When she returned, the sky broke

In rain-soaked Ahvaz, Arman finds love, loses it, and waits for the sky to bring her back.

Title: When she returned, the sky broke

Chapter 1: My Share of Love

The first time Arman saw her, it was raining.
A rare thing in Ahvaz, where the skies more often carried dust than water.

She stood near the entrance of the old cinema on Taleghani Street, her coat damp, her curls clinging to her cheek. She wasn’t seeking shelter. She simply stood there—welcoming the sky.

People rushed past with newspapers on their heads, but she remained still, like a statue carved from longing.

He had never seen anyone so beautifully unafraid of being drenched.

“I hate umbrellas,” she said suddenly, without looking at him. “They try to protect us from things meant to be felt.”

Arman’s breath caught.

“I’m Elina,” she added, finally turning to him.

He replied softly, “Arman.”

She smiled—a brief flash of something eternal—and walked away, leaving him soaked and shaking, not from the rain, but from the strange ache she left behind.

That night, Arman wrote in his notebook:
"Even when I finally want someone, all I get is rain."


Chapter 2: The Moon That Doesn’t Return

They became inseparable—two shadows walking along the Karun River, talking about stars you couldn’t see through Ahvaz’s polluted sky.

Elina spoke of escape:
“To a place where air smells like jasmine and the rain knows your name.”

Arman never asked her to stay, not aloud. But every glance, every pause in their conversation, begged her not to disappear.

He called her his "unrepeatable moon."

“Elina,” he whispered once, tracing her fingers with his own, “what do you want from me?”

She looked away. “You’ve already given it: your silence, your stillness, your soul.”

But Arman wasn’t still. Inside, he was trembling—afraid of how deeply he had fallen. She was the first person who saw his loneliness and didn’t try to fix it—only held it gently, like a fragile thing.

Still, he knew.

She was not made for staying.
She was the moon that shimmered and vanished.


Chapter 3: The Intoxication of My Nights

She left without warning.

One morning, her scarf still hung from the back of his chair. Her tea had gone cold. Her laughter lingered like perfume in the hall.

But Elina was gone.

No letter. No explanation.

Arman wandered through Naderi Bazaar, through the silent corridors of the old Museum of Contemporary Art, to the bridge where she once screamed poetry into the wind. No trace.

He became a ghost of himself—drunk not on wine, but memory.

The rain came again weeks later, soft and sudden.

He stood beneath it, whispering:

"Your hair—like waves—it made a storm of me."

And as it poured, his chest cracked open with the weight of unspoken questions.

“Why don’t I have you, Elina?”
He said it again and again, until the rain began to sound like her voice.


Chapter 4: When the Sky Remembered Us

Years passed.
Ahvaz changed. So did Arman.

But some things remained: the dust storms, the river, the ache in his ribs when it rained.

Then, one dusk in late spring, as the sky broke open above Golestan Boulevard, he saw her.

Elina.

A little older. A little quieter. But unmistakably her.

She stood beneath a mulberry tree, her coat unbuttoned, her hair once again wet and wild. She turned before he spoke, as if she'd heard him coming through time.

“Elina…” he breathed.

Her eyes shimmered.

“I waited,” he said. “Through every season. Through every silence. I waited.”

She stepped closer. “I felt it. Every time it rained, I heard your name.”

“Why did you leave?”

“I was afraid,” she said. “You saw too much of me. And I wasn’t ready to stay.”

He reached for her hand.

She didn’t pull away.

And this time,
this one final time,
as the heavens opened above Ahvaz,
she stayed.