To Keep the Sun Alive. Rabeah Ghaffari

he whispered to her about Nasreen and Madjid’s tryst among the trees and how it made him ache for her—as he always ached for her. After he was done, he kissed them both good night and put them back under the carpet. He blew out his lamp and lay down to sleep.

      In the moonlight, the judge sat under his tree. Bibi-Khanoom sat with her back to him. She pulled down her chador and handed him her hairbrush. He began to brush her hair, sometimes sweeping it off her neck and caressing her skin there, which still made her quiver. “You did so much today,” he said. “You must be exhausted.”

      “I’m fine. Mirza bears the brunt of the work.”

      “My brother embarrassed him about the wine.”

      “We call it medicinal juice.”

      The judge laughed. “That’s what you call the alcohol?”

      Bibi-Khanoom giggled and asked God for forgiveness by blurting out an astagfurallah before saying, “Yes!”

      She leaned into him and he put his arms around her, and as she sank into his embrace you could not tell where one began and the other ended. Their laughter had died down and they sat together, in this stillness and silence. They sat together in each other’s presence, in solitude. Sometimes passion is so quiet, you have to close your eyes to hear it.

       PARIS

       II

      Shazdehpoor looked up from his calligraphy. The cafés surrounding the square had already started filling up with the lunch crowd. It was Friday and Shazdehpoor was due for his weekly meal with his friend Monsieur Trianant. He touched his face and felt the stubble. In the daze of the morning rush he had forgotten to shave. Such an oversight worried him.

      He had shaved, every day, for the past sixty years. Even the morning after his wife’s death, he shaved. He had taught both his boys, as well.

      First Jamsheed, then Madjid. He had taught them how to properly hold the razor, how to pull in the direction of the hair, how to use the heat and pressure of the brush instead of the blade, to raise the hairs away from the face. He had ordered each of them his own shaving kit from the English gentlemen’s catalog.

      After his lesson, Jamsheed had sat in his father’s study, devouring sweets and washing them down with tea. He had a nick on his neck that Shazdehpoor had blotted with paper. He kept touching it. “Stop!” said Shazdehpoor. “You’ll infect it.”

      The boy continued to eat like an animal, barely chewing. “Can’t I get an electric shaver?”

      “We’ll see,” he said, disappointed that his eldest son did not appreciate the ritual he had been made privy to. It was one of many disappointments that would eventually gather into full-blown contempt.

      Madjid, on the other hand, had taken his father’s initiation very seriously. He had sat in the study after his first shave and discussed the origin of shaving. He had spent some time in the library studying it. He had noticed how his father was able to shave in ten strokes or fewer. “In the ancient times,” said Madjid, “people used two shells to shave with. They dragged them across their face.”

      “Yes,” said Shazdehpoor.

      “Men going into battle used to shave to keep their beards from being grabbed during combat.”

      It had given him great pleasure to see his son’s enthusiasm. But his wife implored him on Jamsheed’s behalf. Each time she saw her husband take a step away from her eldest son toward her younger one, she said, “You must show him kindness. It is cruel how you favor Madjid.”

      “Madjid deserves my kindness.”

      “The one who you say least deserves your kindness is the one who needs it most.”

      Those words haunted him now. What had seemed impossible at the time was now so simple.

      Shazdehpoor packed up his handcart and headed away from the square. He stopped off at a small pharmacy and purchased a single plastic razor, then headed toward Rue Marcadet. La Divette was a small, old dilapidated bar with a tabac in the front. The display windows were jam-packed with old radios. In the evenings, musicians, dancers, and singers crammed into the back and, after a few glasses of wine, performed for one another.