The Fogged Mirror

Every morning at eight, Zahra turns on the three sewing machines in her shop, one after another, like a conductor waking an orchestra. The first is a heavy black machine that sews through leather. The second is quick and light and loves silk. The third rattles, and nobody remembers why she keeps it.

Today Mina and Pavel are already at their places, bent over a pile of trouser hems. The radio plays a slow song from a station that is mostly static. Steam rises from the iron at the back of the room. It drifts across the narrow fitting corner, where the tall mirror turns white in seconds.

That is the one flaw in the shop. The mirror fogs up whenever the iron is on, and the iron is nearly always on. Customers learn to wipe it with a sleeve before they look. Zahra has been meaning to move the mirror for six years.

"Fog again," says Mina, without looking up.

"It builds character," says Zahra.

"It builds fingerprints."

The morning follows its usual pattern. A woman brings a coat with a torn lining. A teenager wants his school trousers taken in, and he pretends not to enjoy being measured. A bank clerk collects a jacket and tells everyone, unprompted, how well it fits. By ten o'clock the pile of finished work is growing on the rail, and the shop smells pleasantly of hot cotton.

At twenty past ten the door bangs open.

A man comes in so quickly that the bell above the door gives only half a ring. He is perhaps thirty-five, with dark hair that has been combed in a hurry and a face the colour of paper. Over one arm he carries a black suit in a clear plastic cover. In his other hand is a phone that keeps lighting up and buzzing against his palm.

"Please tell me you can fix a seam," he says. "I'm so sorry. I know I should have called."

Zahra puts down her scissors. "Take a breath first. Then show me."

He lays the suit on the counter. The trousers are fine, but the jacket has a long tear running down one side seam. It runs from the armpit to the hem, as if a knife had opened it.

"Last night I was packing," he says. "The hanger caught on a hook and I pulled too hard, and then I stood there looking at it. I'm Koji. I'm presenting an award at a ceremony this evening. Live, on television. They have my face on the posters."

Mina has stopped sewing. Even the radio seems quieter.

"What time?" Zahra asks.

"I leave here at four. The car is booked. I don't have another suit that fits, and the shops in the centre wanted two days." He swallows. "I can pay anything."

Zahra studies the tear. It is clean, which helps, but the fabric is a fine wool that will punish every mistake. She looks at the clock, then at the rail of waiting orders, then at her two assistants.

"Mina, put aside the hems. Pavel, finish the coat lining in the next hour and nothing else." She turns back to Koji. "I can do it, but you will wait here. It is a delicate job, and I will need to measure you again as I go. If you walk out and come back, we lose time."

"I'll wait. I'll wait wherever you want."

"Good. Take off the jacket you are wearing and go to the mirror."

He goes to the fitting corner and stands there, tall and rigid. The white fog creeps up his reflection until only a pale outline is left. He wipes a small patch with his hand and stares at it, then lets his hand drop.

"Does it always do that?" he asks.

"Every day. It is part of the shop."

"Then how does anybody know what they look like?"

Zahra thinks that this is a more interesting question than he realises. "They learn to trust the tailor," she says.

She works through the morning with total attention. She undoes the damaged seam stitch by stitch, matches the wool with a scrap from the inner pocket, and steams the edges so they relax. Her hands move with the quiet certainty of an old routine, and Koji watches her from a chair by the window. His phone keeps buzzing. After a while he turns it off.

By midday the shop has found a new rhythm. Mina brings him a sandwich. Pavel, who is normally shy, asks him about the television studio and is told that it is much smaller than it looks and always freezing. The radio plays the same slow song again, and nobody changes it.

At two o'clock Zahra begins the final seam on the fastest machine. The needle chatters. Koji stands up without thinking and comes to stand behind her shoulder.

"Can I ask something?" he says. "Why does your work look so calm? I've been so frightened all day that I can't feel my fingers."

"I am frightened as well," says Zahra, not looking up. "I am always frightened for the first minute. After that there is only the seam."

"The first minute of what?"

"Of anything that matters."

He laughs under his breath and says nothing more.

At a quarter to four she cuts the last thread. She holds the jacket up, turns it slowly under the light, and runs her thumb down the repaired line. From the inside you can still see it; from the outside, the black wool lies flat and quiet, and there is nothing to find.

Koji puts it on. He walks to the mirror, and for the first time that day it is almost clear, because the iron has been off for twenty minutes. He turns one way, then the other. His reflection straightens, as if the jacket has pulled him up by the shoulders.

"It is perfect," he says. "I cannot see anything."

"You are not supposed to." Zahra brushes a thread from his collar. "That is the whole job."

He pays her, and then pays her again until she pushes the extra notes back across the counter. Mina and Pavel clap, rather shyly, and Koji bows to them in the doorway with his hand on his heart. The car is waiting at the kerb with its engine running.

At the last moment he looks back at the mirror. Behind him, the iron clicks on, and a pale mist starts to creep across the glass again.

"You should never fix that mirror," he says. "I looked better in the fog."