Fariba Hachtroudi - The Man Who Snapped His Fingers

Finally, as regards the parcel, it was handed to me at the airport. It is your husband’s former lawyer who gave it to me. I took it. I trusted him. That’s all I know about it. I will let you know as soon as I have the dates for my trip to Europe. You are in my thoughts, dear Vima, and I will see you soon.

Vima folds the sky blue silk veil, and places it next to the shoebox. Her hands begin to tremble when she sees the pair of little red boots in the box. A rolled sheet of paper, tied with a blue ribbon, is wedged between the boots. She picks it up, holding her breath. The poem that Del wrote to her years ago has been typed up and is followed by a sentence written in the hand of his eternal love.

The emotion is unbearable. She grabs the boots. Hurries down the stairs, barefoot, and enters the café on the corner of the wide boulevard. She orders a double cognac and drinks it in one go. The waiter who brings it to her hears her murmuring incomprehensibly. “I miss you, one grows weary of an apple, of an orange, of life sometimes. I cannot do without them, your feet, they’re so small, stamping the floor with anger. I ate my apple, drank from the orange, life goes on, when will you return, with your little feet?” Vima recites her love poem, over and over.

The waiter brings her another cognac, and hears her saying to him, absently, He’s asking me to forgive him for not being here with me, and he’s telling me he replaced the sandals with little boots to keep me warm, that’s what he wrote. I should tell my namesake that love is the only axiomatic reality, the diagonal line to the divine ratio connecting kindred spirits. The mystery of our being is God’s only refuge for when he feels like letting go.

Her eyes brim with tears but they do not spill. The pale, barefoot woman squeezes a pair of little red boots to her heart, then puts them on and slips out the door.

Fariba Hachtroudi decided to leave her home country following the Iranian Revolution in 1979. After relocating to Sri Lanka in 1981, she taught at the University of Colombo for two years and studied Teravada Buddhism. Hachtroudi then pursued journalism and eventually went on to write a full-length non-fiction account about her revisit to Iran after 30 years in exile called

The Twelfth Imam’s a Woman?

In addition to writing, Hachtroudi also leads a foundation called MoHa for the advocacy of women’s rights, education, and secularism.