Arash had never thought of the school library as a particularly thrilling place. Sure, it was a quiet refuge from the chaos of his classmates’ shouting matches and pencil wars, but it was mostly just rows of dusty books, ruled over by the ever-frowning librarian, Mr. Jalali.
But one day, everything changed.
It started when Kian, who was supposed to be reading about physics, elbowed Arash and whispered, “Psst! Look at this.”
Arash looked over. Kian was holding a thin, unassuming book. The cover was simple, with a flower and a woman’s name scrawled elegantly across it: "Parinoush Saniee."
“A book by a woman?” Arash asked, his voice a mix of surprise and awe.
“Yeah,” Kian said, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Do you think we’re even allowed to read this?”
“Why wouldn’t we be?”
Kian raised an eyebrow. “Because it’s by her! You know… a girl.”
Arash smirked but couldn’t deny his curiosity. Growing up, almost all the stories they read in school were by men, about men, and for men. A book by a woman was like a rare artifact, a forbidden treasure hidden in plain sight.
“We have to read it,” Arash said.
“We can’t read it here,” Kian replied, glancing nervously at Mr. Jalali, who was busy stamping return dates on a pile of textbooks.
“You’re right. We’ll smuggle it out,” Arash said, already stuffing the book under his jacket.
“Wait, you’re just going to steal it?”
“It’s not stealing. It’s… borrowing without permission,” Arash said, with the air of someone performing a public service.
Kian sighed but followed his lead, grabbing another book with a woman’s name on the cover. Together, they sneaked past the librarian, hearts pounding as if they were escaping from prison.

Back in Their Hideout
The boys’ “hideout” was a dusty storage room behind the gym, filled with old mats, broken chairs, and the faint smell of sweat. It was the perfect spot for covert operations.
Arash and Kian sat cross-legged on the floor, the two contraband books lying between them like sacred texts.
“Let’s see what the fuss is about,” Arash said, opening the first page of My Share.
As they read, their expressions shifted from amusement to confusion, then to something deeper. The book was about a girl navigating a society much like their own, filled with rules, expectations, and constant judgment.
“She’s… kind of like us,” Kian said after a while.
“Except not really,” Arash added, flipping a page. “She’s dealing with stuff we don’t even think about. Like her family telling her she can’t go to school because she’s a girl.”
“Yeah,” Kian said, frowning. “That’s messed up. Why would anyone stop someone from going to school?”
Arash didn’t have an answer.
They moved on to the second book, a collection of poems by Forough Farrokhzad. The words were raw, emotional, and unlike anything they’d ever read before.
“Wow,” Kian muttered. “This is… intense.”
Arash nodded. The poems spoke of love, pain, and freedom in a way that felt both alien and familiar. It was like peeking into a world they’d never been allowed to see before.

The Big Realization
Over the next few days, the boys couldn’t stop talking about what they’d read.
“Did you know girls get judged for just walking down the street?” Kian said one afternoon, sitting on the school steps.
“Yeah, and people actually think they’re not as smart as us. Can you believe that?” Arash replied.
Kian shook his head. “It’s so stupid. Those books were better than half the stuff we read in class.”
“Exactly!” Arash said, throwing his hands in the air. “Why don’t we read more books by women? Why don’t we learn about what they go through?”
Kian shrugged. “Maybe they think it’s not important.”
“Well, it is,” Arash said firmly.
That evening, Arash sat at the dinner table, staring at his plate of rice and stew, lost in thought. He’d always assumed he knew everything there was to know about girls—that they were mysterious, dramatic, and somehow completely different from boys. But now, he wasn’t so sure.
“They’re just… people,” he muttered under his breath.
“What’s that, dear?” his mother asked.
“Nothing,” Arash said quickly, but his mind was racing.

The Library Revolution
The next day, Arash and Kian returned to the library, determined to find more books by women. They scoured the shelves, searching for hidden gems, and discovered a surprising number of titles they’d never noticed before.
It wasn’t long before their classmates caught wind of their new hobby. At first, the other boys teased them mercilessly.
“Reading books by girls? What’s next, wearing dresses?” one boy sneered.
But Arash and Kian didn’t care. The more they read, the more they realized how much they’d been missing out on. Slowly but surely, other boys started joining them, curious to see what all the fuss was about.
Before long, the library became a hub of quiet rebellion, with boys passing around books by women like secret messages. Even Mr. Jalali seemed to turn a blind eye, though Arash could’ve sworn he caught the librarian smiling once or twice.
It wasn’t a full-blown revolution, but it was a start. And for Arash, it felt like the beginning of something big—something that could change the way they saw the world, one book at a time.