Javad pointed to the flatscreen that lit up the otherwise dark house where their lives were shown in photos of the brothers as children, in elementary school, on high school field trips, their faces sometimes caught off guard by the camera, sometimes silly and sometimes sad, attractive, dark eyed.
—are just dominoes, knocked down by all the dominoes before them, and today, they have knocked down the dominoes after them whether it is another inspired bomber, another fanatical anti-Islam party in Europe, some war or death, who knows? Only time will tell us.
Javad sat back on the couch and thumbed at his string of beads and Rez sat beside him, a half-eaten piece of pizza on his lap. Rez had never heard anyone talk like that. Javad spoke as if he understood all of time and all of history and all of the facts and the way they connected and made a web that caught everything. That night Rez watched him as he walked about his well-designed house, parsed the events on the screen, ordered pizza for Rez and Japanese takeout for himself, watered his orchids, entertained the friends who stopped by—nicely dressed men in their early thirties who took off their shoes and embraced their host with an Alhamdullilah—all the while calming Arash with brotherly pats on the back and encouragements to relax, relax. The night went on and the house grew quiet and eventually Arash took a sleeping pill and went to the upstairs bedroom. Javad left the television on and turned off all the other lights and they sat with the flickering light and Rez wished he could see the ocean behind the television but there was only darkness and glass.
Why did he take those tests for Paul Kelly?
I dunno. Money maybe.
Arash has money. As much as he wants. Our parents give us generous allowances.
I dunno then. Maybe he wanted …
Kelly to like him?
Javad finished the answer and Rez nodded and tried to listen for the sound of the ocean outside, waited for it to enter his ears and calm him with its soothing crash and hush, but he couldn’t concentrate enough. Javad made him nervous and Rez had to consider him, this brother, all-knowing, only ten years older than they were, but complete somehow, finished and whole and wise.
What’s the brother’s name, the one who’s trying to kick his ass?
John.
Is he for real?
Rez thought about Kelly and his hunting trips, the guns and the deer hung upside down to drain its blood. The knife he took to Mexico. The family photos and the father in the military uniform.
I dunno. He’s probably really angry now. Their family is really tight.
Javad leaned back on the leather couch and put his socked feet up on the coffee table.
Our family is really tight too.
They heard a noise from upstairs. A groan and then a cough and what Rez thought was a small sob. Then it was quiet again. Javad looked at Rez in the half light.
Why aren’t you scared?
I didn’t do anything. And John Kelly is a dick anyway. Has been for a long time. Maybe I am used to it.
Javad looked at Rez. Rez let him.
What is your family name? Your last name?
Courdee.
You Kurdish?
Nope. American. Born here.
Yes, but your father or maybe your mother, they immigrated.
A long time ago. Before I was born. So I could be born here.
Javad turned off the television and used an app on his phone to turn on the lights. They came on dimly, just enough to shake the edges off the dark.
We are all from somewhere. Like I said before. Events. These next few years are going to be interesting for our part of the world. In many ways I wish I could go back to be there and see the changes, be a part of this big history that is happening. Eighty years ago the Europeans came in and drew all the borders, now the tribes are redrawing them. Interesting times … it would be nice to see it for myself, tell my sons one day, I was there. I saw the reclaiming with my own two eyes …
Upstairs Arash’s phone rang and rang. There were some muffled words and then Rez heard Arash’s flip-flops slap down the stairs.
Dude, let’s go. My mom wants me to come home.
Rez stood up from the couch and walked to the door, where he waited for Javad and Arash to say good-bye first with an embrace and then kisses on both cheeks. Javad came toward Rez and opened both arms. Rez took a step back and put out his hand.
Thanks.
Not a problem. You are welcome anytime. Watch out for my brother.
Will do.
On the drive home Arash put on an old Tupac album and they listened to him talk about dying for causes, loving his mama, failures and bitter success. Highway 1 was empty. On either side of them the shops and houses and parks were dark and even the palm trees and bougainvillea bushes had turned off their color and held still in the night.
Your brother’s weird.
Why do you say that?
He’s just serious, you know. Like really serious and smart.
The music played and they stopped at a light near the beach volleyball courts. A bearded man with wild white hair sat on a bench beside a neat stack of blankets and bags. He held a big-chested dog on a leash and together they looked out at the sea.
He’s practicing. He got serious about it in college.
That’s crazy.
What’s crazy about it?
When Rez got home, the kitchen lights were on but the house was quiet. He saw the television flash and his father, leaned back in the recliner, asleep. Rez went in and turned off the images of the bombing, the faces of victims, the scroll of the death count and stock market openings in Frankfurt and London, and the room went silent. His father did not stir and Rez stared at the sleeping man. Sal Courdee. Head scientist for the Merck labs. MBA from UCLA in pharmaceutical patents. Homeowner. Husband. Father. Juror. Fan of comedies. Rez kept looking. If he stared long enough, could he see Saladin Courdee, fourth of twelve children from a small village in the mountains of Iran? The man who fled a massacre, or so Rez’s mother told him once, who came from a line of Kurdish fighters but wanted to be a movie star. Rez looked and saw only an old man, handsome still, but tired, gravity pulling down the flesh on his face. I am an American. Whatever happened before was before. A long time ago. Those things don’t matter now. His father’s face, soft with sleep, said none of those things now but Rez heard their echoes in the silence of the room. He looked a moment longer and searched for himself in the face, for the fathers before and maybe even the sons and grandsons to come and found only a singular old man. Rez shook his head to break the trance and then exhaustion flooded in, the night behind him now, part dream, part delirium, and he walked to his bedroom and let go into a wide blank sleep.
The next morning his mother drove him to school and they listened to the news and she cried. Three dead—an eight-year-old boy among them—and 264 injured, many single and double amputees. Rez waited impatiently at the stoplights and intersections and counted the corners until they were at the school, where he hopped quickly out of the car to get away from the sounds of her, of the news, of this new reality that gripped them all.
Be careful, Reza joon.
Bye.
Students were everywhere, waiting for the assembly to begin. Rez walked down halls that now felt like tunnels of stares and whispers. He kept his gaze fixed on his shoes until he got to the auditorium and looked for Arash but only found Omid and Yuri at the top of the bleachers. They sat staring at their phones until the headmaster stood up and the students and teachers and staff got quiet and announced that Paul Kelly had just undergone a double leg amputation and was in critical to stable condition, but alive. The auditorium erupted with claps and cheers and Rez saw a lot of the senior girls cry and hug, and some of the teachers do the same. Inside his chest, his breath coiled tightly and he coughed to get air, to open up the pressure that began to wrap around his lungs and heart. The headmaster went on. He spoke now with a gravitas that no one, not the teachers or students, thought him capable of and the audience sat rapt as he carefully
dispelled one rumor after another and explained that the chances of Paul’s survival were very good and that the family requested privacy during this period and that John Kelly appreciated the calls and messages and hoped to be back at school soon.
It is your friendship that he is coming back to, the headmaster went on. The warm open arms of this school and this community of classmates. Please let us take these next few days to practice and prepare our best selves so to welcome John and his family back from these trying times.
The headmaster went on and on to explain classes were canceled for the day and students and faculty were to break up into small groups to focus on grief management and healing. Students were required to attend workshops on culture and conflict and engage in a variety of discussions aimed at bringing together our diverse student body in understanding and compassion.
Yeah, right, Yuri muttered under his breath. It’s gonna get real now.
The headmaster continued in his sincere and hopeful tone.
We must not let these events fracture or divide our community.
Events. That was the word Javad used last night, Rez remembered, Javad’s voice calm, the glass house with the ocean just outside. Events come from the events before them. Rez thought about the event of the assembly, the event of a man without legs, the event of no John Kelly, the event of no Arash, and wondered what events followed those.
Two days later Arash came back to school, his easy smile gone, dark bags under his eyes. Kelly stayed gone but his crew, Johnson and the rest, did their best to represent, slamming lockers when Rez and Arash walked down the hallway. The crew would wait for the bang to catch everybody’s attention and then pretend to cough or sneeze and shout towelhead, asshole, or terrorist under their breath. Rez and Arash said nothing, did nothing, kept to themselves and their crew, away from games and parties and girls. The girls were the worst for Rez; girls he had known and liked since sixth grade barely made eye contact now, and when they did, their faces were masks of anger or terror. He tried to do as he had done before, keep things normal, sit at the front of class, answer the questions only when no one else could, get high at lunch in Arash’s car, and wait for it to pass. There were moments, with Arash, when things got all right, and the two of them talked about music or classes or teachers or weed like nothing happened. One time Rez got to the car late and saw a girl in the passenger seat, where he usually sat, laughing with Arash. He looked through the windshield to make sure Arash was actually laughing and he was, the big white smile gleaming through the glare.
What’s up?
Not much.
Arash passed the joint to the backseat to Rez.
Fatima is making me remember the Eid party when we put toothpaste on the toilet seat and sat outside the bathroom and listened to people freak out. Not nice …
But fuuuun. Come on, we were only eight.
Fatima sang the word and then laughed.
Rez knew who she was, but didn’t actually know her. He had seen her a million times; she was the same grade and smart and at the edges of Arash’s parties, always alone, always on her phone until the party got big and loud and people got lit and then she’d step in and dance and hang with the rest of them. Rez recognized her as hot, her face a pale white circle in the center of an orbit of black curls, the body beneath it petite, bony and fleshy in all the right places, and yet he’d never given it more thought or flirted with her because she was otherwise so cold. Now here she was, sexy and talky and not afraid, rolling the next joint and thinking out loud in that way some people did when they were stoned, her thoughts slicing at him like blades.
This must be really weird for you, Rez. It is Rez, right, not Reza? I remember in middle school it was Reza and then you changed it. Anyway. This must be such a strange time for you. Weren’t you, like, close to these guys? Friends with all of them? You and Kelly used to hang out, surf, do all that American-white-boy shit. Didn’t you even go to Mexico once? I remember hearing something about a car getting jacked, or something … I am guessing you and Peter, James, and John don’t chill anymore. Sometimes you just have to pick a side …
Rez looked out the window. It was April and the spring rains and swells had come and gone, filling the breaks with surfers and turning the valley and the hillsides green again.
… It doesn’t seem like you really know, but Arash says you are cool, then you are cool, right, habibi?
She stuck her head in between the two front seats and Rez smelled the scent of her shampoo, something musky and deep, and the smoke on her breath fresh and grassy, and however much he had turned off to her, stopped listening, tried to ignore her presence in the car and the truth in her questions, his whole body turned on at her closeness. He stared out the window and tried not to see or smell or want her.
On the other hand, Arash thinks everyone’s cool. That is why we love him.
She slid back into the seat and Rez heard the sound of a compact opening, then closing, and things being tossed into a purse and a door opening.
See you guys tomorrow, same time, same place.
The door closed and they watched her walk across the parking lot, pulled-up knee socks, blazer, plaid skirt, long thin legs coming out from underneath—her curly black hair bouncing on her shoulders and down her back with a life all its own—Rez felt himself warm, and he shifted in his seat, and looked past her to the dozens of girls in the same blazers and plaid skirts, and the warmth went away. Arash remained still, silent, unmoved.
Dude, A, how long have you had to listen to her?
Our families have been friends since we were babies. There are picture of us naked in bathtubs together. That kind of thing.
Oh, Rez teased, that kind of thing.
Arash did not smile. He opened his door and stepped out and Rez did the same and they entered into the stream of students heading out of smoke-filled cars, music-filled cars, food- and makeup-filled cars, gossip- and sex- or almost-sex-filled cars, walking through the parking lot to the sterile halls. A few spaces away Matthews and Johnson tumbled out of Matthews’s truck, coughing and laughing, and slung their backpacks over their shoulders. Matthews saw Rez and nodded and Rez nodded back and the afternoon went on, sleepy classrooms, loud bells, notes, and daydreams.
The first day John Kelly came to class Arash left after second period with a note from the school nurse about a migraine. Rez watched as teachers and students and coaches and even Enrique, the high school janitor, came up to offer John their hands and hugs and sad eyes. Brittany Foster, a girl who missed her entire junior year to model in Europe, walked the halls holding Kelly by the hand, playing with his hair, leaning against him whenever he stood still. Normally this amount of personal physical contact got you a demerit, but no one said anything. Rez passed him in the halls a few times that week and Kelly paid him no attention, made no effort to catch his eye or say a bad thing in his direction. That afternoon Rez texted Arash and said things were cool and the school was chill and if he wanted to come tomorrow, Rez thought it was a good idea. Arash came back and there were a few more teachers keeping their eyes on the hallways between class and a quieter atmosphere in the locker room after gym, but otherwise it was just another day.
And for the next week the days went like days. Class, break, lunch, parking lot, Fatima talking and talking, class, break, study hall, soccer practice, home, dinner, sleep. By Friday Arash relaxed. No one had spray-painted his car. No one had slashed his tires. Kelly hadn’t said anything to him and no one had said anything to Kelly. At some point Arash and Kelly even sat near each other in physics lab and Arash leaned over and said he was sorry about what had happened and if there was anything he could do and Rez braced himself for the cold brush, the punch, something, but nothing came and Kelly muttered, It’s cool, but didn’t take his eyes off the board. During Friday’s eighth-period study hall Arash and Fatima checked their phones for parties or clubs to go to and Rez sat beside them in the shade of the founder’s grove and loved that he had friends, that it was Fr
iday and he was a senior with summer in front of him with nothing on top of it or below it. Just summer and smoking and swimming until it was time to sit in a classroom in Berkeley and learn and learn and learn until he was deemed smart and grown, and what could be better than that?
My friend’s sister is throwing a party in Hollywood. Rich kids from Mumbai.
Could be fun.
O’Neil’s is always good on a Friday.
I am not hanging out with old white fishermen.
And on and on, nothing of consequence, nothing at stake, just a night ahead, to do with as they wished. Rez plucked pieces of grass out of the lawn, and when the loud voice of the school secretary shouted through the PA and over the quad, he flinched, it was so aggressive, so unexpected.
Could Arash Dobani please come to the main office. Arash to the main office.
Arash looked up from his phone and his face went pale. He stood up from the grass and pushed out the creases in his khakis. From across the lawn Kelly and Johnson started to laugh quietly to themselves. Rez stood up beside Arash.
I’ll walk with you.
Fatima stood.
Me too.
As they passed the apostles, Johnson called over loud and taunting, That’s right. A Rash. Could we get A Rash in the office please? Rez, could you tell your friend a rash the principal needs to see him.
Rez turned in their direction and felt himself solidify, with a hard body and a hard mind and hard eyes. If there was going to be a fight, he felt himself brace to give and to take, a kind of fuck it—physical, of the body and will—he had not experienced before. A sudden necessity to right something with force of flesh. Arash held his forearm.
Dude. Leave it.
Before the period was over Arash had been expelled. The charges—cheating, use of false identification, and forging a state-mandated test—were leveled with evidence from the Kelly family. They showed Arash the closed-circuit camera footage of him going in, showing the Paul Kelly ID, and sitting to take his SAT exam. Arash was in ninth grade, Paul in eleventh, and the test monitor had barely looked at the driver’s license that Arash presented before turning on the computer in front of Arash and saying, Good luck, Paul. Arash was told to empty his locker and made to stand, with the school guard, as they searched the contents. They escorted him to his car and forced him to sit in the passenger seat until the car was off campus property, and only then did the guard give him the key. Rez and Fatima watched from the parking lot as the car made a right turn onto PCH, no blinker, moving at far below the speed limit.
A Good Country Page 9