Darius the Great Is Not Okay(62)

It reminded me of the Barad-D?r, although it lacked the flaming Eye of Sauron atop it to complete the picture. And it was khaki colored, not black.

I sneezed.

“It’s huge!”

“Yes, huge.” Sohrab squinted at my astonishment. “Come on. It’s better inside.”

“We can go in?”

“Of course.”

It was the most colorful place I had seen in Yazd. Maybe the most colorful place in the entire world.

One entire wall was taken up with a huge stained glass window. Intricately wrought flowers in every color cast dancing rainbows into the mansion.

We were swimming in light.

We were accelerating to warp speed.

“Wow,” I breathed.

It felt like the kind of place where you were supposed to whisper.

“You say that a lot.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I like it. You don’t have these things back home?”

“Nothing like this,” I said. I stared up at the ceiling: gleaming white lines intersecting and weaving together into a twenty-four-sided star, which cascaded outward into interlocking diamonds as they followed the curvature of the inner dome.

I had stepped into a world of Elven magic. Into Rivendell, or Lothlórien.

The cool air from the baad gir above us rippled the hair on my arms.

“Nothing like this.”



* * *





This time, when we went to play soccer/non-American football, I knew to pack a towel. And more supportive underwear.

I still didn’t have cleats—Sohrab said I could borrow his again—but I had my Team Melli jersey to wear, which was even better.

I still felt kind of sick when I thought about being naked again, but the worst had already happened, and I knew Sohrab would stick up for me if it came to it.

When we got to the locker room, Sohrab tried to pass me his nicer cleats again.

“You should wear these,” I said. “I can use the white ones.”

“You take them. These are better.”

“But . . .” I had been outmaneuvered once more. My taarof skills were still very poor. “I feel bad. You can’t give me your nice cleats.”

“Okay, Darioush. Thank you.”

Success!

When I finished dressing, Sohrab looked me over and squinted.

“You look like a football star, Darioush.”

My ears turned so red, they matched the stripe across my chest.

“Thanks.”

“Ready?”

“Ready.”

Ali-Reza and Hossein were out on the field again, engaged in a two-on-eight game against a group of clearly outmatched younger kids. Sohrab and I watched for a minute as Ali-Reza bowled over one of his opponents and scored a goal.

I shook my head. It was the sort of overly aggressive maneuver only a Soulless Minion of Orthodoxy would engage in.

Sohrab grabbed my shoulder. “Come on!”

He ran into the pack and insinuated himself onto the younger team. In a flash, he hooked the ball from Ali-Reza and tore up the field toward the goal. It was completely undefended.

The kids whooped and laughed as Sohrab scored. They didn’t mind at all that we had infiltrated their team.

I hung back to defend our goal with a boy in overlarge cleats—he must have had Hobbit feet like me—and Persian hair even longer and curlier than mine.

“Salaam,” he said. He had a thick accent, but it was cool. I liked the way he formed his vowels.

“Um. Salaam.”

He pointed at my Team Melli jersey.

“Nice,” he said in English.

I guess he could tell I didn’t speak much Farsi.

“Thanks.”

The young Iranian Hobbit—I decided to call him Frodo—ran up toward midfield. Now that Sohrab was playing, Ali-Reza and Hossein had lost their tactical advantage, and our team kept pressing forward.

Sohrab scored three more times, with assists from some of our new teammates, before Hossein held on to the ball and waved us all out to huddle midfield.

Frodo and I jogged out to join the circle. Everyone was talking in Farsi, arguing back and forth too fast for me to make anything out.

Like Frodo when he wore the One Ring, I had slipped back into the Twilight world, hidden from the Iranians around me by my inability to speak Farsi.

Since I was Frodo, I decided that made the Hobbit next to me Samwise.

But then Sohrab said, “English. Darioush can’t understand.”

And Hossein said, “Okay. Sohrab and Ayatollah pick first.”

Samwise looked at me. “Ayatollah?”

My ears burned hotter than Mount Doom.

Sohrab saved me again. “We are changing teams,” he explained. “Six and six. You are with me, Darioush. Captains.”

Me. Darius Kellner. A captain.

Just like The Picard.

“Asghar,” Sohrab said to Samwise. “You are with us.”

Sohrab and Ali-Reza took turns picking the other boys. We got Mehrabon, a non-Reza Ali, and Behruz, who was the shortest kid there but had the darkest mustache.

It was deeply impressive.

“Okay,” Sohrab said. He nodded at me.

I cleared my throat.

“Make it so.”



* * *