“Okay.”
“Please return when you’ve filled out an appeal for special circumstance form.”
Finally, my mother’s ribcage would deflate and we would stand up to leave.
She would spend the next few weeks tracking down the new form, filling it out with all the required documentation, and having it officiated and notarized. Then we would wait again in the embassy waiting room.
You have to understand, by the fifteenth time we did this, I stopped paying attention to the names of the forms or the faces of the agents. None of the document names mattered; none of the agents acted human at any point in the story. It was like sticking a wrinkly dollar into a candy machine over and over and having it spit the dollar out over and over, for a year, with a gun to your head.
Here in Oklahoma, I understand why—why humans would sit behind a glass window and look in the faces of families running away from danger and dead sheep, and not feel anything.
They think we’re bad people who will come and take their stuff.
Like when I won the tetherball tournament at recess against Trevor and I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t been there at all.
* * *
ONCE YOU PROVE TO the UN that you’re a refugee in danger, a country has to raise its hand to take you. And they’re hoping you’re one of the good ones who have educations with kids who start small businesses. Or sometimes they just put you in refugee holding areas until they can sort you out. That’s how we left the UAE after a year, and went to a refugee camp in Italy. I remember that plane ride because I left my kite behind—it was too big. But I kept my book by Richard Scarry called What Do Western Animals Do All Day? which was how I learned English words—for instance, if a pig enters a gymnasium, he will lift barbells, and then go to the butcher to purchase cured meats. I don’t know what meats they eat in animal town. Maybe it’s people.
And I packed four Micro Machine cars, because we still only had the one suitcase, but my pockets were my own.
And so we arrived on the outskirts of a town on the outskirts of Rome called Mentana, at a place people called Hotel Barba.
* * *
INTERRUPTION! INTERRUPTION!
Stop the story.
Stop, Scheherazade.
Stop counting the memories.
Stop, reader.
I have news.
* * *
MY FATHER, MASOUD EBNE JAMSHID NAYERI is coming to America to visit.
“Oh yeah?” said Jared S. when I told Mrs. Miller’s class for my reading assignment. “Is he gonna fly on a carpet?”
“No,” I said.
“Is he going to bring saffron?” said Kelly J.
“Nobody here likes saffron,” I said.
But I was missing the joke. The joke was that to my seventh grade English class, I had made my father a myth, like djinns, like Rostam, or like Mike Maguffy’s girlfriend from summer camp that nobody else knows.
How could the man who drove a golden chariot across the kingdoms of Ardestan, who laughs like a lion laughs—friend of the highest emirs and lowest dervishes, poet of his own religion, and master of the house with the birds in the walls—how could he ever travel to the real world of Edmond, Oklahoma?
“Why are we even letting them come here, when we’re at war?” said Jared S.
I had learned to avoid this topic, but Mrs. Miller said, “We’re not at war with Iran.”
“We have soldiers over there,” said Jared. Everyone knew his uncle was one of them.
“We don’t have soldiers in Iran,” said Mrs. Miller.
“We should bring them home first.”
“Is he coming to stay here?” said Jessica.
Jared jumped in, “Yeah, that’s how they do it. They come over without any papers.”
“They don’t even let you in without papers,” I said.
“People just walk over the border and stay.”
Suddenly the whole class was very worried about the possibility of someone without papers. They had all become little agents behind glass evaluating who got to check into the Economy Lodge Motel of Edmond.
I told them he only had a two-week visa. That he was a very important dentist and was needed in Isfahan.
But I knew that no one really believed anything I said. Kelly didn’t even look up from drawing her bubble letters on a note to Stacy as she asked, “So is he going to come to class?”
I said, “Yes. Yes he is,” so I could prove I had a dad who cared about me and was real. My mom could make cream puffs and it would amaze everybody. No one was going to make fun of him to his face. And it was all going to go exactly as I hoped.
* * *
THE HOTEL BARBA, WHERE we lived in Italy, was a cement building plopped on a hill. It wasn’t beautiful. But on the hill, you could see beautiful things, like the peach orchards of the nearby farms, and the terra-cotta roofs of the town center in the distance. At the foot of the hotel was the parking lot. In the back was a little landfill—a skirt of garbage that flowed down halfway to the nearest farm.
When you walked in, there was a reception desk where nobody sat. Most of the first floor was a cafeteria, like one in a school, that had nothing you could steal or break. The stairs were concrete. The halls of each floor were windowless and narrow. The rooms were one square, one window, one sink, one toilet, one shower. Finito.
It was the kind of place that made a lot of people cry at night.
I’m telling all this because even though it wasn’t an emir’s palace or anything, it was still fine. When I say, “refugee camp,” people sometimes imagine tents and kids who can’t speak English. But at this time, I was seven, and knew more than a hundred English words.
It was a refugee camp in other ways, though.
We were the only Iranians. The rest were homeless people from Slovenia, Ukraine, Serbia, Yugoslavia, and a bunch of other places. Nobody knew who was who.
The Italian staff whispered that some of them wandered over the Alps and had no paperwork at all. They just walked over the mountains and showed up to sleep in the town squares of Italian villages, washing their clothes in the fountains and begging up and down the porticoes.
The refugees could barely speak to each other. The old women sat in the parking lot in front of Hotel Barba (which never had any cars and was just a flat cement courtyard) and exchanged gossip. One would say something in Czech and another would translate into Russian, and another would translate into something else. It was like a giant game of telephone just to figure out where they could go to get cheap photos taken for their documents, or which of the camp administrators to avoid.
No one ever went to town.
It was a long hike down the hill and up two more. And we were unwelcome anyway. But my mom loved the walk along the narrow lanes of the farms. It reminded her a little of Ardestan. Of all the refugees, we visited the town the most. Sometimes, I’d play soccer with the Italian kids in the square. Anytime the ball rolled over to the tables of an outdoor café, the old men would pick it up and kick it back. I spoke Italian. I knew how to say “little help” and “thanks.”
Once, one of the old men held the ball and waved us all in. I looked around for my mom. She was buying more erasers in the stationery store, so I ran over with the other kids. I didn’t know any of their names. The old man—he was like Baba Haji’s age—leaned down and said, “Listen. If you ever see those gypsies walking toward the town, you run back and shout, ‘The gypsies are coming! The gypsies are coming!’ and we’ll take care of it. Understand?”
The other kids nodded.
I raised my hand. “Do you mean the people in Hotel Barba?”
“Hotel Barba,” he said, like he was spitting it. “Yeah them,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. “Them.”
I didn’t understand until I realized they all thought I was one of the Italian kids. I looked Italian, kinda. I didn’t talk as much as the kid who played keeper. They didn’t know I lived with the gypsies. The old man handed back the bal
l, and we all ran back to our game.
I wondered how the men would “take care of it.” Would they stand in the way and demand papers or something? And if one of the gypsy mothers really needed something, if she gathered the courage to say, “What papers?” would they just make something up?
“The 533-C form of Mentana,” they’d say and puff out their chests. And if the mom was really mad, like she’d been treated like garbage for years and all she needed was something from the pharmacy that she had saved up to pay for—if she said, “The 533-C form of Mentana doesn’t exist,” would the men just say, “Yeah”?
And what then? Punches? Kicks? A 360 back kick?
Maybe that was why Ray insisted on learning tae kwon do as soon as he could. And why he taught me.
Maybe I should thank him for showing me that any power of one person over another is built on the threat of violence.
But there must be some middle step when people disagree, before they try to rip each other apart. Right? I mean, this isn’t a kindness commercial for grown-ups to shove at kids. This is my memory of real life. So the gypsies and the old men never came to any understanding. There was only the threat of violence. So the people of Hotel Barba waited till no one was watching and snuck into town one at a time. They caught the bus, or bought stamps, as quickly as they could, and never loafed around the café or the fountain.
* * *
I MET ALI SHEKARI AT the Hotel Barba. He was my best friend in the whole world, and he’s probably king of Australia by now. Back then, he was seventeen, and I was seven, but we were both very good at soccer, so we respected each other like men. He was alone, and we were alone, because no one else spoke the languages we spoke. Luckily, he also spoke Persian.
Most of the hotel courtyard was taken up by circles of old men or women sitting on cinder blocks. The old women were Russian and the only Persian they spoke was the pinching of cheeks. Otherwise, they looked like babushka nesting dolls with red and yellow scarves around sad faces. They sat and probably talked about wherever they had escaped. The old men played a version of backgammon that I didn’t understand and they didn’t explain. They tapped the pieces onto the wooden board so fast it sounded like clattering teeth.
Hotel Barba was limbo. It was the middle waiting area between whatever hellish situation people had come from and whatever free paradise they imagined on the other side. For some of them, their kids were grown and had already made it to a free country. They dreamed of reaching them. For others, they had nobody and it was just two sides of the same bloody river.
No one thought of Hotel Barba as home.
I don’t know why there were so few kids at the Hotel Barba. Maybe kids slow you down. It was just us, some kids who never left their parents because the parents never let them, and Ali Shekari, who my sister said was beautiful, except for the pockmarks all over his face and body.
I met him in the cafeteria on hot-dog day, which was the worst day of any week. I will explain, because you must be thinking that hot dogs are the best food and this Khosrou is a lying fool.
But I am not a lying fool and these hot dogs were not the juicy frankfurters you are probably imagining. They were boiled, bland, and bun-less. Also, no ketchup. And they were served every Wednesday, even though they cost more than to serve everybody’s favorite, penne pasta.
You have to understand, the worst penne pasta in Italy, the tubs of it they would give refugees, was still better than the Oklahoma City Olive Garden. It was that good. The tomato sauce was rich and creamy with leaves of fresh basil, not dried. With parmesan cheese on the pasta, that was all you needed and you could eat three bowls and still crave more.
I didn’t know Ali Shekari yet, because this was only our second week, but I had seen him cause he was a seventeen-year-old dude and had a denim jacket with patches. So I made sure I was next to him in line. That way I could be his bud if he needed one.
The staff at Hotel Barba were from the town and everyone knew which staff to ask for things—like if you needed help translating a form. The one who wanted to be a doctor was a nice lady. The one who always looked mad would call one of the men to back her up as she screamed at you. Most things were against the rules, so when one old lady across the hall from us fell in her shower, we couldn’t do anything but steal cinder blocks from the courtyard and arrange them in her bathroom so she could sit as she washed.
In situations like that, God doesn’t mind stealing.
Or maybe he does, but you get more positive points for helping the old lady who was so happy she cried and kissed my cheeks so hard she rubbed tears all over them.
Or wait, okay, actually, I think the point is that above all other laws is the law of love. I forgot that one for a second.
Anyway, the staff was mostly nice, but had rules we broke sometimes. And sometimes they’d punish us.
So back in line with Ali Shekari, we had our plates out and the Zuppa Guy (the guy who shouted, “Zuppa!” on soup night) put a couple hot dogs on Ali’s plate with some potatoes that had been fried once upon a time.
Again, no ketchup.
I know this sounds ungrateful, because they were feeding us. But people are people and I’m just telling you how it happened.
Ali Shekari said, “What’s this?”
And Zuppa Guy, who was usually really funny, and pretended to dance romantically with the babushkas so everyone would laugh together in all the languages, said, “This? This is American food.”
Ali Shekari had a great laugh. And long, flowy black hair. If not for the marks, he’d look like the Italian soccer stars. And he was the only man in Hotel Barba who could beat up anybody, so he had to be careful to seem weak, or the staff might kick him out. But even so, he said, “Doesn’t it cost more to make American food than to make pasta?”
And the Zuppa Guy said, “Yes, but you must get used to food from where you go.”
Ali Shekari walked to his seat and did his laugh.
The Zuppa Guy added, “You don’t stay here. So you don’t get used to pasta.”
When we sat down, I noticed Ali Shekari wouldn’t eat his hot dogs. I already had two in my mouth at once. He didn’t know any of us. We were all just strangers who lived together. But I could tell he was furious. He pulled up his jacket sleeves and scratched at his arms. They had marks too. It was like somebody had taken bucket of glue and splashed it on him. Wherever the glue splattered, it was a white splotch of skin, even up his neck, on his face, and under his hair.
He waited till meal time was over and threw away the full plate. He said, “They spend extra money just to tell us we’re not welcome.”
* * *
THAT MADE ALI SHEKARI the ultimate hero. A champion of champions who would not eat frankfurters or fries from the hand of a begrudging host. He was Rostam the Unbeggar, and I followed him every day from then on.
My mom would apologize to him, but I pretended not to hear and would say, “What do you want to play, Ali Shekari?” He was a hero, remember, so he would play with little kids, no problem.
When we played soccer in the yard, the babushkas would suck their teeth, because Ali Shekari was a high-flying acrobat with the ball. It would miss their teacups by the width of a mustache hair. Ali Shekari would chase it, and sometimes even speak to them in their languages. He could probably speak all the languages. And he was growing a mustache.
Sometimes he would take me to the orchards on the next hill. Since he did not eat at the Hotel Barba, he was always hungry.
It was Ali Shekari who taught me how to jump a fence, how to climb a tree to toss down peaches, and how to run in zigzags when the farmers would shout and shoot their guns (probably in the air only to scare us, but just in case).
We were peach thieves, I guess.
Now that we are in Oklahoma, I wish I could skip telling you that part, because it makes us seem like villains. And maybe the Zuppa Guy was right not to want us. But I promised the truth, and the truth is Ali Shekari never hit anyone, but he stole peache
s, and that was enough for me.
The rest of the truth is that he was my only friend for a very short time, and it’s my fault that I don’t know where he is—if he’s a king in Australia, or married to a princess, or dead.
If you had been there, hiking down the Italian hills between the stone walls, and seen the trees, hundreds of them shining, and climbed the stone fences, and picked a ripe couple peaches for yourself—if you bit into them and the juice overran your mouth and tasted better than anything you’d eaten in months, and if you heard the shouting from behind the hedges like a wild djinn coming to kill you, and you ran and you heard a hero running next to you laughing and batting branches aside, and it smelled like fresh grass and wet dirt, and the sun was warm, the wind cool, and you had nowhere else in the world to go—it might have felt like an adventure from the myth of your life.
I know it was wrong.
I just wanted you to remember it like I do.
* * *
HERE ARE THE TIMES I lied and stole.
I stole peaches. I told that to you already.
The time I lied was here in Oklahoma when Mrs. Miller found me in the library during lunch. She said, “This is the lunch hour, Daniel.”
Which we both knew.
“I just wanted a book,” I said. Not exactly a lie. I want lots of things.
“Do you have a lunch?”
“For my dad,” I said. “To explain American football.”
Notice I didn’t lie about the lunch, either.
“We can ask Ms. Ivey about it when she gets back.”
Ms. Ivey was the librarian.
“Oh. She’s not here? Okay.”
This is also not a lie, technically, even though I knew Ms. Ivey was out during lunch. But I didn’t say a lie. I just asked a question I already knew the answer to.
Mrs. Miller had a son at Tinker Air Force Base in Midwest City, Oklahoma. His picture was the only one on her desk. He wasn’t in Iraq or anything, but he could be. So it was important that she didn’t think every Middle Eastern person is a liar, or she might tell her son, and he might one day disbelieve a good one of us and die. She lifted her glasses and rubbed the part of her nose where they sat.
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