When he opens the Stationery Shop on the corner of Hafez Avenue, he is one of the first to import foreign books. The young students are crazy about reading these days. Obsessed with novels and stories from abroad as well as reading all the ancient and modern Persian literature.
One day, while Ali Fakhri is at his shop, taking newly printed Farsi translations of Dostoyevsky and Dickens out of a crate and arranging them with their spines aligned, the bell above the door rings and someone steps into the shop. A rich perfume fills the room.
She is tall and elegant, dressed like a Western movie star. She has clearly embraced Reza Shah’s reforms in dress. Some women resisted and found the removal of the veil traumatic. When Reza Shah’s police ripped the veils off women’s heads to force them to modernize, religious women resisted. But others welcomed their new Western ways of no covering. This woman is clearly not one who misses the veil. She even has rouge on her cheeks, and her face is like the moon. A resplendent, round, beautiful moon.
For a moment Ali is confused. He knows that he cannot be staring at the melon seller’s daughter. This woman standing in front of him cannot be that poor girl who emptied her father’s melon rinds into the garbage bin.
“Good morning, Ali Agha.” Her voice is confident and clear. “What a lovely shop you have.”
Behind the counter, Ali Fakhri remains frozen.
“You didn’t think I’d find you? It’s not that hard. Don’t look so scared. Did you think you’d find me on the side of the street getting by? I am an engineer’s wife now, didn’t you know? My husband taught me how to read and how to write. He took the time. And now, here I am. In this lovely shop of books!”
Before Ali can answer, the bell rings again, and in comes a boy, about fifteen, his cheeks red, his dark hair in a thick mop on his head, his eyes joyful and filled with hope.
“This is my son,” the woman says. “I thought you’d like to meet him. He loves to read. I brought him here because I have heard that you have the latest books, the best ones. They say you’re quite a bookseller.”
Ali clears his throat and tries to say something.
“Good morning.” The boy walks over, nods at Ali, and smiles. His confidence takes Ali Fakhri by surprise. “My mother has told me so much about you. She says you even have the Americans like Henry David Thoreau? I would love to read books like that.”
At this, his mother rolls her eyes. “Always with the politics and philosophy! I tell him the future of this country is with oil. Study hard. Learn how to manage economics. Learn finance. I tell him do something useful! But what can you do?” She ruffles the boy’s head with a mixture of frustration and pride. She pushes his head slightly, and the boy cringes. “Always with the politics! The youth of today! He wants the fancy books, Ali Agha.” Her manner of speaking is slightly false, the strained tone of a poor woman who is now rich. For a minute, her eyes lock with the bookseller’s, and Ali Fakhri’s body grows weak. He is the father of four healthy children. People say his wife, Atieh, is a wonderful woman, an angel. He has opened a shop selling books and stationery that is respected throughout the city as a haven for the intelligentsia. He has guided students to their intellectual matches on the shelf. He has imported works and products from all over the world; he is admired and successful, even if his father always remained disappointed that he didn’t become a religious scholar. A melon seller’s peasant girl does not deserve his attention, his mind, his energy. Years ago, she might have been forward and brash with him at the bazaar. Today he is a man above it all.
And yet. When she stands before him, it is hard for Ali not to remember the sweet, sticky encounters they stole in hiding. It is hard not to remember every detail. She had been entirely his. He remembers her impossibly smooth skin, her confident laugh. He promised her they would marry. Badri had sobbed as though her heart would fall out when he told her his father’s reaction, how it would actually be impossible, quite unthinkable.
For years, he’s carried her with him. Now, as she stares at him, Ali feels that all the pages of all the books in his carefully curated haven of a shop could fly in the wind and float as scraps of paper in the sky and he would not care. When she stands before him, he is again filled with desire. He is again lost for her. Her voice has not changed. It was always too grown-up and confident for a girl. Her voice finally matches her build.
Behind the bins in the bazaar, Ali had done things he would not have dared with a girl from his own class; he would not have dishonored a girl from a respectable family. But with her, his teenage passions got the better of him. She hadn’t resisted. She’d surprised him. He had told her he would marry her. He had even meant it. Part of him had hoped it could happen, even though of course he knew it was impossible. He didn’t want Atieh, he wanted her, could it be possible that his parents’ choices were negotiable? No, of course not. A girl who helped her father sell melons in the bazaar was not marriage material. He could never have children with her.
“My husband,” Badri now says with emphasis, “is an engineer. His family, the Aslans of Isfahan, you may have heard of them? Top-class. Descendants of royalty. We have been married,” she continues, “for over twenty-five years. Oh, what a wedding we had. And now my son. He loves to read, as I said. You know how it is now with these bright students. Everybody wants the latest on philosophy. In our part of town—” She drops the name of the street where she lives. It is in a neighborhood up north where the new bourgeois class has moved, building big houses and filling them with fancy newfangled furniture and lace curtains and gold-rimmed dishes. She is rubbing her address in his face, stinging him with news of her engineer husband, pushing her handsome, polite young son in front of him. He files away the street in his mind. He knows he will be unable to resist walking by there, to look for her house, for her window, for her silhouette.
“Show my son the brave philosophers. He wants to read men with spines. He wants to learn from those who have courage, from men who make their own destinies. Those, you see, are the real men. Not the ones who adhere to outdated rules about class and marriage. Wouldn’t you agree?” Her words pierce him like darts. She keeps her eyes on him for an extra minute after she says this, not blinking.
Yes, he acquiesced. Gave in to the demands of his parents. It would have been absurd, a joke—to marry a dahati girl. People of his class did not do that. It was not done. For her to harbor bitterness over it is ridiculous.
Ali Fakhri will take the boy to the philosophy bookshelf. He will show him the very new edition of Walden by Henry David Thoreau that has arrived. A brand-new translation in Farsi. He will shepherd the boy through the giants on his shelves, help his young mind discover and grow. How many students has he helped in this very shop? He is the city’s encyclopedia, the de facto reference librarian, the knowledgeable resource, filled with expertise about literature and philosophy and poetry. This is what he does. This is what he is good at. He will take the boy’s hand and help him. He will make it up to his mother. He will shepherd the boy and hope that Badri forgives him.
He will do anything for Badri to forgive him.
She stands still, challenging him, taunting him in her tight dress, her hand on her hip, rouge on her cheeks, how dare she? Isn’t she nothing more than a melon seller’s daughter who has magically landed an engineer husband, exhibiting everything Ali Fakhri hates about new money?
“I know that street well,” he says, referencing her address. “I go there often.”
“We are the house at the very end of the street. With the big sycamore tree in the front. Such a beautiful view of the Alborz Mountains that we have! Now, Bahman!” She turns to her son and pushes him toward Mr. Fakhri. “Bahman Jan, go see what you can find in these books.”
Ali Fakhri takes the young Bahman to the corner of the shop that houses the philosophy books and shows him the contents of his collection as Badri puffs up her hair. He will teach this boy what he knows. He will show him what he has learned. He will help guide him to whatever it
is his heart desires, whatever is his destiny. It’s the least he can do.
Chapter Fifteen
1953
Fate on the Forehead
Zari came into the house holding an envelope. “This was in the mail today,” she said.
Roya’s heart jumped. She grabbed the envelope. It was his writing! Would she finally know why he hadn’t come to the square, if he was okay, where he had been this whole time? She had been so heartsick for so long. All she’d wanted was to hear from him just to know he was safe. She clutched the envelope with all her might and felt delirious just to see his writing again.
She pulled out the onionskin letter paper she knew so well. And read for her life.
Roya Khanom,
I hope that you and your family are all well and healthy. For the worry and sadness that I have caused you, I apologize. I know that we spoke of marriage and all that, but please know that my priority now is in helping this nation. I will do everything within my capabilities to make sure this happens. If I deceived you with words of love, I apologize. If I made you think that we stood a chance for a future together, I was wrong—I see that now. We had a love because we had a hope for a good future together. But we were naïve. I was naïve. I’m not ready. We rushed into it. We were too rash. I need time. I need space. Please don’t contact me. It’s actually dangerous to do so—you would be putting me in a harmful place. I must pursue the cause in secret. I must help the National Front. I got swept up in teenage love this summer. Now there are bigger concerns for me, you have to trust in that. You are a smart, beautiful young woman who will find many men knocking on her door. I wish you a prosperous future. I wish you joy and good health.
Sincerely,
Bahman
Her fingers shook. The letter was in Bahman’s handwriting. It was on the same paper on which he’d written all his previous letters. But the words were garbage. Bahman would never write this.
Roya put down the letter. What chart o part, what utter nonsense. She could make no sense of it. “Where did you find this, Zari?”
“I told you. It came in the post.”
“But he never mailed his letters to me. They all came to me through the Stationery Shop.”
Zari crossed her arms and stared at her. “And how would he deliver them now?”
“But this letter makes absolutely no sense. For it to arrive today, it must have been mailed a few days ago—before the coup, before the shop was destroyed. . . .”
“Did any of his letters make sense, Sister? Now that you think about it?”
“You read them?”
Zari reddened. “Of course not.” She answered in an extra-high voice, “So tell me, Sister. What does he have to say for himself?”
Roya just shook her head. “He never says why he didn’t come to the square. Not once.”
“Well, for the letter to reach us today, it must have been mailed before the day of your meeting, right? So how could it address that?”
Roya knew Zari was right even though it made her sick that the horrible letter couldn’t even answer where he had been when they were supposed to meet at the square. Roya gave in and showed her sister the letter from Bahman. She wanted confirmation that it had to be a joke, a prank.
Zari read it quickly. She sucked in her breath and said, “A snake. I told you he was a snake. A political donkey!”
“He would never write something like this.”
“Sister, he is siasi—these political types are crazy. He’s telling you in pure Farsi what he is. Why can’t you just believe it?”
Roya tossed and turned again that night. The letter had been written under duress. It must have been. When she finally fell asleep, she dreamt that Bahman was held captive somewhere, guards breathing down on him, clutching his hair as they forced him to write those nonsensical, insensitive words.
“It’s for you, Roya!”
When Roya went into the living room, Maman handed her the telephone with a worried whisper: “Bahman’s mother.”
Roya was so shocked she could barely lift the heavy black receiver to her ear. “Salaam, Khanom Aslan.”
“Roya?”
She hoped her pounding heart couldn’t be heard over the phone. Out of habit, out of deference, out of the social code that demanded respect for one’s elders, she said, “How are you, Khanom Aslan? I am so happy to hear your voice.”
Mrs. Aslan spoke in a rush without taking a breath. “Azizam, dear, I want to say one thing—it is difficult. Bahman is back, by the way. We were all up north. . . .”
“Is he all right?” Roya was dizzy.
“Very. Anyway, never mind the details, I don’t want to worry or mislead you. The truth is, Roya Jan, that Bahman was just fine this whole time. We have a villa up there, you know, as people do. Well, you don’t, but you know that we love our beach house. He was up there with us and, well, he is back now. The fact is, Roya Jan, the fact is that I am calling you because . . . I’m not quite sure how to say this. The wedding is in two months. Bahman is getting married.”
Roya wasn’t sure if she’d heard Mrs. Aslan correctly.
“My dear, I know how difficult this is for you. Of course it would be. My goodness, I didn’t have enough heart to tell your mother, forgive me! Your poor mother, who has been nothing but kind. You are good people. Don’t take this the wrong way. You are good people and your father is a decent man and his clerkship at the government has nothing to do with this. Bahman understands that your father needs to stay on and work for the Shah despite all that’s happened.”
“Excuse me?”
“In any case, darling, these things are difficult—don’t get me wrong. We’ve all been through the tunnels of young love, and I can attest, quite personally, I know well its twists and turns, its fickleness.” She paused and then said, “Its losses. So, my apologies to you for this bad news, but he is happy now, Roya Jan, you understand. And you are young. Life is just this. Our destiny isn’t in our hands. We can’t change it. God willing, you’ll be successful.”
Roya could not form words. Her hand was clammy and the receiver felt like it might slip from her fingers.
“I must go now, there is so much to plan! I’m sure you can understand why an invitation to the wedding isn’t being extended to you and your family. He is happy now and he is healthy, and may you be too, my girl. May God protect you.”
For a long time after the phone call, Roya sat on the floor staring at the wall. Her mother came and fussed over her and said words that Roya could not hear. Time must have passed because Baba was back from work and talking to her and Roya could see his mouth move but she had no idea what he was saying. Finally, Zari’s shrill voice broke through her daze. “I told you so,” she heard her sister say, and “son of a dog,” and “lying lunatic.” Zari dragged Roya to bed and put a cold washcloth on her head. Roya heard occasional phrases like “wimp of a man” and “nutcase mother.” But she was underwater. Everything happened around her without happening at all. She kept hearing Mrs. Aslan’s words on the phone. The matter-of-fact, bold voice. He had been at a summer villa this whole time? Telling her about Bahman getting married. As though she were discussing the price of cucumbers. Or upcoming rain. Or just simple fate.
Zari didn’t arrange her hair in newspaper scraps that night. She repeated how much she hated that lying dog, Bahman Aslan, and his opportunistic, money-obsessed wack job of a mother.
And with shame and a heart pulverized, Roya just said, “Sister, you were right.”
Chapter Sixteen
1953–1954
Pioneers
“You’ll get accepted, inshallah,” Baba said at breakfast. “How long can a father stand to see his child heartbroken? You can’t just sit around, Roya Joon. You too, Zari. Both of you. In a country that’s lost hope and its youth . . . Well, you can’t lose your future. I won’t let it happen. God gave us two beautiful and intelligent daughters, full of promise, didn’t he, Manijeh Joon? God gave us just these two children; it wasn
’t in our destiny to have more. He hasn’t allowed our country to be democratic, why? All we wanted was a say. For the people to have the say. Right, Manijeh Joon?”
Maman crossed her arms and looked out the window.
“See, despite the heartbreak and Mossadegh’s ousting and the loss of life, we have to go on, no?”
Baba had insisted that Roya start English lessons so that she could consider applying to an American university. He even suggested that Zari sign up and start learning English as well. After initially resisting, Roya agreed. It became her one distraction from heartbreak and grief.
“This is an unprecedented opportunity,” Baba continued.
“It is impossible to even think these things. Girls going abroad? To study? I know of boys. Rich boys. From wealthy families. We’re just . . . we’re in the middle. What even are we doing to ourselves?” Maman looked like she might cry.
“But it’s the modern age. Women can go to study abroad just like men. Europeans do it. Americans do it. What are we, backward? We are not. And why should it be just the rich ladies? There is a special program now. My boss is willing to help. He has already helped so much. His son did this program. You would be pioneers, girls! Think what this would mean. What an opportunity. An unprecedented opportunity. When your mother and I were your age, if someone had told us that young Iranian women could go study in American universities, do you know what we would have said?”
The Stationery Shop of Tehran Page 13