The Last Days of Café Leila

by Donia Bijan

In the old days when cities like Tehran and Kabul boasted cinemas and tennis clubs, Café Leila was home to intellectuals.

Maybe if you’ve lived as long as he had, you knew all too well that looking for blame was futile, that you need not go back and ask for explanations.

Morad’s intention had been to shame him, to punish him for life, but he turned away too quickly to know that a savage handshake had only released Zod from a compulsory allegiance to a boorish brother who did not love him.

In the early days of the revolution, secular men and women, communists, socialists, intellectuals, and political dissidents had marched side by side with the religious zealots.

in Cameroon. Noor was amazed that this was voluntary, not mandatory service. She had imagined Americans as being insular but instead found them to be restless dreamers, earnest and intent on shaping and changing an imperfect world,

In response to Farah’s pleas, he refused to speak to her for months—an interpersonal cold war dear to Iranians called ghaar, wherein the sole strategy is to break communication for an indefinite period of time over a minor offense or simply to avoid confrontation.