Darius the Great Is Not Okay(16)

“Here,” Mom said, standing. “Let’s go to the bathroom, Laleh. Come on.”

A Level Six Awkward Silence descended upon us, despite the bustle of the terminal all around.

Awkward Silences were powerful like that.

“Hey.” Dad cleared his throat. “About earlier.”

I glanced up at Dad, but he was staring at his hands.

Stephen Kellner had angular, powerful hands. Exactly what you’d expect from an übermensch.

“Let’s try to get along. Okay? I want you to enjoy this trip.”

“Okay.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

I mean, it wasn’t fine.

I wasn’t even sure which part he thought he was apologizing for.

I still had a knot in my solar plexus.

Like I said, Dad and I only got along if we didn’t see each other that much, and the trip to Iran had already compromised our intermix ratio.

But then Dad looked at me and said, “Love you, Darius.”

And I said, “Love you, Dad.”

And that meant we weren’t going to talk about it anymore.



* * *





I couldn’t sleep at all on the flight to Tehran. We were scheduled to arrive at Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport at 2:35 a.m. local time, which constituted a thirty-minute journey into the future.

I didn’t understand. What was the point and purpose of a half-hour temporal displacement?

As the flight attendants wandered the aisles collecting all the tiny plastic bottles of alcohol, the women on the flight started pulling headscarves out of their carry-ons and covering their hair.

Laleh was young enough that she didn’t technically have to wear one, but Mom thought it would be a good idea anyway. She handed Dad a light pink scarf over the back of the seat, and Dad wrapped it around Laleh’s head. Mom’s own headscarf was dark blue, with peacock feather designs embroidered on it.

My heart did its own sort of feathery flutter when the captain said to prepare for arrival, and the plane began to descend.

The smog blanketing Tehran was transformed into dense orange clouds by the lights of the city below, and then we were flying through it and I couldn’t see anything else. We were soaring through a golden, glowing void.

“I don’t want to fly anymore,” Laleh announced. She scratched at her headscarf but refused to let Dad adjust it for her. “My head itches.”

“Soon, Laleh,” Mom said over the seat. She whispered something to Laleh—something in Farsi, I couldn’t catch what—and then leaned back and took my hand.

She wrapped our fingers together and smiled at me.

We were nearly there.

I couldn’t quite believe it.





THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS



There was only one stall open as we wound our way through Customs. The officer on duty looked like he was experiencing a bit of chronometric distortion himself. He had Level Eight Bags under his eyes, and he yawned every time someone new handed him a passport. Part of me expected the Customs officer to have a turban and a full beard, like all the other Middle Easterners on TV. Which was sad, since I knew it was just a stereotype. I mean, I knew plenty of Middle Easterners myself that didn’t fit that image.

The Customs officer was pale, even paler than Mom, with green eyes, auburn hair, and a five o’clock shadow. Or five thirty, given the temporal displacement.

Apparently, green eyes are common in Northern Iran.

I kind of wished I had green, Northern Iranian eyes myself.

The officer glanced at Dad, then at me, and then his eyes skimmed Mom and Laleh before locking back onto Dad. “Passports?” His voice was grainy, like mustard, and his accent wasn’t much stronger than Mom’s. He flipped through all our passports, holding the picture page up to us to check that we were, in fact, who the United States Department of State claimed we were. “Why did you come to Iran?”

“Tourism,” Dad said, because that is what he was supposed to say. But Stephen Kellner was genetically incapable of deception. “And we’re visiting my wife’s family in Yazd. Her father is ill.”

“Do you understand Farsi?”

“No. My wife does.”

The Customs officer turned to Mom and asked her a few questions in Farsi, too fast for me to make out any words other than you (he used the formal shomaa). He nodded and handed back our passports.

“Welcome to Iran.”

“Merci,” Dad said.

Farsi and French use the exact same word for “thank you.” Mom had never been able to adequately explain why.

I tucked my passport back into my borrowed messenger bag and snapped the clasp shut before following Dad. Behind us, Laleh clung to Mom’s hand, dragging her feet so her shoes squeaked on the tile floor.

“I’m tired,” she reminded us.

“I know, sweetie,” Mom said. “You can rest on the way to Yazd.”

“My feet hurt.”

“I can carry her,” I said, but then I had to stop, because another Customs officer stepped right in front of me with his hand up.

“Come with me, please,” he said.

“Uh.”

My first instinct was to run.

Unlike his predecessor, Customs Officer II did not look sleepy at all. He looked keen and alert. His eyebrows contracted into a sharp arrow above his long nose.