The Stationery Shop(41)

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 na?ve. I was na?ve. 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.