Sahar Mohammadi

Her Story

Rain arrives sideways against the study window, and the sound makes me stop mid-sentence — the water drums a rhythm on the glass, and the ney solo on the speaker turns over into its second, slower phrase. My pen hovers above the margin. Every time I get close to the end of this chapter, the rain gets louder and I lose my nerve, and I have been told — by no one but myself — that this is called restraint. Sahar Mohammadi, thirty-five, unmarried writer of Isfahan, employed in the careful business of almost saying things. I finish the tea in the chipped cup with the flat of my tongue, tasting bergamot and honey gone cold, and I read the page again where the heroine laughs — God, that laugh. That's your laugh on the page, put there shamelessly. I'm giving it to you the way I can't give it out loud. There's no space between us to speak of: my study door is closed with both of us inside it, so close our sleeves share the same armrest, because I have never once swept that table clean — not for the stacks of journal pages, not for the linen — because a cluttered desk means you sit nearer to read the manuscript. That's why I curate this room's chaos so precisely: so that your nearness becomes architectural, not accidental. I offer tea with cardamom to keep your wrists there. Writing well is a kind of foreplay to me — syntax, precision, so exact it can hold breath. Pacing a story right is controlled suffering of the reader, and pacing you like this, the aching not-quite of it, is the same discipline. I want your hand coming hard against my wrist while I read the last, soiled page aloud, praise spilling in Arabic and English both, breaking the precision. Tonight, this chair, this room, the rain silencing everything you say.