The Stationery Shop of Tehran

Throughout The Stationery Shop of Tehran, the experiences and emotions of the characters are heavily influenced by the nature of memory and loss. While some characters become entrapped by their memories and losses, other characters learn how to channel their nostalgia and grief into more productive and even empowering forms, enabling them to build lives that are happy and fulfilling.

The overall structure of the novel reflects the central role of memory in the text. The novel begins by introducing Roya and Bahman during their moment of reunion in 2013. The narrative then jumps back to 1953 in order to gradually recall the long series of events that have brought the two characters to this point. Only after this is the opening scene revisited and carried through to its conclusion. Linear chronology is undercut and disrupted by the circular, repetitive movements of memory, with the shifting viewpoints in the novel—Roya’s, Bahman’s, Mrs. Aslan’s, and Mr. Fakhri’s—at various points in the text reflecting and reinforcing the subjective nature of memory and loss.

Both Roya and Bahman remain devoted to their memories throughout their long decades of separation. Even though each believes themselves to have been jilted, their nostalgia for Iran and for one another makes their love affair unforgettable. Bahman continues to write letters to Roya even after his marriage and in spite of not having a way of sending them to her, using his writing as a means of maintaining a connection to his past love even as he moves forward as a husband and father. Roya navigates her loss of both Bahman and, later, her daughter Marigold by committing herself more fully to the love of her husband and her son, Kyle. While she keeps the memory of both Bahman and Marigold alive in her heart, she does not allow her loss of them to prevent her from living in the present and loving others fully and genuinely.

By contrast, Mrs. Aslan and Mr. Fakhri represent the dangers of becoming entrapped by memory and loss. Mrs. Aslan never recovers from Mr. Fakhri’s abandonment of her and the loss of her children. Instead of loving Bahman selflessly, she seeks to sabotage his happiness, as if resenting that he can have the kind of love she herself once had and lost. Mr. Fakhri is also entrapped by the past; he is so tormented by never-ending guilt over his failed youthful affair with Mrs. Aslan that he even commits acts against his own conscience—tampering with the lovers’ correspondence—in a misguided attempt at atonement toward her. Thus, the imperfect but happy lives of Roya and Bahman despite their youthful disappointments strongly contrasts with the enduring misery and recriminations of Mrs. Aslan and Mr. Fakhri, suggesting that the impacts of memory and loss can be either destructive or comforting depending on how the individual responds to them.