by Adib Khorram
“Not even tea.”
“Not even water?”
“Only if I get sick.”
I hadn’t realized Sohrab’s fast included water. I wondered if it was wise to work up a sweat playing soccer/non-American football if you couldn’t hydrate after.
Then I remembered the locker room, and I decided I didn’t care if Sohrab passed out from dehydration or not.
Dad cleared his throat from behind me.
“Oh. Uh. Dad, Laleh, this is Sohrab. We played soccer together. Football.”
Dad gave Sohrab a firm Teutonic handshake. Laleh looked up at Sohrab and then back to me. She could sense the tension hidden between us like a cloaked Romulan Warbird.
“I’m going to put these away,” I said, holding up my Vans. “Thanks.”
* * *
Sohrab followed me down the hall.
“Darioush. Wait.”
I kept going. The back of my neck was heating up. I didn’t want to start crying again. And if I did, I didn’t want Sohrab to see me.
He brushed my shoulder but I shrugged him off.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “About before.”
He followed me into my bedroom at the end of the hall and closed the door behind him.
“It’s fine.” I kept my back to him and took as long as I could to put my shoes away. I tucked the laces inside and lined them up perfectly parallel at the foot of my bed.
“No. It was not nice. I should not have said it. I should have stopped them.”
I sighed.
I wanted Sohrab to leave.
“It’s okay. I get it.”
Sometimes you’re just wrong about people.
“Thank you for bringing these back. They’re the only shoes I brought.”
“Darioush. Please.” Sohrab rested his palm on my shoulder. It was warm and tentative, like he thought I would pull away.
I thought I would too.
“I was . . .” He paused, and I looked over to see him swallow, his sharp Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “It was nice. You know? Not being the one that Ali-Reza was making fun of.”
I mean, I could understand where Sohrab was coming from.
It sucked being a target all the time.
“But he is not my friend, Darioush. Or Hossein. I’m not like them.”
“Okay.”
“I’m sorry. Really.”
Sohrab smiled—not a squinty one, but almost like a question—and I knew he really meant it.
“It’s okay. I just took it wrong is all.”
“No.” Sohrab squeezed my shoulder. “I was very rude. And I am sorry. Will you give me another chance?”
I thought I had been wrong about Sohrab.
But maybe I had been right.
Maybe Sohrab and I really were destined to be friends.
Maybe we were.
“Okay.”
Sohrab’s smile brightened into a squint. “Friends?”
I smiled too.
It was impossible not to.
“Friends.”
SINS OF THE FATHER
You can know things without them being said out loud.
I knew Sohrab and I were going to be friends for life.
Sometimes you can just tell that kind of thing.
I knew my dad wished I was more like him. Our problems went deeper than my hair and my weight. It was everything about me: the outfits I picked for school photos, the messiness of my bedroom, even how inaccurately I used to follow the directions on my LEGO sets.
Stephen Kellner was a firm believer in adhering to the included directions, which had been diligently prepared by a professional LEGO engineer. Designing my own models was tantamount to architectural blasphemy.
Another thing I knew:
I knew my sister, Laleh, wasn’t an accident.
A lot of people thought so, because she was eight years younger than me, and my parents weren’t “trying for another child,” which is kind of gross if you think about it. But she was not an accident.
She was a replacement. An upgrade. I knew that without anyone saying it out loud.
And I knew Stephen Kellner was relieved to have another chance, a new child who wouldn’t be such a disappointment. It was written across his face every time he smiled at her. Every time he sighed at me.
I didn’t blame Laleh for that.
I really didn’t.
But sometimes I wondered if I was the one who was an accident.
That’s normal.
Right?
* * *
You can learn things without them being said out loud too.
That night at dinner, I learned Ardeshir Bahrami did not like Stephen Kellner very much. At all.
Maybe it was because Mom stayed in America for Dad. She left her family, her country, her father, for Stephen Kellner.
Maybe it was because Ardeshir Bahrami—a True Persian in every sense of the word—was culturally predisposed to reject any and all Teutonic influences intruding on his Iranian family.
Maybe it was because Dad was a secular humanist, and Babou was religiously predisposed to dislike him. Zoroastrianism is patrilineal, which meant that even though Mom had inherited Babou’s religion, she couldn’t pass it on to me and Laleh.
Maybe it was all three.
* * *
We sat around Mamou’s dining room table—Sohrab stayed to eat with us, once the sun had set—and somehow Dad had ended up seated next to Babou, who had decided to keep up a running commentary on the meal.
“You probably don’t like this stew, Stephen.” he said. “Most Americans don’t like fesenjoon.”
“I love it,” Dad said. “It’s my favorite. Shirin taught me how to make it.”
It was true: Dad really did love it.
And fesenjoon is a hard food to love at first.
It kind of looks like mud.
Worse than mud, even: It looks like the sort of primordial goo that could generate new amino acids, which would inevitably combine to initiate protein synthesis and create brand new life forms.
Babou was right that non-Persians (and even some Fractional Persians) tended to regard fesenjoon with suspicion, which is a shame, because it’s just chicken, ground walnuts, and robe. It’s salty and sweet and sour and perfect.
“You eat it the American way,” Babou said. He nodded at Dad’s hands, where he held his knife and fork. Babou—and Mamou and Sohrab and Mom, for that matter—used forks and spoons, which is how a lot of Persians ate.
Dad smiled with his lips closed. “I never got used to eating with my fork and spoon.”
“It’s fine, Stephen,” Babou said. He scooped up a spoonful of rice and said something to Mom in Farsi, who shook her head and answered in Farsi too.
Dad glanced at Mom and then back at his plate.
This was a thing that happened sometimes, when we were around Persians. They would switch from Farsi to English between sentences, or sometimes even within them, and me and Dad would be left out.
Dad’s ears looked a little pink. It was like looking into a distorted mirror at one of our family dinners, with Stephen Kellner playing me and Babou playing Stephen Kellner.
There was something deeply wrong about seeing Stephen Kellner embarrassed.
My own ears burned. Harmonic resonance.
“Darioush,” Sohrab said. He sat next to me, his plate piled twice as high as my own with rice and stew.
He hadn’t eaten since breakfast, after all.
“Tell me about your school. In America.”
“Um,” I said.
“What are your classes like?”
“They’re okay. I take economics, which is kind of cool. Physical education. English. Um. Geometry, but I’m not very good at that.”
“You’
re not good at maths?”
I thought it was very interesting, how Sohrab used the British version of math.
“Not really.”
I glanced at Dad, but he was too busy shoveling rice into his mouth to comment on my math grades. Not that he was ever that bad about it. School was maybe the one thing he was mostly okay about. He knew how hard I studied.
But I knew without him saying it out loud that he was disappointed I didn’t have the knack for it. I would never be an architect like him. He’d never be able to update his messenger bag to say “Kellner & Son” or “Kellner & Kellner.”
It wasn’t the biggest disappointment I had ever dealt him, but I could tell it still stung.
“What about friends? You have lots of them?”
The fire in my ears spread to my neck and cheeks.
“Um. Not really. I guess I don’t fit in much.”
As soon as I said it, I glanced at Dad, because Stephen Kellner was categorically opposed to self-pity. But thankfully, he was still occupied with his fesenjoon.
Sohrab’s smile faded as he studied me.
“It’s because you are Iranian?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
He used his spoon to pick the meat off a chicken leg and scoop it up with some rice. “You’re the only Iranian at your school?”
“No. There’s a girl too. She’s full Iranian, though.”
“Your girlfriend?”
I choked on a bit of rice.
“No!” I coughed. “We’re just friends. Her name is Javaneh. Javaneh Esfahani. Her grandparents are from Isfahan.”
“That’s what the name means,” Sohrab said. “Esfahani. From Isfahan.”
“Oh.”
Babou cleared his throat and pointed his spoon at me. “Darioush,” he said. “How come you don’t know this?”
“Um.”
He turned to Mom. “It’s because you don’t teach him,” he said. “You wanted him to be American, like Stephen. You don’t want him to be Persian.”
“Babou!” Mom said. She started arguing in Farsi, and Babou argued right back. He kept pointing his spoon at me.
“Darioush. You don’t want to learn Farsi, baba?”
“Um.”
I mean, of course I did. But I couldn’t just say that. Not without making Mom feel guilty.
I sunk down in my chair a bit.
But then Sohrab came to my rescue. He cleared his throat.
“Who wants tah dig?”
Tah dig is the layer of crispy rice from the bottom of the pot.
It’s universally acknowledged as the ultimate form of rice.
More than one family has forgotten their arguments when it came time to divide the tah dig.
“Thanks,” I mumbled.
Sohrab squinted at me and handed me a wedge of tah dig.
“You’re welcome, Darioush.”
* * *
I led Sohrab to the door to say good-bye.
“Mamou said you are going to Persepolis tomorrow.”
“Yeah. I think so.”
“She asked if I wanted to come too.”
“Oh. Cool.”
“I won’t go if you don’t want me to, Darioush. It’s time with your family.”
“No. It’s okay. I want you to. Really.”
I was facing hours trapped in a car with Stephen Kellner, and Sohrab being there might actually make it bearable.
“Okay. See you in the morning?”
“Yeah. See you.”
* * *
I didn’t hold out much hope for Dad and me continuing our nightly Star Trek tradition, but I went in search of Babou’s computer anyway.
Across from Laleh’s room was a sunroom—though it was dark now—with a huge window covered in Venetian blinds and a well-loved beige couch in front. Against the opposite wall, a large television stood on an antique wooden table. DVDs and cases orbited in a ring around it, mostly Farsi-language dubs of Bollywood movies.
On either side of the television, and above it, the Bahrami Family Portrait Gallery extended into a new wing.
Fariba Bahrami loved photographs.
One picture was of Mom in the hospital, cradling a newly born baby Laleh. Dad had his arms wrapped around them both, looking ridiculous but somehow still radiating Teutonic stoicism in his light blue scrubs. Beneath Dad’s elbow, there stood a young, still-squeaky me, bouncing on my toes to catch a glimpse of my new baby sister.
There were so many pictures. Some were of Dayi Jamsheed and his kids, and Dayi Soheil’s family. I recognized them from pictures Mom had showed me. Others I recognized from home, because Mom had sent them to Mamou, like one of Laleh from last Halloween. She was dressed up as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz.
Laleh was totally obsessed with The Wizard of Oz last summer. The Judy Garland version. She would watch it and then run around the living room a few times and then watch it again, all day long.
Mom braided Laleh’s hair last Halloween—her curly Persian hair made perfect pigtails—and she’d found a blue-and-white gingham dress. Dad had brought home bright red sneakers with lights in the soles for Laleh to wear as her Ruby Slippers.
Mom and Dad took Laleh trick-or-treating, while I was assigned to monitor the house and disburse candy as necessary.
I was not cool enough to be invited to the parties where the Soulless Minions of Orthodoxy celebrated Halloween. In fact, I wasn’t even cool enough to get invited to a mid-level party. I was a D-Bag, in social status if not in name quite yet. So I sat at home, watching Star Trek: First Contact (the scariest of all Star Trek films) and giving out Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups to the neighborhood kids as they wandered by.
Despite his opposition to my own dietary indiscretions, Stephen Kellner insisted there was no finer candy for trick-or-treaters than Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
At least we were not the house with raisins.
* * *
“What are you looking for, Darius?” Mom watched me from the doorway, cradling two cups of tea. They were the glass kind, the ones with gilded rims and no handles. Many True Persians used cups like that, but I had never mastered the trick. I always burned my fingers.
“The computer. I thought maybe Dad and I could watch Star Trek on it.”
“Probably not, with the Internet censors.”
“Oh.”
Mom sat on the couch and patted the cushion next to her. I took my tea from her, but then I put it on the coffee table before I scorched my fingerprints off.
“So? What did you think of Yazd?”
“Well. It’s different. But not as different as I thought it would be.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I mean, it’s not like Aladdin or anything.”
Mom laughed.
“And it’s more modern. Sohrab has an iPhone, even.”
Mom sipped her tea and let out a long, contented sigh. She ran the fingers of her left hand through my hair and stared at the Bahrami Family Portrait Gallery until she found a photo of my tenth birthday party.
“Your hair,” she said.
When I was ten, I had decided I wanted to wear my hair like Lt. Commander Data, the Enterprise’s android operations officer. Every morning, Mom helped me blow dry my hair and brush it back into perfectly straight lines, and then gel it until it was as stiff as a bicycle helmet.
“The Android Look was not a good one for me.”
Mom laughed.
“What are we going to do for your birthday this year?”
“Um. I dunno.”
My birthday was April 2, which was the day before we left Iran.
According to Mom, even though I was born on April 2, she went into labor with me on April Fools’ Day.
When her water broke, and she told Dad, he thought she was joking.
It wasn’t until she got in the car without him that Dad realized it was really happening.
Sometimes Mom said I was her April Fools’ Joke.
I knew—without her saying—that she didn’t realize how bad it made me feel.
* * *
When I took my teacup/glass to the kitchen, Babou had his nose in the cupboard.
“Darioush. What is this?” He pulled out the FTGFOP1 First Flush Darjeeling and shook the tin around.
“It’s a gift. For having us here.”
“This is tea?” He popped open the tin and peered in. “This is not Persian tea. I will teach you how we make Persian tea.”
I already knew how to damn Persian tea with hell.
“Um.”
“Come. Darioush.” Babou grabbed the teapot off the stove—it was nearly empty—and dumped the dregs into the sink. “We will make it fresh.”
Babou rinsed out the pot once and banged it on the counter in front of me. The back of my neck prickled.
Having my foreskin compared to a turban was still the most humiliating moment of my life, but being taught how to make Persian tea—when I had been making it for years—came in a close second.
“We put the tea in like this,” he said, scooping loose tea from the huge frosted glass jar on the counter. The leaves were black, short, and sharp, but they were bursting with fragrance. Bergamot, mostly—kind of lemony—but there was something else in there too, something I couldn’t place. It was earthy, kind of like feet (not Cool Ranch Doritos), but kind of like the wet mulch in the flower beds outside of Chapel Hill High School’s student entrance.
I leaned over the pot to get a better whiff, but Babou pushed me back.
“What are you doing? This is for drinking, not for smelling.”
“Uh.”
Tea—good tea, at least—was for smelling too.
When I took cupping classes at Rose City Teas, we always had to smell the tea leaves both before and after they had been steeped. Not that I could ever admit to taking cupping classes. Charles Apatan, Manager of the Tea Haven at the Shoppes at Fairview Court, would have called that elitist too.