The Stationery Shop by Marjan Kamalini

The stationery shop

A Persian nostalgia served like the special jeweled rice. Each bite steamy and pieces of soft and crunch alternating. A love story so warm and heart wrenching, such is the loss that it pulls at your hearts strings. You can feel the magic of Zoya and Bahman’s love in words, in the beginning of spring and the taste of elephants ears in bakery, or the love renderings of joon - lover. 

A love story caught in the backdrop of political events before the constant civil disruption of Tehran - the push and pull between supporters of prime minister and democracy, followers of Shah, mouthpieces of clergy, the communist agenda and vested interests of foreign companies in oil - leading to downfall of a beautiful pristine land. 

The best part of nostalgia books is the memories of childhood food and dishes leaving a taste at the back of your tongue like a good family meal. Each dish is poetic rendition of a mother’s love - 

Persian food- jeweled rice generally for a wedding fest with pomegranate seeds. Traditional Persian eggplant khoresh stew (Bademjan) or chicken and prune khoresh stew. A hot tea mixed with nabat to cure most ailments.  Sholeh zard dessert, chicken marinated in lime with saffron nestled into basmati rice sprinkled with slivers of almonds and barberries (the dish that the guests in another life had loved at her engagement party). Pomegranate and walnut khoresh. Fried eggplants with tomatoes, small sour grapes, and meat served with rice. Thick aush soup with noodles and greens and beans. Her mother’s ghormeh sabzi stew. Grape leaf dolmehs stuffed with ground beef and herbs, wrapped by hand and simmered with cardamom.

And finally the stationery shop, with the range of pencils and paper to write beautiful words and stories. The shelves filled with books on English classics - Walden by Henry David Thoreau, Hemingway and Dostoyevsky Or poems of their own Persian greats such as Rumi or Hafez or Saadi. 

Both stationery and book shops have been my soft spots and probably a dream to have one someday, where also love stories can start and live as letters in the folds of these books.