Author : Minoo Parniani
Genre: Illustrated Short Stories for Young Readers
Target Audience: Ages 16+
Language: English (translations from Persian originals)
The Tapestry That Traveled
Synopsis:
A quiet encounter at a charity bazaar connects a woman artist and a silent traveler through a handmade tapestry. Crafted from recycled fabric and sold to support working children, the artwork leaves her world and enters his—its fate unknown but imagined. A brief, evocative story about art, migration, and the silent bonds between strangers.
The charity bazaar was alive with the clang of laughter, the smell of fresh bread, and a rainbow tangle of stalls.
She sat behind her small table, where a handful of framed fabric artworks lay in neat rows—each one stitched from recycled cloth: a slender tree, a pale moon or a shy sun, and a cat whose lips curved into an impossible smile.
The sale would support children who worked instead of going to school.
A young man stepped out of the crowd. Tall, shoulders still carrying the road’s dust, he studied the artworks in silence.
He never smiled. His eyes lingered on one piece:
a crooked tree bending toward a faint silver moon, and a cat whose quiet grin suggested it knew a secret no one else could guess.
He asked the price, listened, and nodded. Without a word, he took out his money, placed it on the table, and carefully lifted the framed tapestry.
He nodded once—a gesture more like a footnote than a farewell—and disappeared back into the river of visitors.
She never saw that tapestry again.
Yet on quiet evenings she wonders: on which country’s wall does it hang now? In what language do they speak beneath it? Perhaps somewhere she will never stand, the moonlight touches that crooked tree, and the cat—forever smiling—repeats its silent secret to a traveler who once stopped, listened, and carried a piece of her world into his own.