A love that rises with the ashes of the fallen towers and stretches across time.
Peter finds his late loverās AIDS journal on the eve of his New York City gallery debut, a journal filled with letters from Rano to a son named Mustafa. The journalās revelation of Mustafa paralyzes Peterās professional and private lives. What other secrets will the journal reveal? The trauma of a near-death experience on 9/11 compels Peter to scour Ranoās journal for the clues he needs to paint again ā¦ and to love.
Peter has company. His art dealer, Erica, must convince her brainy ex to salvage Ranoās brilliant Internet research. Brice must resolve his feelings for Peter and Rano, and for his own curtailed creative career. Immigrant-turned-millionaire Linh must reconcile with her family. As the first anniversary approaches, the collector Thomas waits to see how Peter will honor 9/11, and with whom.
A love that rises with the ashes of the fallen towers and stretches across time.
Peter finds his late loverās AIDS journal on the eve of his New York City gallery debut, a journal filled with letters from Rano to a son named Mustafa. The journalās revelation of Mustafa paralyzes Peterās professional and private lives. What other secrets will the journal reveal? The trauma of a near-death experience on 9/11 compels Peter to scour Ranoās journal for the clues he needs to paint again ā¦ and to love.
Peter has company. His art dealer, Erica, must convince her brainy ex to salvage Ranoās brilliant Internet research. Brice must resolve his feelings for Peter and Rano, and for his own curtailed creative career. Immigrant-turned-millionaire Linh must reconcile with her family. As the first anniversary approaches, the collector Thomas waits to see how Peter will honor 9/11, and with whom.
Peter was quiet, lost in the process of inventing a color. Light flooded his airy South of Market studio on this fogless spring day. He was reliving a color nightmare. Daubs of an evolving red contrasted with the bucolic background color left dried on his palette, like blood splats on a quilt of lichen. He mixed in yellow with his trowel, transforming the oil paint into an explosive orange red. Applying this to the canvas would blow up the image, blast the outline of the shed to smithereens. Add a different color? Start over? When would this nightmare end?
The phone rang, breaking Peterās concentration. He looked from the canvas to the table, where he examined his sketch of the shed. The phone rang again. Peter couldnāt adjust the paint to the color he remembered, and now, as he reviewed the sketch, he wasnāt sure this shed fit with the abstract landscape on the canvas. Another annoying ring. The shed read almost New England, even though heād drawn the thing in all its bright red glory while squatting not a dozen steps off a quiet Mendocino country road. The persistent phone rang a fourth time. No progress today. Peter pushed aside the drawing on the table, smooshed together the colors on his palette, and walked to the phone.
āHi, Peter, itās Erica.ā It was the New York gallery on the line, a call heād anticipated a week ago and then forgot about after a few days. It wasnāt a good sign when these sorts of long-distance negotiations petered out. āHello? You there?āĀ
Phone pressed tight against his ear, Peter took a breath. āOf course.ā
āI meant to get back to you sooner,ā Erica said, ābut a major client asked to meet with several of my artists and I have a show opening tonight. I wanted to let you know my decision before the weekend.ā
Another breath. āI assumed no reply was your reply.ā
āNo,ā Erica said.
āSo itās a no?ā Peter asked.
āNo,ā Erica laughed, āitās a yes, yes, yes. As long as we can open your show September eighth.ā
Three months. Not even. Didnāt leave much time. Heād nearly given up on an invitation. Now Peter was shocked. Ecstatic and shocked.
āI canāt get everything to New York that soon,ā Peter said.
āDonāt worry,ā Erica said. āRelax. Celebrate your good news with friends. Right now I have to celebrate another opening.ā
āThanks so much,ā Peter blurted before they said goodbye. He paced back and forth. There was no way to finish everything by September, much less ship it. He began questioning whether his work was good enough for New York. The invitation had to be proof it was. But maybe not. Adrenaline excitement shook Peterās hands. Like any self-respecting artist unable to concentrate, he put away his brushes.
Celebrate? Maybe clean the studio instead. It was pointless to paint. The New York gallery show marked a new direction for Peter. He needed a distraction, a chance to absorb the significance. Celebrate or clean? No friends around this weekend and, after last night, no romantic interests left to impress. Dinner had been as bland as Peterās date. Dessert was even worse. Spooning a flan, Mr. Bland enquired sardonically how Peter was enjoying what was, to Peterās surprise, their second date. āAm I supposed to remember everyone Iāve slept with?ā was Peterās unfortunate apology.
Cleaning it would be then; a soothing, mindless afternoon of spring cleaning. After Ericaās news, the studio required a preparatory cleanse. It commenced in a dark corner at the far end of the studio. Even the cobwebs were dusty. The last major clean was a dozen years back, after the Loma Prieta earthquake cracked the walls and pushed supplies off the shelves. A half hour into the effort, cobwebs safely suffocated in plastic bags, Peter, climbing to the top of a metal shelf, stretched to reach a long-forgotten box. It was Ranoās box, a box someone must have placed here not long after the earthquake, a box Peter couldnāt wait to open. Not quite a decade since someone placed it here, Peter calculated as he stretched, not quite a decade since Rano died from AIDS. He wasnāt sure what intimacies were inside. Surely photos of friends and Ranoās favorite dildo, but possibly some less amusing artifacts from their relationship.
Peterās unbalanced nudge accelerated to a shove and the decrepit cardboard box flew from the shelf and crashed to the floor. Scrabble tiles exploded from the wreckage, bouncing to form gibberish. Peter climbed down. Photos were scattered like bodies over a debris field, photos of Peter and Rano, of Brice, of other friends, of Linh, of Angel, of Angelās boyfriend and other faces like Angelās boyfriend, faces that Peter recognized but could no longer name. Prehistoric floppy disks crammed with Ranoās unfinished writing strangely circled the black dildoālarger than Rano, but not much. Among the other memorabilia strewn across the floor was a black book, clasp broken; a journal wide open, open to a page about Peter, a page that, as he read it over and over, brought back dark memories of a long-ago night, the night of Carlās attack. āIāll explain what Peter did after Carl attacked us another time.ā What did Rano mean by that?Ā
Cleaning came to a halt as the excitement of Ericaās call dissipated. Peter sat cross-legged on the floor, flipping through a few pages. Each journal entry was addressed to someone he didnāt know, someone named Mustafa. He read a few more entries before returning the journal and the rest of the mess to the box. Ten years after the fact, Rano found an odd way to remind Peter that he also had wanted to work in New York, that he had wanted to move to New York with Peter. If Rano were here, heād let Peter know whether his art was good enough for New York. Peterās heart beat too quickly as he climbed to replace the box on the high shelf. All these years later, he wasnāt sure he had the strength to finish his art, to leave San Francisco, to make the trip to New York without Rano.
April 30, 1989 ā Anniversary
Dear Mustafa,
Tomorrow is May Day. I was reading about May Day protests and remembered that Carl and I met on May Day thirty years ago, a few months, my dear son, before your first birthday. I was the street urchin who knew how to wear a bathing suit. Carl was the vacationing sadist who made sure I accompanied him back to San Francisco.
What I couldnāt have known when I agreed to Carlās offer to live in America was that I would not return to our sunny Algerian coast after Carl captured me, that I wouldnāt see you these thirty years. In the excitement of a new country and a new city, it didnāt occur to me. I was too young then to know the limits of my street smarts.
It wasnāt entirely Carlās fault that I havenāt seen you, Mustafa. Peter played a role, too, although I havenāt let on. Itās better that way. Peter can be stubborn. Iāll explain what Peter did after Carl attacked us another time. Itās why I havenāt seen you.
Today, though, Carl is on my mind, not Peter. Well, the memory of Carl. He returned to Algeria more than once, never with me. He never explained why I couldnāt accompany him. Probably more trips with the same scary French assholes who introduced us. Probably exploring his fetish for dark guys. Naturally there were other street urchins with talent similar to mine. Similar, mind you, but not as prodigious. Also, Carl must have worried I would stay in Algeria if he brought me back. He always worried Iād leave him. He never bothered to understand me.
If Carl had bothered to understand me, he would have known my only interest in returning to Algeria was to see you. Well, perhaps I would have visited the family who forsook me and tracked down a few of the other street urchins who became my chosen family. Perhaps I would have checked out the bookstores and cinemas to see if anything changed. I wouldnāt risk returning to Algeria, though, if I knew how to phone you, hear your voice, see your smile.
Even without bothering to know me, sadistic Carl should have known my departure from him was as inevitable as my departure from Algeria. I moved to San Francisco for my freedom, not his bonds.
Please excuse me if I repeated myself here. I donāt remember everything Iāve told you about Carl. I do remember I havenāt told you about the way Carl blackmailed me before he died. Iāll tell you that when I have more time, dear Mustafa, because it concerns you as well as Peter. Whatās important to know, though, is that Carl never revealed to me where you moved, so I havenāt found you. Yet.
Right now, I have to go to another funeral. Two funerals, actually, one for Eric, the other for David, best friends in the time of AIDS.
On the eve of his art gallery debut in New York City, Peter comes across his late boyfriend's journal, where he chronicled his experience and decline with HIV and later, AIDS. In Rano's journal, Peter discovers secrets Rano never revealed, with the most shocking and notable being that Rano was writing to his son, Mustafa, in Algeria. Since reading this astonishing news, and narrowly escaping the tragic terrorist attacks on 9/11 in New York, Peter has been experiencing art block and has been stuck regarding his creativity and ability to paint. Over the course of a year, we follow Peter attempt to reconcile his past with Rano, unpack and analyze his own guilt and trauma, and explore the possibility of a new love, with the help of a few friends along the way.
Dear Mustafa, set in the midst of the AIDS crisis in the late 1980s and early 1990s in the US, as well as the post-9/11 New York, is an authentic and raw expedition of personal journey and discovery, grief, and healing, while touching on themes of racism, war, technology, and art. It very much reminded me of Rebecca Makkai's The Great Believers, but better. What Believers lacked, Dear Mustafa carried.
This book had a lovely balance of the art world and Peter's personal strife. The art was the perfect amount, and the description of the exhibit toward the end sounded like something that would be truly cool to see. The author's writing was compelling and the reader will be able to empathize with Peter and Rano in their different struggles. While I did find some of the dialogue to be a little odd and repetitive, overall the characters were well developed and realistic, with real flaws and the need for growth. The side characters also played pivotal roles in the story and in Peter's journey, while simultaneously dealing with their own personal issues. I want more Linh!
I enjoyed the entire story, but my favorite parts were Rano's letters to his son, Mustafa. They were so personal, honest, raw, and dripping with Rano's love and desire to find Mustafa and meet in person.
The author was a witness to the AIDS epidemic and a New Yorker at the time of 9/11, and it shows. Damron takes care when writing about these delicate topics, and as a fellow New Yorker who also vividly remembers 9/11, I appreciated the careful attentiveness in his work.
Dear Mustafa is a lovely debut that will captivate readers and leave them thinking about the characters long after turning the last page.