The Stationery Shop

As Roya’s love interest, Bahman Aslan is one of the novel’s primary characters. In some portions of the narrative, the third-person narration inhabits his consciousness and tells the story through his lens. Bahman’s point of view features most heavily in the form of his letters to Roya. These epistolary sections, written in first-person direct address, allow Bahman’s voice onto the page. The letters convey Bahman’s heart, detailing his experiences with and without Roya and offering insight into how he sees the world and into his otherwise inaccessible emotional experiences.

Bahman grows up in Tehran, like Roya. He lives with his mother, Badri Aslan, and his father. His mother has an unspecified mental illness, which often debilitates her and upsets Bahman’s sense of peace and security. Bahman doesn’t understand the full extent of his mother’s internal unrest when he’s growing up. Nonetheless, he consistently devotes his energies to helping Badri as best as he can, trying to emotionally appeal to her or comfort her. He sacrifices his own desires to ensure her safety, which conveys Bahman’s empathetic nature and deep investment in his family.

In addition, Bahman is a political activist. He’s particularly invested in the prime minister’s cause and attends protests and gatherings in his support. Mr. Fakhri warns Roya about Bahman when the teens first meet, because he believes that Bahman’s desire “to change the world […] requires rush,” “vigilance,” and “severe caution” (21). Roya initially dismisses Mr. Fakhri’s warnings, but she becomes worried on Bahman’s behalf after the two fall in love. She worries that he’ll be arrested or injured. She fears the worst when Bahman later disappears after their engagement party without explanation. His activism gives him a sense of meaning and purpose, but it threatens to jeopardize his romantic future with Roya.

Bahman is a complex, round character. While he loves his mother and is invested in political activism, he also has the capacity for great romantic love. His attachment to his family and country doesn’t preclude his ability to follow his own heart and pursue his own dreams. For example, when he temporarily relocates to his family’s villa up north, he does so on his mother’s behalf and to stay safe amid the intensifying political climate at home. While he believes in these efforts, Bahman is more compelled by his love for Roya. He leaves the villa, putting himself at risk, to meet up with Roya because he believes in their future and is willing to sacrifice everything to realize it.

Bahman’s love for Roya outlasts his heartbreak and disappointment. Because of Badri’s interference, he goes through life believing that Roya rejected him because of his mother’s illness. Nonetheless, Bahman’s love for Roya endures. He can’t let go of the connection they shared, which is why he consistently writes her letters about his life for decades to come. These letters enact his and Roya’s indelible bond and thematically reify The Persistent Power of Love.

One of the novel’s secondary characters is Walter Archer, Roya’s husband. He and Roya meet shortly after she immigrates to the US and settles in California, where both characters are pursuing a higher education. When Roya first encounters Walter, he’s “wearing a blue blazer and gray pants, his hair like a sand dune on top of his head: a blond version of Tintin from the French comic series […] and he [moves] with ease” (170). Roya recalls her fondness for the French comic, which reminds her of Mr. Fakhri’s shop back home. The nostalgia she feels when meeting Walter offers her a way to connect with him. He’s unlike Bahman in every way, but she feels drawn to his easy manner and casual way of talking. Walter also gives Roya a portal into US culture and a future in her new country. She’s initially “alarmed by his audacity” (172) when he joins her table and shakes her hand at the café where they meet, “but that was how it was here, wasn’t it, everything easy-peasy—no strict social mores that would shame your entire family if you broke them, no crazy rules like back home” (172).

Roya ultimately makes a life and family with Walter. However, her initial feelings for him are much more muted than her feelings for Bahman. In many ways, Walter is far less exciting and intriguing to Roya. However, his predictability offers her a predictable future. Marrying Walter is a gateway to becoming an American. Even when he proposes, however, Roya feels estranged from her environment and from herself. “All of it—their gentle courtship, their growing affection for one another, the promise of a new life in New England—was a script for someone else’s life” (194). Despite her hesitation, Roya goes through with the marriage because Walter can give her what Bahman never could: a future, even if it isn’t the one she imagined.

Another secondary character, Ali Fakhri (most often referred to as Mr. Fakhri), is the owner of the Stationery Shop in Tehran. He’s responsible for bringing Roya and Bahman together. Mr. Fakhri has a soft spot for both of the characters and encourages their romance, as he has so many other forbidden, class-defying love affairs.

Mr. Fakhri identifies with Roya and Bahman’s story because he likewise once fell in love with someone he wasn’t supposed to. As a young man, Mr. Fakhri was infatuated with Badri Aslan. While he was from a more well-to-do family, Badri was the daughter of a melon seller at the local market. Mr. Fakhri knew he couldn’t be with Badri but started seeing her in secret anyway. Even after she became pregnant with his child, Mr. Fakhri went through with his parents’ arranged marriage for him. For decades thereafter, Mr. Fakhri continued to long for Badri and to regret his cowardice.

His decision to thwart Roya and Bahman’s romance at Badri’s behest conveys his abiding love for Badri. Mr. Fakhri knows he’s harming the young lovers and betraying his own oath to bring young people together through literature. However, his love for Badri is more powerful: “It is a love from which [he] never recover[s]” (308).

Mr. Fakhri dies in the 1953 coup in Sepah Square. He goes to the square to inform Roya that he altered her and Bahman’s letters on Badri’s behalf, but he’s shot and killed when violence breaks out at the demonstration. As he lies on the ground dying, he reflects on his life and realizes his mistakes.