For the LOVE of BOOKS

Houshang Moradi Kermani is one of Iran’s most famous writers. This story is from The Tales of Majid, a collection of stories about a boy named Majid who is raised by his grandmother, Bibi, in the rural Iran of sixty years ago.

MASH ASSADOLLAH WAS the grocer at our corner store. Standing behind his glass display case, he tore out a page from a book. He twisted the page into a cone-shaped envelope and then filled it with tobacco. He placed it on a brass tray on the left side of his scale, and then to weigh the tobacco, he put small, numbered iron weights one by one on the right side of the scale until the two trays were in balance. He folded the envelope of tobacco closed and handed it to me. I was also buying sugar cubes, tea, and turmeric. Mash Assadollah calculated the amounts on an abacus. I paid him and left. When I got home, grandmother took the goods