The Distance Between
Copyright© 2025 by Art Samms
Chapter 1
ELIAS
I stepped out of the plane into the heat and light of a city I’d only ever seen on Google Earth. The air in Shiraz smelled of jet fuel, distant dust, and something floral I couldn’t place. My shoulder ached from the weight of my bag, and my mouth felt dry, but my mind was alert—brimming with that strange mix of nerves and awe that only comes when you finally set foot in a place you’ve imagined for too long.
I had no illusions about what I was doing here. This wasn’t a gap year, and it wasn’t a midlife crisis—I was thirty, not fifty. I wasn’t running from something, exactly. But I was leaving something behind. Or maybe letting it go.
South Jersey had been good to me in some ways. It’s where I grew up, where I taught, where I thought I’d make a difference. But after years of classroom battles with teenagers who couldn’t care less, and meetings with administrators who cared even less than that, something in me started to dry up. Teaching had once felt noble. Lately, it felt like performance art for an audience scrolling TikTok.
So, when Professor Yazdani—my old literature advisor, half-Iranian, half-myth—sent an email about a language institute in Shiraz looking for a business English instructor, I laughed. Then I reread it. Then I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
A few months later, I packed what I could fit into two suitcases and boarded a flight from JFK to Frankfurt, and from Frankfurt to Tehran. Then came the domestic flight down to Shiraz—tired faces, polite strangers, the quiet shuffle of a new chapter beginning.
The drive into the city was a blur of pale buildings, blue-tiled domes, motorbikes weaving between cars, and signs I couldn’t yet read. My driver spoke no English and kept glancing at me through the rearview mirror with mild curiosity, as if trying to figure out what kind of European I was. I didn’t volunteer any corrections. Not yet.
What I remember most is the color of the sky—burnished and bright, like it had been brushed with saffron.
That evening, in a small rented flat above a bakery that smelled of rosewater and yeast, I stood by the window and listened to the unfamiliar cadence of the city. There was a call to prayer in the distance, a barking dog, a horn blaring somewhere out of sight. I watched the pink-hued mountains rim the horizon and thought, not for the first time: You’re really here.
I dared to hope that maybe I even belonged.
My second-floor flat was on a narrow side street somewhere between the old city and the newer commercial blocks. The building wasn’t new, but it had character—stucco walls in need of paint, ironwork railings with delicate curls, a wooden front door that groaned every time I opened it. The landlord, a man in his sixties with surprisingly thick eyebrows and a sense of humor built almost entirely on hand gestures, had assured me the place was “very quiet” and “very local.” I wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by either.
Inside, the flat was small but clean. A tiled kitchenette with assorted dishes, a bathroom where the shower and toilet shared the same square meter of floor space, a bedroom just big enough to pace in. I’d grown up in a two-story house with a yard. This place fit inside my childhood living room, but I liked it. It didn’t pretend to be more than it was.
The best part was the window. It opened onto the street below and, more importantly, onto the roof of the bakery. Every morning, the scent of baking bread rose like a promise. And the heat—real heat, not the humid New Jersey kind—came through the glass and made the room feel like summer even in cooler weather.
I hadn’t meant to eat there my first day. I’d planned to walk further, find a café I’d read about in one of the guidebooks, maybe try my luck ordering in stammered Persian. But by the time I got down the stairs, the smell had undone me.
The bakery had no sign in English—just painted Farsi script curling across a white-and-blue awning. The inside was all warm air and golden light, with trays of fresh barbari stacked behind a glass counter. The bread was thick, oval-shaped, with a crisp top dusted in sesame. A young guy behind the register looked up and grinned when I stepped in.
“Salam,” I said, hoping my accent didn’t butcher it too badly.
“Salam!” he replied, beaming. “You want bread?”
“Yes. Uh—yes, please.”
He handed me a warm loaf wrapped in paper. Before I could pay, an older man—tall, with a stained apron and a voice that filled the room—waved from behind the ovens. “Guest! German?”
I hesitated.
I’d been told to avoid saying I was American unless I had to. Not because anything would necessarily happen—but just to keep things simple. The institute had registered me under my German passport. Technically true. Mostly.
“Yes,” I said, smiling awkwardly. “German.”
He came over, flour on his hands, and offered both. “Welcome. Welcome to Shiraz!”
His name was Masoud, and within five minutes he had offered me tea, a seat by the window, and something flat and sweet he called shirini keshmeshi—raisin cookies, still warm. I wasn’t even hungry anymore, but I ate them all.
The younger guy introduced himself as Saeed, and a third employee—older, quieter, with kind eyes—nodded from behind the dough station. The bakery felt like a family kitchen, one that had been here forever and would be here long after I left. They spoke some English, just enough to ask where I was from.
“Berlin,” I said.
It wasn’t a lie. I’d lived there for a few months in college. Spent most of the time drinking cheap coffee and pretending to write a thesis on Brecht. Still, something about the way the word tasted in my mouth felt off.
They didn’t press. Masoud nodded thoughtfully, then insisted I take a small bag of cookies “for later.” I left the bakery with one hand full of bread and the other wrapped around a glass bottle of doogh, which Saeed had convinced me I needed to try. It tasted like salty yogurt and mint and confusion.
Back in the flat, I sat at the little table by the window and tore into the bread with my hands.
I wasn’t proud of dodging the truth. I’d never been good at that. But I also wasn’t ready to explain that I was American. That I’d grown up ten minutes from an abandoned strip mall, that I’d taught English to students who didn’t care, that I’d left a country where everything felt like noise. That my father was American, and it was my mother who’d actually been German—hence the dual citizenship, and dual passports. That I’d come here not to escape anything—but because I needed to remember what it felt like to be curious.
Maybe someday I’d tell people the whole story. Maybe I’d meet someone who made me want to.
But not yet.
For now, I was Elias Kessler from Berlin. A stranger in a city older than his language. Eating sesame bread and watching the rooftops blush under the Shiraz sun.
I took a moment to savor the fact that for once, I wasn’t in a hurry to be anywhere else.
The next morning, I left the flat with no real plan. I brought a notebook, a pen, and a half-formed idea that I should try to get lost on purpose. It’s something I’ve always done when I move somewhere new. Let the streets take me where they want to. See the city before I start assigning names to it.
Shiraz unfolded slowly, like a book in a language I was only beginning to learn how to read.
The alley near the bakery opened into a busier street with cracked sidewalks and rows of sycamores, their trunks painted white at the base. Shops lined both sides—tailors, bakeries, barbers, mobile phone repair stalls. In the middle of the sidewalk, a boy no older than ten was selling socks from a cardboard box, and beside him, a tiny metal samovar steamed beside a man with a stack of paper cups and two thermoses of tea.
I smiled at everyone I passed. Most people gave a polite nod, a curious glance. I was obviously foreign, but not worth gawking at. My hair was a little too light, my walk too unhurried. I’d made the deliberate choice to wear plain clothes—dark jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, nothing with logos or slogans. If I’d learned anything from my months abroad, it was that blending in wasn’t about disappearing; it was about not making yourself loud.
Eventually, I found myself walking through a quieter neighborhood with older homes—tiled courtyards hidden behind high stucco walls, iron gates shaded by grapevines. A couple of children kicked a flat soccer ball in the street, and an elderly woman swept dust from her doorstep with a short-handled broom. I nodded to her. She didn’t smile, but she nodded back.
I bought a bottle of water from a corner shop and lingered outside, pretending to look at a map on my phone, though I didn’t yet have service. A moment later, the shopkeeper stepped out and handed me a plum. Just like that. No words, just a gesture. I took it, said “merci,” and he gave a small wave before disappearing back inside.
People had told me Iranians were hospitable. I’d read that word so many times it had almost lost meaning. But it wasn’t hospitality in the way Americans meant it. It wasn’t performative or loud. It was quiet, almost matter-of-fact. A kind of built-in dignity to everyday kindness.
Later, I passed a wall covered in murals—calligraphy in sweeping curves, a giant dove, the faces of poets and martyrs I didn’t recognize. A few blocks on, I heard the sound of water and found myself at a small park with a stone pool in the center. A family was seated on a blanket nearby, unpacking what looked like a full meal—rice, kebabs, containers of yogurt and pickled vegetables. The father looked up and gave me the smallest of smiles, and I quickly turned away, not wanting to intrude.
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