Volume 28, Number 15 · October 8, 1981
Tehran Winter
By V.S. Naipaul
There was snow on the mountains to the north of Tehran. Morning light, falling on the snow, revealed the direction and line of every ridge. Then the smog of the city of motor cars banked up and screened the mountains. In the summer the smog had been like the color of the mountains; and it had seemed then that it was only the summer haze of the dusty plateau that hid the mountains. Now the smog could be seen rising against the snow like a dark cloud. By the middle of the day mountains and snow could no longer be seen, until, for a few minutes at the end of the day, the setting sun fell red on the snow of the highest ridges, and they were like a red cliff suspended over the clouded city, darkening fast, pricked here and there with electric lights, and soon jumping with neon lights: the old glitter, remarkably surviving.
Feature, 8238 words
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