I pulled out a folded sheet of paper from my pocket. In the end, I wasn’t able to come up with anything on my own, but I found a really beautiful Rumi poem in a book Jahan gave me the other day.

“It’s a surprise,” I said. “But I think you’ll like it.”

Promptly at eleven thirty—a first in Garbo history, from what I understood of these weekly readings, and of Italian and Iranian culture in general—Jahan stood up and introduced the evening.

“Thank you everyone for coming tonight. I’m going to try not to cry. Not because I’m a man—fuck that—but because I don’t want to ruin this gorgeous Persian vest I have on.” Jahan flapped the vest and gave it a twirl, and everyone clapped and cheered. “You know, I wore this vest because I wanted to honor the Persian tradition of oral storytelling. We Persians, we can’t just write stories like everyone else. We have to tell them out loud, epic and dramatic, much like we’ve been doing in this little bar for several years now. Thank you for indulging me in that tradition. I’m going to miss it.”

And so the night began. People read stories. They read poetry. They put on fake accents and galloped like horses and made the room burst into laughter. It was a night for the books. The room was floating, and Jahan was on cloud nine.

He squirmed every time one of the presenters thanked him for Garbo. For the gift of this bar, these reading nights, his presence. Some people read poetry for Jahan: an Edward Lear limerick, a Shakespeare sonnet, a Rumi quatrain.

Then someone else read Rumi. And another person. Jahan quipped, “What’s with all the Rumi tonight? A bitch loves her mystic Sufi poet, but how about some Hafiz or Saadi, people . . .”

I gulped.

Gaetano, a boy with bright red cheeks whom I hadn’t really talked to much, stepped up to the front of the room. Instead of reading, he talked about how he had struggled to come out just two years ago. He spoke in Italian, but one of Jahan’s friends translated into my ear.

“I used to come to Garbo . . . and drink alone in that corner over there . . . If at any point in the night, someone ‘obviously gay’ entered the bar, I would leave . . . I was not comfortable in my own skin . . . let alone in a bar like this.”

Gaetano paused to make eye contact with Jahan. “One evening, Jahan approached me . . . ‘Come sit at the bar,’ he said . . . he was very obviously gay . . . such a fruit, so flamboyant . . . but there was something about him . . . something genuine . . . I joined him, and very quickly, he won me over . . . he was magic and laughter . . . the kind of presence that made you feel special . . . at that time, my own family was having trouble accepting me . . . I was angry, hateful, most of all, I hated myself . . . but Jahan, you saved me . . . It was because of you . . . I was able to accept myself after the people I loved could not . . . We will miss you.”