Bread

We were walking back to the hotel this evening in downtown Tehran, after viewing it from the snow down the sides of the mountain. The city was swarming, an avalanche of lights.

I stopped to look into a little window - a hole in the wall, really - about four foot square, to see that it opened into a bakery. Inside there was a tray of balls of unbaked bread being rolled by a man in flour-coloured clothes. Out of the window, another baker was leaning and calling to us.

Our host approached him and bought an oval loaf of flat bread, still warm from the oven. She passed it to each of us to tear off a strip. It was crispy and slightly salty, with a sprinkling of sesame seeds. Plain and perfect. I tore off a second strip as we strode through the sights and streets.

The bread and the moment were everything. To call them the simple things in life would be an understatement, as it would be to call me wealthy in my experience of them.

We can live by the moment alone.