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smoking. All that was left standing were the charred walls. As he entered the city, Badi saw someone in the street wearing a red armband. He gathered up his strength, shuffled toward him, and greeted him.
    “Do you know where I can find Minas-the-Teacher’s office?” he asked.
    “What do you want?”
    “I have a problem, you see, a misfortune has befallen my head…”
    And with teary eyes, Badi told him what he had heard about his son.
    “Hm…” the man muttered, pointing his finger toward a white building close by.
    Badi walked to the building, but was denied entry. He was told to come back the following day.
    “But I’m an old man. My cattle are left unattended. Can you not tell me anything about my son?” Badi pleaded and sat by the threshold on the paved sidewalk.
    He stared ahead of him at passers-by and listened to the bustle of the street. He was thinking about Hatam’s daughter, his unattended cattle, and Habud, who had become a piece of burning coal scorching his heart and causing him indescribable pain.
    A man came out of the building and looked down at Badi.
    “Why are you lying here like a dog?”
    “Master, I’m Vands’ Badi, a cowherd…”
    “Vands’?” the man asked, surprised.
    Badi mustered up his courage and told him his troubles. The man listened, frowned, then cut Badi’s speech short. He turned to the doorkeeper, called him over, whispered something in his ear, and then left: quickly, turning the corner onto another street.
    Badi felt as if he had been hit on the head with a brick. He promptly stood up and approached the doorkeeper.
    “Bless you, what did the master say to you?”
    The doorkeeper looked around him, pursed his lips, then suddenly bent over and quickly whispered in Badi’s ear:
    “Last night your son was executed by firing squad in the fort…”
    The doorkeeper pulled back. Badi stood frozen for a moment. Then he grumbled in pain like a wounded beast, and two large teardrops rolled down his wrinkled cheeks.
    Badi ran to the fort, but got lost in the streets of the city, and in the end did not find it…
    He was told that it was already too late, that there was no point in trying to find his son anymore. He returned home by the way he had come, dejected, alone, and empty-handed.
    There was nothing left. Everything was lost.
    Badi barely managed to make it to the caravansary where he fainted in the middle of the road by a stone. The villagers found out where he was. They came and carried him home.
    * * *
    Many changes took place in the village.
    The Bolsheviks returned and Minas-the-Teacher tried to flee to Tabriz, but died on the opposite bank of the Arax River.
    The Bolsheviks came to the village and opened the roads. The Isans’ shop became a reading-hall. The elder of the Isans’ brothers fled to Persia with the penman. To this day nobody knows what happened to them.
    Zaki-the-Messenger fled to a nearby forest and never returned. The villagers didn’t know what had happened to him until last year, when a group of young children gathering firewood found the skeleton of a man under a cabin. Many claimed that those were Zaki-the-Messenger’s bones.
    On the road that leads up to the pasture, not quite near the water mills yet, but by the Atans’ great walnut tree, is Vands’ Badi’s home. Badi is no longer a cowherd. He has no one to come home to. Hatam’s daughter did not live long after her son’s death. Vands’ Badi has remained alone in his old hut.
    His eyes don’t see well anymore, having become drenched in tears. Every day he carries some firewood from the forest for different people for a bite to eat. He is living the last days of his life.
    Sometimes, when the wood he is carrying gets too heavy, he grumbles:
    “What am I supposed to say to you, God, who has seen me and has taken him away?”
    In the evenings he returns home alone, throws one or two pieces of dung in the fireplace, and lies on the mat…
    Outside, like the old days, the Atans’