Summary of the short story “Dahliz” by Houshang Golshiri
The tragedy begins when the mother returns from the bath and finds her three children lying face up in the water of the courtyard pool. Neighbours gather, many of them crying, while the house fills with confusion and grief. When the father, Yadollah, returns home in the evening, he walks silently through the crowd and locks himself in a room. His face appears like stone, expressionless and unreadable. That night the bodies remain in the house, and no one can persuade him to open the door.
The following day the neighbours collect money and bury the children. Yadollah returns from work as usual, carrying the bread he brings home every evening. Inside the house he says almost nothing. Visitors come and sit in awkward silence, staring at the worn patterns of the carpet while the grieving mother weeps. Meanwhile Yadollah withdraws deeper into himself. In his mind he seems to move through a long, dark corridor filled with the mechanical noise of the textile factory where he works, the smell of bread, and murmuring voices. At the far end of this imagined corridor he sees three small windows of coloured glass, faint sources of light that seem to promise escape from the suffocating darkness.
Gradually fragments of his past emerge. Years earlier he had been imprisoned and tortured. After his release he returned to ordinary life, working long hours in the factory, raising children, and trying to forget the humiliation and suspicion that surrounded him. Yet the memory of betrayal and suffering never truly left him. The endless noise of machines, the hostile glances of others, and the weight of daily labour continue to haunt him.
One day he meets his former friend Hassan, who had also been involved in those past events. Hassan tries to explain that they had both been manipulated and used like “two dolls” by forces beyond their control. He urges Yadollah to forget the past and live normally. But the conversation only deepens Yadollah’s inner conflict.
In the end Yadollah stands alone on a bridge, watching children playing in the water below. He wishes he could see Hassan again and talk with him once more. Yet what remains in his mind is the fading image of his friend’s familiar face, now blurred and almost erased beneath the passing layers of time and suffering.