The Turquoise Harmonica

Leaving in three days, I'm rushing to post as many memories as I possibly can from my vacation to Iran when I was nine. A decade has passed and I'm about to embark again on the eleventh. This next memory I call, "The Turquoise Harmonica."

Still in Shomal, the North of Iran near the Caspian, me, my mother, and my sister decided to meet a few friends that lived in the area at the local bazaar. On entering the bazaar I was immediately taken into a trance at a morbidy obese, Iranian male with a blanket of black hair on his forearms swinging a whetted blade in a mechanical motion systematically hacking off the heads of fish after fish, while, in the fashion of an assembly line, a strikingly skeletal partner carefully flayed the decapitated residue. A hand on my shoulder broke my concentration as I met my mother's friends.

Walking through the bazaar I quickly found gratification in a store that sold toy trinkets, and a turquoise harmonica immediately grabbed my attention. I grabbed one, pulled at my mother's side and begged for her to buy me it. She gave me a few tomans, I purchased it and began to suck and blow into this cheep music-making device. The music slowly began drifting me out of the store, into the masses of the bazaar and away, away, away into a comfortable day dream. On awakening I had absolutely no idea where I was, but I still had the harmonica to my mouth, and I was still playing a melody. Something or another drove me to cock my head up and view the alley-making structures around me, and in one of the fourth story windows, two men eyed me, one, a greasy Iranian male, beckoned me up with a gesture of his index finger. I kept playing my harmonica and acquiescently nodded.

The man told his friend of his new catch, and his friend quickly came down to reel me in. The screen door of the apartment complex opened, he quickly descended three to four steps, worked his way through the crowd and placed a vicegrip on my harmonica wielding hand. I quickly, nervously, anxiously, fearfully looked around as quick as I could too afraid to scream, lengthening the conversation with my captor while slighly, perpetually and ever-increasingly tugging away from his grip, when from among the masses I heard a male voice scream my name, the grip let go as a comforting hand found my shoulder and quickly returned me to my mother and her friends.

Memory ends.