Letter IX

Dear Mr. Writer,

Hello,

Ever since Skype shut down more than a year ago, no way has been left to me to reach you except writing a letter. If only Microsoft had known that in an apartment on the fifth floor of an old building in the northwest of Paris, five bus stops past the last metro station, there lives a writer who, out of all the possible means of communication, has chosen only Skype. Then again, perhaps you were even pleased by its closing; it was an unsolicited contribution to elevating your self-imposed solitude within that noisy city.

The last time I came back to Paris, I went as far as the door of that same building. I still remembered the entry code, and luckily it hadn't been changed. I stepped into the courtyard, but at the foot of the spiral staircase that years ago, on Thursday afternoons, used to carry me up to you, I stopped. You never liked unannounced visits or unexpected events. And I had no way of letting you know. But I know you well enough to know how much effort you had put into this solitude, and that I shouldn't ruin it out of excitement.

I walked into the inner courtyard of the building, right where the windows of your living room and kitchen opened onto. The light of your apartment was on, facing the darkness of the yard. I don't know if it was a reconstruction of my imagination or if I actually saw two kinds of smoke coming out of the window; one, the smoke of one of the two cigarettes of your daily ration, which you were in the process of quitting, and the other, the steam of the kettle on which you were brewing your strong evening black tea. I imagined you at your desk, glasses on, absorbed in reading or writing with great care.

I remembered all those days when I was a student in Paris and, by chance, with a strange stroke of luck, of the kind that only happens in Paris, I had found my way into your solitude and seclusion, and every single moment of it I was thinking to myself, what a pity that you no longer accept invitations to any of the literary and cultural gatherings, the popular programs, the radio shows, and the podcasts.

Every time I asked about your new novel, with that particular smile of yours, you would gesture with your head toward the drawer of your desk and say: "Typed and edited, it's inside this drawer, it's safe there."

In a noisy world where production and promotion grow more professional by the day and everyone is scrambling to be seen, there was a strange calm within you and you were in no hurry to arrive or to finish. Perhaps you had come to believe that dreams, before we reach them, are more beautiful.

This past year, I have thought of you more than at any other time. Of our story readings, of criticizing and analyzing films, of your passion for watching football. Of the fact that it was you who introduced Zlatan to me back then. Of that time when you were reading one of Bahram Sadeghi's stories and, from the sheer thrill of that peerless masterpiece, as you yourself put it, your eyes sparkled as you spoke. I wanted to record your voice and you said: "Let it go."

I even think of all those gigots and tiramisus you cooked with love, and now I understand that at the time, cooking was for you a way to practice living in the moment inside that very cocoon you had spun around yourself. It was as if you wanted to feel the softness of the silk around you at every instant.

I wrote all this to tell you that today, when more than twelve years have passed since those days and I am no longer that excited student, optimistic about the world, I understand better now what a difficult path you chose: to withdraw from the clamor of the world, after creating all those pages and melodies, into the silk of your own being, into the dream of becoming a butterfly. Perhaps the soft path of reaching the dream was more pleasing to you than the dream itself.

Now I understand that smile and the meaning of that "let it go." Now I understand that the world and the future are too unreliable for us to be constantly worrying about gathering and recording and preserving. Perhaps from a certain point on, we too should slowly begin to spin a cocoon around ourselves and, with tenderness, nurture in our heads the dream of the possibility of becoming a butterfly.

Now, after more than twelve years have passed, I understand how safe the novel "Butterflies and Possibilities" was, inside the drawer of your desk.