A Handbook to Luck by Cristina Garcia

man, too, reliving his past through a magnifying glass. Before he was arrested, Baba had spent his nights reading histories of the Qajar era, retelling the tales as if they were his own. At boarding school, Leila was shocked to discover that Persian history didn’t exist.
    Thirty years ago, Baba said, peasant families used to bring their sick relatives to his hospital and camp out in the waiting room. The doctors and nurses would have to pick their way among rolled-out carpets, charcoal stoves, an occasional goat. Everybody would be smoking and talking loudly, coming and going as they pleased until all hours of the night. They wanted to see with their own eyes what they stood to lose. What would she give now, Leila thought, to hear Baba telling these stories again?
    Maman also had changed. She’d given up on her garden, leaving it untended and wild. The wells went dry and the fountain painted with doves lay crumbling in the sun. These days, Maman lived for the mirror. She devoted herself to preserving her beauty with expensive creams and an occasional face-lift in London—and to finding a suitable husband for Leila. There would be an interesting young man at Aunt Parvin’s party tonight, a physics student from the States who was home for the winter break. He was an identical twin, Maman said, a lucky trait.
    How could she be matchmaking at a time like this?
    A fig tree spread its meager canopy over her brother’s plot, which was littered with rotten fruit. The seeds stuck out dully from the pulp like crooked teeth. An unruly vine was wound around the trunk, giving off an acrid scent that permeated everything. Leila imagined her whole family dead and buried beside Hosein, their bones slowly hollowing, submitting to the quiet claw of decay. For an instant, she longed to scratch each of their names in the dry earth.
    â€œAre you still there?” Leila kicked the edge of her brother’s grave, dislodging a clod of dirt. She remembered their last day together: the stir of Hosein’s sheets, the taut warmth of him in her hand, the look from him that inhabited her still. Certain things, she decided, just couldn’t be erased. At boarding school, Leila liked to dress in her brother’s old clothes—his silk shirts and sweatpants, his sleek brown socks worn at the heels. In this way, she’d kept him close.
    The wind blew hard against Leila’s lamb’s-wool jacket.
Leilaleilaleila.
A leaf floated past her face, dispersing the words. A thin lizard, encrusted with mud, waited at the foot of the grave. She listened for her name again, but nothing around her stirred. The insects mutely looted the last of the fruit.
    â€œHelp us, Hosein. Please help us find Baba,” Leila prayed. “Tell me he isn’t dead. Tell me he’ll be returned to us soon.”
    Haq! Haq!
Leila looked up, half hoping to catch a glimpse of the Bird of Truth. Instead she saw a dull brown thrush with thickset feathers singing off-key. What was it doing here in the bitter middle of winter?
    A sudden excess of light scattered the sky’s fragile blue, then disappeared altogether. Raindrops pricked her scalp. Leila unwrapped her cinnamon bark and placed it on Hosein’s grave, securing it with a stone. The fig tree shed its final shadow. Then she hurried back to the waiting taxicab.
    â€œHome,” she told the driver. “I want to go home.”

Marta Claros
    M arta enjoyed the peace of Mrs. Sheffield’s house after the incessant clatter of the shoe factory. For the past two weeks, the factory had been in full swing, trying to meet the army’s deadline for a huge order of boots. Marta spent twelve hours a day, six days a week, staple gun in hand, affixing hundreds of leather soles to the stiff, shiny boots. She grew dizzy from the stink of the finishing glue, from the heat and the tedious repetition. It was a relief to spend some quiet time cleaning Mrs. Sheffield’s