Darius the Great Is Not Okay(50)

“You think so?”

Babou nodded.

Dad stared into his tea. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.

And then he said, “I think Sohrab might be the first real friend he’s ever had.”

Deep inside my chest, a main sequence star collapsed under its own gravity.

I hated that Dad thought that about me.

I hated that he was right.

I hated that Sohrab could hear him.

“Uh,” I said, louder than I needed to.

Dad looked back and saw me. His ears turned bright red too.

I wanted him to say something. To take it back.

But Stephen Kellner never said things he didn’t mean.

It was Sohrab who rescued me.

“Khodahafes, Agha Bahrami. Eid-e shomaa mobarak.”

“Khodahafes, Sohrab-jan.”

“Uh. Good night,” I said.

I led Sohrab to the living room, which looked like it had been host to a Level Twelve Party by twenty or thirty Soulless Minions of Orthodoxy.

Like I said, alcohol was illegal in Iran (not that it stopped everyone, but it stopped the Bahrami family), so there were no empty bottles or red Solo cups to pick up, but there were dirty plates and teacups and piles of split tokhmeh shells and several white powdered-sugar handprints on the walls.

There could only be one culprit for those. They were at perfect Laleh height.

At the door, Sohrab kicked off the pair of Babou’s garden slippers he had worn outside. He still had on his black socks. I never wore socks with sandals, but Sohrab had managed to pull it off.

He was a True Persian.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Darioush. You remember what I told you? Your place was empty?”

“Yeah.”

“Your place was empty for me too,” he said. “I never had a friend either.”

I almost smiled.

Almost.

“See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah. If you like. I mean, I think so.”

Sohrab cocked his head to the side, like I had said something funny, but then he shook his head and squinted at me. “Okay. Khodahafes, Darioush.”

“Khodahafes.”





THE BORG OF HERBS



Clank. Clank.

The Dancing Fan was still dancing, its rubber feet beating out the same syncopated Persian rhythm I’d been listening to all night, but that wasn’t what woke me.

I slipped out of my bedroom, sticking to the rugs where I could. The floor tiles were cold as my feet slapped against them.

Clank. Swish.

It was coming from the kitchen.

“Mom?”

She stood at the sink in her robe, Mamou’s bright pink rubber gloves pulled up to her elbows. Her hair was still done up Persian Casual, all curls and falls, though several locks had managed to escape their careful arrangement.

The counters to the right of the sink were stacked high as the Gate of All Nations with pots and pans, plates and glasses, and teacups.

So many teacups.

“Hi, sweetie.”

“What’re you doing?”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Can I help?”

“It’s okay. Go back to bed.”

I could tell she was just taarofing.

“I can’t sleep either.”

“All right. You mind drying these?” She nodded to the serving platters in the dish rack. “You can stack them on the table.”

I pulled a tea towel from the drawer next to the stove, then grabbed the ceramic rice platter and dried it off. The enormous dish was white with concentric rings of tiny green leaves on it.

“Hey. Didn’t we send this with the Ardekanis last year?”

Mom pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose with her forearm. “Yeah. For their anniversary.”

“Oh, yeah.”

Mamou and Babou had been married for fifty-one years.

I thought about all the fights they must have had, and all the times they had forgiven each other.

I thought about the little secrets they knew about each other that no one else knew.

I thought about how they might not reach their fifty-second anniversary.

“Mom?”

“Yeah?” Her voice had gone all pinched, like the neck of a deflating balloon.

“I’m sorry. About Babou.”

She shook her head and scrubbed the soup pot hard enough to bore a hole through it. “No. I’m sorry. I wish I had brought you and Laleh sooner. It’s not fair you only get to see him like this. So tired. And just . . . well, you saw.”

She stopped scrubbing and blew a hair out of her face.

“Yeah.”

“His doctors say it’s going to get worse.”

I swallowed and looked for a dry spot on my towel.

“You know what I remember?”

“What?”

“There was this day . . . I was seven or eight, and me and Mahvash had gone to the park to play. We were friends growing up. Did I tell you that?”

She had not told me that.

It was weird, imagining Mom having childhood friends.

But I liked that Mom was friends with Mahvash, and now I was friends with her son.

“Anyway, we had gone barefoot, because it was a cool morning. But when lunchtime came around, we tried to leave the grass, and the pavement was too hot.”