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

"It is not just a dream. Somehow the damn thing comes to me even when I'm awake. I'll be sitting or standing somewhere, and I'll hear her walking behind me. Sometimes I think as she walks by she whispers, 'It's safe! Come!' And as soon as I look behind me or turn to follow her, I realize there is no one there, not her and not anyone else."

And he shouts, "Of all people, why can't you understand? Would it not torment you if you were in my place and constantly heard and felt these things?"

He wipes the foam from the corners of his mouth.


The scribe on his left shoulder writes:

"If you yell at me one more time," Reyhaneh snaps, "I will leave you to rot in your room."

"Well, when the dreams come and seem like the same as the dreams I have forgotten, they can't all be bogus."

"I don't know. All I know is that you have really messed up your mind. Something is bound to happen to a sane man who fakes it for five years in a nuthouse."

"I didn't suffer like this in the nuthouse. I didn't know much, but I knew I was at peace. You dragged me out of there. All these dreams and fantasies started when you brought me to this house."

And he relents.

"Don't get angry, Reyha. I can't help it. I am begging you."

«Rains are waiting beyond the window, rains that are always sad. Was there ever a time when rains were happy? When rains fall in bad places, do they ever complain that they have fallen in a bad place? … And now Reyhaneh's eyes are no longer beautiful and kind. They look at me with suspicion and doubt. They glare at me as if I am deliberately lying so that I can catch them at their lies, or perhaps as if I am scheming against her. But I know she is hiding something from me. I am sure there are things she is not telling me so that she can catch me in a lie.»

"At sunset the fog grows thicker among the trees. There are so many secrets and ciphers in it. Do you see? There is secret crying in it. Abu-Yahya is crying for the one whose life he could not take. Can you see him?"

Reyhaneh glances out at the garden and then turns and stares at him with an air of authority, or concern, or suspicion.

"Why do you all look at me like that? What have I done? Why are you all afraid of me?"

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.