caspian Sea. After his parents had been killed in the revolution, Ferdowsi clung to the coast where a local fishery fed him their daily waste and expired bottles of doogh. He often slept on the shore, buried in the sand to keep away from the cold breeze that came in off the sea at night. As Ferdowsi grew stronger the fishery hired him as a hand and Ferdowsi learned the art of fishing aboard the MarjAneh. Ferdowsi's work ethic impressed the captain, and Ferdowsi's humble and quiet nature impressed the captain's wife, Farah.

Farah dreamed of a more fulfilling existence than that a of fisherman's wife and, before Ferdowsi joined her husband's crew, she would often stare out the window praying that her husband's boat would not appear on the horizon at twilight. Ferdowsi himself found life at sea a lonely existence and he resented his haggard shipmates who enjoyed low brow humour and only saw the rials when the sturgeon were brought up from the sea. Ferdowsi and Farah's common misery brought them together at the light house at night. Ferdowsi said that it was their love that blasted a light across the sea, and Farah would smile longingly.

Ferdowsi's nose for nostalgia has lead him away from the present and has caused him to momentarily forget about the little girl slouching before him. Ferdowsi moves his thumb along the right side of his face, wiping away the evidence of his reflection and softly asks, "What can I do?"

"Some food?" The girl's puffy pink eyes match the hue of her ballet shoes. Ferdowsi always has been a keen observer; it was this qualification that got him employed at the lighthouse at night when he could no longer bear to sleep in the captain's spare room, away from Farah.

"Is no one coming for you?"

"No."

End of segment one.