Excerpt from The Gardens of Consolation by Parisa Reza, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The women, though, never leave the village. To them, the mountains have only one face, the one they see with their own eyes. The other face exists only in fables about the adventures and loves of princes and kings who confront giants, ogres, and dragons.

Talla has never been beyond the mountains. And yet her reclusive life felt enormous to her. She worked in the orchards, picked roses in spring, fed and slaughtered hens, milked ewes and made butter, cheese, and yogurt. She believed in all the legends people told, in djinns and peris, in curses and talismans. But what truly delighted Talla was climbing to the tops of trees, swimming in fresh water, running across the plains, and hollering across the mountains.


They left Ghamsar at dawn on the track that runs along the foot of Mount Ashke.1 Once out of the mountains, Talla saw a vast desert of red sand before her.

She can now associate the word desert with its reality. A fascinating reality. They make slow progress. The donkey's hooves sink into the sand, slowing its pace. The sun is already up, the kindly rays of mid-fall spare them any crushing heat. Talla thinks she is in a dream, in the middle of nowhere. But Sardar speaks softly to her. He has already experienced this terror, this lost feeling, so he reassures, gives hope.

"When we arrive, when we reach the place you can't yet see, there will be life again, and water and greenery and a secure future."

Talla looks off into the distance, but the glaring light of the desert masks the view. Dazzled, she appeals to heaven and endlessly recites verses from the Koran. Does she know that the desert prophesy lies in this same light, this very silence? Does she know the desert kills or toughens those who cross it?

Several times Talla thinks she sees an oasis. She points it out to Sardar, who explains about mirages: evil creatures that trick travelers from one illusion to the next, luring them toward the wastelands from which no one ever returns. Talla shudders at the thought of invisible malevolent creatures marauding around her, and does not stop praying the whole time it takes them to cross those sands.

The day trickles by with her in this same state: half wonderment, half torment. They arrive on the outskirts of Kashan at sunset, and spend the night in a caravansery. A ruin. A few walls, barely still standing, whose only purpose is to mark out a space in which men and animals sleep side by side. What matters is for the donkey to eat, drink, and rest. Sardar and Talla settle in a corner well away from the camels and their owners. They spread a length of cloth on the ground, eat some bread and cheese, and lie down next to each other. Talla looks at the sky, the intricate lace gilded with stars that she is used to seeing overhead every night and that can be viewed this clearly from only two places on earth, this being one of them. But the geographical characteristics and the astronomical visibility of the place matter little to Talla; she is an inherent part of the natural world and its manifestations—and these include the sky, be it immaculately blue or starry black. And she falls asleep.


For three days now, Talla has been gazing at the road. Fascinated by this long line she must tread without ever straying.

She was so gripped by Kashan's beauty and all the fantastical things it had to offer, she almost fell into a swoon, but soon found it hard to cope with this surfeit of new sights. What a relief it was leaving the town behind and returning to the calm of the desert. She is still afraid of meeting beasts and monsters, though.

"Which hole in the ground will they emerge from?"

Neither the donkey's regular hoofbeats on the earth beaten by successive caravans nor Sardar's monotonous voice talking constantly to reassure her succeed in disturbing the silence of the desert. A great emptiness absorbing them, indifferent to their passage. Talla is numbed by it.

Excerpted from The Gardens of Consolation by Parisa Reza. Copyright © 2016 by Parisa Reza. Excerpted by permission of Europa Editions. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.