by Arvin Ahmadi
“Hey!” I elbowed him lightly, and he chuckled.
“They were a messy couple anyway,” Neil said. “Bound to break up eventually. I was with Rocco a long time ago, just for a little bit, and oh man. I know what he’s like. Combined with Giovanni’s entitlement … well, it was only a matter of time.”
I glanced down at the bracelets on Neil’s arms—one made out of turquoise beads, the other black beads. I had asked him about them once and he said the first one was a gift from an old girlfriend, from back when he was “straight,” and the second one he’d gotten with Francesco when they went to Madagascar spontaneously for their one-year anniversary. Then I noticed the engagement ring on his finger.
“Remember when you told me sometimes you don’t recognize that person?” I said, pointing at his ring. “Right after Francesco proposed. You were drunk, and you were like, ‘sometimes I can’t believe I’m, like, this serious, committed person now.’ It’s funny because that’s the only ‘you’ I know. It’s hard to believe you once dated Rocco.”
“I guess there’s more to people than meets the eye,” Neil said.
“Yeah. About that.” I hesitated, then I turned to him. “I didn’t really tell you guys the truth about my family. They never kicked me out. I left home before I even had the chance to come out to them.”
Neil’s eyes grew wide. “Oh.”
“It’s a long story, but basically someone at my school was going to out me, so I ran.”
“Ah.”
“And I just didn’t think …” I bit my lip. “I wish I had told you guys from the beginning. I wish I could go back in time to that dinner party and just suck it up and tell the truth.”
“You’re telling the truth now,” Neil said.
I tried to smile. “I don’t know what I feel worse about, that or the Giovanni thing.”
“Again. Not. Your. Fault.”
“It was so stupid of me, though. Giovanni had just invited me to Umbria, and I thought maybe we’d be friends and I wouldn’t be alone after Jahan leaves …”
“Um, hello? Aren’t I your friend?” Neil nudged me. “In fact, I have an idea. Come with Francesco and me to our mountain home. It won’t be nearly as glamorous as Giovanni’s villa in Umbria, but the view is amazing. We’re driving up after Jahan’s goodbye party.”
I wanted to, but I didn’t know if I trusted myself, after how I had messed up Giovanni and Rocco’s relationship, not to do the same with Neil and Francesco. But then I thought about it: Neil was a genuine friend. And this was a genuine, friendly invite.
“Grazie,” I said. “I’d love to.”
We gave up on the Italian lesson and moved up to the rooftop. About twenty people were drinking and chatting under the fairy lights, a mixed crowd of men and women, young and old, while a band played folk music.
“So that singer I was telling you about,” I said. “I was talking to her today. She said my sister messaged her on Instagram. How crazy is that?”
Neil looked surprised. “What did she say?”
“My sister wanted to know where I am.” I sighed. “I miss her a lot. I really do. I was thinking, maybe if I make enough money, I could buy her a plane ticket or something to come visit me. But I don’t want her knowing where I am. Not yet.”
“Have you tried talking to your family? I know you said you left without coming out to them, but now that they know—”
“I can’t,” I said, interrupting him. “Not anymore. Trust me, I’ve tried.”
“How do you know they won’t come around?”
I sighed again. “I guess I don’t. I don’t know that someday they won’t come around. But why should I have to disrupt my life, make it that much harder, just to get them to understand something so simple about me?”
Neil didn’t say anything. My eyes wandered over to the band playing.
“You know, that singer and I are sort of friends now. Her name’s Laura Pedrotti. I could ask if she wants to perform here sometime. She’s really incredible—I’ve listened to her songs on Spotify, and she’s insanely talented.”
“Uh, sure,” Neil said absently. “That would be great.”
“Cool. I’ll ask her when we get back from the mountains.”
Interrogation Room 38
Roya Azadi
WE JUST WANTED our son back. It had been weeks since his disappearance. I was crying myself to sleep at night. I couldn’t see anything clearly anymore; I was grasping for an explanation, for something to make sense, because what didn’t make sense was that Amir was not home.
My husband and I had been calling Amir for days, but he wouldn’t pick up. The last thing we wanted was for him to think we had abandoned him. We understood how the tone of our last phone calls might have made him feel. So we went and talked to Soraya.
Interrogation Room 38
Soraya
THEY CAME INTO my room when I was practicing “Memory” for, like, the millionth time. I had just gotten to the key change. Touch me! It’s so easy to—Um, these walls are soundproof, right? Anyway, they knocked on my door and asked to talk.
Talking to my parents when I knew Amir was in Rome made my stomach hurt. Even if we had stopped talking about Amir, I was constantly thinking about him. So for them to sit on my bed and ask, “Soraya, do you know where your brother is?” I just about thought I was going to blow up. My whole body was screaming.
I told them I did know, as a matter of fact, but that I wouldn’t tell them where he was. They were not happy with this answer.
Before I spilled the beans, I made my parents promise that they would try to understand. I made them promise that they would listen to Amir. That no matter what, they would still love him.
And my mom went, “Of course we’ll love him.” She said, “We love him, and we love you, more than anything. No matter what.” My dad didn’t say anything.
So I told them. I showed them the Instagram post of Amir reading that poem at that bar. That’s when we got in touch with Neil.
Interrogation Room 39
Afshin Azadi
I’D RATHER NOT get into the specifics of our argument on the plane.
Three Days Ago
I DIDN’T THINK it was good etiquette to show up at a goodbye party for someone who might hate me, but I showed up anyway. It felt wrong not to be there for Jahan’s last night in Rome—even if it meant facing Giovanni and Rocco, too.
It was a surprise party. People started to trickle in, and we were waiting to hear from Jahan after his exam. I didn’t even know half the people there, on the rooftop of Rigatteria. Some of them were familiar faces from Garbo, like the woman with the femme rage tattoo.
What would my life in Rome look like after Jahan left? It was a selfish thing to wonder as we took our positions hiding behind all the furniture and antique doors and mirrors for Jahan’s last big night in Rome, but I wondered it anyway. I was pretty sure I had gotten a taste of it these past couple days. I pictured my life in Rome like the nipple ring in Jahan’s story, dangling off a thread.
“He passed!” someone screamed. “He passed his exam! But now he’s saying he’s tired and doesn’t want to meet us for a drink.”
“Cazzo.”
“Tell him to get his ass over here,” Neil said.
We all got quiet while someone got on the phone with Jahan and demanded he meet them for “a drink.” “Stronza, vieni qui,” they told Jahan over the phone. “Bitch, get over here.” At least my Italian was getting better.
Eventually, Jahan agreed to come, and we all got back in our hiding positions and waited. Finally, someone whispered that he was coming up the stairs.
“Sorpresa!”
“Surprise!”
Jahan was genuinely floored; as in, he fell to the floor, laughing and crying. He was in such good spirits after passing his exam. He floated around the crowd. He hugged everyone. But when he got to me, he just smiled and gave me a quick hug. It even seemed shorter than the others, like he was barely acknowledging me.
There was a projector screen in the front of the room, rolling through old photos and videos of Jahan and his friends. Every time I looked over at this screen, it was a younger Jahan with green hair, or Jahan dancing through a museum lobby I didn’t recognize, or Jahan and Rocco dressed up as Sonny and Cher for Halloween. It made me think maybe I didn’t know Jahan as well as I thought I did.
My parents loved to go through old photos and videos of Soraya and me at home. I remembered just a couple of months ago, right after Ben and Jake had begun blackmailing me, we were gathered in our living room, celebrating the Persian New Year, which always falls on the first day of spring. My dad put on a video from when I was six. Soraya was a baby, and in it, I was inspecting her face, her cheeks. Then suddenly she hiccupped and cried. My parents laughed. “Aww, jigari,” a weird term of endearment that means “liver.”
It made me wonder if we owe our parents that kind of simple, unfiltered happiness for the rest of our lives. Why couldn’t they find our hiccups now as cute as they were back then? Who had changed—them or me?
Throughout the night, Jahan would stop and stare at the projector screen, too. He was lost in the nostalgia. I hardly existed to him that night. It was like this summer had never happened. We were like strangers at the bar. The party continued, and I overheard him from just a few feet away talking about how relieved he was to be done with algebra.
“It was like the one thing I’ve wanted most my entire life,” he said, “hinged on the one thing I’m not good at.”
A group of Italians stood chatting and laughing at the end of the bar, next to a broken mirror; I recognized one of them, a girl with punk-rocker hair, as a friend of Rocco’s. There were two other girls next to me whispering in Italian. I found Neil and hung out with him for a while.
“Giovanni and Rocco never came,” Neil said to me.
I nodded, my gaze focused on Jahan. He was waving his hands wildly and pedaling his feet. “Probably for the best,” I muttered.
The people around Jahan burst into laughter.
I stayed all the way until the end of the party. Even though I lived in Testaccio, I walked back to Trastevere alongside Jahan and one of his friends, someone whose name I don’t remember. It was five in the morning. They were yelling Italian curse words loudly through the streets as we crossed the bridge over the Tiber. It was a long walk, and I was mostly silent. As much as I wanted closure, I couldn’t bear to bring up my problems, not on Jahan’s last night here in Rome.
We said goodbye at a small intersection in Trastevere. It was unspectacular. Plain. Like saying goodbye at the end of another day. There was nothing about staying in touch, nothing about our time together in Rome and everything I had learned from him. Jahan left Rome, our Rome, much like I had left my family.
Interrogation Room 38
Roya Azadi
I DON’T MEAN to be rude, but I have to wonder why this is taking so long.
You’re saying Amir won’t stop talking? If you could kindly tell him that he can talk to us, I would appreciate that.
May I ask why you just laughed? No, I believe that was a laugh. I hope I am not being disrespectful, it’s just I believe when I told you that Amir could talk to us, you laughed. Soraya, please. It’s all right. I can handle this.
Officer, I see the way you look at me: at my clothes, my skin, my accent. You think that I wouldn’t understand my son. Because of my culture, you make certain assumptions about my beliefs. And I won’t lie—it was difficult, learning that Amir was gay. It has not been an easy road. For me or for my husband. But we are trying our best to understand.
I am not comfortable speaking up like this. I have not been comfortable this entire time. Many times, in this country, however, I am made to feel uncomfortable, just like this. It is normal for me, to feel that I have walked into a party that I was not invited to. To be interrogated. To have my every value, every detail of my existence, questioned.
Soraya, you may experience this in life, too. People will make you uncomfortable. And I do believe, firmly, that most of the time, you should not cause a scene. You should not let people get to you. But there are times when you have to defend yourself, when the things you love most dearly are thrown into question.
You look at me, ma’am, like I’m not capable of loving my own son. And that hurts. Because no matter where I come from, I am a mother before I am anything else. Ever since Soraya told us that Amir is—that he is gay, I have imagined how his life would be different, living a life like that. How much more difficult it would be. I have so many questions. I don’t fully understand what he is going through. But in every single one of those scenarios, I am in my son’s life. I am there for him. I will always, always be there for my Amir.
Interrogation Room 39
Afshin Azadi
Two Days Ago
THE DRIVE UP to the mountains was spectacular. Neil sat in the front with Francesco, while I kept the dogs company in the back seat. We drove through winding, twisty roads, and as we got closer to the mountains, we passed rolls of hay shaped like giant Fruit Roll-Ups. One of the dogs was nestled under the driver’s seat, and the other rested her head out the window, her floppy ears swimming in the wind.
I gazed out the window next to her, thinking about how I had left things in Rome. If I even had anything to go back to there. I hadn’t heard from Valerio since our Sistine Chapel date, and I was afraid to text him—he had probably heard what happened, that I’d hooked up with Giovanni and ruined his relationship. He probably wanted nothing to do with me. He’d had his heart broken before. Why risk it again?
The dog licked my face, and I smiled.
We had a picnic that afternoon in a huge field. The air was chilly. The grass was tall and weeds whipped all around us. We were surrounded by the most spectacular view of mountains and flatland, endless green fields. There was a hut out in the distance. “For the cow herders,” Neil said. It was all very Brokeback Mountain. Francesco had prepared a basket of fresh prosciutto, bread, and different cheeses. We made little sandwiches and lay out on a picnic blanket and took in the fresh, cool air.
We took a walk around L’Aquila. It was an ancient Italian city an hour and a half north of Rome that had been ruined by an earthquake about a decade ago. Walking around was surreal. It was like the whole city was holding its breath. We walked down these shade-covered alleys, one side an old house, the walls painted yellow, half-covered in dirt, cracking, and the other side scaffolding. A new construction. But left deserted. There were abandoned mansions. There was construction and scaffolding, cranes hanging from the sky, but no one was working on it. Francesco said that the city jumped right into revitalization after the earthquake, into rebuilding itself, but they ran out of money. So all of a sudden, the development stopped. He said he was hopeful it would pick up again soon.
We had dinner at an outdoor restaurant, hidden away from civilization, in what seemed like the middle of the woods. It was the best meal of my life. The owner came out and explained, in Italian, that they had no formal staff, that the kitchen was entirely operated by family. The grandma, the nonna, would come out with each plate of food. There were so many plates. A meat and cheese plate with wild boar, reindeer—meats I never thought I’d get to try. A butternut squash soup that I was skeptical about sharing but now wish I could share with the entire world. And of course, the pasta. There was squid ink pasta that tasted like it had been pulled fresh out of the ocean, and eggy, yolky carbonara, and a rigatoni in tomato sauce that would have blown your mind. We finished the meal with dessert—reluctantly, since I didn’t have room, but Francesco and Neil insisted—and I am so happy they did. I could have happily died with that tiramisu as my last bite of food.
Back at their mountain home, a small apartment in a complex with another family, I slept in a lofted bed. I was relieved that there was no sexual tension whatsoever—not that that giant meal would have allowed for it, as I had learned with Valerio. In fact, Francesco and Neil were very friendl
y. We watched a movie before going to bed: Milk, since Neil, like Jahan, was disappointed I hadn’t seen it yet. I cried. It’s discomforting, now, to think of that perfect day in the mountains. I fell asleep so full, so happy. And now I’m hungry again. Not just for food, but for the love I thought I had in Italy.
Interrogation Room 39
Afshin Azadi
THAT IS ABSURD; I would never hurt my son. It was an argument. A disagreement. I wish we had not raised our voices like that, in public, on an airplane of all places, but that was how it happened. You can assure those passengers that their concern was not necessary; I would never lay a hand on Amir.
Yes, of course I love my son! I love my son more than words can say. I don’t like that … part of him that you keep mentioning, that specific part that we were arguing about on the airplane. But I love Amir.
I can see from your expression that you are confused. I will not lie; I am confused, too. I don’t know, I haven’t figured out how to reconcile those two feelings. I kept telling Amir we’ll work on it. But what if he doesn’t change?
That was the part that hurt most. He kept saying, “It’s not going away. I’m not changing.” Because if Amir doesn’t change, then that image that I had my whole life, his future—it is all wiped away. I pictured him with a certain kind of job, a house and income and wife, a certain life. Not because I am small-minded, but because I want my son to be happy and stable. Because I know what he is capable of.
When Amir was young, we used to solve multiplication tables in the doctor’s office. His mother was always worried about his health, and if he so much as coughed or sniffled, she would make me take him to the doctor. So we were there a lot, and we passed the time with math. He was brilliant, Amir. He knew every answer: six times nine, twelve times fifteen, twenty times twenty-two. He solved every problem I gave him in the snap of my fingers. I remember thinking he was going to be a doctor himself one day. Maybe a scientist like his dad. My son was going to go further than I ever had. That much I knew.