Third and last instalment (for now)

Last bit (for now) of my first day in Iran in February 1989.
After a long day of struggling to communicate using a vocabulary of about twenty words, meeting new relatives and processing many new impressions I was ready for bed, so to speak. Sister opened the double fitted wardrobe and pulled out everybody’s bedding: thick mattresses made of cotton and covered in colourful, flowery fabric, heavy duck-down pillows and blankets with sheeting sewn on, which reminded me of my childhood and how my mother used to do the same with my blanket. Normally sister slept downstairs in the same room with her parents and her younger brother, but that night she intended to come upstairs. I told her that I didn’t want to get her out of her habitual sleeping place and assured her that I could sleep upstairs on my own.
Both Maman-jun and sister would hear none of it. What if I needed something during the night? Brother carried two mattresses and a tray with a water jug and two glasses upstairs to the reception room. “Whatever you need, any time of the night, just wake me up,” sister said. For the first time in the year and a half after I left home for university in England, I had the warm feeling you get when you return home and your mother cooks your favourite dish. Only this was hundreds of miles away from home, among people I had just met, who were kind not because I was their bride, but because this is who they were.
When I woke up at 3 am to ‘go to the yard’ (i.e. toilet), I was too embarrassed to wake sister up. I groped for the corridor light switch and started down the stairs. She must have sensed the movement and followed quickly, overtaking me by the front door.
“You’ll freeze outside. Put on a jacket,” she said, handing me a thick, hand-knitted jacket from the hanger behind the door. “I’ll come with you if you’re scared.” I told her I was fine and also wanted to tell her that back in my Greek native island my younger sister woke me up to go to the yard with her, so no, I wasn’t scared. But I was too sleepy and couldn’t muster all the words I needed.