This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2019 by Rabeah Ghaffari
First published in the United States in 2019 by Catapult (catapult.co)
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-1-9482260-97
Jacket design by Donna Cheng
Book design by Wah-Ming Chang
Catapult titles are distributed to the trade by Publishers Group West Phone: 866-400-5351
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018950158
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my father, Mohammad Bagher Ghaffari
Be the sun and all will see you.
—FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
Contents
The morning of the solar eclipse began like any other. Rue de Belleville was already littered with pedestrians. Car horns rang out. Metal grill gates thrashed upward. Children whined as mothers dragged them to school. Pensioners, in no particular hurry, made their way to the park, greeting one another in slow motion, while young professionals rushed by in a beeline to the metro station.
The faces on those streets were a strange mix: Jews, West Africans, Chinese, and Maghrébins among many others, thrown together as though in some urban refugee camp. Shazdehpoor was no different. He was as displaced as them, and as anonymous—a single unseen thread in a haphazardly woven carpet. Only older, frailer, wearing a seersucker suit with fraying cuffs and faint sweat stains on the crisply ironed fabric.
He struggled through the crowds, dragging his handcart down the subway steps, shooing away anyone who got too close with his walking stick. The Line 2 train was approaching and he barely made it onto the last car. A young man stood and offered Shazdehpoor his seat. Surprised, Shazdehpoor wanted to thank him, not for the seat, but for his kindness. As so often happened lately, he was too slow. The young man had already turned away.
At the Place du Tertre, tourists swarmed past the artists and artisans—most of them immigrants. Senegalese teenagers hawked woven baskets and tribal jewelry. Tunisian women, babies tucked into their skirts, sold richly painted ceramics with intricate Islamic designs. All for a few euros, a coffee or less. For more than three decades Shazdehpoor had made his livelihood spelling out the names of passing strangers in Persian calligraphy. Each year was harder and harder. He unlocked his handcart and opened the chair and table. He wiped the sweat on his brow with his handkerchief, then arranged the stack of rag paper, inkpot, calligraphy pen, and sander.
A young woman soon approached. American. He dipped his pen in the inkpot and, with the trembling hand of an old man, looked up. “What is your name?” he said.
She leaned over. “Mo-ni-ca,” she said, slowly, as though he were deaf. He dipped his pen in the ink again and squeezed his arthritic fingers around it. Carefully, he began to write her name, from right to left, silently mouthing the equivalent letters in Persian. The roundness of meem flowing into the upward line of alef. Then the U-shaped noon straight into the half-moon yeh. Then he raised up the pen and began the triangular kaf, whose third point touched the last letter right before sweeping up into the final alef. The final touch of the dot over the noon and two dots beneath the yeh were done in calligraphic diamonds.
When he was finished, he shook sand over the paper and blew off the dust. The ink was quick drying but the elegant flourish impressed buyers. He rolled the paper and tied it with a ribbon, shyly accepting the three euros from Monica’s hand. Even now, taking money from people still shamed him.
The sound of shouting caught his attention. It was Madam Wu. A man was shaking the piece of paper she had handed him in her face. “Mein name ist Adam not Yadang!” he said.
She