Darius the Great Is Not Okay Page 13

  The whole thing smelled like sun-baked dust—it made me think of Mom running the vacuum, which was weird—but it wasn’t old or musty. The wind from the mountains around Shiraz kept a light breeze spinning through the Apadana, quieter and more subtle than the Dancing Fan could ever hope to be.

  In pictures, old buildings are always white and smooth. But in real life, Persepolis was brown and rough and imperfect. There was something magical about it: the low walls, all that remained of some ancient hall, and the pillars looming over me like giants in an ancient playground.

  According to Sohrab, many of the buildings were never finished before Alexander the Great sacked Persepolis.

  Alexander the Great was the Trent Bolger of Ancient Persia.

  Dad followed us into the Apadana and pulled his sketchbook back out.

  “These arches are incredible.” Dad pointed to a huge set that looked at least four stories high.

  “Yeah.”

  “Stephen,” Sohrab said. “You like architecture?”

  “That’s what I do back home,” Dad said. “I’m an architect.”

  Sohrab’s eyebrows shot up. “Really?”

  Dad nodded and kept sketching.

  I wanted to ask him if the ruins reminded him of Vulcan, the way they reminded me.

  I wanted to ask him if he wanted to come exploring with me and Sohrab.

  But I didn’t know how.

  Stephen Kellner stared at the arches above us and bit his lip. He rubbed his thumb against the page to make a shadow and kept sketching.

  “Come on,” I said to Sohrab as we left Dad behind.

  “Your dad is an architect?”

  “Yeah. He’s a partner in a firm.”

  “That’s what I want to do. Someday.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. That or civil engineering.”

  “Wow.”

  To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what the difference was between the two.

  I couldn’t say that out loud.

  “It’s a lot of school, though.”

  “Yes. Not easy for Bahá’ís.”

  “Oh?”

  Sohrab nodded, but he didn’t elaborate.

  Instead, he said, “Come on, Darioush. There’s much more to see.”

  * * *

  We found Laleh and Babou standing in front of a wall.

  It was not a plain wall: Like everything else in Persepolis, it was oversized, carved, and the color of cargo pants.

  “Eh! Sohrab. Good. Darioush hasn’t seen this,” Babou said. “Come see, baba.”

  Laleh was sagging against Babou’s leg. I put my hand on top of her headscarf and rubbed it a little. Laleh sighed and shifted her weight from Babou’s leg to mine.

  Babou nodded at the wall. “Look.”

  I craned my neck to try and make out all the details.

  It was a relief, carved directly into the stone. A bearded man sat on a throne, holding a staff in one hand and a hyacinth in the other.

  Maybe he was preparing for Nowruz. Lots of people like to add sonbols to their haft-seen.

  Carved in relief, the figure’s beard looked like it was made of enormous stone beads, each with a little swirl in the center, countless tiny galaxies of rock.

  “It’s you.” Babou poked me in the chest.

  “Me?”

  I was certain I would never be able to grow a beard so luxurious as the one hewn into the wall above me. Stephen Kellner’s fair-haired Teutonic genes would prevent it.

  “It’s Darioush the Great,” Sohrab said.

  “Oh.”

  Babou said, “He built many of these things.”

  Until they got burned to the ground by angry Greeks.

  Well, Macedonians, technically.

  Babou looked right at me. “Darioush was a great man. Strong. Smart. Brave.”

  I didn’t feel strong or smart or brave.

  Like I said, my parents were setting themselves up for disappointment, naming me after a titanic figure like that.

  Darius the Great was a diplomat and a conqueror. And I was just me.

  “Your mom and dad picked a good name for you.”

  Babou put his arm on my shoulder. I swallowed and followed his gaze to stare at the carving.

  “Mamou thought it was too much driving to come here. To see this. But it’s important for you to know where you come from.”

  I didn’t understand Ardeshir Bahrami.

  Yesterday I wasn’t Persian enough because I didn’t speak Farsi, because I took medicine for depression, because I brought him and Mamou fancy tea.

  He made me feel small and stupid.

  Now he was determined to show me my heritage.

  Maybe Ardeshir Bahrami experienced Mood Slingshot Maneuvers too.

  Babou squeezed my shoulder and then led Laleh away, leaving me and Sohrab alone.

  “Babou is right,” Sohrab said. “It’s good to see where you come from.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I guess.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “No. It’s just . . .”

  Sohrab had grown up with this history all around him.

  He knew where he was from.

  There was no ancient emperor for him to measure up to.

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s okay, Darioush,” he said.

  He put his arm over my shoulder and led me down the path after Babou and Laleh.

  “I understand.”

  BETTE DAVIS EYES

  Laleh and I taught Sohrab how to play I Spy on the drive back to Yazd. When it got too dark to play any more, Laleh fell asleep with her face mashed into my side. I unwound her headscarf so it wouldn’t get tangled as she shifted against me.

  As we reached the outskirts of Yazd, Babou slowed the Smokemobile down so much, it felt like we were coasting down the evening streets on maneuvering thrusters only.

  “Ardeshir?” Mamou said.

  Babou looked back and forth at the road signs and said something in Farsi. Mamou put her hand on his arm, but he shook it off and snapped at her.

  In front of me, Mom’s shoulders bunched up.

  “What is it?” I asked, but Mom shook her head. Laleh stirred against me, yawned, and rubbed her face into my stomach. My shirt was wet where she had drooled a little bit.

  I looked to Sohrab, but he was staring at his hands folded in his lap.

  Mamou and Babou argued back and forth until Babou slammed on the brakes—not that it did much, since we were barely crawling forward—and pulled over. The Smokemobile’s exhaust plumed around us.

  Mamou unbuckled her seat belt, but Mom reached forward to put an arm on her shoulder. She and Mamou started whispering in Farsi, while Babou sat in the driver’s seat with his arms folded and his chin on his chest.

  Mom popped her own seat belt and tried to get up, but Dad caught her. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m driving us the rest of the way.”

  Dad glanced at Mamou and Babou and then back to Mom.

  “Let me.”

  “You sure?” Mom’s voice caught, like she had swallowed tea the wrong way.

  “Positive.”

  Dad opened the sliding door, letting in a cloud of the Black Breath that nearly suffocated us all. Once Dad got out, Babou climbed in next to Mom and slid the door shut with the finality of a guillotine.

  Dad settled into the driver’s seat of the Smokemobile—the most un-Audi car imaginable—and buckled himself in. “You’ll have to guide me.”

  Stephen Kellner, Teutonic Übermensch, had never asked for directions in his life.

  “Take the next right.”

  While Mamou guided Dad, Mom whispered to Babou in Farsi and wound her arm through his.

  I cleared my throat a
nd glanced at Sohrab again.

  “What happened?” I whispered.

  Sohrab bit his lip. He leaned in close so no one else would hear.

  “Babou got lost.”

  * * *

  Like I said. You can know things without them being said out loud.

  I knew that Babou would never get to drive the Smokemobile again.

  * * *

  I didn’t say anything when we dropped off Sohrab. Just waved good-bye.

  Some things were too big to talk about.

  Sohrab understood that.

  When we got back to Mamou’s, Laleh crawled over me and sprinted inside to pee. She’d been complaining since she woke up that her bladder was about to experience a non-passive failure.

  Mamou led Babou inside, talking low in Farsi, while Dad waited for Mom at the door after letting Laleh in.

  I stooped under Dad’s arm where it rested against the door frame and walked into the house. When I looked back, Dad was holding Mom, kissing her hair as she shook and cried against him.

  I didn’t know what to do.

  Darius the Great might have known. But I didn’t.

  I went to the kitchen to make some tea.

  * * *

  Babou’s unnecessary and humiliating lesson in how to dam tea had one benefit: I now knew where Mamou kept her tea and hel.

  When it was ready, I poured a cup and knocked on the sunroom door. “Babou? Do you want some tea?”

  “Come,” he said, which made me think of The Picard.

  Babou had changed into a plain white shirt and loose white pants with a drawstring waist, and he had hitched them halfway up his torso. He sat on the floor with a blue-patterned Persian tablecloth spread before him, picking through sabzi with Laleh’s help. The warm glow of a table lamp softened the planes of Babou’s face and brightened his eyes. Even his mustache seemed friendlier.

  “Darioush-jan. Come. Sit.” He nodded at the couch behind him, then went back to paring the stalks of fresh cilantro from the colander next to him. Every so often, he’d hand some to Laleh for her to sort out the bad leaves.

  “Um.” I handed Babou his tea and a sugar cube. Up close, he looked less warm—almost gray.

  I hated seeing Babou like that.

  I think I liked it better when I only saw him on a computer screen.

  That’s normal.

  Right?

  “Did you see your mom?” He pointed his knife at a weird wrought-iron-looking frame on the wall with six oval photos in it, all of Mom when she was young: Mom as a baby, Mom as a little girl playing with Dayi Jamsheed and Dayi Soheil, Mom lined up with the family behind the haft-seen for Nowruz. There was this one stunning portrait of teenaged Mom looking over her shoulder toward the camera, tugging her headscarf toward her face.

  Shirin Kellner (née Bahrami) could have been a supermodel.

  “I never thought she would move to America,” Babou said. “But she did well.”

  I could tell there was more that Babou wanted to say but didn’t.

  “She did well,” Babou repeated. “She married your dad.”

  It was the first nice thing—well, almost-nice thing—Babou had said about Dad.

  “And she had you and Laleh.”

  Laleh looked up at the sound of her name, and Babou gave her a handful of basil leaves from the colander, wrapped in a damp paper towel. He said something to her in Farsi, and Laleh hopped up and ran off.

  Babou shifted the sugar cube around in his mouth, clacking it against his teeth. “Your dad is a good man,” he said. “But he is not Zoroastrian. You and Laleh are not either.”

  “Oh.”

  I was used to being a disappointment to Dad, and being a disappointment to Babou didn’t seem that different. But I hated that he was disappointed in Laleh too, for something she couldn’t change.

  I swallowed.

  Babou looked up at me. There was something sad and lonely in his eyes, in the way his mustache drooped over his frown.

  I wanted to tell him I was still his grandson.

  I wanted to tell him I was glad I was getting to know him.

  I wanted to tell him I was sorry about his brain tumor.

  I didn’t tell him any of that, though. I sipped my tea, and Ardeshir Bahrami sipped his. The silence between us hung heavy with all the things we couldn’t say. All the things we knew without them being said out loud.

  * * *

  Mamou was at the kitchen table, drinking her own cup of tea, when I brought the basket of cleaned sabzi into the kitchen.

  “Darioush-jan. Did you make this tea?”

  “Um. Yeah?”

  “It’s cinnamon?”

  “I added a pinch.”

  “It’s good, maman!”

  “Thanks.” I poured myself a fresh cup. “I was worried Babou wouldn’t like it.”

  “Babou doesn’t notice, you know? His taste buds are not that good.”

  “Oh.”

  “Did you have a nice time, maman?”

  “Yeah. Um. Babou showed me Darius the First.”

  “Where your name came from.”

  I nodded.

  “I wish you had seen it sooner. I wish you lived here.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, of course. I miss you. And I wish you could know your history better. You know, for Yazdis, family history is very important.”

  “Um.”

  “But I am happy for you, living in America.”

  I sipped my tea. “Is Babou okay?”

  Mamou smiled at me, but her eyes had turned sad. Fariba Bahrami had the kindest eyes in the entire galaxy. They were huge and brown, with little soft pillows under them. Mom called them Bette Davis eyes.

  I had to google who Bette Davis was. It turns out someone wrote a whole song about her eyes.

  Mamou said, “Babou is okay.”

  I knew he wasn’t okay. Not really. She didn’t have to say it out loud.

  “I love you, Mamou.” I set down my tea and hugged her.

  “I love you too, maman.” She kissed me on the cheek, and then she smiled again. “Do you like broccoli?”

  “Uh. Sure.”

  I had no strong feelings on broccoli. And I wasn’t prepared for the conversation’s sudden and inexplicable course correction. Fariba Bahrami was a Level Ten Topic Changer when she needed to be.

  “I’ll make you some tomorrow. You want anything before bed?”

  “No. I’m okay.”

  I washed our dishes while Mamou put away the sabzi Babou and Laleh had picked through. “You are like your dad,” she said. “He always helps in the kitchen too.”

  “He does?”

  “I remember, when we came for the wedding. Your dad always did the dishes. He wouldn’t let me help at all. Your dad is so sweet.”

  There it was again.

  Stephen Kellner: sweet.

  “You are sweet too, Darioush-jan.”

  “Um.”

  Mamou pulled me down to kiss me again. “I’m so glad you came.”

  “Me too.”

  PERSIAN CASUAL

  Dad woke me up the next morning, shaking my shoulder.

  “You naked?”

  “What? No.”

  “Good. Happy Nowruz, Darius.” Dad rubbed my hair.

  He didn’t even comment on its length.

  “Happy Nowruz, Dad.”

  Like I said, there were special rules for Star Trek—or at least there used to be, before Dad changed them on me—rules where we got to be a real father and son.

  At Nowruz, the same rules applied. But this time, our father-son relationship had an audience.

  The Dancing Fan had been creeping up on Dad, a relentless Borg drone determined to assimilate us both, but as soon as he glanced at it, it st
opped moving.

  Resistance was futile.

  “Better get dressed. Your uncle Soheil is coming soon.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Almost ten. Come on. Before the kitchen gets taken over.”

  Dad poured me a cup of tea and sat next to me as I ate my sangak and feta cheese.

  Noon-e sangak is a flatbread baked on a stone. It’s kind of chewy, unless you toast it—which I did, using the gleaming, deluxe toaster oven Mamou kept on the counter. It was all brushed steel with digital readouts and touch-sensitive controls.

  It was the U.S.S. Enterprise of toaster ovens.

  Back home, we had bacon and eggs for breakfast on holidays (or on days when Mom was craving bacon, which usually happened if she was stressed at work), but you couldn’t get bacon in Yazd. It wasn’t halal, which meant it was forbidden in the Islamic Republic of Iran. So I ate flatbread and cheese for breakfast, just like every other teenage boy in Iran. Just like Darius the First probably did when he was growing up.

  I felt very Persian indeed.

  * * *

  “Happy Nowruz, Darioush,” Mom said, kissing me on the head while I washed my dishes from breakfast. She was back to using my Iranian name.

  “Happy Nowruz, Mom.”

  She had her hair in curlers, and she was wearing a long, puffy white robe. My stomach experienced a gravitic inversion.

  “Uh. Are you dressing up for the party?” But I already knew the answer.

  “Just a little bit.”

  “Should I dress up too?”

  “Whatever is fine. It’s just family. Wear something casual.”

  I knew she was lying.

  “Okay.”

  “Where’s your sister?”

  “Watching Iranian soap operas with her grandfather,” Dad said without looking up from his sketchpad. He had been refining his sketches of Persepolis ever since we got back. “He said it would improve her Farsi.”

  I kind of wanted to go watch Iranian soap operas with my grandfather and improve my Farsi too.

  “If we’re not careful, my father may try to kidnap her,” Mom said.