The following is an excerpt from Seasons of Purgatory by Shahriar Mandanipour and translated from the Persian by Sara Khalili. Seasons of Purgatory is available now from Bellevue Literary Press.

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The morning sun peeking over the wall had brightened half of the sour orange tree in the garden patch. Among its leaves, Dorna again saw the fruits left over from last year. “Just like shiny jewels,” she said. And Sara, who, according to what Father had said that morning, was dead, did not as usual say, “No . . . like fire . . .” There was a large crisscross across the small garden and the wall behind it. A long time ago, Sara had tried to scratch the tape off the window with her fingernails, but it had not come off.

Father walked in and said, “My girl, I have to take Sara away now.”

Dorna cried. She wanted to go with him, just like the day Father had said Sara was sick and she had gone with them as far as the door to the doctor’s office.

“Don’t do this,” Mother said. “Do you realize what you’re doing? Don’t do it.”

“It’s something I started. . . . I have to finish it. . . .

It’s better this way  My girl, you stay home.”

Dorna screamed, “It was you and Mom who wanted her to die. You two. Mom didn’t take care of her at all. So now, I’m going with you!”

“Where to?” Father said. “Do you know where I’m going? Look, I’ll take Sara away and I’ll be right back. I’ll take her somewhere . . . I don’t know, I’ll ask around and take her somewhere that’s right for her.”

Mother sat down on a chair and said, “What are you doing! . . . At least not like this.”

“I’m going, too! No matter what, I’m going with you.”

“Where to?” Father shouted. “To the cemetery?

You want to go to the cemetery?”

Dorna ran to the door  Father finally gave in.

“I won’t say anything anymore,” Mother moaned. “I’m done.”

Dorna put on her street clothes and walked out with Father.

“Is the cemetery far?” she asked.

“It’s very far,” he said. “But now that you want to come with me, we’ll walk all the way there.”

Father rubbed his hands together hard. Then he wrung them as though there were soap on his fingers and he wanted to spread it all over. Dorna’s eyes were still wet when they reached the main street. Father stopped and stared ahead.

“Why did Sara die?” Dorna asked.

“How many times are you going to ask me this? She didn’t listen. She was stubborn. It was cold and she went out to the yard without her coat; she got sick. . . .This is what happens to children who don’t listen to what grown-ups tell them.”

“Then, me, too?”

The city was again being bombed. The street was empty. Most of the shops were closed and only now and then a car sped by.

Father said, “I’m telling you now, you are not allowed to go inside the cemetery. Do you understand? You are not allowed. When we get there, don’t start crying and screaming that you want to go inside.”

“Later, after you bury her, can we put flowers on her grave like we do for Grandmother?”

Father took her hand and they crossed the street. Most of the buildings had the same crisscrossed tape on their windows, but in different colors.

Dorna asked, “So why didn’t I die when I had a cold?”

It seemed Father didn’t hear her. He kept looking left and right, and then he looked up at the sky. Dorna asked again. Father didn’t answer. Dorna asked again. And Father said, “Sara was very sick. Last week the doctor said she was terribly ill. But it’s all right. You shouldn’t be sad. She’s gone to heaven. She’s happy. . . .She’s playing with the angels.”

“Are there schools in heaven?”

“No.”

“So Sara’s happy. Really happy! Right? She didn’t like doing homework, either, just like me.”

She wanted to say, “I wish I would die, too.” But she knew Father would shout, “What is it that you don’t have in your life? Haven’t your mother and I sacrificed enough so that you would have everything?” And he would yell even louder, “Sara, you ungrateful, unkind girl, you do nothing but torment us. Stop teaching these things to Dorna.” And the door would slam shut and she would hear Mother say, “Stop going on and on about Sara this and Sara that; it’ll make things worse. Can’t you under- stand . . . she has started to actually talk to Sara.” And Father would say, “She’s comparing She’s starting to understand the difference between good and bad.”

And Dorna wondered what Sara would do just then, if she were alive. She would probably leap into the street and run against traffic, screaming, “Honk ’til you drop dead!” Or perhaps she would go on the grass divider and not listen to Father, not even when the knees of her cherry red pants turned green. She would not listen to Father at all, and she would force him to buy things for her. Even if Father said he had no money, she would still force him to buy whatever she suddenly craved. She would tell him he was a bad Father because he had no money, and she would cry, she would cry as much as she wanted, and she would cry in front of strangers, and she wouldn’t care that it was wrong for a big girl to cry like that in front of peo- ple. And then she would say, “I wish all the people on the street would die, all the muggers, so that we can go out, all the shopkeepers, so that we can take whatever we want, all the airplanes, all the school principals . . .and I wish only that old man would stay alive.” “Maybe Sara isn’t dead.”

Father growled between his teeth, “She’s dead.”

“If she’s not dead and you bury her, it’ll hurt her. She’ll be cold when it snows in the winter. And it’ll be your fault . . . and Mother’s. She never gave her any lunch.”

Father stopped, lit a cigarette, and nervously flung the matchstick behind him. The blare of the red-alert siren rose in the distance. A car pulled over alongside the street gutter. The driver got out and huddled down next to the car. Father yanked Dorna by the arm and started to run. He stopped . . . looked around. He dragged her across the street and they ran up the stairs in front of a tall building. Behind the closed doors, they could hear someone running. Father pounded on the door. They heard footsteps descending the stairs. No one opened the door. Father held Dorna in his arms and crouched over her. If Sara were there, she would have escaped his arms and run into the street to see where the bombs were falling, and Father would have shaken his arms in the air and shouted at the people, “Damn you! A bombed house is nothing to watch; a corpse is nothing to gawk at!”

Dorna said, “Dad, let’s go back home.”

“It’ll be over soon,” Father whispered. “Don’t be afraid It’s nothing. It’ll stop.”

Through the crook of Father’s elbow, Dorna could see a white cloud gently floating in the air. The sky was blue. Like the blue of the sea in paintings, and the cloud was so bright that it hurt her eyes. Father’s smell both- ered her. He smelled like that every time he got angry with Sara and yelled at her. The day Sara plucked all the violets in the garden patch and Father saw their pet- als on the floor, in the middle of the room, Dorna had quickly said, “Sara did it.” When Father grabbed Sara by the arm and took her to the garden and spanked her right there, the smell was worse than ever. It was like the smell of dirty socks. The white-alert siren went off. Dorna knew the bombs had the habit of falling more at night. Father took her hand and they set off.

“You always scolded her,” Dorna said. “Let’s buy a few candies and leave them next to her.”

“The dead . . .”

And he didn’t finish his sentence. The war anthem was being broadcast from a loudspeaker. When they reached it, there was a lot of commotion on the street, and after they were some distance away, again the street was quiet and empty. Dorna looked up at the cloud. If only it would come down and make everything white, so white that it would hurt their eyes and Father would close his eyes, and she and Sara could run away. She was sorry she had gotten scared the night Sara wanted to run away. What had Sara done that day? She couldn’t remember. Perhaps she had peed in the garden patch while standing up, as she often did. All Dorna could remember was that Sara was locked up in her room again The neighborhood’s old hunchback was walking toward them. Now and then he stopped, held up his cane like a rifle, and pretended to shoot at the people and the cars. Father let go of Dorna and again wrung his hands, as if he were holding them under a faucet and rinsing off soapsuds. Then he looked at her and smiled, and Dorna smiled back and grabbed the hem of his long jacket.

Father said, “For Sara Are you listening to me, my girl? I want to tell you a secret. A big secret, just between you and me . . . Perhaps for Sara . . . How should I put it? . . . You can’t tell anyone our secret. This is a secret between three people, because . . . Well, now that Sara is gone, it’s a secret between two people. Yes, between you and me. Perhaps Sara is gone because she wanted to go, because it was better for her. And she didn’t listen to you and me because she didn’t love us   Don’t you think it’s better for her this way? It’s what she wanted. This world wasn’t good for her. Where she is now?  Well, let’s just say, it’s better for her   Don’t you think so?”

“No.”

Father took Dorna’s hand. His palm was sweaty. The scent of sour orange blossoms had filled the air. “It was better for her. She wanted it this way. Now it’s just your mother and me and our one and only daughter, who is a very good girl. Daddy adores her because she is a very, very good girl.”

“There are no kids at all on the street,” Dorna said.

Father was still talking. His voice was gentle and kind. Dorna had not listened to most of what he had said.

“Now you have to accept the fact that Sara isn’t here anymore ”

Dorna thought, If all the children are dead, like Sara, they are probably having a lot of fun together in heaven. She snatched at the air and clenched her fist to hold on to the scent of sour orange blossoms.

Father asked, “Would you like to go out for a walk tonight?”

Whenever they went out, Sara would stop and stare at people, in the park, on the sidewalk. Father would pull her by the hand. Sara always wanted to stop and watch when men got into a fight. They probably got into fights everywhere. But Father would drag her away. Sara didn’t like it when as soon as they saw people standing on line somewhere, they had to go and stand there, too, and use their coupon to get cooking oil. Father would grab her hand and hold her there, and Sara would scream, “We don’t want this oil! It’s pissy oil.” And at night, from behind the window, Mother would watch her tear at the soil in the garden patch and grab fistfuls of dry, curled-up sour orange leaves and throw them up in the air. But Mother was against Sara’s being there; from the very start, she didn’t want her to exist. The night’s garden was blue when Father said, “I know my girl knows what’s right. And I know who tricks her, tricks her into not doing as she’s told.” Dorna had asked, “If you think you know, then tell me who it is.” And Father had replied, “Sara a mean and naughty Sara, who sits with you and whispers things in your ear.” Mother had screamed from outside, “Don’t say these things!” And then their fights had become more regular. More regular than when Dorna’s brother, who was in Mother’s stomach, didn’t come out, and Auntie said, “The child was miscarried from the shock of these bombs.” And in the kitchen, Mother would say, “Don’t do this. My child will only get worse.” And out in the yard, shadows would rise from the ground and Father would say, “You don’t understand anything. If you did, you would have raised her so that she wouldn’t break the window at school. You can’t even make her wash her hands and face.” And Mother would scream and call Father stupid and crazy, and Father would come outside and say, “Bad Sara can go do whatever the heck she wants, but my Dorna will sit down and do her homework, and tomorrow she will grab the top grade from these mean, stingy lessons that want my girl to be lazy and not do well.” And Dorna, scared by his voice that didn’t sound as it usually did, would sit at her desk to write her homework, and she would see Sara drawing pictures on the wall with all the colors of her pencils, and in between the colors she would write: airplane . . . write: death to . . . write: 3+1=S. And she would see Sara biting the blond doll’s hand, and she would hear Father calling out, “Are you writing, Dorna?” And she would reply, “Yes.” And Sara would stare out the window at the garden’s night. “Write, Dorna!” And Sara would pass through the glass, and out in the yard; she would gather all the shadows, pile them up in the middle of the garden patch, and kick them. The shadows of all the mean people who lied and pretended to be Father’s friends. And Father would walk in, and because Sara had not written anything, he would grab her notebook and throw it out of the room. Father would say, “I know you don’t like your lessons, but you have to study. Oth- erwise, you’ll amount to nothing; people will make fun of you. We love you and we want everyone to respect you.” . . . And in the morning, when Sara again did not wake up on time, Father slapped her with his heavy hand. Mother said, “Dorna, at school, tell them you ran into a door.” But Sara told everyone what had hap- pened, and she didn’t say why.

“We’re getting tired,” Father said now. “Let’s take a taxi.”

Father didn’t know the name of the street where the cemetery was. Every now and then when a taxi drove by, he leaned forward and shouted, “Cemetery?”

The cemetery was on a crowded street with plenty of trees. There were soldiers. There were flags. Dorna counted the coffins: eleven . . . The soldiers sang an anthem.

“They’re the martyrs of war,” Father said, pointing at the coffins.

And he turned away. Dorna knew he wanted to cry.

She asked, “Then why doesn’t Sara have a coffin?” “How do you know what a coffin is?” Father asked. Dorna counted the coffins: twelve . . .

Father said, “You have to stay right here and wait until I come back. Don’t wander off; you’ll get lost.” And he left. Dorna looked at the women wearing black chadors and crying. She didn’t like black chadors. She looked at the framed photographs in front of the coffins. The photographs looked back at her. She saw fragments of the sun; they were bubbling, simmering, the color of the delicious quince jam that Mother made, that Sara didn’t like. The green shadows of the trees were every- where, and in between everywhere, here and there, there were patches of sun. As people walked by, the patches jumped up on them and then fell down on the ground again. The men beat their chests and mourned. They looked like they were grabbing something from the air above their heads and beating it against their chests. Through the fence, Dorna peeked in at the cemetery. For one second, she thought she saw Father nearby, and then the people coming and going blocked her view. She wanted to go to the end of the street. She looked up. She could see pieces of the sky between the leaves. Blue and green, the blue had an end and the white cloud was no longer there. She wanted to go to the end of the street. One day, once upon a time, they had left the bicycle in the alley and wandered off. Dorna had said, “Let’s go.” And they’d followed the hunchback with a cane. The old man walked slowly. They hunched their backs, just like he did, and dragged their heels as they went. The old man found a human eye. He put it in his pocket. His jacket pockets were down by his knees.

Father came back. “Let’s go.”

“But why didn’t Sara have a coffin?”

“Little children don’t need coffins. They jump straight to heaven.”

“They jump from where?”

“From here.”

The old hunchback was walking with his cane ahead of them. He saw a pair of fingers on the sidewalk. He went to pick them up. He bent down like children who fold at the waist and touch their heads to the ground. Across the street, next to a lot of gravestones, a man was kneeling on the ground, hitting a chisel against a slab of stone.

Father said, “I saw Sara go up to the sky. Now, you’re alone; you’re by yourself. Maybe when the war is over, Mother will bring a brother or sister for you. Then you’ll be together; you won’t be alone anymore.”

Father rubbed his hands together. The old man was still up ahead. He walked along without hearing them. He patiently walked, just as he always walked.

. . . That bicycle day, that once-upon-a-time day, when they went back home, there was no one there and it was dark. Then Father and Mother came. Mother cried and Father just stared. They had brought the bicycle in from the alley. Father angrily said that they had searched everywhere and told all the policemen, and then he sat down and said, “I know it’s all Sara’s fault. She tricked you to . . .” Dorna said, “No. I tricked her.” But Father didn’t believe her. . . . The old man bent down and picked up a marble and put it in his pocket. Father was looking up at the sky. Suddenly, he stopped.

“Do you hear a siren?”

“No.”

When they arrived home, Mother had cooked Dorna’s favorite dish. Father didn’t eat lunch. He went and sat on the easy chair where he always sat and he smoked a cigarette. After lunch, Dorna went to her room. The walls were covered with Sara’s handwriting: One day a sparrow . . . divisions are stupid . . . drawings like to play. . . Dorna had asked Sara, “Which do you like more, additions or subtractions?” . . . Rain falls on the . . . Death to stupid, wicked Soleimanzadeh . . . Sara had grabbed at Soleimanzadeh’s Islamic headdress and pulled her hair. The school principal had told Mother, “Madam, if tomorrow this wild girl stabs a student in the eye with a pen, who is answerable?” Sara had shouted, “Soleiman- zadeh took my friend to play a game and she wouldn’t let me play with them.” The principal had said, “You are a liar.” Sara had screamed, “You bitch! . . . You bitch! . . .” And she had run out into the schoolyard, shrieking, “Aaa—a! . . .” Snaking squiggles in red on the back of the door . . . crows . . . lots of crows . . . from the closet all the way to the window . . . let’s go play . . . death to . . . And Sara was no longer there. From her room, Dorna called out, “Can I go out to the yard?”

“Sit down and draw a few pictures!”

“But school is closed.”

“The hell with school. You sit down and draw. . . . For just one hour, sit still and do something.”

From the window, she could see the petals of sour orange blossoms falling one by one. They fluttered gen- tly, like feathers, like snowflakes She could smell Father’s cigarette. The radio was on, so that they would know when the red-alert sirens went off, so that they could run and huddle under the stairs.

Mother said, “Let’s go away somewhere.” “Where is there for us to go?” Father replied. “The upstairs neighbors left this morning.” They sounded like they had made up.

“Where can we go that won’t be like this? Be patient.” Father walked into her room.

“Why are you crying, my girl?”

“It’s nothing.”

“You’re crying over nothing?”

Father paused and then asked again, “Why are you crying?”

“The teacher said whoever is bad will go to hell. You sent Sara to hell.”

“No, my girl. For Sara . . . You need to understand this. For Sara, it’s much better this way. Now, you . . .” And he walked out, and Dorna closed her eyes.

Mother said, “Now, do you understand what you’ve done by fabricating that Sara for her? You maniac!”

“Stop it! She’ll forget in a day or two. You don’t understand . . . you don’t understand anything. What else could I have done?”

And their voices drifted away and the sour oranges turned the color of shadows. Then there was the sound of Father sobbing out in the yard, and the dark grew thicker, and like winter nights when she buried her head under the down blanket and it grew warm, the dark grew warm, and she woke up, realizing she was sleeping on the floor, and she didn’t remember when the sheet had been draped over her. She thought hard, but she didn’t know whether it was yesterday, today, or tomorrow, and it was night and the light in her room was turned off, and there was a rustle behind the win- dow. Quietly, she said, “Sara? . . .”

And she heard, “Shhh! . . . What do you want?”

“I brought this for you from near the cemetery.” And she opened her fist, clenched since morning and full of the perfume of sour orange blossoms, for Sara.