When Skateboards Will Be Free

by Said Sayrafiezadeh

  “What do you mean, ‘If I were a girl’?”

  “You know, if you were still you but a girl. Who would you think would be the most handsome boy in our class?”

  “ltd be me,” he said, “of course.”

  To which I had replied candidly, too candidly, “I can see why!”

  In my mind Daniel had one flaw, only one, and that was his blatant and unconcealed racism. “Last year I went trick-or-treating dressed as a nigger,” he told me one day while playing in his backyard, causing me to flush, stammer, change the subject. Another time he jokingly used the word Gerzenstein, which he explained was a contraction of nigger and Reizenstein. And when he feigned a stomachache in gym class, it was done so as to avoid having to swim in the pool.

  I overlooked all this as best I could. Evading and ignoring. Never laughing, never encouraging, and also never taking a stand. After school I would wait patiently for him in the parking lot, and when he arrived we would board his school bus together and head up into the Pittsburgh hills. In his basement we would watch television or play Ping-Pong or roll around on a big beanbag chair, the likes of which I had never experienced before. Later we would go out into his backyard, where we would join up with other boys from the neighborhood to play football. It was the waning days of October, and the leaves had changed colors and fallen from the branches and been ground into a thick paste by days of rain and boys’ sneakers. It was cool but it was getting colder; winter would arrive soon. I would be turning eleven.

  “Throw the ball to me, Daniel!” I would yell out. And he would throw the football and it would sail up into the late-afternoon sky, darkening toward evening, and then down, down, into my hands.

  20.

  ON THE MORNING OF MONDAY, November 5, 1979, as my mother and I were sitting down to eat our breakfast, a peculiar report from Tehran came over National Public Radio. “Shh.” The day before, a group of Iranian college students had broken off from an anti-Shah demonstration, scaled the wall of the U.S. Embassy, and taken a large group of diplomats hostage, almost all of whom were American.

  I watched my mother, who was watching the radio. Her face seemed unaffected, calm almost. Was this good news? I had learned well that often what sounded like bad news was actually good news, and vice versa. I seem to remember that the broadcast did not end at the usual time but went on, moving back and forth between correspondents in the United States and Iran and Britain, each one adding to the bulk of information that was only just being unpacked.

  Then it was time to leave for school, and in the middle of sounds and voices and my mother’s contented demeanor, I gathered up my knapsack and my lunch.

  “Good-bye, Ma,” I said.

  In the cafeteria that afternoon, while sitting with Daniel and Tab, I overheard a classmate mentioning to another classmate, “Did you hear what they did in Iran?” The comment was toothless and without opinion, but I registered it with displeasure. It was the first time Iran had found its way into school, and I did not approve of its appearance. I felt like pounding my fists hard on the table and upending the lunches.

  On my way home after school I passed a vending machine stuffed with newspapers. The front page had a giant photo of a slightly overweight American woman, her eyes blindfolded, her mouth agape. Next to her, standing resolute and well poised, was one of her captors, a woman veiled entirely in black. Briefly, I considered trying to pry open the machine so I could remove the newspapers and dump them in the trash.

  That night after dinner I sat with my mother in front of the television as we watched Walter Cronkite informing us of all that had transpired that day. The news was not good. (Or do I mean the news was good?) The television cut first to footage of Iranian men cheering and dancing maniacally around a burning American flag; then to the occupied U.S. Embassy, hung with a sign that read Khomeini Struggles, Carter Trembles; and then to the Iranian prime minister assuring everyone that he would be bringing a quick end to the siege. But when I awoke the next morning, the siege had not been brought to an end. During breakfast I was greeted with a report from National Public Radio that Khomeini’s son had declared all ties with the United States to be severed immediately. In the cafeteria, not a word was said about Iran, but on my return home from school the afternoon paper dripped in colossal black type, u.s. HOSTAGES FACE IRAN DEATH. The use of Iran as a modifier added to my vexation. It seemed to imply that death was one thing, but an Iran death was another thing, gruesome and unimaginable.

  On day four of the crisis, the prime minister’s government dissolved itself, with all authority immediately being ceded to Khomeini. On day five it was discovered that one of the hostages was a twenty-two-year-old Pittsburgh woman. And a few days after that, on my way to school, I observed for the first time a yellow ribbon wrapped around a tree in front of someone’s house, fluttering gently in the wind.

  It will all end soon, I assured myself. Of course it will. It cannot go on forever.

  But even as I thought this, I was also well aware that I should not be desiring the end of the hostage crisis. The taking of the embassy was a blow against imperialism, my mother had told me. It was deepening the revolution, galvanizing the masses, emboldening the Third World. Besides, the real cause of the crisis was President Carter, who had allowed the ailing Shah to enter the United States for treatment for lymphoma, an act of willful provocation. Now there was a clear and simple remedy to the dilemma: return the “Hitler of Iran,” along with the seventy billion dollars he had absconded with, so that he could stand trial for his crimes against humanity. As for the breaching of diplomatic etiquette, Trotsky had already dispensed with absolute views of morality. The ends justify the means, and in the pursuit of working-class revolution, all is fair game.

  “The lives of sixty-two Americans in Iran,” The Militant declared, “are being held hostage—by the Carter administration, not by Iran.”

  Every evening I would sit with my mother when she watched Walter Cronkite. These were the warmest moments of my day, cozy, just the two of us, locked in against the elements. My mother would pull up the armchair in front of the television and I would, at some point in the broadcast, squeeze in beside her and lean into her body. As the cast of characters appeared on the television screen, I would ask my mother, “Good or bad?” Carter, Khomeini, Brzezinski.

  “Good or bad?” I’d say to my mother. “Is he good or bad?”

  “Bad,” she’d say.

  “What about him? That one. Is he good or bad?”

  “Bad.”

  There was something playful about this, something like a game. According to my mother, almost everyone was bad, Americans and Iranians alike. It seemed that we were helpless and in a world without hope, where everyone was a wolf. There was hardly a single person who could be called a friend. The Americans were capitalists and the Iranians wanted to become capitalists. What made the question-and-answer so compelling for me, what made me continue asking night after night amid the endless onslaught of bad, bad, bad, was the physical rush I would get, like a gambler at the poker table, when my mother would finally respond, in reference to some new figure who appeared to make a cameo—Arafat, perhaps—“Good!”

  Good! There was good, after all. It was mainly bad, yes, but there was also good. And that small dose of good, that single drop from the eyedropper, was enough to sustain me.

  The next time Iran was mentioned in school was not in the raucous open air of the lunchroom but in the enclosed silence of my final class of the day. It was my reading class, taught by a pudgy, humorless Indian woman with a thick accent and bad breath and the improbable name of Mrs. Irani. Everyone had been working diligently at their desks, trying very quietly to map out the plot of a tedious story, when a classmate burst out with “Mrs. Irani, are you from Iran?”

  The class came alive with giggles. Everyone giggled, including Daniel and Tab. I regarded their happy faces with dismay. There was perceived comedy in the prospect that someone, anyone, could actually be from Iran. Even the wor
d itself was given the added indignity of being pronounced incorrectly, as if it were the phrase I ran, rather than the way my mother pronounced it, E ron. Again I wanted to pound my fists and shout out, not words but sound, disruptive sound, but the heavy weight of a laughing class had a sobering effect. The desire to set the record straight was replaced by a desire to leave well enough alone. I stared down at my desk, pretending to be absorbed by the story in front of me.

  Mrs. Irani had not understood the question. “What did you ask?” she said, her bewilderment combined with her heavy accent causing the class to laugh again. This time louder.

  “What?!” she demanded severely. “I will not have this!”

  The class shushed, and the student who had first asked now affected the air of a sincere student posing a sincere question. “Are you from Iran, Mrs. Irani?” And giggles could not be suppressed.

  I wondered if anyone in my class knew I was Iranian. Did Daniel and Tab know? Maybe they didn’t. Maybe I had never told them. Why should I have told them when I barely considered myself Iranian in the first place? Now the ethnicity was thrust upon me all at once. There was no hiding from it. If fate had worked differently and my mother had put her foot down and named me after her uncle, Julius Klausner (salesman of floor coverings), I might have been sitting in Mrs. Irani’s class laughing along with the other students, sheltered behind the name Julius—Julius Harris. “Stop laughing, Julius Harris!” Mrs. Irani would demand.

  I stared down at the story on my desk and saw the name I had penciled in at the top of the paper come into horrible focus.

  Saïd Sayrafiezadeh.

  It looked up at me with wide eyes. No, do not make a sound, I thought. You must be as quiet as you can. When this is all over I will let you return.

  21.

  ON DAY THIRTEEN, KHOMEINI DID a surprising thing and ordered the immediate release of thirteen hostages, all of them black or female. This was seen by Americans as the opposite of progress. The headline of the Pittsburgh Press stated it plainly: IRAN HOLDS ON TO WHITE U.S. MEN. AS for the future of those white men, Khomeini assured us they would be tried for espionage forthwith, and, if found guilty, he could not guarantee their safety.

  Two days later President Carter ordered a naval task force to the Arabian Sea.

  “Do you see what the imperialists are doing?” my mother asked.

  The next day, I waited after school for Daniel and caught the bus with him as if all was normal. We played Ping-Pong in his basement until it was time to go out in the backyard. When the other boys from the neighborhood showed up, I withdrew to the edge of the grass, tossing the football stiffly.

  “Saïd! Saïd!” Daniel called out, and I cringed at the sound of my name.

  On day twenty, it was reported that Khomeini was proposing to train twenty million Iranians to defend the country in the event of a U.S. invasion. And that afternoon, the Pittsburgh Press ran a photo of a cute little blond boy, about five years old, sitting atop his father’s shoulders at a rally in New Jersey. In one hand the boy held an American flag, waving it in a sea of a million other American flags; in the other hand he held a toy rifle. I knew that the boy, despite being younger than I, could overtake me, force me to the ground with ease. I would be defenseless against that little boy.

  It was in December, around day forty, while everyone in class was enjoying a break before our history teacher arrived, that Daniel and I sat huddled over my desk with a piece of paper folded into a tiny triangle, pretending to play football with our fingers. The edge of the desk was the end zone, and if you managed to flick the piece of paper so that it hung just over the edge into the abyss you would have scored a touchdown. Back and forth we went, our fingers working frantically at scoring, the tiny paper football either falling short or sailing out onto the floor. And just as I was stooping to retrieve it yet again from beneath my desk, I heard Daniel ask me, “What do you think about the hostage crisis, Saïd?”

  I righted myself quickly, which made all the blood rush out of my head. For a second I thought I might topple. Daniel’s face appeared composed and unperturbed. He must have thought it was a throwaway question, more small talk than inquest. It was certainly asked with ease.

  “Let’s bomb Iran,” I thought to say. How simple that would be. Just a quick retort. I could feel the words right at the tip of my tongue. “Let’s bomb Iran, Daniel. That’s what I think. How about you?” “I think the same thing, Saïd.” Then we would finish our game of paper football. But the thing that had gripped me one year earlier at Victor’s dinner table with his father gripped me again. The orator rose. I saw him rising and I was helpless to stop him. He entered the stage, took his place behind the podium, and said to the audience, “I believe the hostages are spies and should be tried for their crimes against the Iranian people.” And on top of that, indulgently, speaking long after the applause had ended, he added, “They’ll deserve whatever they get.”

  Daniel stared at me. Perhaps he was trying to ascertain whether or not I was kidding. Just kidding, Daniel. Ha-ha. I could feel a fog settling around us. Mr. Petrisko entered the room, bald and eyeglassed, and I watched Daniel turn to his desk and open his book. He moved slowly, like he was made of clay. Everything was slow. Even Mr. Petrisko’s voice was slow. “Let’s stop all the chitchat,” he said to the class.

  The following day Daniel did not speak to me. I knew immediately that I was in trouble, but I chose to cling to other, more-hopeful versions of events.

  “Are you sick, Daniel?”

  “What did you say?”

  “Are you sick?”

  He wasn’t sick. In the lunchroom I could see him over at the other table laughing freely with Tab. What were they laughing about? Maybe I was the one who was sick. Yes, I was not feeling too well. With my uneaten lunch I navigated my way, stumbling, groping, to the bathroom. I ran my hands under the cold water. In the mirror I observed the features of my face. Your eyebrows are like his. The eyebrows rested thickly over my eyes. Is that how eyebrows are supposed to look?

  The next day at school, Daniel’s back seemed to always be facing toward me. And now Tab’s back was turned. “Are you sick, Tab?” The next day too. Had it now been three days of silence?

  And then I did a terrible thing, a desperate thing. “Hey, Daniel,” I said. We were sitting in math class but it hadn’t begun yet. “Hey, Daniel, I was watching Saturday Night Live and one of the actors—I can’t remember his name—one of the actors was pretending to be from South Africa and he was talking about the Krugerrand, but instead of saying ‘Krugerrand,’ he was saying ‘niggerand.’ Isn’t that funny, Daniel? Niggerand.” How simple, how easy. And Daniel smiled.

  “Daniel, do you want me to come over to your house today?” I asked. “I thought we could play Ping-Pong.” I could hear the sound of pleading in my voice.

  “Oh, sure. Okay.”

  Okay? Yes! Okay. He had said it. There, see, the fog was lifting. There was nothing to be worried about. He had been sick but now he was well. And when the bell rang to end the day, I gathered my books and rushed to the parking lot to wait for him to come and collect me. As I stood there, I observed the white students boarding their yellow buses. Each with their books and their bags. A horde of white students, one after the other. Beyond them were the black students as they went their own way. Then the yellow bus doors closed. I looked for Daniel in the crowd but could not see him. Perhaps we had missed each other and now he was already sitting on the bus, hoping I’d come. But which bus was his bus?

  “Is Daniel on this bus?” I yelled to the driver.

  “Who?”

  And when the bus pulled away, I saw that all the buses were pulling away. I stood alone in the parking lot and watched them go. A row of giant yellow animals. Still I waited. Eventually the teachers came out the side doors, carrying their papers and their books, and they walked to their cars and also left for the day.

  How immense the parking lot looked when there was nothing in it. The trees cast lo
ng shadows.

  It had been a mistake, of course. A mix-up. He had been waiting for me, and I had let him down. Oh, well, we will try again tomorrow. But when I started to squeeze through the fence in the direction of my apartment, I suddenly saw so vividly the Ping-Pong table and the beanbag chair and the backyard, and without considering what I was doing I began to walk the other way.

  I followed the path that his school bus would take, meandering through the city streets, curving and winding block by block as if tracking a trail of bread crumbs. I trekked up steep hills and then down steep hills—Pittsburgh is a city of hills. It was getting dusky. I was losing time. Will we have time to play in the backyard? My legs ached and I grew thirsty. I walked on. Daniel will be surprised to see me when I arrive. He will be happy to see me.

  “I was getting worried,” he will say.

  It was evening when I arrived at his front door. I could hear the sound of voices coming from somewhere, boys’ voices. Laughter. I pressed the bell and the door opened.

  “Hey, Daniel,” I said with good cheer.

  His face went pale to see me.

  “I missed your bus,” I said. “Sorry about that.”

  He shrugged and turned without a word—was he sick?—and I followed him through his grand home and then outside into the backyard, where I joined the other boys already at play.

  “Throw the ball to me, Daniel!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, but now there was no time, because I had arrived too late and it was already night.

  And the next day in school it was all laid bare when Mrs. Irani distributed a piece of paper to each of us. “This is a homework assignment,” she announced, her Indian accent causing the words homework and assignment to bounce up and down like rubber balls. Listed on the paper were a series of sentences, and within each sentence was the name of a country. Australia, Spain, Japan, etc. And Iran. What were we supposed to do with the names of these countries in each of these sentences?