by Adib Khorram
“Not really,” I said.
But then I said, “Do you have a blue?”
Oma’s eyes lit up.
And Grandma said “Here,” and handed over a bottle of this really pretty turquoise.
“Have you ever painted your nails before?”
* * *
When they were dried, my nails were this perfect color. It made me think of Yazd. Of the turquoise minarets of the Jameh Mosque shining out in the sun.
Of sitting with Sohrab on the roof of this bathroom in the park where we used to play soccer/Iranian football.
Of drinking tea in companionable silence with Mamou and Babou.
Grandma insisted on doing the dishes, so Laleh and I sat in the living room and helped Oma with a puzzle.
“Hello?” Mom called from the kitchen.
I hadn’t even heard the garage door open.
“Oh. Hi.”
Mom was laden with Target bags. I set them on the counter and grabbed the rest from her trunk.
When everything was unloaded, I hugged Mom and let her kiss my forehead.
“Wait.”
She grabbed my hands and turned them over.
My ears burned.
“Do you like it?” I whispered. “Oma did it. We all did our nails this afternoon.”
“It’s nice,” she said.
But her voice was pinched when she said it, and there was this look in her eyes.
I got this ugly feeling. One I couldn’t shake.
I wondered if Mom was embarrassed by me.
“It reminded me of Yazd,” I said.
Mom rested her palm against my cheek.
“Mom! Mom!” Laleh ran in. “Look!” She showed off her pink nails, which transitioned from fuchsia on her thumbs to bubblegum on her pinkies.
“They’re beautiful, Laleh,” she said. “How was school?”
Laleh told Mom all about her day while I made a pot of jasmine tea.
But by the time it was ready, the puzzle had been cleared off, and Oma and Grandma were playing on their iPads again.
Laleh was curled up reading her book, and Mom had gone upstairs.
It was like we had been living in this static bubble of joy, but it had undergone a subspace field collapse, and now everything was covered in a melancholy residue.
Our perfect moment had evaporated.
I didn’t know how to get it back.
* * *
I had a hard time sleeping that night.
When I was in eighth grade, in the middle of Yet Another Prescription Change, there were nights I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, feeling like I was being smothered.
I felt like that again. Like the weight of a dark matter nebula rested on my chest, and every sad thought kept echoing in my mind, poised on the event horizon of the singularity of my life.
I wanted to cry. Or howl.
But it was late, and the whole house was asleep.
So I turned my pillow over to find a cool spot and tried to sleep.
* * *
Around two in the morning, someone knocked on my door.
I reached for my trunks and slipped them on under the covers.
“Come in?”
The door creaked open. Mom stood silhouetted in the hall light.
“Mom?”
She just stood there.
“Is everything okay?”
“No,” she said. “I just heard from your Dayi Soheil.”
My heart thudded.
“Babou passed away.”
ACROSS TIME AND SPACE
There was no going back to sleep after that.
I put on some clothes and went downstairs to put the kettle on.
When we visited Iran, Babou showed me how Iranians make tea. And then he drank it while clenching a sugar cube between his teeth.
I was crushing cardamom pods when I couldn’t hold in the tears any longer.
The thing is, I knew Babou was dying. We had known that for months.
But it didn’t hurt any less, losing him bit by bit, because it still felt like we had just lost him all at once.
There was no more Ardeshir Bahrami.
There was a hole in the center of our family.
Oma and Grandma trudged down the stairs, Oma in her robe and Grandma in her pajamas.
“I’m so sorry, Darius,” Grandma said. She took both my hands, and then pulled me in for a brief hug. “Don’t cry.”
“Where’s Mom?”
Oma pulled a paper towel off the roll and handed it to me. “With your sister.”
I nodded and blew my nose.
Grandma said, “Shouldn’t you try to go back to bed?”
“I can’t sleep.” I hiccupped. “I should go check on them.”
I poured three cups of tea and put them on the little wooden tray Mom had brought back with her from Iran. It matched the one Mamou had in Yazd, the one she would use to bring tea and snacks to Babou when he was resting.
I held in a sob.
Upstairs, Laleh’s door was cracked.
“Mom?”
“Come in.”
I elbowed the door open. Mom was sitting on Laleh’s bed, holding a sobbing Laleh and rocking her back and forth.
She looked up at the tray of tea.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” I croaked.
Mom nodded and scooted over to make room for me. I set the tray down on Laleh’s nightstand and sat on Laleh’s bed. I wrapped my arms around Mom and Laleh both. Mom rested her head against my shoulder.
I’d been taller than Mom for a couple years, but for the first time, it really struck me how she would never hold me again the way she was holding Laleh. And one day, Laleh would be too big for her to hold too. And she would grow older.
Time would flow inexorably forward.
And someday, she would be gone too.
I held my mom as tight as I could.
And I cried harder than I had ever cried before.
* * *
Oma and Grandma came in to check on us, and to take away the tray of cold, untouched tea. They brought a fresh box of Kleenex and an extra trash bag, and kissed Laleh on the forehead, and whispered in Mom’s ear, and patted my shoulder. But mostly, they left us to our grief.
Once we’d cried ourselves out—Laleh actually cried herself back to sleep—Mom kissed us each about a hundred times. She sniffed and whispered, “I need to call Mamou.”
I stood as quietly as I could and helped Mom tuck Laleh back in. She brushed Laleh’s hair off her forehead and kissed her one last time, and then we closed the door behind us.
Mom got the call started on her computer while I wheeled over a chair to sit next to her.
We waited.
And waited.
And just when I thought Mom was going to hang up and try later—
“Hello?”
Mamou’s pixelated face appeared on the screen. Her voice sounded robotic and compressed, like her bandwidth was throttled, which it probably was.
Mom started crying again, but she sniffed and wiped her eyes. “Hi, Maman. Chetori?”
Mom and Mamou started talking in Farsi.
Normally I could halfway follow their conversations, but with Mamou sounding like she was at the other end of a broken subspace relay, and my own sniffling, I missed some stuff.
Eventually there was a pause, and Mamou said, “Hi, Darioush-jan. How are you doing?”
“Hi, Mamou,” I said. I tried to smile for her, but my face probably just looked constipated. “I’m okay. How are you?”
“I am holding on,” she said.
Mamou blinked at me and wiped her eyes, and I did the same.
I wanted to tell her how sorry I was.
I wanted to tell her how much I
missed her.
I wanted to tell her about the hole in my heart.
But I was helpless against her grief, and Mom’s grief, and my own.
I hated how powerless I was.
“I love you, Mamou,” I said. “I wish I was there.”
And I meant it so much.
But it didn’t feel like nearly enough.
Maybe nothing would ever be enough.
Maybe not.
* * *
Mom went back to bed after we said bye to Mamou.
I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. And then, when I couldn’t take the silence anymore, I called Sohrab.
Sometimes you just need to talk to your best friend.
But the call rang and rang. His icon pulsed on the screen.
Eventually, a little error message popped up.
I don’t know why, but the little blip noise is what got to me.
My grandfather was gone.
I curled back up in my bed and wound my blankets around myself like a burrito and cried into my pillow until I finally fell asleep.
* * *
At some point, Mom must’ve called into school for me, because when she knocked on my door around noon, all she asked was if I needed anything.
“I’m okay,” I said.
And then I said, “We have a game tonight.”
“I talked to your coach. She knows you’ll be gone.”
“Okay.”
Eventually, I got that feeling in my legs, like they were full of springs, and I knew I had to get out of bed.
I went with Oma to the grocery store that afternoon. When we got back, I sat in the living room with Laleh while she read.
I tried calling Sohrab again—no answer—and then wrote him an email.
We called Dad, and I talked to him for a while.
“I’m so sorry,” he kept saying, like it was his fault Babou was gone. “I’ll be home soon. It’ll be okay. I love you.”
That evening, Oma made grilled cheese and tomato soup.
Linda Kellner’s solution to all of life’s problems was grilled cheese and tomato soup.
It’s not like either the sandwiches or the soup were particularly good. Oma used regular American cheese slices and white bread for the sandwiches. And the soup came from a can, made with water instead of milk since, according to Oma, milk gave Grandma gas.
But I thought maybe cooking for us was Oma’s way of showing she loved us, since she almost never said it out loud.
“Can I help any?” Landon asked.
He’d come over after school, with a little bouquet of flowers for Mom and a card for me.
“I’m fine,” Oma said. “You relax.”
Landon shifted in his seat.
I think the sight of Oma cooking with American cheese was deeply disturbing to him.
“Why don’t you make some tea?” Oma suggested.
“Okay.”
So Landon put the kettle on while I pulled down some Second Flush Darjeeling Mr. Edwards had us sample a couple weeks ago. It was maltier than the first flush from the same estate, and brisker, but it was still pretty good.
While the tea steeped, Oma cut the sandwiches into quarters diagonally—the only acceptable way to cut grilled cheese sandwiches—and started ladling soup into bowls. Landon set the table and I went to get Laleh from her room.
“Laleh?”
She was curled up against her pillow, a new book open on her lap.
“What’re you reading?”
Laleh held up the book so I could read the cover: The Fifth Season.
“Is it good?”
“Better than Dune,” she said.
“Cool. You want some dinner?”
We ate in silence, all of us dunking our sandwich triangles in the velvety processed soup product.
It actually did make me feel a little better.
After, as Landon was getting ready to leave, he said, “Are you going to be okay?”
“Yeah,” I said.
And then I said, “It’s not like it came as a surprise.”
And then I said, “Is it awful that I’m kind of glad it’s over?”
I felt terrible as soon as I said it.
What kind of grandson says something like that?
Landon took my hand. “It’s not.”
I sniffled.
“It’s okay.”
He pulled closer to try to kiss me, but I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I—”
Landon bit his lip. “No. It’s okay.”
The doorbell rang.
“That’s probably Dad,” he said.
But when I opened the door, it wasn’t Mr. Edwards standing there.
It was Chip.
“Oh. Hey,” I said.
“Hey.” He ran his hand through his hair. It was messy and smushed from his helmet. He looked past my shoulder and nodded at Landon.
“How’s it going?”
I shrugged.
“Yeah.” He twisted his lips back and forth. “The guys all signed this for you.” He pulled a card out of his messenger bag. “We missed you.”
“Thanks.”
I don’t know why, but the card made me want to cry again, and I hadn’t even opened it.
I never thought I’d have the kind of friends who’d get me cards when my grandfather died.
“How’d we do?”
“We won.”
“Good.”
“Yeah.” Chip shifted back and forth on his feet. “Your nails look nice.”
I looked down at my hands.
“It’s a good color on you.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Um.”
“I’d better get home. But. Well. If you need anything?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks, Chip.”
“See you,” Landon said from behind me. He stepped onto the stoop and wove our hands together.
Chip looked from Landon to me and back. “Yeah. See you.”
We watched him bike away.
Landon held up my hand to study my nails.
“It really is a pretty color on you, you know.”
I smiled.
It felt like breaking the rules.
“Thanks.”
AN OVERABUNDANCE OF FOOD
We held Babou’s memorial at the Portland Persian Cultural Center.
The PPCC (an acronym that always seemed hilarious to me as a child) was a converted mattress store, with a big tiled common room in front and offices in the back for meetings and small gatherings. There was a tiny bookstore, which mostly just had cookbooks and Farsi language learners and pamphlets for local activities.
And then there was the kitchen, which had required the most extensive remodeling.
Iranians are notoriously exacting when it comes to kitchens. Mom used to talk about remodeling ours, at home, but she hadn’t mentioned it for a while. Not when our savings were drained, and the dishwasher was still broken.
Mom showed her ID to the security officer at the door, who beeped us in.
It made me feel weird, that the Portland Persian Cultural Center had to have a security guard.
Apparently there had been lots of windows broken, and even some harassment incidents, before I was born. And after too, but Mom always said the worst was right after 9/11.
For as long as I could remember, the PPCC had security officers at the doors and little cameras tucked into the corners of the ceiling. But those hadn’t been around when Mom first found the place, and invited Dad to a Hafez reading for their third date.
Dad was supposed to be here, but his flight got delayed out of LAX, and he didn’t know when he’d make it home.
“Can you take these?” Mom passed me a huge cardboard box full of tiny vases with jasmine blossoms in the
m.
I missed the smell of jasmine in Babou’s garden.
“Yeah.”
I took the box in one hand and offered Laleh my other. She rested her fingers in my palm, and I led her to the kitchen, which was also the staging area for decor.
The nice thing about the Portland Persian Cultural Center was, it was already an explosion of all things Iranian: Photographs of Iran lined the walls, many of them faded pre-revolution images of Tehran and Tabriz and Shiraz. There were even some of Yazd. Paintings of Nassereddin Shah—the least controversial figure in Iranian portraiture—hung in a few spots. (Not that he was without controversy, but still. He predated the Islamic revolution and even the Pahlavi dynasty that had preceded it.)
Tinny speakers in the ceiling played the Iranian equivalent of elevator music.
“You thirsty, Laleh?”
“Yeah.”
I poured her a cup of water and went back to help Oma and Grandma carry in the aluminum trays of rice and kabob from Kabob House, this Iranian restaurant in Beaverton.
No gathering of Iranians would be complete without an overabundance of food.
Everyone wore nice dresses—Mom’s was black, but not mournful—while I was in gray dress pants and a dark blue button-up. Underneath I had on my jersey from the Iranian national soccer team, Team Melli.
Sohrab had gotten it for me, when I visited Iran. It made me feel closer to Iran, and Babou, and playing Rook, and sitting in silence drinking tea.
I grabbed a paper towel and wiped my eyes.
I kept crying at weird times.
I had never lost someone I loved before.
I didn’t know how to deal with it.
* * *
“Darius? Hey.”
There was one other Iranian at Chapel Hill High School: Javaneh Esfahani.
She was a senior, and now that we didn’t eat lunch together, I barely ever saw her. She was in AP classes during the day, and busy with Associated Student Body after school.
Javaneh wore a sleek black dress with a red blouse over it and a dark red headscarf. She had on new glasses too, cat-eye ones with green highlights on the frames.