Darius the Great Is Not Okay(56)

My throat squeezed shut.

I loved how Sohrab could say things like that without feeling weird. How there were no walls inside him.

“I wish I could have known him back then,” I said. “I wish . . .”

I was cut off by the azan sounding. Up on the rooftop, it was loud and clear, richer than I had ever heard it before.

We listened to the voice in the speakers chant, and I imagined everyone in the Jameh Mosque kneeling to pray, and all the people in Yazd heeding the call, and even farther out, a neural network spread throughout the entire country and to the Iranian diaspora across the whole planet.

I felt very Persian just then, even though I didn’t understand the chanting. Even though I wasn’t Muslim.

I was one tiny pulsar in a swirling, luminous galaxy of Iranians, held together by the gravity of thousands of years of culture and heritage.

There was nothing like it back home.

Maybe the Super Bowl.

When it finished, I wiped off my eyes with my sleeve.

I would have felt nervous excreting stress hormones in front of someone else, but not Sohrab. Not when he told me he felt like he already knew me.

Maybe I already knew him too.

Maybe I did.

“It’s beautiful,” Sohrab said.

“Yeah.”

“We only pray in the morning and night. Not to the azan.”

“Oh.”

“Sometimes I wish we had it. It feels . . .”

“Like you’re connected?”

“Yes.” He picked up a loose sliver of tile and tossed it off the roof.

I scratched at the collar of my shirt, wishing it had tassels on it, because the silence between us had grown suddenly heavy. It was not unpleasant, but it was full, like the hush before a sudden downpour.

Sohrab swallowed. “Darioush. Do you believe in God?”

I looked away.

Like I said, I didn’t really believe in any sort of higher power, The Picard notwithstanding.

I found my own chunk of roof to throw off.

“I guess not,” I said.

I felt ashamed and inadequate.

Sohrab kicked his heels against the fence beneath us and studied the shadows we cast on the ground below.

“Does it bother you?”

“No,” Sohrab said.

I could tell without him saying that it did.

“Sorry,” I whispered.

Sohrab shook his head and tossed another tile to clatter on the ground below.

“Who do you turn to?” He closed his eyes and swallowed. “When you need succor?”

I knew he was thinking about his dad.

I put my hand on his shoulder. It was awkward—I didn’t know how Sohrab could just do stuff like that without thinking about it—but after a second it felt okay.

“I guess . . . that’s what friends are for.”

Sohrab looked up and almost squinted.

Almost.

He put his arm over my shoulder, and I reached across him so we were linked.

“I’m glad we are friends, Darioush,” he said. He reached up and mussed my hair. I liked how he did that. “I’m glad you are here.”

“Me too.”

“I wish you could stay. But we will always be friends. Even when you go back home.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

I squeezed Sohrab’s shoulder. He squeezed mine back.

“Okay.”





A TACTICAL WITHDRAWAL



We hadn’t watched any Star Trek on Nowruz, of course—that would have been impossible—but the day Sohrab showed me the rooftop, Dad brought out his iPad after dinner.

“I’m making tea . . . mind waiting for me?”

“You’ve seen it before,” Dad said. “You know your sister gets impatient.”

By the time I finished, Laleh sat pressed up against Dad with his arm around her, well into the first act of “Allegiance.”

They looked happy and content without me.

Like I said, I knew Laleh was a replacement for me. I had known that since she was born. But I had never minded it before. Not that much.

Star Trek was all Dad and I had. And now Laleh had replaced me at that too.

The quantum singularity in my chest churned, drawing more interstellar dust into its event horizon, sucking up all the light that drew too close.

I took a sip of my tea and then went back through the kitchen and out into the garden.

The jasmine was in blossom again. Everything was silent, except for the occasional rattle of a car cruising down the street.

I loved the quiet. Even if it sometimes made me think of sad things. Like whether anyone would miss me if I was dead.

I sipped my tea and breathed in the jasmine and wondered if anyone would be sad if I was killed in a car accident or something.

That’s normal.

Right?



* * *





“Darius?”

“Yeah?”

“Why didn’t you come watch?”

“Like you said. I’ve seen it before.”

Dad sighed at me.

I hated when he sighed at me.

“Don’t be like that.”

“Like what?”

“You’re being selfish.”

“Selfish?”