by Adib Khorram
Mr. Apatan got mad if I ever mentioned tea grading at Tea Haven. He said it was “elitist.”
I really hoped Mamou would like the tea. Persians are notoriously picky about their tea—like I said, I had to keep the ingredients in genmaicha a secret from my own mother—but I couldn’t think of anything else that would make a nice enough gift.
It was hard to shop for someone I barely knew, even if it was my own grandmother.
“Darius!” Dad bellowed from downstairs.
“Coming!”
* * *
My sister did not function well at 4:30 in the morning, which is when we pulled into the parking garage at Portland International Airport.
I was grateful—grudgingly—for the Kellner & Newton Messenger Bag, because I was able to sling it in front of me and carry my sister piggyback through the airport until we reached security, while Mom and Dad pulled our luggage. It was windy, and Laleh’s fine hair kept blowing into my mouth. It smelled like strawberries, because of her shampoo, but it did not taste like strawberries at all.
“You got her?” Dad asked.
“Yeah. I’m good.”
“Okay.” Dad glanced at Laleh’s sleeping face for a moment and then back at me. “Thanks, Darius.”
“Sure.”
The woman in front of us at the TSA Security Checkpoint was wearing knee-high combat boots. Who wears knee-high combat boots on an airplane? They were black leather, with steel toes and acid-green laces that ran from ankle to bony kneecap, where they ended in neon bunny ears.
Combat Boot Lady wore a too-large Seattle Seahawks jersey and a pair of sweat shorts, which I felt somehow explained everything.
The combat boots were too large for the gray plastic tubs, so Combat Boot Lady tossed them onto the conveyer belt behind her bin of less than 3.4 ounces of fluids (in a clear plastic bag) and stepped through the backscatter X-ray chamber.
The TSA agent at the scanner yawned and stretched so hard, I thought the buttons would pop off his uniform and fly everywhere. I could smell his coffee breath from the other side of the line.
He scratched his nose and nodded at Combat Boot Lady.
“Laleh.” I jiggled her legs up and down where they rested in my elbows. “Time to wake up.”
“I’m tired,” Laleh said, but she let me put her down. She was still in her pajamas, except for her little white tennis shoes.
My sister had the cleanest white tennis shoes of any eight-year-old ever. I didn’t know how she kept them so pristine.
“We can sleep on the plane. But you have to go through the scanner first.”
I tossed my Kellner & Newton Messenger Bag on the conveyer belt, double-checked all my pockets, and waited for Laleh to get the all-clear so I could take my turn in the scanner.
I stood with my arms above my head and had to resist saying “Energize!”
I felt like I was on a transporter pad, except no one ever had to hold their hands above their head for three seconds on the Enterprise.
I was “randomly selected” for an enhanced screening after that, even though my messenger bag had nothing liquid, gel, or aerosol in it.
“Where are you headed?” asked the officer—a burly guy with dark, angular eyebrows and a round face—as he ran the little brown paper over my hands.
“Um. Yazd. I mean, we’re flying into Tehran. But my grandfather lives in Yazd.” The officer stared at me, still holding my palm with one of his blue-gloved hands, which made me nervous. “He has a brain tumor.”
“Sorry to hear that.” The machine beeped. “Good to go.”
He threw away the paper swab and looked me over again.
“I didn’t realize your people did the dot thing too.”
“Um. The dot thing?”
“You know.” He tapped his index finger against his forehead, right between his robust eyebrows.
I placed a fingertip in the same spot on my own forehead and felt the scabbed-over ruins of Olympus Mons, which is what I had decided to name the remains of my pimple.
Olympus Mons is the highest peak on Mars. It’s a volcano nearly sixteen miles high, and it takes up more square mileage than the entire state of Oregon. Technically, Olympus Mons would have been a better name for the pimple in its un-popped state, since the scab looked more like a crater than a volcano, but it was the best I could do at three in the morning.
“Um.” My ears burned. “It was a pimple.”
The officer laughed so hard, his face turned red.
It was deeply embarrassing.
TEMPORAL DISPLACEMENT
That morning, we flew from Portland to New York. Our connection to Dubai wasn’t until the evening.
I slept all the way to JFK, with my head against the window and my knees pressed up against the seat in front of me. Since New York was three hours ahead of Portland, it was past lunch by the time we landed. We ate a cursory meal in the food court (I had a salad to appease Dad, who was unhappy I had finished off the cold pizza for breakfast), and then Laleh used the rest of our interminable layover to visit every single store and stall in JFK’s Terminal 4.
Our flight to Dubai was fourteen hours, and we crossed another eight time zones. I was wide-awake. Laleh had acquired a bag of Sour Patch Kids while she browsed Terminal 4, and the combination of sugar and temporal distortion proved an incendiary one.
She turned around and stuck her face between her and Dad’s seats, peppering Mom with questions about Iran, about Yazd, about Mamou and Babou. Where were we going to sleep? What were we going to do? What were we going to eat? When would we arrive? Who was going to get us at the airport?
A knot started forming, right in the middle of my solar plexus.
All those questions were making me nervous, because Laleh wasn’t asking the really important questions.
What if they didn’t let us in?
What if there was trouble at Customs?
What if it was weird?
What if no one liked us?
Laleh finally tired out at about midnight Portland time, though I had no idea what the local time was, or even what time zone we were in. She turned around and leaned against Dad’s shoulder and fell asleep.
Mom played with my hair, twisting the curls around her fingers, as I steeped a sachet of Rose City’s Sencha (a Japanese green tea) in the little paper cup of hot water I got from our flight attendant.
I pulled the sachet out and dropped it in the empty cup of water I’d used to take my medicine.
“Hey, Darius. Can I talk to you about something?”
“Sure.”
Mom pursed her lips and dropped her hand.
“Mom?”
“Sorry. I don’t really know how to explain it. It’s . . . I just want you to be prepared. People in Iran don’t think about mental health the way we do back home.”
“Um.”
“So if anyone says anything to you, don’t take it personally. Okay, sweetie?”
I blinked. “Okay.”
Mom’s hand returned to my head. I sipped my tea.
“Hey. Mom?”
“Hm?”
“Are you nervous?”
“A little.”
“Because of me and Dad?”
“No. Of course not.”
“How come, then?”
Mom smiled, but her eyes were sad. “I should have gone back a lot sooner.”
“Oh.” The knot in my solar plexus tightened. Mom pushed a loose strand of hair behind my ear as I stared out the window.
I had never flown over an ocean before. It was night out, and looking down at all that black water below, capped white where the moon glinted off the swells, left me feeling like we were the last humans left alive on planet Earth.
“Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m a little nervous
too.”
* * *
It was night again when we landed at Dubai International Airport. We had flown all the way into one day and back out again.
I couldn’t remember the last time I had taken my medication. Or brushed my teeth. And my face felt oily enough to generate two or three more Olympus Mons–sized pimples.
My body said it was yesterday, but the clocks said it was tomorrow.
This is why I hate time travel.
“Our flight’s in three hours,” Mom said as I stood and stretched, bending over Laleh’s seat to try and extend my back. “We should grab some dinner.”
“Is it dinner?” My body didn’t think so. All I could think about was a hot cup of tea. I had been cultivating a headache for the last few hours—the kind of headache that felt like it was going to pop my eyes right out of my skull—and caffeine usually helped.
Laleh was hangry, the first sign of an impending Laleh-pocalypse. She dragged her feet down the jet bridge, holding my hand and staring at the floor desultorily, until we stepped into the terminal and she caught the scent of Subway.
Subway was my sister’s favorite restaurant.
The glow cast by the white and yellow letters instantly rejuvenated her. She wrenched her hand out of mine and sprinted straight for it. I chased her, my Kellner & Newton Messenger Bag banging against my legs.
I detested messenger bags.
“Can we have Subway?” Laleh asked.
“We have to ask Mom and Dad.”
“Mom? Dad? Can we?” Her voice was getting whinier by the second, the pitch rising higher and higher like a teakettle on the cusp of whistling.
“Sure, sweetie.” Mom studied the menu. Even in the United Arab Emirates, Subway was Subway. The menu was pretty much the same as it was in Portland, except for a seafood sub and a chicken tikka masala sub.
Dad shifted his own Kellner & Newton Messenger Bag on his shoulder. His was dark leather with the logo embossed on it—much nicer than my canvas-and-polyester one. “What do you want?”
“Um.” My stomach gurgled.
I had eaten two meals on the plane—a sort-of dinner and a sort-of breakfast—and though neither of them left me that satisfied, I did not want Subway.
I couldn’t stand the smell of Subway—not since my old job spinning signs for the pizza place. It had been across the parking lot from a Subway, and ever since, I couldn’t smell baking Subway bread without feeling trapped and claustrophobic from the porcupine costume I was forced to wear.
What kind of pizza place has a porcupine for a mascot?
“Um,” I said again. “I don’t really feel like Subway.”
“You can’t keep eating Laleh’s Sour Patch Kids.”
Stephen Kellner was extremely attentive to my dietary indiscretions.
I studied the menu. “Um. The chicken tikka masala sub?”
Dad sighed. “There’s nothing with vegetables that sounds good?”
“Stephen,” Mom said. She looked at Dad, and they seemed to be exchanging some sort of subspace communiqués. Laleh rocked back and forth on her heels and glanced at the counter. She was dangerously close to full-on Laleh-geddon.
“Never mind. I’m not that hungry anyway.”
“Darius,” Mom said, but I shook my head.
“It’s fine. I have to use the bathroom.”
* * *
I stayed in the bathroom as long as I could.
I still had some of Laleh’s Sour Patch Kids left.
But when I couldn’t hide any longer, I found Mom, Dad, and Laleh seated around a brushed-steel table with little blue hourglass-shaped stools. Laleh had demolished her meatball sub, leaving gallons of sauce spread around her mouth: a conquering Klingon warrior drenched in the blood of her enemies. She was licking her fingers clean, ignoring Mom and Dad’s conversation.
“You can’t keep trying to control him,” Mom said. “You have to let him make his own decisions.”
“You know how he gets treated,” Dad said. “You really want that for him?”
“No. But how is making him ashamed of everything going to fix it?”
“I don’t want him to be ashamed,” Dad said. “But he’s got enough going on with his depression, he doesn’t need to be bullied all the time too. He wouldn’t be such a target if he fit in more. If he could just, you know, act a little more normal.”
Mom glared at Dad as soon as she saw me. “Here,” she said, pulling out a seat for me. “You sure you don’t want something? We can go somewhere else.”
“I’m okay. Thanks.”
“You feeling all right?” Mom pressed the back of her hand against my forehead. It was greasy from being on the stuffy plane for so long.
“Yeah. I’m fine. Sorry.”
Dad wouldn’t look at me. He kept studying his hands, wiping at them with his white Subway-brand napkin, though I doubted they were dirty, since he’d eaten a salad.
Stephen Kellner always ordered salad at Subway.
“I’ll be right back. Anybody need anything?”
Mom shook her head. Dad grabbed his empty water cup and took it back for a refill.
Once he was out of earshot, Mom said, “Darius . . .”
“It’s fine,” I said.
“Don’t be mad.” She squeezed my hand. “He just . . .”
Laleh chose that moment to let out a huge, resonant burp.
Unlike Javaneh Esfahani, Laleh was perfectly capable of burping.
I laughed, but Mom was appalled.
“Laleh!”
“Sorry,” she said, but at least she was smiling again.
Thankfully, the meatball sub had averted the impending Laleh-clysm.
She was still giggling when Dad sat back down. He dipped his napkin in his ice water and handed it to Laleh for her to clean off her mouth, but it was a lost cause.
“Here,” Mom said, standing. “Let’s go to the bathroom, Laleh. Come on.”
A Level Six Awkward Silence descended upon us, despite the bustle of the terminal all around.
Awkward Silences were powerful like that.
“Hey.” Dad cleared his throat. “About earlier.”
I glanced up at Dad, but he was staring at his hands.
Stephen Kellner had angular, powerful hands. Exactly what you’d expect from an Übermensch.
“Let’s try to get along. Okay? I want you to enjoy this trip.”
“Okay.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
I mean, it wasn’t fine.
I wasn’t even sure which part he thought he was apologizing for.
I still had a knot in my solar plexus.
Like I said, Dad and I only got along if we didn’t see each other that much, and the trip to Iran had already compromised our intermix ratio.
But then Dad looked at me and said, “Love you, Darius.”
And I said, “Love you, Dad.”
And that meant we weren’t going to talk about it anymore.
* * *
I couldn’t sleep at all on the flight to Tehran. We were scheduled to arrive at Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport at 2:35 a.m. local time, which constituted a thirty-minute journey into the future.
I didn’t understand. What was the point and purpose of a half-hour temporal displacement?
As the flight attendants wandered the aisles collecting all the tiny plastic bottles of alcohol, the women on the flight started pulling headscarves out of their carry-ons and covering their hair.
Laleh was young enough that she didn’t technically have to wear one, but Mom thought it would be a good idea anyway. She handed Dad a light pink scarf over the back of the seat, and Dad wrapped it around Laleh’s head. Mom’s own headscarf was dark blue, with peacock feather designs embroidered on it.
&nb
sp; My heart did its own sort of feathery flutter when the captain said to prepare for arrival, and the plane began to descend.
The smog blanketing Tehran was transformed into dense orange clouds by the lights of the city below, and then we were flying through it and I couldn’t see anything else. We were soaring through a golden, glowing void.
“I don’t want to fly anymore,” Laleh announced. She scratched at her headscarf but refused to let Dad adjust it for her. “My head itches.”
“Soon, Laleh,” Mom said over the seat. She whispered something to Laleh—something in Farsi, I couldn’t catch what—and then leaned back and took my hand.
She wrapped our fingers together and smiled at me.
We were nearly there.
I couldn’t quite believe it.
THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS
There was only one stall open as we wound our way through Customs. The officer on duty looked like he was experiencing a bit of chronometric distortion himself. He had Level Eight Bags under his eyes, and he yawned every time someone new handed him a passport. Part of me expected the Customs officer to have a turban and a full beard, like all the other Middle Easterners on TV. Which was sad, since I knew it was just a stereotype. I mean, I knew plenty of Middle Easterners myself that didn’t fit that image.
The Customs officer was pale, even paler than Mom, with green eyes, auburn hair, and a five o’clock shadow. Or five thirty, given the temporal displacement.
Apparently, green eyes are common in Northern Iran.
I kind of wished I had green, Northern Iranian eyes myself.
The officer glanced at Dad, then at me, and then his eyes skimmed Mom and Laleh before locking back onto Dad. “Passports?” His voice was grainy, like mustard, and his accent wasn’t much stronger than Mom’s. He flipped through all our passports, holding the picture page up to us to check that we were, in fact, who the United States Department of State claimed we were. “Why did you come to Iran?”
“Tourism,” Dad said, because that is what he was supposed to say. But Stephen Kellner was genetically incapable of deception. “And we’re visiting my wife’s family in Yazd. Her father is ill.”