Darius the Great Is Not Okay(4)

“You know, if you just stood up for yourself, they’d leave you alone.”

I sucked on the tassels of my hoodie.

Stephen Kellner didn’t understand anything about the sociopolitical dynamics of Chapel Hill High School.

As we turned onto the freeway, he said, “You need a haircut.”

I scratched the back of my head. “It’s not that long.” My hair barely touched my shoulders, though part of that was how it curled away at the ends.

That didn’t matter, though. Stephen Kellner had very short, very straight, very blond hair, and he had very blue eyes too.

My father was pretty much the übermensch.



* * *





I did not inherit any of Dad’s good looks.

Well, people said I had his “strong jawline,” whatever that meant. But really, I mostly looked like Mom, with black, loosely curled hair and brown eyes.

Standard Persian.

Some people said Dad had Aryan looks, which always made him uncomfortable. The word Aryan used to mean noble—it’s an old Sanskrit word, and Mom says it’s actually the root word for Iran—but it means something different now.

Sometimes I thought about how I was half Aryan and half Aryan, but I guess that made me kind of uncomfortable too.

Sometimes I thought about how strange it was that a word could change its meaning so drastically.

Sometimes I thought about how I didn’t really feel like Stephen Kellner’s son at all.





THE DISTINGUISHED PICARD CRESCENT



Despite what boring Hobbits like Fatty Bolger might have thought, I did not go home and have falafel for dinner.

First of all, falafel is not really a Persian food. Its mysterious origins are lost to a prior age of this world. Whether it came from Egypt or Israel or somewhere else entirely, one thing is certain: Falafel is not Persian.

Second, I did not like falafel because I was categorically opposed to beans. Except jelly beans.

I changed out of my Tea Haven shirt and joined my family at the dinner table. Mom had made spaghetti and meat sauce—perhaps the least Persian food ever, though she did add a bit of turmeric to the sauce, which gave a slight orange cast to the oil in it.

Mom only ever cooked Persian food on the weekends, because pretty much every Persian menu was a complicated affair involving several hours of stewing, and she didn’t have the time to devote to a stew when she was overwhelmed with a Level Six Coding Emergency.

Mom was a UX designer at a firm in downtown Portland, which sounded incredibly cool. Except I didn’t really understand what it was that Mom actually did.

Dad was a partner in an architecture firm that mostly designed museums and concert halls and other “centerpieces for urban living.”

Most nights, we ate dinner at a round, marble-topped table in the corner of the kitchen, all four of us arranged in a little circle: Mom across from Dad, and me across from my little sister, Laleh, who was in second grade.

While I twirled spaghetti around my fork, Laleh launched into a detailed description of her day, including a complete play-by-play of the game of Heads Down, Thumbs Up they played after lunch, in which Laleh was “it” three different times.

She was only in second grade, with an even more Persian name than mine, and yet she was way more popular than I was.

I didn’t get it.

“Park never guessed it was me,” Laleh said. “He never guesses right.”

“It’s because you have such a good poker face,” I said.

“Probably.”

I loved my little sister. Really.

It was impossible not to.

It wasn’t the kind of thing I could ever say to anyone. Not out loud, at least. I mean, guys are not supposed to love their little sisters. We can look out for them. We can intimidate whatever dates they bring home, although I hoped that was still a few years away for Laleh. But we can’t say we love them. We can’t admit to having tea parties or playing dolls with them, because that’s unmanly.

But I did play dolls with Laleh. And I had tea parties with her (though I insisted we serve real tea, not imaginary tea, and certainly not anything from Tea Haven). And I was not ashamed of it.

I just didn’t tell anyone about it.

That’s normal.

Right?



* * *





At last, Laleh’s story ran out of steam, and she began scooping spaghetti into her mouth with her spoon. My sister always cut her spaghetti up instead of twirling it, which I felt defeated the point and purpose of spaghetti.

I used the lull in conversation to reach across the table for more pasta, but Dad pressed the salad bowl into my hands instead.

There was no point arguing with Stephen Kellner about dietary indiscretions.

“Thanks,” I mumbled.

Salad was inferior to spaghetti in every possible way.



* * *





After dinner, Dad washed the dishes and I dried them while I waited for my electric kettle to reach 180o Fahrenheit, which is what I liked for steeping my genmaicha.

Genmaicha is a Japanese green tea with toasted rice in it. Sometimes the toasted rice pops like popcorn, leaving little white fluffy clouds in the tea. It’s grassy and nutty and delicious, kind of like pistachios. And it’s the same greenish yellow color as pistachios too.