The Stationery Shop(36)
Roya waited all that day to hear from him. Hours stretched out, and still nothing. Everyone she asked was shell-shocked from the coup. When she got in touch with Bahman’s friends, each one said something different. His old classmates told her they still hadn’t heard from him, but they insisted that Bahman would not have been involved in anything on the streets. Another friend said that maybe Bahman had gone to a square during the coup and was actually arrested and that they should contact every prison to find him. When asked, Jahangir only cursed and said that a man nobler than Mr. Fakhri did not exist, for God’s sake, and how could the soldiers just randomly shoot into the crowd, and he hoped Bahman was fighting every day to bring Prime Minister Mossadegh back to power. Roya had no idea whom she could trust. She had always assumed that Bahman’s friends were on his side, that they had his back. But when Jahangir ranted about the Shah, Roya began to feel a seed of doubt. Could Jahangir be egging her on so she’d reveal something anti-Shah to him? Maybe he was a spy. It revolted her to think that she was now suspicious of everyone. She couldn’t even fully trust Jahangir.
The rumor of foreign agents being involved in displacing the prime minister was already being discussed in bazaar stalls and in cafés over espressos and in living rooms everywhere. Zari countered every conspiracy theory with: Okay, what if they did pay them with foreign money? What about our own people? We have spineless thugs who are only too happy to take to the streets to repeat whatever the slogan of the day is. And to take money from the Americans to do their bidding!
Roya couldn’t sleep. When she did, it was in fits and spurts but with vivid, detailed dreams.
In the dream that haunted her the most, she entered Mr. Fakhri’s shop, the bell above the door ringing like always. Inside, it smelled of ink and books; the familiar comforting coolness enveloped her. At first she didn’t see Mr. Fakhri, but then there he was, behind the counter, writing in his inventory book, the fountain pen gliding across the page. He looked like himself again: clean and calm, his glasses on straight. He had nothing of the wild look that she remembered from that fateful day in the square.
He looked up and for just a second panic crossed his face. Then he broke into his usual smile. In the polite voice to which Roya was accustomed, he asked how her parents were doing, how her sister, Zari Khanom, was, how all of the extended family fared, if all was going well in their neighborhood, may they all be healthy and live long lives. He added extra heapings of Persian tarof—the formal niceties required in every social interaction.
“Have you heard from Bahman?” she asked.
“Roya Khanom, no.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Not one word.”
“But he was delivering his letters to you till just a few days ago. Right?”
Mr. Fakhri sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “My advice to you, young lady, is to forget about that young man. Move on with your life. Get married. Have children. Be good.”
“I’m sorry?” Roya’s heart banged against her chest. “Get married is exactly what I am going to do. I’m engaged to him.”
“Yes, well, sometimes engagements don’t work out. Did you know that?” He said the words delicately, as if they could break her if he said them carelessly.
“I want to know if he’s all right. No one has heard from him. I just thought maybe you had, since—”
Mr. Fakhri held up his hand. “We do not always get what we want, Roya Khanom. Things do not always work out the way we planned. Those who are young tend to think that life’s tragedies and miseries and its bullets will somehow miss them. That they can buoy themselves with na?ve hope and energy. They think, wrongly, that somehow youth or desire or even love can outmatch the hand of fate.” He took a breath. “The truth is, my young lady, that fate has written the script for your destiny on your forehead from the very beginning. We can’t see it. But it’s there. And the young, who love so passionately, have no idea how ugly this world is.” He rested both hands on the counter. “This world is without compassion.”
Roya felt like she had suddenly been soaked in ice.
“You would do well to remember that,” Mr. Fakhri said. A low, grating whistle passed between his teeth. He took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and finally said, “It seems to me that he never loved you. It was all a game for him.”
Roya would wake up with a start then, soaked with cold sweat.
Even awake, she could feel Mr. Fakhri in the Stationery Shop as it used to be, taking inventory of his stock, organizing the translations of authors from all over the world. She could see him dust the table that carried volumes of poetry, including the ones in which she and Bahman had passed their notes. He had opened up a world of possibilities for her, offering a place where her dreams had formed into a viable path, where she had escaped the tumult of politics and found refuge. Where she had fallen in love.
She could still feel the shelves digging against her back where she had leaned as Bahman pressed into her, whispering to her.
But in her dream, Mr. Fakhri always said that Bahman had never loved her. He told her to start a new chapter of her life. Even if so many unanswered questions remained in this one.
He had been their ally, their encouraging chaperone. A middle-aged man dusting books and arranging school stationery in a shop, talking to the young and helping them secretly get access to political material and exchange love notes.