Excerpt from Moon Brow by Sara Khalili, Shahriar Mandanipour, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"So? What is your point?"

"I am trying to say, let me tie my sleeve to yours, too."

Sounds echo in the empty chambers of his mind.

« … and I should remember that it is still now. Out there, that is still our garden. It has fallen under a spell and at night, in the lingering fog, seven cuckoo bird couples turn into stone and at dawn they fly away. Abu-Yahya is hiding behind the Khezr cherry tree. He is compassionately observing my incompetence in taking on the sane butchers. He scoffs at how I struggle now that I am alone and crippled, and he is afraid when I am afraid of people because they forget nothing.»

"Tell me! Tell me, Reyha. Even if you think I am lying, even if I am one-armed, or eight-armed, tell me again everything you know. There is not even dung in the empty holes in my head, they are just empty. I don't care if you treat me like a crippled beggar, you will be doing a good deed for your God. Tell me, even if you have to tell me ten times. Why don't you clever people understand that right now is the right time, otherwise everything will be lost?"

He thinks the samovar is simmering faster. Fog is spreading in the room.

«It is so nice that in the gurgle of the samovar there is no shriek of shrapnel coming to sever your arm.»

Ghosts of his nightly soliloquies on the peaks of the distant mountains float past a corner of his mind.

«… My sweetheart! It is good that you know nothing about the loneliness of an enlisted officer on scout duty up in the mountains. The other officers and the regular soldiers don't understand my language and I don't understand their pain. The summits are always the end of the line for the wails of wounded soldiers … and it can always suddenly happen, and it is always suddenly afterwards. Whether you are asleep or awake, fountains of blood descend upon the earth and like acid eat away the soil. Whether it is snowing or not, the whipping wind brings snow from the mountain's ice pits up to the peaks, and there, the days and nights pass more slowly than they do in the valley. On the mountaintop, the fog is not a friend of the scout, and night is your enemy's friend, and always, very suddenly, the sheep-like soldiers go at each other with scorpion-like Russian Kalashnikovs and horn-like German G3s. Those who, trusting my eyes, are fast asleep might not even have the chance to admonish me. The scout's eyes grow heavy, eyelids melt in the darkness of the night, and enemy soldiers prowling in the shadows swallow their coughs like mucus. Eyes deceivingly say, I will close my eyelids for only a few seconds; if the enemy moves, the ears will hear—water sloshing in a canteen, the belch of a Kalashnikov's breechblock, feet tapping against a stone or treading on shell casings scattered on the ground … but ears know that the sound of blood always comes too late, or does not come at all. And always, it is the instant after calamity.»

In the fog, the naked winter-stricken trees look gaunt. To him, they look like the princes who have turned to stone before the beast's rock fortress. He thinks, You lying angels, have you seen the wintersweet bushes along the garden path? Their leaves grow sparse, but they flower more. Don't you think there is something amiss in this world?

And the perfume of wintersweet flowers that has crept into the room like gas from a chemical bomb caresses his skin, patiently, butterfly-like.

Reyhaneh is picking at a blemish on her pale knee.

"Doesn't she talk to you? Think about it. Perhaps she talks to you."

"Other than you, no one really talks to me. Everyone just barks orders at me so that I don't start asking them questions."

"Now don't start. … You should figure out why you are so obsessed with this dream. You're tormenting yourself. I hear you pacing up and down your room in the middle of the night. But the story of this girl is just a dream."

Excerpted from Moon Brow by Shahriar Mandanipour. Copyright © 2018 by Shahriar Mandanipour. Excerpted by permission of Restless Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.