" With the blanket pulled up all the way to her chest, and the silence that still pervaded her every breath, she could definitely have been mistaken for a Victorian heroine; the Lily Maid, thought Marjan, on her way out of Camelot's reign.
Tennyson's poem had been a favorite of Marjan's when she was younger; she had learned it in high school in Tehran, during a particularly spirited semester of English literature.
Still, it took a minute for her to remember the story's fateful outcome: the Lady of Shalott had not made it alive out of the fabled kingdom; she had left on her death barge, floating on a dark river. "

― Marsha Mehran , Rosewater and Soda Bread