Badri’s Night

Reading orientation

A small riverside house contains two versions of waiting. The son expects his father’s boat to appear; the mother knows that the man was killed, although his body was never found. A bloodstained shirt is the remaining material trace of his absence. Source 2

The opening holds moonlit water alongside the room’s shortage of food and money. The mother’s attention to what can be sold makes loss practical as well as emotional. Her reassurance to the child can be read against what she understands and cannot easily tell him. Source 2

Publication and language

Avaye Tabeid 20 prints the Persian story under Rabihavi’s name in Summer 1400 / 2021, with a dedication to Nassim Khaksar. This record identifies the magazine appearance, without assigning an earlier first-publication date or treating the fictional family as a biographical account. Source 1

The river crossing she remembers

Badri’s husband carried people across the river secretly, hoping one final profitable crossing would allow all three family members to leave. Instead, the boat returned without him. The same gendarmes associated with his death later visit the widow. Her need to find food, her attachment to a surviving bedspread and her anger at their visits enter the night’s waiting together. Source 3

As a light moves on the water, Badri begins to share the expectation she had tried to quiet in her son. She lays out the bedspread, attends to her face and imagines her husband reaching the house. When a gendarme knocks, she refuses him. Preparing for the person she wants to return briefly gives her another way to inhabit the room. Source 3

The stranger’s lantern

An older man appears beside the river carrying a spade, having repaired the bank. He thanks the moonlight that helped him work. His words make Badri look again at the light she has taken for a lantern: its shape breaks and reforms on the water. She recognises reflected moonlight and closes the window. The ending returns her to absence after allowing hope to change the whole room. Source 3

The magazine prints Spring 1358 at the end of the story. That composition marker is earlier than this 2021 appearance but supplies no original venue. It is preserved alongside the issue date so that the story’s writing and republication remain distinct. Source 3

Sources & credits

1. Badri’s Night · publication

   Avaye Tabeid 20. Summer 1400 / 2021. Persian. By Ghazi Rabihavi.

2. Badri’s Night · reading evidence

   Beside the river, a mother and son wait differently for a man whose bloodstained shirt returned without his body. The website paragraphs are editorial orientation to this source.

3. Badri’s Night · extended reading evidence

   Avaye Tabeid 20, Summer 1400/2021. Original source 293, complete story 4454–4768, printed 71–75 / PDF 72–76 (the contents points to the preceding fiction-divider page70), dedication to Nassim Khaksar. The concluding dateline is Spring 1358, not an established first-publication date; an encyclopedia’s pre-revolution description does not override it. The website sections are original English editorial orientations; literary passages are not reproduced.