Darius the Great Is Not Okay(26)

“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.”

Sohrab squinted at me. “Of course not. Come on. Let’s go.” He opened the door again and then turned to holler back at the kitchen. “Khodahafes, Agha Bahrami.”

“Khodahafes, Babou,” I said.



* * *





Sohrab led me to a park down the street from Mamou’s house. A chain-link fence ran all the way around, and it was bordered on three sides by squat stone houses and on the fourth by another of Yazd’s boulevards.

The field was full-sized, or pretty close at least, and the sort of vibrant green that only came from constant watering. Nothing else I had seen in Yazd so far was that green—not even Babou’s garden, though I would never tell him that.

Sohrab led me to the small, sad-looking public bathroom at the edge of the field. It was clean inside, even if it did have the feta-cheese-and-baby-powder smell of a boys’ locker room.

There were no urinals, only a few stalls with sitting toilets—none of the squatting ones, like my bathroom at Mamou’s—and I wondered if that was a Social Cue I had missed. What if I was not supposed to pee standing up in Iran?

It wasn’t the sort of thing I could ask Sohrab.

How do you ask a guy if it’s okay to pee standing up?

“Lots of people play football here.” Sohrab started pulling clothes out of his backpack. He tossed me a green T-shirt and a pair of shorts so white, they were blinding in the alien glow of the bathroom’s fluorescent lights.

“Darioush, what size shoe do you wear?”

“Twelve,” I said.

Sohrab bit the inside of his cheek. “Here,” he said, and stepped next to me. “Take off your shoes.”

I toed off my Vans, and Sohrab stepped out of his sandals. He wrapped his arm around my side and lined up his foot with mine.