Darius the Great Is Not Okay(59)

“Alláh-u-Abhá, Laleh-khanum. What a beautiful name. Nice to meet you.”

Laleh blushed again. “Hi,” she said to the gray-tiled floor.

I took Laleh’s hand and gave it a wiggle. “Do you want faludeh, Laleh?”

She shook her head and stared downward, studying the toes of her white sneakers.

Even the lure of dessert wasn’t enough to overcome Laleh’s sudden and inexplicable shyness.

Mr. Rezaei said, “We have ice cream too, Laleh-khanum, if you like.”

Persian ice cream is mixed with saffron and pistachios.

I didn’t like it as much as faludeh, but it was still terrific.

“Bastani mekhai, Laleh-jan?” Sohrab asked.

“Baleh,” she said.

“Darioush?”

“Faludeh. Please.”

I sent Laleh to wash her hands, while Sohrab and his amou talked in Farsi. Sohrab kept smiling. Not his usual squinty smile, but a softer one.

I liked watching Sohrab talk to his uncle. He was different than he was with his mom. More relaxed.

Maybe he felt like a kid again when he was with his amou, in a way he couldn’t with his mom, because he had to be the man of the house.

I wished Sohrab could be a kid again all the time.



* * *





I don’t know if Ashkan Rezaei always gave out such large servings of faludeh, but I was grateful Stephen Kellner wasn’t around to witness my dietary indiscretion.

Sohrab was fairly restrained—he only put a little splash of lime juice on his faludeh—but I doused mine in enough sour cherry syrup to turn it into Klingon Blood Wine.

I grabbed napkins for us, and Ashkan Rezaei handed Laleh a perfect sphere of sunny yellow bastani.

“Noosh-e joon,” he said.

Laleh finally looked up. “Merci,” she whispered.

She bypassed her spoon and started licking her bastani straight out of its little paper bowl.

I reached out to shake Mr. Rezaei’s hand. “Khaylee mamnoon, Agha Rezaei.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, swallowing my hand with both of his. I noticed the backs of his hands were very hairy, like his chest. “Come back soon, Agha Darioush.”



* * *





Laleh’s tongue was turning yellow, and it had clearly gone numb from the cold, but that didn’t stop her from carrying on a full conversation with Sohrab in Farsi as we walked home.

I didn’t know why she had decided to make the switch, but it made me angry.

I didn’t have to bring her along for ice cream.

I didn’t have to include her. I didn’t have to spend time with her.

The singularity swirled inside me, a black hole threatening to pull me in.

First Laleh had taken Star Trek, and now she was threatening to take Sohrab too.

“How’s your ice cream?” I asked, to try and gain a foothold in the conversation.

“Good,” Laleh said. And then she turned back to Sohrab and started up in Farsi again.

Sohrab glanced at me and turned back to Laleh. “Laleh,” he said. “It’s not polite to do that. Darioush can’t understand you.”

I blinked.

No one had ever made people speak in English around me before.

Not even Mom.

“It’s okay,” I said.

“No,” Sohrab said. “It’s not polite.”

“Sorry, Darius,” Laleh said.

“It’s fine.”

I looked at Sohrab. He squinted at me with his spoon in his mouth.

“Thanks.”



* * *





“Darioush,” Sohrab said. “Can you stay out?”

“Oh. I think so.”

I deposited Laleh in the kitchen with Mamou, who tried to feed Sohrab more Nowruz leftovers—it seemed they were self-replicating, and we might never run out—before we left again.

I could tell, from the turns we took, that Sohrab was leading us back to the park near the Jameh Mosque.

It was becoming our spot.

“Darioush,” he said, once we had settled onto the roof of the bathroom. He crumpled up a newspaper that had somehow found its way onto the rooftop. “What’s wrong?”

“What do you mean?”

Sohrab chewed on his bottom lip for a second and squished the newspaper until it was a tiny sphere.

“You seem very sad.”

“Oh.”

“Are you mad about Laleh?”

“No,” I said.

And then I said, “Not really.”

Sohrab nodded and waited for me.

I liked that about Sohrab. That he would wait for me to figure out what I wanted to say.

“Me and my dad used to watch Star Trek every night. You know Star Trek?”

Sohrab nodded.

“It used to be our thing. But now he wants to watch it with Laleh instead.”

“He doesn’t want to watch with you too?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t know.” I sucked on one of my tassels for a second and then spit it out when I realized I was doing it in front of Sohrab.

I didn’t want Sohrab to think I sucked on my tassels.

“It’s just . . . it’s not just the Star Trek thing. Like, with Farsi. She can speak it and I can’t. And everyone here likes her better. So where does that leave me?”