48 pages • 1-hour read
The Stationery Shop
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Parts 2-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of mental illness, pregnancy loss, and child death.
Part 2, Chapter 14 Summary: “The Melon Seller’s Daughter: 1916”
The book flashes back to a scene in Ali Fakhri’s youth in 1916, when he falls in love with Badri, a local melon seller’s daughter. He watches her at the market every day, enchanted by her beauty. One day, he follows her. She confronts him for stalking her and threatens to have her father kill him. Ali is unaccustomed to such treatment but does nothing. He’s speechless when Badri kisses him. They make plans to meet up again.
Over the following days, Ali and Badri sneak around together. Ali’s lust turns to love. Despite his intense feelings for Badri, however, he goes through with his family’s arranged marriage to Atieh. He eventually settles into his marriage, but he never forgets Badri.
Years later, Badri shows up at Ali’s Stationery Shop and introduces him to her son, Bahman. Ali is struck by seeing Badri again and impressed by Bahman. He wishes he had stood up to his parents and married Badri instead. He also wishes he could earn Badri’s forgiveness. He starts investing in Bahman’s education in the following months.
Part 2, Chapter 15 Summary: “Fate on the Forehead: 1953”
Roya receives a letter from Bahman. He apologizes for making promises he couldn’t keep and admits that he was distracted by his feelings for her. He now must focus on the political conflict in secret.
The letter shocks Roya. Then, Badri calls Roya to say that Bahman is at the family’s beach house up north and is going to marry Shahla. After the call, Roya goes to bed, feeling defeated.
Part 2, Chapter 16 Summary: “Pioneers: 1953-1954”
Roya and Zari plan to immigrate to the US. Their parents encourage them to apply to schools there, hoping that they’ll escape the upheaval in Tehran. Zari tells Roya she’ll accompany her, though she’s in love with a boy at home.
A few months later, the sisters are accepted at a “women’s college in California” (161). On the flight overseas, Roya is overcome by emotion, shocked by how far they’re traveling from home.
Part 3, Chapter 17 Summary: “California Coffee Shop: 1956”
Roya spends the next two years studying science in college and settling into life in the US. Zari is also studying and has fallen in love with an American named Jack Bishop. One day, Roya is studying at a café near her school when she meets a charming young American man, Walter Archer. Roya agrees to let him join her for coffee. They start spending more time together thereafter. Their relationship develops quickly. Walter isn’t what she expected, but she dismisses her memories of Bahman and Tehran and throws herself into the relationship.
Part 3, Chapter 18 Summary: “Alternate Plan”
Bahman writes Roya a letter about his life. He’s married to Shahla but wishes he and Roya were together, regretting that Roya changed her mind about their relationship. He updates her on the political situation in Tehran and his mother’s well-being. His father died recently. He reflects on his parents’ relationship, which broke class boundaries. He knows how important money can be to a marital contract like his and Shahla’s, but he was still heartbroken when he received Roya’s last letter saying she couldn’t marry him because of his mother’s condition. He has so many regrets. Nonetheless, he’s excited to welcome his first child soon. He closes the letter, revealing that he waited in the square for Roya that day in 1953.
Part 3, Chapter 19 Summary: “Cooking Lessons”
Roya and Walter start double-dating with Zari and Jack. One night, they talk about food, and Walter expresses interest in Iranian cuisine. Roya offers to cook for him. She misses Iranian food and still hasn’t adjusted to American cuisine. One Saturday shortly thereafter, Roya has Walter over to her boardinghouse and prepares a traditional meal for him, explaining the recipe as she works. Walter is impressed.
Part 3, Chapter 20 Summary: “To-Do: 1957-1959”
Walter starts coming to the boardinghouse for regular Saturday night dinners with Roya. She enjoys cooking the recipes, but feels dissociated and strange throughout. Then one night, Walter proposes to Roya, and she accepts. Zari is thrilled when she hears the news and suggests calling their parents. Roya wants to ask for Baba’s approval but feels worried. She can’t help recalling her engagement to Bahman.
Baba and Maman fly to the US for the wedding. Everything goes as planned. In the following months, both Roya and Walter graduate from college. Roya previously planned to return to Iran after graduation, but makes different plans with Walter instead. They move to Boston, where he’ll be attending law school at Boston University. Zari marries Jack, too, but plans to stay on the West Coast. The sisters part ways.
In Boston, Roya and Walter settle into married life. Roya gets to know Walter’s mother, Alice, and his sister, Patricia. Patricia dislikes Roya, especially because she hasn’t gotten pregnant yet. Over a simple American dinner that Roya made for Patricia’s visit, Patricia harps about babies and motherhood, disapproving of Roya’s plans to find work in a laboratory.
Despite her in-laws’ disapproval, Roya pursues jobs in science over the following months but finds nothing. The derision of Walter’s family reminds Roya of Badri. She feels frustrated and trapped. However, she has no idea how much worse her pain will become.
Part 4, Chapter 21 Summary: “Births: 1958”
Bahman writes Roya a letter about his life as a father. Shahla had twins (a boy and a girl) last year. He reflects on Badri’s experiences of motherhood, revealing that he recently learned she had several miscarriages before having him. He wondered if the miscarriages led to her having depression, but later learned that she experienced a great loss even before then.
Part 4, Chapter 22 Summary: “Marigold: 1962-1963”
While Zari starts a family back on the West Coast, Roya continues seeking work on the East Coast. Meanwhile, she keeps thinking and dreaming about Bahman. One day, Walter suggests that she apply for a secretarial job at Harvard Business School (HBS). Roya is unenthused but applies and secures the job anyway.
In 1962, Roya gives birth to a baby girl, whom they name Marigold. She’s more beautiful than Roya could have imagined. However, just 12 months later, Marigold stops breathing and dies at the hospital. Roya is devastated.
A few weeks later, Zari visits Roya with her two young children, Darius and Leila. Roya finds it hard to be around the children. She spends most of her time lying down while the children run around, and Zari keeps house.
After Zari leaves, Roya returns to work and tries to settle back into her life. One day, Patricia comes over to see Roya and give her condolences. Over the following months, Roya and Walter fall into a routine. Roya tries to maintain normalcy but can’t forget Marigold. A year later, she finally takes the rocker she used with Marigold out to the curb.
Parts 2-4 Analysis
These chapters trace Roya’s attempts to recover from losing Bahman during the years following the 1953 coup; these narrative sequences introduce the novel’s theme of The Struggle to Shape Identity Across Cultures. In the wake of Bahman’s alleged rejection, Roya must alter her life plan. With Bahman, Roya thought she had a secure future. The two were so in love that they thought their connection could overcome all social, political, and economic barriers. Once Bahman disappears from Roya’s life, failing to make good on his promise to meet her at the square and marrying Shahla instead, Roya must reinvent her reality: “Roya felt herself grow small. Her role had become that of the jilted lover, the object of pity and shrugs. It was beyond humiliating” (156). For several months, she can’t even leave her home or engage in social interactions. She swears off contact with young men and assures her parents that she’ll never marry. Finally, tired of letting heartbreak over Bahman dictate her life, she makes strides to move beyond it, applying to school in the US and relocating to California, then dating and marrying Walter, moving to Boston with him and beginning a new job, and eventually trying to start a family as well. These actions are Roya’s attempts to move beyond her loss and create a life entirely detached from her and Bahman’s relationship. In the US, Roya tries to become someone new in hopes of leaving her memories behind once and for all.
Roya’s experiences in the US abrade her experiences in Iran, challenging her to balance her past and present identities. Caught in this diaspora, Roya feels disconnected from the young woman she once was, the people she once knew, and the culture that once shaped her life and identity:
Being in a new country felt like being plunged into a darkened room. In the beginning, nothing was distinguishable; it was all blurry blobs at best. But eventually, her eyes adjusted. Forms that were previously incoherent came into slow, painstaking focus. […] Roya hadn’t wanted to leave Tehran behind, even with all its pain and heartbreak and its political mess. Yet she had no choice but to create—stitch by stitch—a new life (167-68).
The third-person omniscient narration likens Roya’s early experiences in the US to being trapped in a dark room, a metaphor implying that Roya can’t see and is struggling to navigate her new environment. The notion that everything is indistinguishable and a mess of “blurry blobs” underscores her disorientation in the US. Though reluctant to do so, Roya feels that she must abandon her homeland, culture, and associated memories in exchange for settling into American life: that to become American, she must stop being Iranian. The two cultures feel in conflict with each other, putting her two identities in conflict, too. The metaphor of her stitching a new life for herself suggests that she’s recreating her identity with care and intentionality. She’s curating a new version of herself that will enable her to begin again as a different woman.
Recurring images of food and scenes surrounding cooking represent Roya’s complex diasporic experience. In Part 3, Chapter 19, the text asserts, “Roya never did learn to eat like an American” (182). Although she has attempted to assimilate into life in the US, her relationship with American food reveals her continued discomfort in her new home: “American food was surprisingly harder to adjust to than she’d expected” (183), just as American life is harder to adjust to than Roya initially thought. When she starts cooking Iranian food for Walter, she opens up about her past and invites him into a dormant facet of her cultural identity: “Her self-consciousness began to evaporate as she cooked” (188). Roya is still uncomfortable dating someone so positive, outgoing, and cheerful, but she convinces herself that she can adjust. Just as American food contrasts with Iranian food, Roya’s American romance contrasts with her Iranian romance. Cooking is initially a way for her to bridge the gap between her divergent lives. Over time, however, Roya even lets go of preparing Iranian dishes. When Patricia comes for a visit in Boston, for example, she cooks “meat loaf and boiled carrots, not wanting to bother Patricia with Persian cuisine” (202). She believes that sharing her cultural identity with Patricia is a waste, as her sister-in-law will only scrape the food into the trash. She offers her a simple American dish to shield her Persian identity and to appeal to Patricia’s American identity. How Roya interacts with and regards food reflects her internal experience. Food is an extended metaphor for culture, identity, and comfort.
In addition, the epistolary sections of Parts 2, 3, and 4 reiterate Roya’s attempts to navigate her competing identities. Roya doesn’t know about Bahman’s life in Iran since they parted, but the letters formally haunt her story in the narrative present. In the same way that Bahman appears “in her dreams” (212) and threatens to pull her away from her life with Walter, Bahman’s presence permeates the narrative through his letters. Roya has been desperately trying “to forget it all when she was awake. She could not allow it to interfere with the present script of her life” (212), but Bahman has never left her. For self-preservation, she has deluded herself into believing that negating her past with Bahman will help her better invest in her US life with Walter. However, Bahman’s letters and Roya’s dreams prove that Roya’s past life in Iran is a vital part of who she is and can’t be erased.
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