A Room With A View

We have taken temporary accommodation in a small flat we bought three years ago off-plan so that we could be near Hossein’s father and younger sister, Mansoureh and her family whenever we visited Iran. As luck would have it, Mansoureh bought an identical flat on the second floor of the same block, which is now proving a great help with settling in, especially for our children, Athena, 14, and Yusef,12, who have found companionship and language practice in their cousins, Ali, 16, and Kimia, 12.
It is within walking distance from the holy shrine of Hazrat-e Abdol Azim in Shahrerey, on the south of Tehran; until ten days ago, looking south-west from my bedroom window I could see the golden dome of the shrine, flanked by two minarets illuminated in green. (That was through the steel skeleton of a block of flats under construction; now that the brickwork is complete, the view is blocked.)
Looking down south, a mish-mash of residential buildings, some newly built, their façades clad in granite, others slightly older in white marble, a few much older and dilapidated, squeezed between their newer, elegant neighbours, for the moment still untouched by the building fervour seen all throughout Tehran. And beyond those the herb gardens in patches of different shades of green: parsley, coriander, thyme, fenugreek, tarragon. For now, I can see far out into the distance, something resembling a lit torch by night: the chimney of the oil refinery in Bagherabad.
I have a sense of transience about this view. It will only last until the two-storey building in front resists the pressure to re-invent itself as a five-storey block with a granite façade and reflective plate-glass windows, but no bath tub, or even a shower tray, just like ours.