by Adib Khorram
Not really.
* * *
Sohrab and I sat out in the garden talking as the evening chill descended on us. The fine, dark hairs on Sohrab’s arms stood at attention. “We should go inside. It’s getting late. I think my mom already left.”
I shivered. “Okay.”
My foot had fallen asleep. It felt like I was walking on glass shards as I followed Sohrab inside.
I did feel better, though. Sohrab had that effect on people.
Everyone had left. Dad and Babou sat alone at the kitchen table, sipping tea and talking quietly.
“I don’t know,” Dad said. “It’s like he’s always making things hard on himself.”
“It’s too late to change him,” Babou said. “You can’t control him, Stephen.”
“I don’t want to control him. He’s just so stubborn.”
My ears burned. I waited for them to notice me and Sohrab standing in the doorway.
“Don’t worry so much, Stephen. At least he made friends with Sohrab. He is going to be fine.”
“You think so?”
Babou nodded.
Dad stared into his tea. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.
And then he said, “I think Sohrab might be the first real friend he’s ever had.”
Deep inside my chest, a main sequence star collapsed under its own gravity.
I hated that Dad thought that about me.
I hated that he was right.
I hated that Sohrab could hear him.
“Uh,” I said, louder than I needed to.
Dad looked back and saw me. His ears turned bright red too.
I wanted him to say something. To take it back.
But Stephen Kellner never said things he didn’t mean.
It was Sohrab who rescued me.
“Khodahafes, Agha Bahrami. Eid-e shomaa mobarak.”
“Khodahafes, Sohrab-jan.”
“Uh. Good night,” I said.
I led Sohrab to the living room, which looked like it had been host to a Level Twelve Party by twenty or thirty Soulless Minions of Orthodoxy.
Like I said, alcohol was illegal in Iran (not that it stopped everyone, but it stopped the Bahrami family), so there were no empty bottles or red Solo cups to pick up, but there were dirty plates and teacups and piles of split tokhmeh shells and several white powdered-sugar handprints on the walls.
There could only be one culprit for those. They were at perfect Laleh height.
At the door, Sohrab kicked off the pair of Babou’s garden slippers he had worn outside. He still had on his black socks. I never wore socks with sandals, but Sohrab had managed to pull it off.
He was a True Persian.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Darioush. You remember what I told you? Your place was empty?”
“Yeah.”
“Your place was empty for me too,” he said. “I never had a friend either.”
I almost smiled.
Almost.
“See you tomorrow?”
“Yeah. If you like. I mean, I think so.”
Sohrab cocked his head to the side, like I had said something funny, but then he shook his head and squinted at me. “Okay. Khodahafes, Darioush.”
“Khodahafes.”
THE BORG OF HERBS
Clank. Clank.
The Dancing Fan was still dancing, its rubber feet beating out the same syncopated Persian rhythm I’d been listening to all night, but that wasn’t what woke me.
I slipped out of my bedroom, sticking to the rugs where I could. The floor tiles were cold as my feet slapped against them.
Clank. Swish.
It was coming from the kitchen.
“Mom?”
She stood at the sink in her robe, Mamou’s bright pink rubber gloves pulled up to her elbows. Her hair was still done up Persian Casual, all curls and falls, though several locks had managed to escape their careful arrangement.
The counters to the right of the sink were stacked high as the Gate of All Nations with pots and pans, plates and glasses, and teacups.
So many teacups.
“Hi, sweetie.”
“What’re you doing?”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Can I help?”
“It’s okay. Go back to bed.”
I could tell she was just taarofing.
“I can’t sleep either.”
“All right. You mind drying these?” She nodded to the serving platters in the dish rack. “You can stack them on the table.”
I pulled a tea towel from the drawer next to the stove, then grabbed the ceramic rice platter and dried it off. The enormous dish was white with concentric rings of tiny green leaves on it.
“Hey. Didn’t we send this with the Ardekanis last year?”
Mom pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose with her forearm. “Yeah. For their anniversary.”
“Oh, yeah.”
Mamou and Babou had been married for fifty-one years.
I thought about all the fights they must have had, and all the times they had forgiven each other.
I thought about the little secrets they knew about each other that no one else knew.
I thought about how they might not reach their fifty-second anniversary.
“Mom?”
“Yeah?” Her voice had gone all pinched, like the neck of a deflating balloon.
“I’m sorry. About Babou.”
She shook her head and scrubbed the soup pot hard enough to bore a hole through it. “No. I’m sorry. I wish I had brought you and Laleh sooner. It’s not fair you only get to see him like this. So tired. And just . . . well, you saw.”
She stopped scrubbing and blew a hair out of her face.
“Yeah.”
“His doctors say it’s going to get worse.”
I swallowed and looked for a dry spot on my towel.
“You know what I remember?”
“What?”
“There was this day . . . I was seven or eight, and me and Mahvash had gone to the park to play. We were friends growing up. Did I tell you that?”
She had not told me that.
It was weird, imagining Mom having childhood friends.
But I liked that Mom was friends with Mahvash, and now I was friends with her son.
“Anyway, we had gone barefoot, because it was a cool morning. But when lunchtime came around, we tried to leave the grass, and the pavement was too hot.”
Mom got this funny smile on her face.
“When we didn’t make it home, Babou came and found us. But he didn’t know why we were there, and he hadn’t brought us any shoes.”
“Oh, no,” I said.
“So he carried Mahvash back home, piggyback, and left me in the park. He told me it would teach me to be more responsible.”
That sounded like something Babou would do.
“But when he came back, he had forgotten to swing by our house and get shoes for me. So he had to carry me home too.”
That made me smile.
“He was so strong,” Mom said. And then she sniffled.
I put down my towel and tried to give Mom a sideways hug, but she shook me off.
“I’m okay.” She pushed her glasses up again. “I’m sorry I didn’t teach you Farsi.”
“What?”
I didn’t understand. Our conversation had made a particularly confusing Slingshot Maneuver.
“It was my job to teach you. To make sure you knew where you came from. And I really screwed up.”
“Mom . . .”
She put down her sponge and turned off the sink.
“It was hard for me, you know? Moving to America. When I left here, I was sure I was going to come back. But I didn�
��t. I fell in love with your dad and stayed, even though I never really felt at home. When you were born I wanted you to grow up American. So you would feel like you belonged.”
I understood that. I really did.
School was hard enough, being a Fractional Persian. I’m not sure I would have survived being Even More Persian.
Mom shook her head. “You’re so much like your dad. In so many ways. But you’re my son too. I tried to do better as you got older, but I think it helped your sister more than it helped you.”
I mean.
It would have been nice to learn Farsi like Laleh.
“I’m sorry, Darius.”
Now that it was just us—all the True Persians had gone to bed—I was back to my American name.
Mom leaned over to kiss the side of my head and then turned the faucet back on. “You’d have an easier time talking to your grandfather if you could speak to him in Farsi. He was never very comfortable in English, even before.”
That was something I already understood. Back home, when we Skyped, it was Mamou who did most of the talking in English.
“He really does love you, you know. Even if he doesn’t always say the right things. He loves you.”
“I know,” I said.
“I think he loves you more, since he never gets to see you. It makes it more special.”
“Yeah. I love him too.”
That may have been an exaggeration.
I mean, I loved the idea of Babou.
But the idea was very different from the reality.
* * *
Laleh was the first one up the next morning. She ran up and down the hallway, singing at the top of her lungs, her feet pattering on the tiles as she danced. She cracked my door and peeked into my room.
“Morning, Laleh.”
“Sobh bekheir!”
“You want some breakfast?”
“Baleh.”
“Okay. I’ll be right there.” I pulled on a pair of socks and followed her to the kitchen.
Thanks to me and Mom, you could hardly tell there had been a Nowruz party the night before. I even wiped down the countertops and stove.
Laleh stuck her nose in the refrigerator. It was stacked so full of leftovers, the light up top didn’t hit anything below the first shelf.
“Noon-o paneer mekham.”
Laleh had entered Farsi-only mode, though at least she was sticking to phrases that I could understand.
I pulled the feta cheese out from the highest corner of the refrigerator door. “You want me to toast the bread for you?”
“Baleh!”
Laleh couldn’t reach the plates, but she got out clean butter knives for us. When the toaster oven dinged—I kind of wanted it to make a Red Alert sound or something, it was so futuristic-looking—I lined a basket with one of Mamou’s tea towels and filled it with bread.
“You want some tea?”
Laleh nodded and pulled out a piece of sangak bigger than her head. She tossed it on her plate and blew on her fingers where the bread had burned her.
After breakfast, Laleh and I settled in the living room—me to read The Lord of the Rings, and her to watch another Iranian soap opera. I had never seen a soap opera in America, so I had no frame of reference, but the Iranian soap operas were absurd.
Every single character seemed to be doing a William Shatner impression.
My sister loved it.
“Look at her coat!” Laleh had finally switched back to English to provide a running commentary for me.
On the television, an older woman sat at a table in a fancy restaurant, wearing a ridiculous white fur coat that made her the exact color (and size) of a polar bear.
“Wow.”
Mamou found us like that, Laleh laughing at the television, me reading my book and concurring with my sister when necessary.
“Sobh bekheir!” Laleh said, switching back to Farsi now that she had a receptive audience.
“Sobh bekheir, Laleh-jan.” Mamou kissed Laleh, and then me. “You had your breakfast?”
“Baleh.”
“There’s still warm sangak in the basket,” I said. “I can make some more tea.”
“Why don’t you make me the special tea you brought, maman?”
“Okay.”
While I pulled down the FTGFOP1 First Flush Darjeeling, Mamou pulled out a big bowl of qottab covered in plastic wrap from somewhere deep inside the refrigerator, gave me a wink, and carried it into the living room.
I heard Laleh cry out “Yum!” in a voice three octaves below her normal register.
Laleh liked qottab even more than I did.
I put the pot of tea on a tray, along with a few cups, so I could serve Mamou in the living room.
“Thank you, maman,” she said. She inhaled long and slow over her cup. “The smell is very nice.”
Despite what Ardeshir Bahrami said, it seemed like tea could be for smelling after all.
Mamou closed her eyes and took a long, slow sip.
“It’s good, maman! Thank you.”
I offered a taste to Laleh, who refused—it was too hot, and it had not been sweetened at all—and then took my own sip.
Mamou smiled and scooted closer to kiss me on the cheek.
“Thank you, Darioush-jan,” she said. “Your gift was perfect.”
I really loved my grandmother.
* * *
Mom emerged around ten o’clock, already dressed. She pulled a headscarf off one of the hooks by the door. “Mamou,” she said. “Bereem!”
Mamou emerged from her room, dressed up too.
“Where are you going?”
“We are going to visit my friends,” Mamou said.
“It’s tradition,” Mom said. “On the day after Nowruz.”
“It is?”
Mom nodded.
“We never do that back home.”
I remembered how Sohrab had looked at me, when he asked if he would see me. How he was surprised I didn’t say yes right away.
How could there be a Nowruz tradition I didn’t know about?
“Well,” Mom said. And then she blinked at me, like she wasn’t sure how to answer. “Why don’t you go visit Sohrab?”
It was only logical.
“Okay.”
* * *
I showered and got dressed, and Mom drew me a quick map before she left. Sohrab only lived a few blocks away, but everything looked different if you were walking instead of driving.
When we picked up Sohrab to go to Persepolis, it was still dark out. In the daylight, the Rezaeis’ house was older and smaller than Mamou’s, the khaki muted enough that I could look at it without sustaining damage to my visual cortex. It had wooden double doors, and each had a differently shaped bronze knocker on it: a horseshoe on the right, and a solid rectangular slab on the left.
The bronze was slightly pitted—like the doors, like the house itself. It felt lived-in and loved.
It made perfect sense for Sohrab to come from a place like this.
I gave the horseshoe knocker three quick raps. Mahvash Rezaei answered. There was a smear of white powder across her forehead, and some had gotten into her eyebrows, too, but she smiled when she saw me—that same squinting smile she had passed down to her son.
“Alláh-u-Abhá, Darioush!”
“Um.”
I always felt weird, if someone said “Alláh-u-Abhá” to me, because I wasn’t sure if I should say it back—if I was even allowed to—since I wasn’t Bahá’í and I didn’t believe in God.
The Picard didn’t count.
“Come in!”
I pulled my Vans off and set them in the corner next to Sohrab’s slender shoes.
There was a wooden partition separating the entryway from the rest of the house, with shelves cov
ered in pictures and candles and phone chargers. The rugs were white and green with gold accents, and they didn’t have little tassels on them like Mamou’s. The house felt cozy, like a Hobbit-hole.
The air was heavy with the scent of baking bread. Real, homemade bread, not the mass-produced Subway kind.
“Have you eaten? You want anything?”
“I’m okay. I had breakfast.”
“Are you sure?” She steered me toward the kitchen. “It’s no trouble.”
“I’m sure. I thought I should come visit, since it’s the day after Nowruz.”
I felt very Persian.
“You are so sweet.”
Darius Kellner. Sweet.
I liked that Sohrab’s mom thought that about me.
I really did.
“You are sure you don’t want anything?”
“I’m okay. I had qottab before I came.”
“Your grandma makes the best qottab.”
Technically, I had not tasted all the possibilities, but I agreed with Mahvash Rezaei in principle.
“She sent some with me,” I said, holding out the plastic container I’d brought.
Mahvash Rezaei’s eyes bugged out, and I was reminded of a Klingon warrior. Her personality was too big and mercurial to be contained in a frail human body.
“Thank you! Thank your grandma for me!”
Khanum Rezaei set the qottab aside and went back to the counter by her oven. It was dusted with flour, which explained the mysterious white powder on her face.
Her sink was overflowing with whole romaine lettuce leaves, bathing under the running water. I wondered if it was for the bread. I didn’t know of any Iranian recipes that involved baking romaine lettuce into bread, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any.
“Um.”
“It’s Sohrab’s favorite,” Khanum Rezaei said, nodding toward the sink. “He and his dad love it.”
Sohrab’s dad.
I felt so bad for him.
Also, I felt confused, because I didn’t know anyone whose favorite food was romaine lettuce.
Sohrab Rezaei contained multitudes.
“Can you take it outside for me?” Mrs. Rezaei scooped the leaves into a colander, banged it on the sink a few times, and handed it to me. “Put it on the table. I’ll go get Sohrab.”