It was tradition to visit relatives in the thirteen days following the first day of spring. They called upon elders first and worked their way down according to age. All shops and restaurants were closed for the holidays. The scent of Maman’s chickpea and pistachio cookies and rosewater rice-flour pastries filled the home.
Two weeks later, on the first Tuesday when the shops had reopened, Roya practically ran to the Stationery Shop. The city had bloomed into a colorful kaleidoscope of flowers. New buds burst forth as she rushed breathlessly through the streets.
When she swung the door open, the bell chimed in its familiar way. And there he was, standing in front of the counter, talking to Mr. Fakhri, who was taking notes on a pad of paper. The sound of his voice gave her a pleasant falling feeling.
“Roya Khanom, saale no mobarak. Happy New Year!” Mr. Fakhri saw her first and put down his fountain pen.
“Happy New Year to you. Both.”
Bahman looked up and his face exploded into a huge grin. “Hey! How are you? How is your family? Did you have a good new year?”
She walked closer to him and then couldn’t help but gasp. What looked like a row of large black ants crossed the back of his neck. Stitches. Those thugs.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Jahangir’s father doused it with enough antiseptic to sterilize a swamp. I’m fine.”
Two other customers came in, and Mr. Fakhri went to them.
Bahman reached for something on the counter and handed her a package wrapped in red paper. “Here,” he said. “I got this for you. An eidy for the new year.”
“You didn’t have to get me anything!”
“I wanted to.”
She could tell it was a book. She opened the wrapping carefully, as if the paper would be forever kept and stored. When the wrapping came off, she was surprised to see it was a notebook.
“For you to write your own poems in,” he said sheepishly.
She opened the notebook. He had written on the first page: For Roya Joon, my love. May you always be happy and may all your days be filled with beautiful words. Underneath he had inscribed, in his own hand, a verse from Rumi:
The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was.
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.
They’re in each other all along.
“I hope you like it?” he asked tentatively.
She wanted to cup his face in her hands and kiss him and show him just how much she liked it, but Mr. Fakhri and his customers were on the other side of the store. “It is perfect. Thank you,” she said.
“Do you have time right now? To come with me?” Bahman asked.
“The last time we went out didn’t end up too well.”
He reddened. “I hate that you had to see that. But no one’s demonstrating today. Everyone’s still in the Nowruz spirit. I promise to take you somewhere safe. And sweet.”
Together they went outside. He walked in stride with her right away this time. With the freshness of the new year, it was easier to forget the political woes. If there was one holiday that made everybody happy, it was Nowruz. Everyone looked plumper and brighter, having benefited from time away from work and school.
They walked through Ferdowsi Square. At the fountain in the middle stood an elderly woman dressed all in red. She was wearing a red dress, even red shoes. She looked around as if waiting for something or someone. Her expression was anticipatory but dejected.
“They say she was to meet her lover here,” Bahman said as he took Roya’s hand.
“I’ve seen her here before.”
“Yes. But he never showed up. Years and years ago. This boy in my class even wrote a poem about this poor soul.”
“How sad,” Roya said.
“I can’t bear to look at her some days,” Bahman said as they walked quickly away.
After a few blocks, Bahman stopped in front of a shop window. White frothy lettering on the glass spelled out CAFÉ GHANADI. Roya had passed by this café many times but had never gone inside. It somehow seemed reserved for more sophisticated grown-up types, for people who drank coffee instead of tea, for girls who had fiancés, for chic couples who dressed like American film stars.
Bahman took her inside.
Row after row of pastries in glass cases, small round tables, chairs adorned with pink cushions, blush-colored walls, flowers in thin vases, cream oozing out of éclairs and from the tops of small cakes—it all made her dizzy.
The air smelled of sugar and coffee and cinnamon. Bahman led her to the back. He held on to her arm as if they were a couple, his body pressed against hers as they squeezed past tables. He smelled of musk and something Roya couldn’t quite place but which she had noticed that seventh Tuesday in the Stationery Shop when he’d first held her hand. She could only think of it as wind—a fast, cool, exciting gust. She held on to his upper arm, the muscle comforting and strange. Maybe it was the coffee and cinnamon in the air, or maybe it was the fact that she was in a chic café with this handsome Bahman Aslan, but by the time he pulled the chair out for her and she sat down, Roya was sure the whole pink, sugary place was spinning.
“What would you like?”
“Tea, thank you.”
“Have you ever had shir ghahveh?”
“Sorry?” She could barely hear him. The couples around them chattered. Fashionable young ladies on pink-cushioned chairs looked like foreign actresses she’d only seen on magazine covers, their hair in perfect waves (waves Zari worked so hard to emulate by setting her hair in newspaper scraps every night). These ladies chatted easily with young men across from them. The surreal world of sophisticated couples was just as intoxicating as the pastries in the glass case. Were these couples engaged? What would Maman and Baba say to see her sitting on a delicate pink-cushioned chair across from a guy?
“Be right back.” Bahman disappeared to the front of the pastry shop.
He returned many minutes later with a tray holding steaming cups of coffee with cream and a plate of two pastries. He handed Roya one of the cups, placed the tray on the table, sat down, and watched her take a sip. The coffee burned Roya’s lips. It was hot and strong and rich.
“Ear for you, tongue for me.”
Roya almost spit out her drink. “Excuse me?” she sputtered.
“The pastries. Elephant’s ear for you. Tongue pastry for me.” He paused and grinned at her. Roya looked at the plate. One pastry was indeed in the shape of an elephant’s ear and the other was an oblong shape: a tongue.
“Do you like your shir ghaveh?”
The coffee was intense, unlike anything Roya had tasted before. “It’s . . . different.”
“Best Italian espresso you can find in Iran!” He tapped the table. “Right here.” He leaned across and took her hand. “Maybe this can become our second-favorite hangout. Hmm?”
Roya giggled and nodded.
“I mean, not that I don’t love pencil sharpeners and books of Rumi’s poetry. And demonstrations. But you know . . .”
She giggled again. It felt like the beginning of everything. She was surprised that he’d led her out of the Stationery Shop again and into the brightness of the world as if it were fate that they should walk together, be seen together, sit and drink and eat together. Would they have sweet cakes and éclairs and shirini in the future? Just take bites and dive in? Perch on chairs sipping Italian espresso? Roya was dizzy but suddenly absurdly sure that being with him was her fate for the new year and beyond.