My “Bartleby” Days in New York
(A tribute to Herman Melville!)

By: Firoozeh Khatibi

In the fall of our arrival in New York City as immigrants from a country in the midst of 1979's Islamic revolution, I enrolled as a foreign student in Queens Borough College. The campus was a short bus ride from my older sibling's house where my other sister and I shared a room in the basement. Those first days of autumn, when lush trees lining the streets of Bayside were just turning orange and yellow, I would sit enthusiastically in a literature classroom where we once discussed a fascinating short story called “Bartleby the Scrivener” by Herman Melville. The story was about a successful lawyer on Wall Street who hired a scrivener to relieve the load of work experienced by his law firm and for two days Bartleby - the scrivener- executes his job with skill and gains the owners confidence for his diligence. 

During those first days of college, I spent a lot of time in the library, where I was overjoyed by the availability of the titles from Pablo Neruda's poetry to Albert Einstein's biography and Eugene O'Neal's plays.

When we left Iran, we had to give away my father's rare books which were carefully kept in a glass case in his bedroom with a framed portrait of JFK from a Time magazine's cover hanging above it. At that time, our “Majlis” library in Tehran was just about 60 years old with thousands of books and documents but not accessible to the general public. I was a little girl when the first libraries for young adults were installed in some parks and public spaces. Later a peddler called “Book Man” visited our neighborhood occasionally with many translations of children's books on his wooden cart!

In November of that year, only a few weeks into my BS in Liberal arts, the country's education laws changed and I was notified that in order to attend classes I must pay for tuition which at the time was totally unaffordable for me. But Professor Conrad of literature invited me to sit in his classroom regardless of tuition and Professor James of philosophy gifted me a book called “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”. On my last day, my Asian friends invited me to their spiritual lunch gatherings where the crowd sang “Take me home, County Road” and we ate aromatic rice and fresh grapes!

I dropped out of college and went to an employment agency in the city to find a fulltime job.

That very day, even though I had no previous job experiences, I was sent to an exclusive French Restaurant on 56th and Lexington Avenue and to my surprise, I was hired on the spot as a billing clerk. I was to assist Ms. Jobin a very fussy and prudish accountant and an old maid who looked despondent! Here is when strangely enough my life as an Iranian immigrant in New York City, somehow resembled with the character of “Bartleby” in Herman Melville's short story.

I have to admit that my job by no means was close to working on a row of copy workers like Bartleby. Firstly, I was the only clerk in the large office whose windows opened to a beautiful garden. My duties were to enter the amount of daily bills of VIP clients into their respective accounts and prepare and send monthly statements. Ms. Jobin and I shared the room with Mr. Henry Barnaby - General Manager - an elderly gentleman of class, who told me I now lived in an egalitarian society and should call everyone in the office by their first names. Hank later introduced me to Jean-Paul - the Chef and the owner, who according to him had a very fiery relationship with Greta - that was Ms. Jobin's first name - whom I found demeaning and even at times dismissive. Hank also told me that having lunch at the restaurant was part of my job benefits and it was he who taught me how to order frog legs and “foie grass” from a French menu as he gently sipped on his clam juice appetizer.

Unlike Bartleby and his situation, in our office we had freshly brewed French coffee and croissants, baguettes, crème fresh and Rose jam served on a linen lined silver tray each morning exactly at 10 o'clock. That definitely broke the long morning sessions of countless numbers of restaurant bills from the day before. On those lunch hours with Hank, he would discreetly point out famous clients on the other side of the huge dining room with pistachio color walls and rich broadcloth covered seats, impeccable white linen tablecloths, a soft light and music playing in the background. Oh Bartleby!

During my short two months at the job, I got to see Salvador Dali in person! He sat in the west wing having lunch with his girlfriend as his wife was dinning with her escort on the opposite side of the restaurant. Tony Randal was a regular too and one time I watched Sophia Lauren eating snails with a delicate silver hook! But Charlton Heston always lunched alone and looked very serious.

For a while I was fascinated watching celebrities at lunch. Dali's ever changing signatures on those daily “dead letters”, the “bright and sparkling” face of his young girlfriend, Tony Randal lunching with friends and generously picking up the bill even though he was 90 days behind with his payment. Those rich and sweet chocolate mousse desserts helped me forget my boredom and “pallid hopelessness”. Soon I began to think to myself :“Oh Bartleby can any business seem more fitted to heighten it than that of continually handling these dead letters?”

One morning, I looked at Greta's sad face and decided to ask for a monthlong vacation. She looked at me with wide eyes - a sign of disbelief - and said: “Sure!” Little did I know I could not take a monthlong vacation after only two months at a job! Ah Bartleby, Ah humanity!

10/21/2021