The Stationery Shop(82)

She added to the box the last letter Bahman had written to her, after their reunion at the Duxton Center.

The ice would melt. For the first day of spring, for Persian New Year, they would have the curtains washed and the windows cleaned. They would have the house scrubbed from top to bottom. And celebrate rebirth and renewal. She thought of her parents in Iran, who hadn’t gotten to know this son of hers. She thought of Zari and Jack and the kids and all their grandkids in California. She thought of Jahangir doing the tango with Bahman and dying in the Iran–Iraq War. She remembered the day of the coup, how she had stood in that square as the country fell apart around her. She thought of all the times her country had swelled with pride and hope and collapsed in fear and repression. Maybe one day it would be free. She thought of the daughter who should have been in this kitchen with her tonight and of the man with whom she had lain in bed on the last day of his life. She was suddenly wrecked by her love for him and for Walter and for all those who had gone and for those who remained.





Epilogue


August 19, 1953



* * *



The Keeper of Secrets

Others, even of his class, go to the main bazaar downtown every now and then. It’s good for gold and rugs and bangles to adorn the thin wrists of elegant women like Atieh. Saffron is sold in heaps of crimson. Lingerie of lace is hung with clothespins on string. Colorful mosaic boxes are piled in pyramids for the masses. But Ali avoids the bazaar the way one would avoid heartache. To smell the fruit sitting in the sun, to hear the hawkers shout about their wares, to detect even the slightest scent of melon could make him blind. No need for shopping there. Why? The house is stocked. Atieh runs their home with regularity and reliability. His sons don’t give him much grief. The daughters have grown and married well. What more could he even ask for? For God’s sake. For all that is decent, Ali.

He opens the shop to help the young. He makes it a priority to carry books as much as stationery. Titles from all over the world, spines with lettering that beckon, words of the old greats and the new, tomes of knowledge and risk. This shop—this haven—has saved him, especially since his father’s phlegmy laugh denied a future with the one whose melon-scented skin he still wants. Decorum and tradition and “for God’s sake, for all that is decent, Ali” lead him to a marriage of stability and happy parents on either side. He and Atieh seal their future, and that girl who balanced the tub of melon rinds on her hip and kissed him in the square behind the bazaar is disposed. To be almost forgotten.

The children, when they come, happen in quick succession. Four in all, and all in good health, as it so happens, thanks be to God. Raised under the care of their mother and with his own guidance. Two sons who make their mark in scholarship (Ali’s father feels vindicated to see at least his grandsons follow in his academic footsteps, even if Ali has stooped to selling wares “like a merchant, like a bazaari”).

Today, Wednesday, 28 Mordad, he works alone. The prime minister has asked people to stay off the streets. The shop is quiet save for the scrape of the stepladder he drags across the floor of the back storage room. He is seized by the memory of Badri on that stepladder just a few weeks ago. The knife entering her throat. The droplets of blood on her skin.

He is suddenly drenched in sweat. It will pass—this rush of panic, this mess of his insides that mean minutes of immobilizing pain. It has to pass.

Forget the girl, Ali.

He needs to finish organizing books. He has to go home soon. Atieh is waiting, and sometimes when he is late, he can tell she suspects that he is seeing someone else.

Ali picks up the broom and sweeps the floor, and again she is with him. Stunning how he can carry her with him all the time. When she reentered his life right here in this shop, charging in with her young son after all those years, he was behind the garbage bins in the bazaar again. Had he really ever left that place? Where they had for themselves everything while the rest of the world held up their hands in prayer.

He misses her now. He misses her still. Why does he do the things he does for her? Why can he not say no to her? She tells him over and over again that Roya and Bahman cannot end up together.

She tells him to change the letters. She makes him swear to do it, and he does. Because he owes her. Because he slurped her up in that square behind the bazaar. He impregnated her, stole her honor, ended her innocence. Because he was a man—a young man, yes, but still a man—who took advantage of a fourteen-year-old. And then when he should have married her, he left and listened instead to his father and his mother and married Atieh. Atieh, whose skin is papery-thin and white. Atieh, whose personality is like yogurt. Atieh, who deserves better than a man who wants Badri.

He wants nothing more than to help these kids who come in so hungry for knowledge. He wants to save them from predictability and stagnation. Free them from the trap of custom. He disseminates the political speeches and treatises because he believes in democracy. He knows Prime Minister Mossadegh is a fair and just leader. When boys like Bahman Aslan come in (oh, that first day when his mother brought him in—the pain and pleasure of seeing Badri again), he wants to help them grow. Maybe he can guide these idealistic boys and girls to use their smarts and skills to better the country and themselves. Maybe he can save them.

All those days when Roya Kayhani rushed in after school, when she asked for book recommendations, he was fulfilled.