Va baʻd bastam chashm-hāyam rā Persian 2026

And Then I Closed My Eyes… by Mehdi Marashi is a novel about memory, exile, and the fragile boundaries between past and present. The story follows an Iranian photographer living in Canada who, while returning home from the forest one day, encounters the unexpected presence of his mother in the passenger seat of his car. This mysterious encounter places him between a distant past that suddenly feels near and a present that gradually fades as he moves through the streets and hospitals of an unfamiliar city.

Through this journey, the novel explores themes of migration, identity, loss, memory, and the experience of living between two worlds. The narrator’s physical movement through a foreign landscape becomes an inner journey through forgotten memories, family bonds, and unresolved emotions. The work reflects on how the past continues to inhabit the present and how exile transforms one’s relationship with place, time, and belonging.

Mehdi Marashi is an Iranian fiction writer, translator, and researcher based in Canada. He has published several short story collections, including Nafas-Tang (Short of Breath), Ketābat-e Bahār (The Writing of Spring), and Az Jādeh ke Migozashtim (As We Passed the Road), as well as novels such as The Story of Zarathustra, The Custom of This Woman Is Silence, and They No Longer Passed That Station. His literary work also includes revised editions of classical Persian narratives and research on Zoroastrian history and literature.

As a translator, Marashi has translated works by Pier Paolo Pasolini and Roland Barthes, including Mourning Diary. He has also organized the Hezardastan Montreal Fiction Workshop (2011–2023) and taught creative writing in Montreal. And Then I Closed My Eyes… continues his exploration of memory, displacement, and the emotional landscapes of Iranian lives in diaspora.