by Adib Khorram
Dayi Jamsheed started unloading our stuff from the back. I shook the sleep off my head and slid out of the SUV after Mamou, while Dad tried to rouse Laleh. “Let me help you, Dayi.”
“No! You go in. I’ve got it, Darioush-jan.”
We had a lot of suitcases, and Dayi Jamsheed only had two hands. It was clear he needed help, but he was genetically predisposed to refuse it.
It was my first official taarof in Iran.
* * *
Taarof is a Farsi word that is difficult to translate. It is the Primary Social Cue for Iranians, encompassing hospitality and respect and politeness all in one.
In theory, taarof means putting others before yourself. In practice, it means when someone comes to your house, you have to offer them food; but since your guest is supposed to taarof, they have to refuse; and then you, the host, must taarof back, insisting that it’s really no trouble at all, and that they absolutely must eat; and so on, until one party gets too bewildered and finally gives in.
I never got the hang of taarofing. It’s not an American Social Cue. When Mom met Dad’s parents for the first time, they offered her a drink, which she politely declined—and that was that.
She really did want something to drink, but she didn’t know how to go about asking.
She had yet to learn the proper American Social Cues.
Every Thanksgiving, Dad tells the story again, and every year, Mom laughs and says she’s going to kill him if he tells it one more time.
Maybe joking is the Primary American Social Cue.
* * *
“Please,” I said. “I want to help.”
“It’s fine.” Like Mamou, Dayi Jamsheed had a funny way of twisting the ends of his words. “You’re tired. You are a guest.”
Both of those statements were technically true, but truth was irrelevant when it came to taarof.
“Um.”
Mom came to my rescue. “Jamsheed.” She reached into the SUV to extract Laleh’s unconscious body from Dad. My sister was pretty much a rag doll when she was asleep. “Let Darioush help.”
Dad unfolded himself from the back of the SUV while Dayi Jamsheed argued with Mom in Farsi. For a beautiful, poetic language, it sounded harsh as Klingon when they fought, especially when Mamou joined in and turned it into a three-way argument.
Laleh still hung in my mom’s arms. I didn’t know how she could sleep through it.
Dad yawned and swung around doing trunk twists. He blinked at me and cocked his head toward Mom.
I shrugged. “Taarof,” I whispered, and Dad nodded.
This was not the first time Dad and I had been stuck spectating at a taarofing match we couldn’t understand.
We could have had all the luggage taken inside in the time it took them to allow us to help.
Finally, Mom prevailed, and Dayi Jamsheed handed me Laleh’s roller bag. “Thank you, Darioush-jan.”
“Sure.”
Laleh’s suitcase was twice as heavy as mine, because it was also crammed full of the stuff Mom had brought with her from America.
It wasn’t just stuff for our family. When Mom announced we were going to Iran, every Persian family in the Willamette Valley started calling her, asking if she could take something to Iran for a relative, or bring something back.
It would be Mamou’s job to distribute what Mom had brought after we left. It was all random stuff too: a particular kind of shampoo, or a face cream, or even Tylenol PM, which apparently you couldn’t buy in Iran.
I grabbed my own suitcase, slung my Kellner & Newton Messenger Bag around the retractable handle, and followed Mamou up the driveway.
“Where’s Babou?”
“In bed.” Mamou lowered her voice as she let us inside. “He wanted to come to the airport, but he was too tired. He is sleeping more.”
I got this sort of flutter in my stomach.
Meeting Mamou—really meeting her, I mean—but not Babou felt wrong, like ending an episode on a cliffhanger.
I was anxious to meet my grandfather, but I was a little scared too.
That’s normal.
Right?
The lights were still off, and the narrow windows didn’t let in much of the morning sun. Where they did, thin shafts of light struck the dust motes suspended in the air and lit the photos on the walls.
There were a lot of photos on the walls. Some were framed, singly or in groups, but plenty were tacked in place with tape, or pinned up by clothespins, or tucked into whatever corner would hold them. I wanted to stop and look at them—the Bahrami Family Portrait Gallery—but instead, I kicked off my Vans on the doormat and followed Mamou down the hall that ran the length of the house. She stopped at the last room on the right.
“Is this one okay?”
“Sure.”
“It has a washroom.” She pointed to a door in the corner.
“Uh.” Mom had warned me about Persian bathrooms.
“Are you hungry, maman?”
“No. I don’t think so.” The truth was, I couldn’t tell anymore. Our journey through the space-time continuum, followed by my near brush with State-Sanctioned Torture at the hands of Customs Officer II, had left me feeling disoriented and gross.
“You’re sure? It’s no problem.”
It was my second taarof in Iran, and this time Mom wasn’t around to help me.
“Um. I’m sure. I think I’m going to shower if that’s okay. And maybe take a nap.”
“Okay. There are towels for you in the closet.”
“Thanks.”
Mamou pulled me down into a hug, kissed me on both cheeks, and then went to help put Laleh to bed.
I left Laleh’s suitcase in the hall, pulled my own in after me, and shut the door.
The room was maybe half the size of my bedroom back home: a twin bed with olive-green covers, and matching green curtains covering the small round window above it. A tiny wooden desk stood in the corner, with more photos on the wall above it. I recognized Dayi Jamsheed and Dayi Soheil and their kids, but there were strangers in some of them too. A few were really old black-and-whites from when Mamou was growing up.
One was familiar: a photo of Mamou with her parents. Mamou was my age, with long straight hair that fell all the way down to her chest. She wasn’t smiling, but she looked like she wanted to.
Mom had a copy of that photo framed in our living room at home, on the wall closest to the kitchen and the Turbolift Door. It was the only picture of my great-grandparents (on Mamou’s side) that we had.
I peeled off my shirt. It was sticky and musty from the day’s travel. My face was so greasy, I thought it might slide off right onto the floor. I needed a shower.
More than that, though, I really had to pee.
I stared at the toilet: a perfect porcelain bowl, set in the floor with rose-colored tiles arranged all around in an abstract mosaic.
Mom had warned me about Mamou toilets. In Iran—especially in older homes—you were supposed to squat over the toilet instead of sitting on it. It was considered much more healthy.
I hoped my leg muscles were strong enough, when the time came. As it was, I circled the toilet, studying it like a Klingon Warrior sizing up his enemy. I wasn’t sure exactly how I was supposed to use it without making a mess.
But I really did have to pee.
* * *
I showered, pulled on some shorts, and got my medicine out, but then I decided I should take it when I got back up, so I could have it with breakfast.
The air in the bedroom was too close. It was not humid, but I could feel every single air molecule as it brushed against my freshly scrubbed face. There was a box fan tucked into the corner, so I dragged it away from the wall and turned it on. It buzzed a little bit, and I had a brief vision of it experiencing a non-passive failure and exploding into a billowing cloud of smoke and
motor particles, but then it got up to speed.
The fan would not stay still. It jiggled and jittered across the floor, dancing toward me.
I angled it so it would dance away from me instead. But by the time I’d gotten my pants off and pulled back the sheets, the fan had danced itself around to face me once more, shaking and shimmying inexorably toward my bed.
That fan was evil.
I pulled the Dancing Fan to the middle of the room and then propped my suitcase against it to hold it in place. It rattled ominously and hopped back and forth on its rubber feet. The suitcase blocked some of the airflow, but at least I knew it wouldn’t creep up on me while I was sleeping.
I slipped into bed and faced the wall, but I could feel that fan.
It was watching me. Waiting for me to lower my guard.
It was deeply unnerving.
THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN-IRANIAN RELATIONS
Thud.
Tap squeak tap.
I blinked and looked around. I had tossed off my covers while I was asleep, and the Dancing Fan lay facedown, its blades pushing air impotently at the floor.
The bedroom had become stuffy and dry. The back of my neck stuck to Mamou’s beige pillowcase when I sat up. My mouth was crusty and gross.
Tap squeak tap. Something rattled the window behind the green curtain. A shadow fell across it, most likely humanoid. I peeled back the curtain and peeked out, blinking against the brightness, but whoever (or whatever) was out there had already vanished.
I pulled on some clothes and tiptoed down the hall.
The house was quiet. Mom, Dad, and Laleh were still asleep after our long journey through the space-time continuum, but I found the kitchen, and a door leading out to the backyard.
I blinked in the sun and waited for my eyes to adjust, sneezing at the brightness. The sun in Yazd was more intense, and it was directly overhead. Every surface glowed.
It was blinding.
I sneezed again.
A deep voice spoke from above, something in Farsi. I blinked and looked up.
Ardeshir Bahrami—my grandfather—had leaned a ladder against the side of the house, right next to the little round window above my bed, and he was halfway up to the roof.
Babou was taller than I expected. He wore khaki dress pants, a white pinstriped button-up shirt, and dress shoes, with the socks bunched around his ankles. And he was climbing a ladder.
He looked healthy to me, even though Mom and Dad said he wasn’t. Even though Mamou said he was sleeping more.
He looked fine.
I cleared my throat and pushed my hair off my face. I had serious bed head (it was one of the burdens of having Persian hair), even though I hadn’t slept for that long. I thought. Maybe what had felt like a few hours had actually been an entire day.
Maybe it was already tomorrow.
I tried to say hello, but my throat had closed off, and I made a sort of squeaking sound instead.
It felt weird to speak, knowing he could hear me. Knowing I could reach out and touch him—if he ever came down from the roof.
I guess I had pictured our first meeting a bit differently.
Babou hoisted himself onto the roof, teetering for a moment at the top, and I was convinced I was about to witness my grandfather plummet to his death off his own rooftop.
“Sohrab!” he shouted. He was staring out into the garden, past the rows of herbs, toward a shed hidden behind a trellised kiwi tree.
Persian children—even Fractional ones—learn their fruit-bearing trees at an early age.
There was a boy stringing a hose from the shed, un-looping and wrestling the knots and kinks out of it as he went.
I had never seen the boy before. He looked about my age, which meant he couldn’t be one of my cousins, because they were all older than me.
I glanced at Babou, who shouted “Sohrab!” again, and then at the boy, who shouted back in Farsi.
“Um.”
Babou swayed for a moment and then looked down at me.
His eyebrows lifted.
“Eh! Hello, Darioush. I will be down soon. Go help Sohrab.”
Sohrab shouted back and then waved me over. The sun pressed against the back of my neck as I ran out to meet him, the rough stone of the patio giving way to scrubby grass and then back to stone again. It was warm against the soles of my bare feet.
Sohrab was shorter than me, compact and lean. His black hair was cropped close, and he had the most elegant Persian nose of anyone I had ever met. He had brown eyes, just like me, but there was some light hidden behind them.
It made me think maybe brown eyes weren’t so boring after all.
“Um,” I said. “Hey.”
And then I realized that was quite possibly the most inane greeting in the history of American-Iranian relations.
So I said, “I mean, salaam.”
Salaam means “peace.” It’s not a Farsi word—it’s an Arabic one—but it’s the standard greeting for most True Persians.
“Salaam,” Sohrab said.
“Um. Khaylee kami Farsi harf mizanam.”
I knew just enough Farsi to stutter that I barely knew how to speak Farsi.
Sohrab’s eyes crinkled up when he smiled. He almost looked like he was squinting.
“English is okay.”
“Oh good. Uh. I’m Darius. Babou’s . . . Agha Bahrami’s grandson.”
“From America.” Sohrab nodded and handed me one of the knots he was working on. I held the hose as Sohrab took the end and wove it back through the loops. He had short, proportional fingers. I noticed them because I always thought my own fingers were weirdly long and skeletal.
Sohrab shook the hose to loosen it. I grabbed another knot for him.
“Um.”
Sohrab glanced at me and then back at his work.
“Are we related?” I asked.
It was an awkward but legitimate question for one Persian to ask another. I was related—distantly—to several Iranian families in Portland. It was usually through marriage, but I had a third cousin, once removed, in Portland too.
When it comes to keeping track of our family trees, Persians are even more meticulous than Hobbits. Especially Persians living outside of Iran.
Sohrab squinted at me and shrugged. “I live close.”
It had never occurred to me that Mamou and Babou could have neighbors.
I mean, I knew there was a whole city around them, but the other residents of Yazd had always been abstract. Even the photographs I had seen were usually devoid of human inhabitants.
Mamou and Babou had always existed in their own cuboid universe: the two of them, and the walls of the computer room around them.
Sohrab pulled the last tangle out of the hose. And then, before I could stop him, he pointed the sprayer toward me and squeezed the handle. I held up my hands and shouted, but the water just dribbled out.
Sohrab laughed. I liked Sohrab’s laugh: It was loose and free, like he didn’t care who heard it.
When he squeezed my shoulder, his hand was warm, even though he’d been handling the clammy hose. “Sorry, Darioush. It’s not on yet.”
I tried to glower at Sohrab, but it was impossible, because he was squinting again and I ended up laughing instead.
I decided I liked Sohrab.
* * *
Here’s the thing:
Every Iranian knows someone named Sohrab. If they don’t, they know someone who knows someone named Sohrab. Back in Portland, one of Mom’s friends (who we were not related to) had a nephew named Sohrab.
Now I had a Sohrab of my own.
The name Sohrab comes from the story of Rostam and Sohrab in the Shahnahmeh, which is basically the Silmarillion of Persian fables and legends. It has other stories too, like Feridoun and his three sons, and Zal and the Simurgh (wh
ich is the Persian version of a phoenix), and King Jamsheed, but none of them are as famous as the story of Rostam and Sohrab.
Rostam was a legendary Persian fighter who accidentally killed his own son, Sohrab, in battle.
It was deeply tragic.
It was also deeply ingrained in the DNA of every Persian man and boy, which is probably why all Persian boys work so hard to please their fathers.
I wondered if all fathers secretly wanted to kill their sons. Just a little bit.
Maybe that explained Stephen Kellner.
Maybe it did.
* * *
“Sohrab! Darioush!”
“Bebakhshid, Agha Bahrami.”
That means “I’m sorry.” Or “excuse me.”
Like I said, Farsi is a deeply context-sensitive language.
I helped Sohrab drag the hose to Babou, who hoisted a few coils up to the roof. Sohrab stood at the base of the ladder with his left foot on the bottom rung.
“Do you like figs, Darioush?”
“Uh.” Liking figs was not a Persian trait I had inherited.
All True, Non-Fractional Persians like figs.
But I thought they were weird, because I accidentally read about how figs are pollenated by little wasps that climb inside them, mate, and then die. Ever since then, I couldn’t stop thinking that I might be eating dead wasps when I ate a fig.
“Your grandfather grows the best figs in Yazd,” Sohrab said. But then he shrugged. “They won’t be ready until summer, though.”
“Darioush-jan,” Babou called from the roof. He waved his hand back toward the shed. “Turn the water on, please.”
“Okay.”
The hose leaked a little when I turned it on, so I tightened it as best I could, and then I stood by Sohrab and we watched Babou. He tottered across the roof tiles, spraying his fig trees like it was the safest, sanest procedure in the world.