Making Beautiful

Their job? Their job was making things beautiful.
Not that they were a hairdresser, or worked with mirrors, or took photographs — no plastering, no rouge and powder.
They worked with their shadow, not their hands.
Whatever their shadow spread over, they made beautiful.
Whatever was tied to them, they made beautiful.
They made their own name beautiful.
They made brown leather jackets beautiful.
They made every colour they wore beautiful.
They'd stand in a photo and the people beside them grew lovelier than ever. They'd lean on a tree and the tree turned greener, the colours clearer. Their hands around your neck — oh, with their hands around your neck you smiled with a geometry neater than ever.
You asked how that's possible?
Did I ever tell you I always disliked the name Bijan? That was long ago, before I read Bijan Elahi, Bijan Najdi, Bijan Jalali. Now I keep wanting to say Bijan. Isn't it a strangely musical word, kind to the ear?
I was saying: the window of my house always faced this street, an ordinary street. But one day they made this street beautiful — the day they came to the window and said, lucky you, to have a window onto such a lovely street! What a neighbourhood! What a tree!
And that same day I saw the ivy on the house across the street let down its hair, the bricks fall into better order, and the street's one old tree — where had it even been? — claim all of spring's beauty. The view beyond the window turned out to be a priceless painting someone had suddenly pulled the curtain from.