About This Video
Years ago, there was a time when night truly meant something. Not like now — when day and night blur together in the glow of our phones and screens. Back then, night had darkness. It had silence. It had a sky so wide and deep you could almost fall into it. We didn’t have electricity twenty-four hours a day. Sometimes, right in the middle of a radio program or a TV show, the lights would suddenly go out, and the whole house would sink into darkness. But that darkness wasn’t frightening to us. It was the signal — story time had begun. In the hot, endless summers, we used to sleep on the rooftop. The night breeze carried the smell of dust and jasmine; crickets sang from somewhere far away; and above us, the sky spilled over with stars. Even now, when I remember those nights, it feels like the Milky Way belonged only to my childhood. It was so close that I thought if I stretched out my hand, I could pick a few stars and tuck them into my little sister’s hair. Winters were different. Cold winds howled through the cracks of the old windows, and to save on fuel, we all slept in one special room. We called it the zimestaneh — the “winter room.” It was where warmth lived — where laughter, breath, and stories blended into a single rhythm. My grandfather would clear his throat, lean a little closer to the lantern’s flickering light, and begin one of his Gap-Sho tales — stories not from books, but from memory, from life. We called those storytelling sessions Gap-Sho, meaning “night talk.”