by Marjan Kamali, 2019
Recommended by Christie, this is a sweet book about two young lovers in 1953 Tehran, Iran. They meet in the Stationery Shop, a shop filled with beautiful pens, papers, journals, books, etc. They decide to marry, despite the young man’s mother’s objections, and arrange to meet in the square at a certain time. The young lady (Roya) makes her way through a political mob to the place they had agreed to meet, but the young man (Bahman) never shows up. A letter from him received a few days later says his love was all a mistake and he is marrying someone else, the woman his mother wants him to marry.
Life goes on, Roya moves to America, meets Walter, the sweetest, most gentle man who loves her dearly. They marry and move to Massachusetts where he becomes a lawyer. They have a daughter, Marigold, who dies of the croup at the age of 1. This devastates them but when Roya is 42, she miraculously gets pregnant again and has a son, Kyle. They are blessed and happy but she can never forget the young man who said he loved her so but never showed up that day in 1953. At age 77, she hears about a store called the Stationery Shop in her Massachusetts town. She visits it and it is exactly the same as the Stationery Shop in Tehran. The owner looks like Bahman. It turns out to be his son. Bahman is in a nursing home in Massachusetts. Roya goes to visit him and they learn what happened. Bahman’s mother had the letters changed so Roya went to one place and Bahman went to another. She then had letters written that said they had changed their mind and didn’t want to marry the other. The person who wrote the letters and was able to copy the lovers’ handwriting was Mr. Fakhri, the owner of the Stationery Shop in Tehran. He had fallen in love with Bahman’s mother when she was only 14 years old and just a poor, melon-seller’s daughter. He got her pregnant and wanted to marry her but his family refused to let him marry her, so he abandoned her. She gave herself an abortion, which botched her up inside and when she did get married to an engineer, they lost 4 children before they finally had Bahman. She was mentally deranged and refused to let her son marry the woman he loved.
Interesting book.