Darius the Great Is Not Okay(22)

Maybe it was already tomorrow.

I tried to say hello, but my throat had closed off, and I made a sort of squeaking sound instead.

It felt weird to speak, knowing he could hear me. Knowing I could reach out and touch him—if he ever came down from the roof.

I guess I had pictured our first meeting a bit differently.

Babou hoisted himself onto the roof, teetering for a moment at the top, and I was convinced I was about to witness my grandfather plummet to his death off his own rooftop.

“Sohrab!” he shouted. He was staring out into the garden, past the rows of herbs, toward a shed hidden behind a trellised kiwi tree.

Persian children—even Fractional ones—learn their fruit-bearing trees at an early age.

There was a boy stringing a hose from the shed, un-looping and wrestling the knots and kinks out of it as he went.

I had never seen the boy before. He looked about my age, which meant he couldn’t be one of my cousins, because they were all older than me.

I glanced at Babou, who shouted “Sohrab!” again, and then at the boy, who shouted back in Farsi.

“Um.”

Babou swayed for a moment and then looked down at me.

His eyebrows lifted.

“Eh! Hello, Darioush. I will be down soon. Go help Sohrab.”

Sohrab shouted back and then waved me over. The sun pressed against the back of my neck as I ran out to meet him, the rough stone of the patio giving way to scrubby grass and then back to stone again. It was warm against the soles of my bare feet.

Sohrab was shorter than me, compact and lean. His black hair was cropped close, and he had the most elegant Persian nose of anyone I had ever met. He had brown eyes, just like me, but there was some light hidden behind them.

It made me think maybe brown eyes weren’t so boring after all.

“Um,” I said. “Hey.”

And then I realized that was quite possibly the most inane greeting in the history of American-Iranian relations.

So I said, “I mean, salaam.”

Salaam means “peace.” It’s not a Farsi word—it’s an Arabic one—but it’s the standard greeting for most True Persians.

“Salaam,” Sohrab said.

“Um. Khaylee kami Farsi harf mizanam.”

I knew just enough Farsi to stutter that I barely knew how to speak Farsi.

Sohrab’s eyes crinkled up when he smiled. He almost looked like he was squinting.

“English is okay.”

“Oh good. Uh. I’m Darius. Babou’s . . . Agha Bahrami’s grandson.”

“From America.” Sohrab nodded and handed me one of the knots he was working on. I held the hose as Sohrab took the end and wove it back through the loops. He had short, proportional fingers. I noticed them because I always thought my own fingers were weirdly long and skeletal.

Sohrab shook the hose to loosen it. I grabbed another knot for him.

“Um.”

Sohrab glanced at me and then back at his work.

“Are we related?” I asked.

It was an awkward but legitimate question for one Persian to ask another. I was related—distantly—to several Iranian families in Portland. It was usually through marriage, but I had a third cousin, once removed, in Portland too.

When it comes to keeping track of our family trees, Persians are even more meticulous than Hobbits. Especially Persians living outside of Iran.

Sohrab squinted at me and shrugged. “I live close.”

It had never occurred to me that Mamou and Babou could have neighbors.

I mean, I knew there was a whole city around them, but the other residents of Yazd had always been abstract. Even the photographs I had seen were usually devoid of human inhabitants.

Mamou and Babou had always existed in their own cuboid universe: the two of them, and the walls of the computer room around them.

Sohrab pulled the last tangle out of the hose. And then, before I could stop him, he pointed the sprayer toward me and squeezed the handle. I held up my hands and shouted, but the water just dribbled out.

Sohrab laughed. I liked Sohrab’s laugh: It was loose and free, like he didn’t care who heard it.

When he squeezed my shoulder, his hand was warm, even though he’d been handling the clammy hose. “Sorry, Darioush. It’s not on yet.”

I tried to glower at Sohrab, but it was impossible, because he was squinting again and I ended up laughing instead.

I decided I liked Sohrab.



* * *





Here’s the thing:

Every Iranian knows someone named Sohrab. If they don’t, they know someone who knows someone named Sohrab. Back in Portland, one of Mom’s friends (who we were not related to) had a nephew named Sohrab.

Now I had a Sohrab of my own.

The name Sohrab comes from the story of Rostam and Sohrab in the Shahnahmeh, which is basically the Silmarillion of Persian fables and legends. It has other stories too, like Feridoun and his three sons, and Zal and the Simurgh (which is the Persian version of a phoenix), and King Jamsheed, but none of them are as famous as the story of Rostam and Sohrab.

Rostam was a legendary Persian fighter who accidentally killed his own son, Sohrab, in battle.

It was deeply tragic.

It was also deeply ingrained in the DNA of every Persian man and boy, which is probably why all Persian boys work so hard to please their fathers.