The Bookbinder’s Son

Armaan’s father had hands like the roots of a tree, broad and knotted and always a little stained with ink. He had been binding books in the same shop since he was fourteen, and he said very little, because, as he liked to explain, books did all the talking in his family.

He noticed everything, though. He noticed when a customer was lying about the age of a manuscript, and when a young man began whistling while he trimmed the edges of pages, and when the loose brick by the door had been moved and put back a little crooked.

He said nothing about any of it until one evening in March, when he set down his bone folder, looked at his son over the top of his glasses, and asked who she was.

Armaan considered lying. He considered it for almost three seconds, which he would later admit was the longest he had ever considered anything.

“The Rashids’ daughter,” he said. “Zoya.”

His father picked up the bone folder again and ran it slowly along the crease of a signature, pressing the fold flat. “Her grandfather and I did not speak for eleven years,” he said. “Over a wall. Can you imagine? Two grown men and a wall.”

“What happened after eleven years?”

“His wife sent over a plate of halwa and I sent back the plate with a book in it.” The old man smiled at the page. “You should always send back the plate with something in it. Remember that.”

It was, Armaan realised later, the closest thing to a blessing his father had ever given anyone.