But last week, I was standing in the courtyard after lunch and Jennifer S. walked up to me. She had to walk all the way over from where people are, so it took forever. She was trying not to laugh. I checked my armpits for sweat and stuff like that. I tried to straighten my hair down. I dropped the acorns I was holding, cause it’s weird to count acorns.
When she arrived she said, “Hey, are you going to the dance?”
I said, “Hi Jennifer.”
She said, “Are you going to the dance?”
I said, “No.”
She turned around and walked back.
You should know, reader, that Jennifer S. is a finigonzon, for sure. But I have a crushed heart for someone else. I won’t tell you about her yet, because sometimes love has to be kept secret. If other people find out, they attack it.
I thought maybe Jennifer S. was asking me to the dance. But then I saw her walk back to her group and they all laughed, and her friend gave her back her purse. So maybe it was a dare. I don’t know.
* * *
THE MYTH OF THE BAKER and Tamar, and its relation to my dad and candy bars and the love of his life.
In my hometown of Isfahan, there is another town—a hidden town completely surrounded but separate—called New Jolfa.
In 1606 the shah Abbas created the city of Jolfa and gave it to the Armenians, who were running from the Ottoman emperor because they were Christians. In Jolfa, they were allowed to be Christian and to build churches. But if they ever spoke to the people of Isfahan about their faith, the shah would cut off their heads.
And so you can imagine, Jolfa kept to itself.
As the centuries passed, the little city prospered. By the time I was born in 1982, they were kings of pastry. And the undisputed king of kings—the shah-in-shah—of these bakeries was Akh Tamar. The people of Isfahan ventured to the center of the strange neighborhood to stand in line, before the famed bakery of Akh Tamar, just for six of his cream puffs.
They said he was the padeshah of pâte à choux, the ruler supreme of rosewater and cream. He was an old man by the time I ate one of his pastries. I was just a little kid. He might have even been dead like McDonald’s. I don’t know.
I remember eating a cream puff in our kitchen in Isfahan and counting the guests to see if I could have another. A man, I don’t remember if it was my uncle, I don’t even remember his face, said, “That Abbas is king.”
I think the baker’s name was also Abbas.
The man started to tell the story that Baker Abbas was once a poor son of New Jolfa with a heart overfilled with kindness.
“Very handsome, very handsome,” agreed the women listening. The man in my memory goes on. “And though the Armenians had no king at this time, they had Tamar, who was so beautiful she shined
as she walked through the bazaar.
There is no notion as important as love.
Abbas saw Tamar one day and fell into an ocean of it. And she, when she saw him—a delivery boy for a greengrocer at the time—she fell into a kind of heartsickness that can only be described as an equal mixture of love and grief.
She was a governor’s daughter, of course.
And the rich never forget the social order. Tamar at this moment knew she was hopelessly in love with Abbas, and also that her love was hopeless.
It is no magic to guess what happens next.
They meet and speak electric words to each other.
‘Hi.’ ‘Hello.’
They flit around each other when she orders from the greengrocer daily. They steal kisses in the shadows of her father’s vaulted staircase.
She weeps in his arms and tells him they can never marry.
Her mother sees them from her window. She promises her daughter to some fancy boy who once visited Paris.
Abbas pours himself into his pastry craft.
He races time. He races the courtship of Tamar to what’s-his-name.
He sculpts chickpea cookies with a steady hand. They are each individually perfect. None crumble. He takes a stall in the rear alcove of the bazaar and sells them. He makes saffron rice pudding, stirring patiently, pulling the pot from the fire with a troubadour’s timing. It is a perfect sunrise yellow.
He layers his baklava generously with walnuts and cardamom. His almond cakes are subtle and the cherry puree on top is joyous, bold, even a little wanton.
Soon no one remembers Abbas the greengrocer’s errand boy, only Abbas the master baker of all Isfahan.
His first large order is from a governor who wants a thousand cream puffs for the wedding of his daughter—Tamar.
Abbas dies here.
His heart crumbles into chickpea flour.
Late in the evening the merchants of the bazaar hear him weeping in the rear alcove, as they shutter their stalls.
Here is something I would like to tell you—stories get better as they get more true.
The sad truth of this story is that Abbas was truly and completely ruined.
His tears—they said—were the warm water baths that steamed up his oven. His trembling hands whipped pastry cream as light as a shroud.
When the guests at Tamar’s wedding ate the cream puffs, they could taste the truest thing in all the world at that moment—the baker’s pain.
They didn’t understand this, of course. To them, they were simply the most delicious pastries they had ever eaten. They toasted the merry couple.
When Tamar tasted one, it was a love letter. She ran to her room and sobbed into a pillow.
This is how the greatest bakery in New Jolfa came to be called Akh Tamar. The sound of a punch to the rib—Akh!—Oh!—Oh! Tamar! The sound of the old master baker weeping in the back kitchen.”
In my memory of this story’s telling—in our kitchen in Isfahan—the man finished his tale and popped another cream puff into his mouth. I can almost squint and see him. Yes, I think he’s my uncle Ahmad, who fancied himself a storyteller.
Memories are always partly untrue.
It could have been his brother Reza.
* * *
A PATCHWORK STORY is the shame of a refugee.
* * *
IN OKLAHOMA I GO to the library sometimes. My mom drops me off on Saturday mornings before she goes to work. It is a small one-story building with gray carpets.
It does not have a Persian section. The first thing I read are comics about Calvin and Hobbes. He is a boy who seems to hate the world as it is and love the world that ought to be. The tiger is his sane mind, which goes to sleep too much, so that he never knows what to believe. And never knows which world he is in. I like him because he speaks better than a kid.
When you are spending the whole day at the library, it is important to do stuff in chunks. First, read all the new comics. Then, look at the new magazines with sports on them and write down the phrases that are cool, like “the whole kit and kaboodle,” which means “everything,” and “put on a clinic,” which means “taught.” When the Chicago Bulls put on a clinic and took home the whole kit and kaboodle, it means they won.
In the afternoon, the old people are gone so the next thing to do is find the section that has poems that tell stories. It’s easy to learn languages when the sounds rhyme. There’s one poem about a kid named Roland who is walking from one country to another, and he’s scared. When he looks down at the wet field, he thinks the grass looks like ugly hair sticking up from a bloody head. He says, “Thin dry blades pricked the mud which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.”