As Roya walked to school with Zari, remembering the incident of Jaleh and the water hose, she wished the polarization and constant political rivalry could end. Politics had seeped into every classroom. Her classmates at school were now divided, much like the country, into pro-king, pro–prime minister, and pro-communist. And she was tired of it.
When Roya and Zari reached the entry gate, Abbas, the door guard, looked stern. It was his job to make sure that no unauthorized person entered the grounds, to protect the sanctity of the institution and the safety of the girls. It was not part of his job description to open the slit in the crotch of his pants and flash his penis tied up in a neat pink ribbon. But he was known for occasionally doing just that.
Zari stiffened as Abbas opened the gate and smiled. Once they were past him and out of earshot, she whispered, “He showed me his doodool again last week.”
“Was it tied in a ribbon?” Roya asked.
“As ever. How do men even walk with that thing hanging there?”
“It has to hurt.”
“It’s so big, I’m surprised they don’t all have permanent rashes down there.”
“Well, you’ve only seen the doorman’s.”
“Yes.” Zari seemed to reflect on this for a minute.
“Did you tell the headmistress?”
“She said it was very ugly of a girl like me to lie. That Abbas has worked here since before I was even born and that I should be ashamed of myself for making up such vulgar stories.”
“I see. Her usual response, then.”
“Yup.” Zari sighed.
Boys had no trouble finding their way from their own schools to the girls’ school to linger by the gates at dismissal time. Abbas shouted and shooed them away. “You sons of dogs!” he yelled. “Leave these girls alone, you’ll burn in hell!”
Roya ignored the boys who followed them home, but Zari made sure the good-looking ones saw her twirl her thick, dark hair, especially if Yousof was in the mix. Some days the boys appeared at every street corner, round every bend. Slick, sly, clever boys who winked and whistled and flirted. Handsome, smart boys with charming smiles. Quiet, shy boys who sneaked an occasional glance at them, then reddened when caught. Roya got used to them the way one gets used to annoying flies, which meant she never got used to them.
Roya’s favorite place in all of Tehran was the Stationery Shop. It was on the corner of Churchill Street and Hafez Avenue, opposite the Russian embassy and right across the street from her school.
Roya loved running her fingers over tablets of smooth pages in that shop. She loved the boxes of pencils that smelled like lead and promised knowledge. She could spend an entire afternoon just looking at fountain pens and ink bottles or flipping through books that spoke of poetry and love and loss. The shop was simply called the Stationery Shop—no fancy name to it—but it was a bookstore as much as a stationery store. As the political divisons deepened that winter and hotheaded people engaged in debates and demonstrations all over the streets, it was the perfect retreat of quiet and learning. It was a sanctuary of calm and quiet: never overlit, never loud.
One particularly windy day in January, when Roya wanted to escape the communist demonstration gathering momentum in the street, she slipped into the shop. She just wanted to read some poetry.
“Rumi today?” Mr. Fakhri asked from behind the counter. He was a calm, kind man in his fifties with salt-and-pepper hair, a bushy mustache, and round wire spectacles. Mr. Fakhri’s shoes were always freshly polished. He had owned the shop for as long as Roya could remember and he was an expert on books. Mr. Fakhri kept the shelves stocked with Persian classics and poetry and translations of literature from all over the world.
“Yes, please.” Roya had come here so often that Mr. Fakhri knew her reading tastes well. He knew that Roya loved ancient Persian poetry but couldn’t stand some of the modern short stories. He knew that she would spend the very last of her allowance on a brand-new tablet of paper and that her favorite stationery products were those imported from Germany because they were the most colorful and modern. Knew that she not only read every word of the ancient poets but that in silence, every now and then, she scribbled words of her own on the tablets she bought from him. Mr. Fakhri knew all these things, and it was his nonjudgmental calm that led her into his shop as much as the piles of pristine books and pencils and paper tablets.
“Here you go.” The Rumi poetry book he handed her was printed on shiny new paper and had a dark-green cover with gold lettering. “Some of his best between these covers. Make sure you find yourself a quiet spot and don’t let anyone disturb you. He takes some concentrating if you really want to get to the truth of him.”
Roya nodded and was reaching into her purse when the bell above the shop door chimed. The door burst open, letting in shouts from the streets and a huge gust of wind. The pages of Rumi ruffled in her hand. A boy her age entered the store in a hurry. He had on a white collared shirt and dark pants; his hair was a thick, black mop, his cheeks red from the wind. He walked in whistling a tune that was wistful and filled with longing. It was unlike anything she had heard and completely out of place with his stride and confident look.
Mr. Fakhri jumped to attention and moved fast. He dove behind the counter, grabbed a pile of papers, bundled them with string, and handed them over to the boy as though he’d been waiting for this special guest all day. The boy stopped whistling, dug into his pockets, and paid. It was a quick, urgent, wordless transaction. The boy was almost out the door when he turned. She thought he’d say thank you to Mr. Fakhri. But he looked right at her. His eyes were joyful and filled with hope. “I am fortunate to meet you,” he said. Then he strode out of the store and into the wind.
Mr. Fakhri and Roya stood silently as the store settled back to normal after the effect of the boy’s presence, as though they had ridden in a hot-air balloon that was only now landing and deflating.
“Who was that?” Roya asked, feeling, for no reason at all, charged. It was disorienting and confusing to have this excitement surge through her just from the boy’s brief visit.
“That, my dear girl,” Mr. Fakhri said, “is Bahman Aslan.” A look of concern crossed his face. He drummed his fingers on the counter. “That is the boy who wants to change the world.”
Roya carefully placed her Rumi book into her satchel. She stared at the doorway. She felt slightly infected, as though she had witnessed something overpowering and surprising but also deeply personal, something of the inevitable beat of hope and life and energy. She said good-bye to Mr. Fakhri in a daze.
For days she looked for him on the streets. Snot-nosed Hossein followed them to and fro; it annoyed her so much. Bold and loud Cyrus insisted on opening doors for her and Zari. Yousof stole a few glances at Zari as they crossed the street and then pretended that he was actually concentrating on the lamppost. It seemed everywhere they went the students from the boys’ schools filled the streets. The boys participated in the different demonstrations in groups. But the one boy who had burst into the Stationery Shop and made the world move a little faster, a little more briskly, with a lot more vigor—even if for just a few minutes—was nowhere to be seen.
Roya went to school and back with Zari every day, ate her mother’s khoresh stews, and listened to Baba tell them all about Prime Minister Mossadegh’s plans. He was going to make their country independent of foreign influence once and for all so no one could steal their oil again. He would thrust them into a future of democracy!