Darius the Great Is Not Okay(29)

Sohrab squinted at me again. He shook me by the shoulder and rubbed my head, sending sweat flying off the ends of my hair. He didn’t seem to care.

“You know what, Darioush? You are better than him too.”





THE AYATOLLAH’S TURBAN



Back home, at Chapel Hill High School, we didn’t shower after physical education. I don’t know why, given how terrible I smelled after running laps or doing mountain climbers, or even playing Net Sports with overly aggressive players like Fatty Bolger and Chip Cusumano. But class ran until five minutes before the bell, which was just enough time to get changed, slather myself with extra deodorant, and run to geometry on the other side of the school.

(Go Chargers.)

So I was a little alarmed when Sohrab pulled soap and shampoo out of his nylon drawstring backpack.

“Uh,” I said. “It’s okay. I’ll shower when I get back to Mamou’s.”

“You’re dirty.” He pointed to the grass stains down my legs and across my arms.

“I don’t have a towel.”

Sohrab pulled a pair of towels out of his bag.

I couldn’t figure out how they had fit in there, especially with two kits and two pairs of cleats. Sohrab’s backpack had exceeded the normal laws of space-time.

Sohrab tossed the towels onto the wooden bench between us and pulled off his shirt, peeling the wet fabric away from his flat chest and stomach. He was still breathing hard, his abdomen expanding and contracting.

I turned away, to give him privacy and also because I was so embarrassed.

Sohrab was in really good shape.

Also, it was weird to get all the way naked. I had never taken my underwear off next to another guy.

I wasn’t even standing that close to Sohrab. But I felt the heat radiating off his skin, like a warp core about to breach.

My skin was still flush from our game, which was good. Sohrab couldn’t tell I was blushing all over as I pulled off my own sticky shirt, wrapped the towel around my waist, and pulled my borrowed shorts and not-borrowed boxers out from underneath.

Sohrab was right: I did need a shower.

New life-forms were evolving in the primordial swamp festering between my legs.

“Over here,” Sohrab said, which was unnecessary, since the spray of the showers echoed from around the corner.

I turned to follow him. He had his towel over his shoulder, like he didn’t have a care in the world.

My skin prickled, the sensation spreading up to my ears, down my neck and shoulders, all the way to my toes. I nearly tripped over my own feet.

I couldn’t breathe.

“Uh.”

There were no stalls. There were just open shower heads.

Red Alert.

Hossein and Ali-Reza were already under the sprays, talking in Farsi and laughing about something. They were both tanned and lean, their stomach muscles highlighted by the reflection on their wet skin.

I felt like a space-borne leviathan, just standing in the same room with them.

Sohrab hung his towel on the wall. I bit my lip, sucked in my stomach, and did the same. I got under the closest spray, turned away from the other guys, and tried to breathe.

I thought I was having an anxiety attack.

I had never been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, but Dr. Howell said that anxiety and depression often went hand in hand. Comorbidity, he called it.

It was an ominous-sounding word.

It made me anxious.

Sometimes my heart would pound so fast I thought I was going to die. And then I would start sobbing for no reason.

I couldn’t let the guys see me do that.

That wasn’t something True Persians did.



* * *





The guys had gone quiet. I could barely make out their voices over the spray.

I scrubbed my armpits, and scratched at the grass stains on my elbows until my skin was pink and angry. Hossein and Ali-Reza were arguing with Sohrab in whispered Farsi.

Sohrab cleared his throat behind me.

“Darioush?”

“Um. Yes?”

“What is wrong with your . . . penis?”

My throat clamped up. “Nothing,” I squeaked.

Sohrab said something to the other boys, in Farsi again, and they answered, more insistent.

Sohrab cleared his throat again. “It looks different?”

“Uh. I’m not circumcised?”

It was not a question. I just wasn’t sure if circumcised was a word Sohrab knew how to translate to Farsi.

“Oh!” He started talking to Ali-Reza and Hossein again, no doubt explaining my penis to them.

I didn’t think my skin could get any redder than it was, but I was pretty sure I had started glowing like a protostar about to undergo its first burst of fusion.

Ali-Reza laughed, and then he said, in English so I could understand, “It looks like the Ayatollah’s turban.”

Ayatollah Khamenei was Iran’s Supreme Cleric: the absolute religious and governmental authority. His photograph was all over, on signs and walls and newspapers, with his fluffy white beard and a dark turban wrapped around his head.

It was the most humiliating comparison of my life.

Hossein said something in Farsi, and Ali-Reza laughed again.

And then Sohrab said, “Ayatollah Darioush,” and all three of them laughed.