The White Wagon in Autumn

Text & Photos: Tina Esmati

ln an old neighbourhood where even the alleyways, the trees, and the gates of the houses seemed weathered by time, it was only natural to find old cars. ln fact, nothing else would have felt right.

Autumn has always been a strange season. A season of longing, and sometimes of love. Last autumn, I often found myself wondering whether I would one day fall in love like everyone else. Perhaps I would meet someone, share a life with them, and experience the kind of romance that fills poems and stories.

Yet whenever I allowed my thoughts to wander further, whenever I reflected on the verses of great poets from Iran and around the world, the feeling that remained was not hope, but longing.

A deeper longing.

One that seemed impossible to satisfy.

It felt as though even love itself would not be enough to silence it.

One afternoon, while walking through a quiet street, I saw a white Peugeot 505 station wagon parked beneath a tree. Golden and amber leaves surrounded it. Some rested gently on its roof, while others lay scattered around its wheels.

The contrast between the white paint and the autumn colours created a scene so beautiful that it seemed almost unreal. I stopped and stared. The neighbourhood around me faded into silence.

As I looked more closely at the old Peugeot, I began to notice the marks left behind by time. Its tired body carried the weight of countless years. The paint no longer shone as brightly as it once had, and yet there was dignity in its age.

The longer I looked at it, the more I felt connected to it.

Strangely, the exhaustion within that old machine seemed to flow into me. For a moment, I felt every mile it had travelled, every season it had endured, and every memory it had carried.

Yet in doing so, I forgot my own fatigue.

And then I found my answer. The longing I had carried for so long was not really about finding another person. It was about finding purpose. It was about discovering the thing that truly belonged to me.

Standing before that white station wagon, beneath a shower of autumn leaves, I realised that my future was inseparably tied to classic automobiles. Their stories, their history, their imperfections, and their survival gave me a sense of meaning that I could find nowhere else.

Perhaps happiness means something different for everyone.

For some, it is love.

For others, it is success.

For me, it has always been found in old machines waiting patiently to be understood and remembered.

That autumn day, the white Peugeot 505 wagon did not move an inch. Yet somehow, it carried me exactly where I needed to go.

And for a brief moment, surrounded by falling leaves and fading sunlight, my life felt perfectly at peace.