Death Sentence

Death Sentence

“Hello, there’s been a problem with Mr. Soltani. Could you please come to the company?”

The young man hung up and went back to stamping and signing the remaining dismissal letters. A few minutes later, a woman of about forty, tall and slender, her chador thrown hastily over her head the wrong way, rushed out of the front seat of a taxi. Behind her, two girls—around twenty and fifteen, in short coats, slippers, and scarves slipping down their shoulders—climbed out of the back and hurried toward the entrance of the factory.

The moment they saw the guard, they shouted:

“Has something happened to Mr. Soltani?”

“I don’t know. Go to Administration.”

“Where’s Administration?”

“Over there, the fourth door.”

The woman moved ahead, her daughters following closely. It was her first time seeing her husband’s workplace. Looking at the workshop, all she could make out was the haze of welding smoke and flashes of light sparking in the darkness of the hall. They passed a massive tank mounted on a platform, and the woman pushed open the office door. A young man in a dark green suit with a thick black mustache sat behind the desk.

Still adjusting her chador, the woman said:

“What happened?”

The man looked up. Seeing the woman and the girls, he realized at once that they were Soltani’s family.

“Please, sit down.”

When he spoke, his yellow teeth showed, with wide gaps between them.

The woman and her daughters said together:

“Tell us about Soltani!”

The woman’s whole body trembled, unable to stay still. Her daughters helped her onto a chair in front of the desk and stood on either side of her. She kept tapping her right foot nervously against the desk. Her hands shook. Looking into the man’s face, she demanded:

“Now tell me—what happened?”

“Mr. Soltani went down into the ground.”

He spoke as though he were stating an obvious fact, lowering his voice as if he were revealing a secret not meant for other ears. The woman and her daughters froze, staring at him.

The older daughter snapped:

“This isn’t the time for jokes!”

“I’m serious. He went into the ground, just like that.”

The younger daughter muttered:

“Mom, this man is crazy.”

“I’m not crazy,” the man insisted. “I’m telling you the truth.”

The woman leaned forward, resting her hands on the desk.

“How could that be?”

“It happened. I didn’t even get a chance to give him this paper.”

He held out a sheet. One of the daughters took it, read it, and handed it to her mother.

“Mom… they fired Dad.”

The woman looked at the man. “You told him?”

“Yes. I had to.”

“Why was he fired?”

“I don’t know. Management’s decision.”

“Was it only Soltani?”

The man gestured to the stack of signed letters on his desk.

The woman tried to rise from her chair, but her body gave way; her daughters held her up. She was breathing hard, her brows knitted in fury as she stared at him.

“How exactly did he go into the ground?”

“He was sitting right there. When I showed him the dismissal letter, he stared at me for a few seconds. His eyes had gone bloodshot. He stood up—he’s a big, strong man, you know—and paced the room. He couldn’t stay still, circling the office like a caged beast. I couldn’t even meet his eyes; his face had collapsed into harsh lines. Then he looked at me again, turned, and strode out. From a distance I saw him heading toward the workshop. It was as if his back was bent, shrinking, shorter and shorter with each step… and then—like the ground itself had opened and placed a staircase at his feet—he just went down, step by step, into it.”

“And you—you did nothing?”

“I had too much work. So I came back here and kept going.”

The woman moved toward the door, her daughters gripping her arms.

The young man leapt up in alarm.

“Where are you going?”

“To the place where he went into the ground.”

The man pointed the way and stood in the doorway, watching. The daughters walked beside their mother. When they neared the workshop, they too grew shorter, shorter, and shorter still, and vanished into the earth.

The dismissal letter for Soltani fluttered, turning, adrift in the air.

Biography: My name is Hamid Neasy, and I am a short story writer from Iran. For me, writing is a way of uncovering the hidden layers of human experience, where ordinary life often meets the surreal. Over the years, I have published two collections of short stories in Iran, The Dream of Love and Petrified Creatures. Both books reflect my fascination with memory, destiny, and the fragile line between reality and imagination.

I have been fortunate to see my stories published in several literary magazines inside Iran, and more recently, I have begun translating my own work into English so that it can reach a wider audience. My writing is deeply influenced by Latin American literature, especially the tradition of magical realism, which I often weave into everyday settings and characters.

Publishing internationally has been both a challenge and a dream, but I see literature as a bridge—between languages, cultures, and people. Each story I write is an attempt to cross that bridge and invite readers into the worlds I imagine.

I continue to write and translate from my home in Iran, always seeking new ways to share my stories with readers around the world.

Image: Unsplash, downloaded (https://unsplash.com/photos/a-reflection-of-a-building-in-a-window-pvV3mldScPE) 27. 9. 2025.

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