by Adib Khorram
“Darioush,” he said, once we had settled onto the roof of the bathroom. He crumpled up a newspaper that had somehow found its way onto the rooftop. “What’s wrong?”
“What do you mean?”
Sohrab chewed on his bottom lip for a second and squished the newspaper until it was a tiny sphere.
“You seem very sad.”
“Oh.”
“Are you mad about Laleh?”
“No,” I said.
And then I said, “Not really.”
Sohrab nodded and waited for me.
I liked that about Sohrab. That he would wait for me to figure out what I wanted to say.
“Me and my dad used to watch Star Trek every night. You know Star Trek?”
Sohrab nodded.
“It used to be our thing. But now he wants to watch it with Laleh instead.”
“He doesn’t want to watch with you too?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t know.” I sucked on one of my tassels for a second and then spit it out when I realized I was doing it in front of Sohrab.
I didn’t want Sohrab to think I sucked on my tassels.
“It’s just . . . it’s not just the Star Trek thing. Like, with Farsi. She can speak it and I can’t. And everyone here likes her better. So where does that leave me?”
“Darioush,” he said. “You remember what I told you? Your place was empty before?”
“Yeah.”
“Laleh can’t take your place. Why would you think that?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Sometimes I just get stuck thinking things.”
“Sad things?”
I nodded and played with the hem of my shirt.
I didn’t know how to explain it any better than that.
“It’s hard for you? Your depression?”
“Yeah. Sometimes.”
Sohrab nodded.
And then he put his arm across my shoulder and said, “But you know what? Laleh is not my best friend, Darioush. You are.”
My ears burned.
I had never been someone’s best friend before.
Sohrab swayed me back and forth.
“Don’t be sad, Darioush.”
“I’ll try,” I said.
I was Sohrab’s best friend.
I almost smiled.
Almost.
I didn’t have to say it out loud.
Sohrab had to know he was my best friend too.
* * *
Star Trek Time was becoming a regular thing again, now that our nights weren’t so busy. Now that our days had slowed down.
Now that being in Yazd didn’t feel so different from being at home.
It had become a regular thing, except that Laleh was there.
And I wasn’t.
Despite what Sohrab said, it was hard not to think about her taking my place when she and Dad snuggled up on the living room couch to watch “Captain’s Holiday,” which is one of the best episodes of The Next Generation’s third season. It’s about The Picard racing against time-traveling aliens to solve an ancient mystery.
Even though I hate time travel, I love that episode.
It’s terrific.
It’s also notorious for Captain Picard’s vacation attire: extremely short silver swim trunks that only a Frenchman could pull off.
Laleh found them ridiculous.
“What is he wearing?” she asked, so loud that I could hear her from the kitchen, where I sat drinking tea and reading The Lord of the Rings.
Dad shushed Laleh. “Captain’s Holiday” was one of his favorite episodes too.
I almost went and joined them.
Almost.
But then Laleh started talking again, making fun of the special effects.
So I drank my tea and I read my book, and I did my best to ignore the sound of Dad and Laleh laughing.
* * *
“Darius?”
I looked up from my book. The ending credits music was playing in the living room.
“Yeah?”
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Want me to grab your medicine?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
I poured a glass of water while Dad pulled down our bottles. He handed me mine and then shook out his own pills.
“Better get to bed soon. Early start tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
Dad pulled my head down to kiss me on my forehead. He hadn’t shaved since we arrived in Iran, no doubt in an attempt to cultivate a rugged Iranian five-thirty shadow, and his chin scratched against the bridge of my nose.
“Love you, Darius.”
Dad held my face for a moment and looked in my eyes.
I didn’t know what he wanted. What he expected from me.
But at least he said it.
“Love you, Dad.”
FATHER ISSUES
The next morning, Mamou invited Sohrab and his mom over for breakfast. Laleh took the opportunity to educate Sohrab about Star Trek: The Next Generation, now that she was a self-proclaimed expert.
While Laleh distracted Sohrab, I poured a glass of water and took my medicine.
I don’t know why I didn’t want him to see it. He had seen my foreskin, after all. And he knew all about my depression anyway.
But I still hated that he was seeing me have to take pills.
Somehow it felt more intimate than just being naked in front of each other.
That’s normal.
Right?
“Finish your breakfast, Laleh-jan,” Mamou said. “Let Sohrab eat. We have to go.”
We were going to see Dowlatabad.
Dowlatabad is one of the most common place-names in Iran. It’s like Springfield back in the United States: There is one in every province.
The one in Yazd was a garden, not a separate city (at least, not as far as I could tell), and it was famous for its landscaping and its mansion and its giant baad gir.
The adults walked ahead, with Laleh riding on Dad’s shoulders, while Sohrab and I walked behind in companionable silence.
That was one of the things I liked best about Sohrab: We didn’t have to talk to enjoy each other’s company. We just walked and enjoyed the Yazd morning. Sometimes we would catch each other’s eye and smile or squint or even chuckle.
The sun was shining, but the air was still shaking off the night’s chill. I really should have worn a hoodie, but instead I had on a long-sleeved shirt with my Team Melli jersey over it.
I really loved that jersey.
I felt very Persian in it.
Birds whistled above us.
I sneezed.
“Afiat basheh,” Sohrab said.
“Thanks.” I sneezed again. “Sorry. How far is it?”
“Not far. Closer than Masjid-e-Jameh.”
“Okay.”
“Darioush. When are we going to play football again?”
I bit my lip and stared down at my Vans. They were getting dusty.
I wasn’t sure I could endure another episode of penile humiliation in the showers.
But Sohrab said, “We don’t have to play with Ali-Reza and Hossein, if you don’t want to. We can go to a different field.”
That’s another thing I liked about Sohrab: He knew what I was thinking without me having to say it out loud.
And a third thing I liked about him: He gave me time to think things over.
Penile humiliation notwithstanding, I actually did have fun playing soccer/non-American football with Sohrab. And we couldn’t really play with only the two of us. Not if we were going to be on the same team.
I always wanted to be on the same team as Sohrab.
“I don’t mind,” I said at last. “We can play with th
e others.”
“You sure? I won’t let them tease you again. I promise.”
“I’m sure,” I said. “We can play whenever.”
Sohrab squinted at me. “Let’s go this afternoon. When we get back. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“You are so good at it, Darioush. You should play for your school. When you go home.”
I imagined running onto a field in the Chapel Hill High School team kit. Go Chargers!
“Maybe I will.”
* * *
Fir and cypress trees lined the walkways of Dowlatabad Garden. We walked in the dappled shade, enjoying the mist blown off the burbling fountains. The path was paved with broken stones on one side and gleaming white diamond-shaped tiles on the other.
It was so peaceful.
“My dad loved to come here,” Sohrab said.
I liked that he felt safe talking about his dad to me.
“Do you get to visit him?”
Sohrab chewed his cheek and didn’t answer.
“Sorry.”
“No. Don’t be. It’s okay, Darioush.”
He sat on the edge of a fountain, and I sat beside him, bumping shoulders.
I don’t know why people say “joined at the hip.” Sohrab and I were joined at the shoulder.
I let him take his time.
“We got to see him at first. For the first few years. Once a month.”
The fountain gurgled.
The wind rustled the trees.
“Was it bad?”
“Not too bad. He was here, in Yazd. The prison was not good, but at least he was close.”
Sohrab’s jaw twitched.
I bumped his shoulder again, more to cheer him up than anything.
But then he said, “Four years ago they transferred him.”
“Oh?”
“To Evin prison. You know Evin?”
I shook my head.
“It is very bad. It’s in Tehran. And they put him . . .”
Sohrab stared up at the branches shading us.
“No one can see him. Not even the other prisoners.”
“Solitary confinement?”
“Yes.”
“Oh,” I said.
Sohrab sighed.
I wanted to make it better, but I didn’t know how.
Sohrab had Father Issues.
I suppose I had Father Issues too, though they paled in comparison.
Maybe all Persian boys have Father Issues.
Maybe that is what it means to be a Persian boy.
“I’m sorry, Sohrab.”
I rested my hand on his shoulder, and he let out a long, low breath.
“What if I never see him again?” he whispered.
I squeezed Sohrab’s shoulder and then stretched my arm all the way across it, so I was kind of holding him.
Sohrab bit his lip and blinked and squeezed out a few stress hormones of his own.
Just a few.
“You will,” I said.
Sohrab wiped his face with the back of his hand.
I felt so helpless.
Sohrab was hurting and there was nothing I could do. Nothing except sit there and be his friend.
But maybe that was enough. Because Sohrab knew it was okay to cry in front of me. He knew I wouldn’t tell him not to have feelings.
He felt safe with me.
Maybe that’s the thing I liked about Sohrab best of all.
After a minute, he cleared his throat, shook his head, and stood up.
“Come on, Darioush,” he said. “There is more I want you to see.”
MAKE IT SO
“Darioush. Look up. We’re here.”
“Wow.”
The roof of leaves ended abruptly. We stood at the end of a long fountain, and that fountain led to a huge eight-sided mansion, and out of that mansion rose a baad gir. A wind tower.
It was a true tower—not like the Towers of Silence, which were more mounds than anything.
The baad gir of Dowlatabad Garden was even taller than the spindly columns of Takhte Jamsheed. It soared a hundred feet above us, smooth along its bottom half, slotted along the upper half to catch the wind, with little spade-shaped ornaments at the top. Spines dotted the surface of the spire.
It reminded me of the Barad-Dûr, although it lacked the flaming Eye of Sauron atop it to complete the picture. And it was khaki colored, not black.
I sneezed.
“It’s huge!”
“Yes, huge.” Sohrab squinted at my astonishment. “Come on. It’s better inside.”
“We can go in?”
“Of course.”
It was the most colorful place I had seen in Yazd. Maybe the most colorful place in the entire world.
One entire wall was taken up with a huge stained glass window. Intricately wrought flowers in every color cast dancing rainbows into the mansion.
We were swimming in light.
We were accelerating to warp speed.
“Wow,” I breathed.
It felt like the kind of place where you were supposed to whisper.
“You say that a lot.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I like it. You don’t have these things back home?”
“Nothing like this,” I said. I stared up at the ceiling: gleaming white lines intersecting and weaving together into a twenty-four-sided star, which cascaded outward into interlocking diamonds as they followed the curvature of the inner dome.
I had stepped into a world of Elven magic. Into Rivendell, or Lothlórien.
The cool air from the baad gir above us rippled the hair on my arms.
“Nothing like this.”
* * *
This time, when we went to play soccer/non-American football, I knew to pack a towel. And more supportive underwear.
I still didn’t have cleats—Sohrab said I could borrow his again—but I had my Team Melli jersey to wear, which was even better.
I still felt kind of sick when I thought about being naked again, but the worst had already happened, and I knew Sohrab would stick up for me if it came to it.
When we got to the locker room, Sohrab tried to pass me his nicer cleats again.
“You should wear these,” I said. “I can use the white ones.”
“You take them. These are better.”
“But . . .” I had been outmaneuvered once more. My taarof skills were still very poor. “I feel bad. You can’t give me your nice cleats.”
“Okay, Darioush. Thank you.”
Success!
When I finished dressing, Sohrab looked me over and squinted.
“You look like a football star, Darioush.”
My ears turned so red, they matched the stripe across my chest.
“Thanks.”
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
Ali-Reza and Hossein were out on the field again, engaged in a two-on-eight game against a group of clearly outmatched younger kids. Sohrab and I watched for a minute as Ali-Reza bowled over one of his opponents and scored a goal.
I shook my head. It was the sort of overly aggressive maneuver only a Soulless Minion of Orthodoxy would engage in.
Sohrab grabbed my shoulder. “Come on!”
He ran into the pack and insinuated himself onto the younger team. In a flash, he hooked the ball from Ali-Reza and tore up the field toward the goal. It was completely undefended.
The kids whooped and laughed as Sohrab scored. They didn’t mind at all that we had infiltrated their team.
I hung back to defend our goal with a boy in overlarge cleats—he must have had Hobbit feet like me—and Persian hair even longer and curlier than mine.
“Salaam,” he said. He had a thick accent, but
it was cool. I liked the way he formed his vowels.
“Um. Salaam.”
He pointed at my Team Melli jersey.
“Nice,” he said in English.
I guess he could tell I didn’t speak much Farsi.
“Thanks.”
The young Iranian Hobbit—I decided to call him Frodo—ran up toward midfield. Now that Sohrab was playing, Ali-Reza and Hossein had lost their tactical advantage, and our team kept pressing forward.
Sohrab scored three more times, with assists from some of our new teammates, before Hossein held on to the ball and waved us all out to huddle midfield.
Frodo and I jogged out to join the circle. Everyone was talking in Farsi, arguing back and forth too fast for me to make anything out.
Like Frodo when he wore the One Ring, I had slipped back into the Twilight world, hidden from the Iranians around me by my inability to speak Farsi.
Since I was Frodo, I decided that made the Hobbit next to me Samwise.
But then Sohrab said, “English. Darioush can’t understand.”
And Hossein said, “Okay. Sohrab and Ayatollah pick first.”
Samwise looked at me. “Ayatollah?”
My ears burned hotter than Mount Doom.
Sohrab saved me again. “We are changing teams,” he explained. “Six and six. You are with me, Darioush. Captains.”
Me. Darius Kellner. A captain.
Just like The Picard.
“Asghar,” Sohrab said to Samwise. “You are with us.”
Sohrab and Ali-Reza took turns picking the other boys. We got Mehrabon, a non-Reza Ali, and Behruz, who was the shortest kid there but had the darkest mustache.
It was deeply impressive.
“Okay,” Sohrab said. He nodded at me.
I cleared my throat.
“Make it so.”
* * *
Playing soccer/non-American football with Sohrab, Asghar-Samwise-Frodo, and the rest of my team was genuinely fun. Even if Asghar and the other guys had all decided to call me Ayatollah.
I hated it at first, but as far as I could tell, none of them knew the real reason.
“It’s because you are in charge,” Sohrab said. “That’s what I told them.”
Our team cheered my new nickname whenever I nailed a tricky pass or managed a good save. I almost started to like it.