Darius the Great Is Not Okay(24)

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.

“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.