Читать книгу To Keep the Sun Alive - Rabeah Ghaffari - Страница 16

Shazdehpoor looked up from his calligraphy. The cafés surrounding the square had already started filling up with the lunch crowd. It was Friday and Shazdehpoor was due for his weekly meal with his friend Monsieur Trianant. He touched his face and felt the stubble. In the daze of the morning rush he had forgotten to shave. Such an oversight worried him.

He had shaved, every day, for the past sixty years. Even the morning after his wife’s death, he shaved. He had taught both his boys, as well.

First Jamsheed, then Madjid. He had taught them how to properly hold the razor, how to pull in the direction of the hair, how to use the heat and pressure of the brush instead of the blade, to raise the hairs away from the face. He had ordered each of them his own shaving kit from the English gentlemen’s catalog.

After his lesson, Jamsheed had sat in his father’s study, devouring sweets and washing them down with tea. He had a nick on his neck that Shazdehpoor had blotted with paper. He kept touching it. “Stop!” said Shazdehpoor. “You’ll infect it.”

The boy continued to eat like an animal, barely chewing. “Can’t I get an electric shaver?”

“We’ll see,” he said, disappointed that his eldest son did not appreciate the ritual he had been made privy to. It was one of many disappointments that would eventually gather into full-blown contempt.

Madjid, on the other hand, had taken his father’s initiation very seriously. He had sat in the study after his first shave and discussed the origin of shaving. He had spent some time in the library studying it. He had noticed how his father was able to shave in ten strokes or fewer. “In the ancient times,” said Madjid, “people used two shells to shave with. They dragged them across their face.”

“Yes,” said Shazdehpoor.

“Men going into battle used to shave to keep their beards from being grabbed during combat.”

It had given him great pleasure to see his son’s enthusiasm. But his wife implored him on Jamsheed’s behalf. Each time she saw her husband take a step away from her eldest son toward her younger one, she said, “You must show him kindness. It is cruel how you favor Madjid.”

“Madjid deserves my kindness.”

“The one who you say least deserves your kindness is the one who needs it most.”

Those words haunted him now. What had seemed impossible at the time was now so simple.

Shazdehpoor packed up his handcart and headed away from the square. He stopped off at a small pharmacy and purchased a single plastic razor, then headed toward Rue Marcadet. La Divette was a small, old dilapidated bar with a tabac in the front. The display windows were jam-packed with old radios. In the evenings, musicians, dancers, and singers crammed into the back and, after a few glasses of wine, performed for one another.