I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing here, in this hell. What was the purpose of my creation? Am I just a clown to him—someone to make him laugh—or merely a tool to show me his authority? No matter how hard I try, the poor always stay poor. There’s no promotion, no change. It’s my destiny to live like a pig in a dog’s nest.

At least, the only thing that makes me feel human is having a family. My wife is seventeen, and I’m thirty-five. What a conquest for a man like me. Her family, like mine, were farmers. When the man of their house died, her mother, Ashraf, came to me. Word had spread through the village that I was looking for a wife. She begged me to marry her daughter—and what a daughter she was. Blonde hair, blue eyes—very, very charming. I married her the next day.

We lived off the farm. Everything we needed came from the land and our daily labor. But no matter how long or hard we worked, prices were always rising. There was no stability. The only enjoyment I had, the only thing that wasn’t affected by inflation, was sex. Sex with my blondie wife, Zulikha. During those moments, nothing else mattered. It was the only time I felt relief from the futility of my life. I thought only of her body and my release. Sometimes we did it three or four times a day, after finishing work on the farm.

Our sex wasn’t just for pleasure. I had a purpose. I wanted to grow my family—not because I wanted to be a father, but because I needed labor. Two people working wasn’t enough. So far, we’ve had twelve children. I think that’s enough. The factory should close.

My wife is now twenty-seven, but she looks like my deceased grandmother—weak and fragile. Still, she has those same ocean-blue eyes. Our last child was a girl. The eleven boys—my workers—look like me: ugly, dark-skinned, scorched from the sun. But my dear daughter… oh my God. She should be the queen.

After she was born, her mother became bedridden. She could barely work alongside me anymore, but thank God, the investment I made in her vagina had already paid off. I forced my young sons to do the hard work on the farm, even though it was too much for kids their age. But there was a big “but” in all of this: I kept my little girl at home—partly to take care of her mother, who had become useless to me, and partly because I didn’t want to ruin her beauty with farm labor.

There’s something inside me, something I can’t quite explain, that tells me this girl can give me more than her mother ever did. Her mother was useful in the fields, or when I was horny and needed to escape life’s miseries. But my daughter… she’s something else.

Before the revolution, they promised heaven on earth. They said they’d provide not just for our bodies but for our souls. But look at me. Do I look like what philosophers describe as “human”? I live in filth. When it rains, the ceiling leaks. We have only one bed, and it’s already taken—by my half-dead wife. Why do I even call her my wife? She’s rotting meat now. We don’t even have a refrigerator. What’s the point when there’s nothing to eat?

Most days I just boil tomatoes we grow on the farm. My children look like the damp walls of our home—pale and yellow. But my daughter, she’s the exception. I’ve invested in her differently. I’ve killed for her—just to bring home meat, protein, anything to keep her healthy and glowing like the moon.

My boys are my slaves. But she—she is royalty. “She’ll lift us all up with her when the time comes,” I told myself.

No matter how much we work, prices keep going up. We even had to start working on other people’s farms. Still not enough. Sometimes, a strange thought comes into my head: maybe I should kill some of my sons with the rifle. The lazy ones. The ones who sneak off to flirt with girls on the beach. They’re just extra mouths to feed.

Then, another idea came to me. Maybe I should get rid of my dear incubator—my wife. She was a burden now, and my beautiful daughter had to care for her. That bothered me. Taking care of her mother meant she’d lose her youth, and with it, her charm. I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t risk my future.

One night, I told the children, “Your mother needs fresh air. We’re going to the farm to check the crops.” They were surprised. It had never happened before. The only times I’d ever gone anywhere with her was in bed during sex. Thank God some of the kids weren’t born or weren’t awake to witness those moments.

We went. She could barely see and was panting. I told her, “Hold the reins tight. I need to check something over there.” That was a lie. There was nothing to check. I slipped out the rifle and aimed at her.

I’m not a sentimental man, but for some reason, our memories came flooding back. Don’t think it was romantic stuff—no picnics, no sweet words, no roses. Just sex. Me on top of her, her gasping—I don’t even know if it was from pain or pleasure. Her sounds still echo in my ears.

“I can find another girl. No doubt. Girls can’t survive without men,” I told myself.

Then I thought about love. “There’s no such thing as love. God just created them so we can open their legs,” the voice inside me said. I kept repeating those words to dehumanize our relationship. To convince myself. To pull the trigger.

And I did.

She was still on the mule, her head drooping like she was dizzy. She fell off smoothly. Burying her was the easiest part. She was so thin. Hunger had already begun to digest her body. I buried her on the farm—not out of love, but as a sign of usefulness. She would enrich the soil.

Now the bed is empty—not just for me, but for my daughter too. My boys were so busy working that they never asked where their mother was. Only once did my daughter look at me and ask, “Daddy, where’s Mom?” I told her she’d see her again soon. She never asked again.

In this world, nothing matters except survival.

Five years passed. Nothing new happened. We were still miserable, still fighting to live.

Then my golden chance arrived—through Agha Mirza Taghi, the factory owner, a man of about fifty. He came to my house as a suitor. He told me that from the first time he saw my daughter, he fell in love with her. He was rich. He promised that if he became my son-in-law, he’d hire me at the factory. I could finally become someone after all these years of hell.

I told my fifteen-year-old daughter about him. She didn’t even understand what “suitor” meant. I said, “You’ll be like Mom soon.”

She looked confused, as if she didn’t even remember her mother.

Then, while playing with her dolls, she said, “I don’t know, Daddy. Do whatever you want.”

Her suitor gave me some money upfront. That evening, I gave her a few coins and told her to go buy bread. With the rest, I went to the butcher. Meat—for the first time in forever. I could’ve eaten it raw right there.

On my way home, Masht Yadollah, the old man who’d lived his life in the mosque, stopped me.

“You know,” he said, “God placed an invisible wall between men and women. They’re only allowed to get close if it’s for marriage and starting a family.”

I didn’t understand what he meant at first.

He continued, “Some people saw your daughter talking with Hassan—the same age as her. They said after buying bread, she followed him into an alley near his house. They were playing ball together.”

Then he asked me, “Tell me the truth, Rahman. Do you consider this boy a suitor for your daughter? Or worse… does she have a boyfriend?”

I was frozen. Speechless. Trembling.

“You know it’s a sin, don’t you?” he said.

I rushed home. On the way, I noticed people looking at me differently. Whispering. I could feel it—they were talking about me.

What a disgrace. What a catastrophe. What had she done?

It didn’t take long for the news to spread through the village. What a pity—such beauty, now ruined. What would the factory owner say if he heard?

Suddenly, a voice inside me—soft, like a mother whispering to her child—told me what I had to do. I had to clean this stain. Or else I’d never again hold my head up.

I got home. My daughter was playing with her dolls. I asked, “Do you have a boyfriend?”

She smiled, innocently. “Yeah. Today I met a boy. We played ball together…”

That was enough. I didn’t ask if he was just a friend. I didn’t care. My mind was flooded with thoughts—memories of her mother, of all I had done to her. I imagined this outsider, this boy, touching what was mine. Corrupting her.

She had been seized by foreign ideas—Western freedom, that disease. Now I understood why she always insisted on going to school.

I thought: maybe I could find another girl. Start over. Invest again. But no, I couldn’t let her live. Not after this.

I told her her future husband had bought her a diamond necklace. “Since he’s not your mahram yet,” I said, “he asked me to try it on you.”

I asked her to turn her back. “I can’t look into your eyes,” I told her. “They’re too blue—just like your mother’s.”

I remembered: if her mother hadn’t been sick—if her eyes had been wide open—I couldn’t have done what I did to her either.

But instead of a necklace, it was the rifle in my hands—the same one that had transported her mother to the next world.

I aimed, but I couldn’t pull the trigger. Her blond hair… it was too much. I told her to cover it with a scarf—an old one, her grandmother Ashraf’s.

Even our clothes weren’t ours. Neighbors gave them to us when they bought new ones.

Finally, I raised the rifle again. This creature, this thing, wasn’t mine anymore. I pulled the trigger.

Her blood sprayed across the wall, across me, across the floor.

I leaned the rifle against the wall. I dragged her body out to the field. I laid her face-down in the pit. I couldn’t bear to see her face—it would’ve made me mourn the money I’d spent.

I cleaned the house and lay down on my bed.

My sons came back, exhausted from working in neighbors’ fields three kilometers away.

I’d forgotten the rifle.

They saw it—saw the blood. Saw the dolls their sister always carried with her , but their owner was not there.She was gone.

They showed no emotion. Just like what they did with their mother.

“Dad,” one of them said, “please wake us up at five tomorrow. There’s a lot of work to do.”