Darius the Great Is Not Okay Read online

  Sohrab squinted at me. “Relax, Darioush. He does this every week.”

  That only made me worry more.

  My breath hitched when Babou leaned over the edge of the roof to reach the farthest leaves of his fig trees.

  I stood on the opposite rung of the ladder and leaned in toward Sohrab.

  “Should he really be doing that?”

  “Probably not.”

  “So we just watch him until he’s done?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.”

  A HOLODECK VISION

  Babou spent a full ten minutes watering the canopy of his fig trees, strolling up and down the roof. He never did fall, though he came pretty close when he leaned over to yell at me to turn the water off. The ground smelled like wet clay where the hose had dripped all over, despite my efforts to tighten it. I wiggled my toes in the cool water.

  Sohrab held the ladder for Babou when he finally climbed down. He handed the hose to Sohrab and waved me over as Sohrab wrestled the hose back into the shed.

  “Hello, Darioush-jan.” He squeezed my shoulders with his strong hands and held me at arm’s length. His hands were wet, and his palms were so callused I could feel them through the cotton of my shirt. “Welcome to Yazd.”

  I kind of thought Babou would pull me into a hug—I was so convinced, in fact, that I started to lean into him. But he kept a grip on me and looked me up and down.

  “You are tall. Like your dad. Not like Mamou.”

  “Yeah. Um.” I stood up straighter, because I had been a little hunched in anticipation of the hug that seemed not to be forthcoming. Babou’s eyebrows quirked, but he didn’t smile.

  Not quite.

  “Thank you. Merci. For having us.”

  “I am glad you could come.” Babou let go and waved toward Sohrab. “That is Sohrab.” He pointed at Sohrab, who was fighting the hose. “He lives down the street.”

  “Yes.”

  “He is a good boy. Very nice. You should be friends with him.”

  I had never been ordered to befriend someone before.

  I glanced back at Sohrab, who crinkled up his eyes and shook his head.

  My ears burned.

  “Sohrab. It’s fine. Leave it.”

  “Baleh, Agha Bahrami.”

  Babou asked Sohrab something in Farsi, but all I caught was Mamou and robe, which is pomegranate molasses.

  Like I said, I could usually recognize food words.

  “Of course. Darioush, you want to come?”

  “Um. Where?”

  “His amou’s store,” Babou said. “Go with him, baba.”

  “Okay.”

  “Come on, Darioush,” Sohrab said. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  I laced up my Vans while Babou handed Sohrab a few folded bills, and we headed out.

  Yazd was blinding in the daylight. I had to blink for a moment and sneeze. Without the shade of Babou’s fig trees, the neighborhood was a luminous white, so bright, I was certain I could feel my optic nerves cooking.

  Now that it was daytime, and I wasn’t quite so sleep deprived, I could appreciate how each house on Mamou’s block had its own character. Some were newer and some were older; some had large gardens like Babou’s, and some had an extra lane to park a car behind the house. There were khaki houses and beige houses and off-white houses and even some that had been worn to a light tan.

  Nearly every car parked on the street (or occasionally up on the curb) was light-colored and angular, makes and models I had never seen before.

  I wondered where Iranian cars came from.

  I wondered what Stephen Kellner thought of Iranian cars, and how they compared to his Audi.

  I wondered if he was still asleep. If he’d wake up and we’d be able to get along, the way he wanted.

  Sohrab cleared his throat. “Darioush.” He kicked a white stone off the sidewalk. “What do you think of Yazd?”

  “Oh.” I swallowed. “Um. I haven’t seen much yet. But it’s neat. You live close by?”

  Sohrab waved behind him. “The other way.”

  “Oh.”

  Sohrab led me out of Mamou’s neighborhood, past more khaki walls and old wooden doors and little shaded gardens, and onto a larger street with a tree-lined median that we would have called a boulevard back home.

  I didn’t know the Farsi word for boulevard.

  Stores with brightly colored awnings lined the side opposite us, and the houses on our side got smaller as we walked.

  It was weird, seeing real-life Iranians walking down the sidewalks, popping in and out of the stores, carrying plastic bags of groceries or whatever. Most of the women had on headscarves and long-sleeved jackets, but some wore full chadors: big black robes that covered them from head to toe, except the perfect hole where their faces peered out.

  I wondered how they didn’t overheat, covered in black.

  My own dark, Persian hair was baking in the sun. If I cracked an egg over it, I could have shaken scrambled eggs out of my curls.

  That would have been gross.

  The Yazd in Mom’s old photos gave me a holodeck vision of it: crisp and static and perfect. The real Yazd was messy and bustling and noisy. Not loud, but full of the sounds of real people.

  “This is your first time to Iran?”

  “Huh? Yeah. I think my mom was kind of scared to come. You know, ’cause my dad is American. And we hear lots of stories.”

  “I think it’s not so bad, you know.”

  I thought of Customs Officer II, who I had imagined stringing me up to the ceiling and interrogating me before he decided to let me go.

  “Um. Yeah. It wasn’t so bad coming in.”

  I reached for something else to say, but I came up blank.

  Sohrab didn’t seem to mind, though. It was a comfortable silence between us. Not awkward at all.

  I liked that I could be silent with Sohrab.

  That’s how I knew we really were going to be friends.

  * * *

  We took another left, past a furniture store and down the street, until Sohrab pointed to the green awning above his uncle’s grocery store. After our blinding journey through the sunlit streets of Yazd, it seemed almost dark inside, despite the warm golden walls.

  The first thing I noticed was that Sohrab’s amou’s store looked almost exactly like the Persian grocery store back home: tightly spaced aisles filled with stacks of dried goods and canned goods and bottled goods in the middle, a long refrigerator filled with dairy and meat on one wall, and produce on the others.

  I don’t know why I expected any different. Or what different would have looked like.

  The second thing I noticed was Sohrab’s uncle, who stood behind the counter. He was the largest Iranian I had ever seen: taller than Stephen Kellner but heavier too. He seemed to take up half the store, though part of that could have been his wild smile, red and huge as a carved watermelon. His mouth curved up the same way as Sohrab’s, with one side a little higher than the other.

  I could tell he was a True Persian by the density of his luxurious chest hair, which stuck out of the collar of his shirt.

  “Alláh-u-Abhá, Sohrab-jan!” he said. His voice was low, like the drone of a thousand bees. “Chetori toh?”

  “Alláh-u-Abhá, amou.”

  Alláh-u-Abhá is the traditional Bahá’í greeting. It means something like “God is the most glorious.”

  I hadn’t realized Sohrab was Bahá’í.

  “This is Darioush. Agha Bahrami’s grandson. From America.”

  Sohrab’s uncle turned his smile toward me. I didn’t think it was possible, but it got bigger somehow.

  “Darioush, this is my amou Ashkan.”

  “Nice you meet you, Agha . . . um . . .”

  “Rezaei,” Sohrab said.<
br />
  “Nice to meet you, Agha Rezaei,” I said.

  “Nice to meet you, Agha Darioush. Welcome to Yazd.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Babou sent us to get some robe for Mamou.”

  “Sure.” Agha Rezaei stepped out from behind the counter and squeezed himself into one of the aisles. He asked Sohrab something in Farsi. Sohrab turned to me.

  “Mamou likes more sour or more sweet?”

  “Um.”

  My ears burned.

  I didn’t know there was more than one kind.

  I didn’t know what my grandmother liked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “This one is better,” Agha Rezaei said, and pulled down two garnet bottles of robe. He led us back to the counter, talking to Sohrab in Farsi. Unlike Mom, Agha Rezaei didn’t pepper his sentences with English words—it was pure Farsi, and a lot harder for me to track. He kept saying “baba,” but that was all I could follow. Something about Sohrab’s dad.

  “Agha Darioush. You want faludeh?”

  “Amou makes the best in Yazd,” Sohrab said, pointing to the freezer behind the counter.

  Faludeh is rosewater sorbet with thin starchy noodles. It sounds weird, but it is actually delicious, especially when you drizzle it with sour cherry syrup and lime juice.

  “Are you going to get some?”

  “I can’t,” Sohrab said.

  “How come?”

  “We are fasting. We are Bahá’í. You know what Bahá’í is?”

  “Yeah. Mom has some Bahá’í friends back home. How long are you fasting?”

  “Until Nowruz. We do it every year, for the last month.”

  “Oh.”

  I couldn’t eat in front of someone who couldn’t eat with me.

  “I’m okay for now. Can we come back after Nowruz? Then we can both have some.”

  Sohrab squinted at me. “Sure.”

  We paid for the robe—well, Sohrab paid for it—and said good-bye.

  Agha Rezaei promised to have fresh faludeh for us when we came back.

  “Maybe I can bring my sister,” I said as we headed back to Mamou’s, the bottles clinking in their plastic bag at my side.

  “Laleh. Right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How old is she?”

  “She’s eight. How about you? Any sisters? Brothers?”

  “I don’t have any,” Sohrab said.

  “Oh. Do you want one?”

  “It would be nice to have a brother. Someone to play football with.” Sohrab squinted at me. “Do you play football? Soccer?” He pronounced it sock-air, which seemed like a cool way to say it.

  “Uh.”

  I hadn’t played on a proper soccer team since I was twelve, but we played it in physical education sometimes, when we weren’t doing Net Sports or Whiffle ball or timed mile runs.

  “We play most days. You should come. Tomorrow afternoon?”

  “Okay.”

  I wasn’t sure why I had agreed. I didn’t like soccer/non-American football that much.

  Somehow Sohrab made it sound like the best thing ever.

  He laughed at me again, but it wasn’t a mean laugh. “You don’t taarof, do you?”

  “Oh. Sorry.” I had completely forgotten the Primary Social Cue. “Do you not want me to come?”

  Sohrab threw his arm across my shoulder.

  “No. You should come and play with us, Darioush.”

  “Okay.”

  * * *

  Sohrab led me back to Mamou’s house.

  “See you tomorrow? For football?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Tomorrow.”

  “I will come get you. Be ready in the afternoon.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.” Sohrab jogged down the block and waved at me before he turned the corner.

  I took the robe to the kitchen, where Babou was pouring himself a cup of tea.

  “Uh. Is everyone else still asleep?”

  “Yes. You want tea, Darioush-jan?”

  “Oh. Yes. Please.”

  I had forgotten to taarof yet again, but Babou didn’t seem to mind. He poured me a cup, then grabbed a cube of sugar and clenched it in his teeth. I had seen lots of Persians drink their tea this way—sipping it through a cube of sugar—but I was categorically opposed to sweetening tea in any way.

  I think it was because of Tea Haven.

  We sat and drank our tea in total silence, except for the intermittent sound of slurping. Babou seemed content not to talk, and I had no idea what to say to him anyway.

  I thought it would be different, seeing my grandfather in real life.

  I thought I would know what to say.

  But I had spent so long on the other side of a computer monitor from him, watching him like an episode of Star Trek.

  I didn’t know how to actually talk to him.

  Babou blinked and smoothed his bushy mustache with his finger. Maybe he was used to watching me like an episode of Star Trek too.

  It was deeply uncomfortable.

  * * *

  Someone was playing with my hair.

  “Darius,” Mom said. “Wake up. Time for dinner.”

  I sat up and banged my knee on the table, rattling the bowl of tokhmeh and knocking over my empty teacup.

  “Sorry. I’m awake.”

  “Come on. Let’s eat something and then you can go back to sleep.”

  “Okay.”

  Mamou had made ash-e reshteh, which is a sort of Persian noodle soup.

  It was not my favorite, but I couldn’t tell her that.

  We all scooped soup up with our crusty Persian bread, while Babou interviewed Laleh in Farsi. She kept up fairly well, though she switched to English a few times, like for “meatball sub” and “airport.”

  She seemed to be telling Babou the entire saga of our journey through the space-time continuum.

  I didn’t know where she got the energy.

  I kept nodding off, shaking my head, until Mom finally said, “Darius, why don’t you go to bed? It’s okay.”

  “Um.”

  “It’s the time difference, maman,” Mamou said. “It’s okay. You can go to bed.”

  This is why I hate time travel.

  Mamou led me back to my room.

  “Thank you for getting the robe for me, Darioush.”

  “Oh. It was mostly Sohrab. I just went along.”

  “Babou says you are going to play football tomorrow.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m happy for you. I’m glad you made a friend already.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I had made a friend.

  And I was actually looking forward to soccer.

  I really was.

  “Me too.”

  SOCCER/NON-AMERICAN FOOTBALL

  By the time I woke up the next morning, Mamou had already taken Mom, Dad, and Laleh into town.

  The kitchen table was still laden with breakfast: a basket of toasted bread, bowls of nuts, jars of jam, a platter of cheese, and a few slices of some sort of melon. Babou was in his room with the door closed, and the house was quiet and still.

  I wondered if mornings were always like this in my grandparents’ house.

  I wondered if I would ever get used to the temporal displacement.

  I wondered when Sohrab was going to show up.

  * * *

  I put the jam back in the refrigerator and grabbed a glass. Mamou didn’t keep her glassware in the cupboard: She kept it upside down in a drawer to the left of the sink, which I thought was an interesting way to store glasses.

  I grabbed the pitcher of filtered water and opened up my meds.

  “Darioush. What are you doing?”

  Babou had emerged from his room, dressed
in another pair of creased dress pants and a blue button-up.

  I dribbled some water down the front of my shirt as I swallowed. “Taking my medicine.”

  “Medicine?” He set his cup in the sink and picked up one of my pill bottles. “What is this for? Are you sick?”

  “Depression,” I said. I refilled my glass and took another gulp so I wouldn’t have to look at Babou. I could sense the disappointment radiating off him.

  I never expected Ardeshir Bahrami to have so much in common with his son-in-law.

  “What are you depressed for?” He shook the pill bottle. “You have to think positive, baba. Medicine is for old people. Like me.”

  “It’s just the way I am,” I squeaked.

  I would never be good enough for Ardeshir Bahrami.

  “You just have to try harder, Darioush-jan. Those will not fix anything.” He glanced at the table. “Did you have enough to eat?”

  “Um. I . . . yeah.”

  “Good.” Babou poured himself a cup of tea and sat down at the table with a bowl of tokhmeh. “When is Sohrab coming?”

  “Soon. I think.”

  “Do you play football in America?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Sohrab is very good. He plays most days.” Babou spat out a shell onto his plate. “It’s good you met him. I knew you would be friends.”

  “Um.”

  I didn’t know how Babou could know that.

  He was right, of course.

  But how could he be so certain?

  I nearly jumped out of my chair when someone finally knocked on the front door.

  “Hey,” I said.

  Sohrab squinted at me. “Hi, Darioush. Ready to go?”

  I knelt and pulled my Vans on. “Ready.”

  “Do you have a kit?” Sohrab held up his red nylon bag, the kind with draw-strings that doubled as straps to make it into a sort of backpack.

  I shook my head. I had failed to anticipate the need for soccer/non-American football gear when I packed.

  (Not that I owned any.)

  “It’s okay. I brought extra.”

  “You sure you don’t mind? Sharing, I mean.”