Mitchell Johnson

“river in northern France?” She mumbled something and slouched away. What had they taught her in nursing school? he wondered. AFTER LUNCH THE TAXI driver safely returned them home and Zod, exhausted from the outing, dozed on the couch, snoring”
― Donia Bijan, The Last Days of Café Leila

“To live into your forties thinking it was you who brightened rooms, because nothing of what you had seen so far prepared you for the truth: how small and inconsequential your so-called luster, how easily extinguished and utterly dark.”
― Donia Bijan, The Last Days of Café Leila

“whatever her own parents did or didn’t do was nothing short of heroic and”
― Donia Bijan, The Last Days of Café Leila

“Maybe we don’t really grow up until our parents die, she thought. Maybe her infant memory was forever looking to Zod and Pari to make things better because they always did. Because if our parents didn’t exalt us, we spend our adult lives blaming them—for not doing this, and not doing that, not being “supportive,” not making an appearance at our first recital, being overprotective or aloof, damaging our self-esteem. Yet at our best or worst, who sees everything? Who knows us best? Who waits and waits to see what we yet may be? Then one day they’re gone and it’s just you, and there’s nothing left to squeeze, no one to blame for the dismay over the course your life has taken. Once the tears have stopped, it’s just the here and now and the desire to do better, to be closer to the person you want to be. Noor”
― Donia Bijan, The Last Days of Café Leila