Darius The Great Is Not Okay

I knew just enough Farsi to stutter that I barely knew how to speak Farsi

Sohrab’s eyes crinkled up when he smiled. He almost looked like he was squinting.

English is okay.”

“Oh good. Uh. I’m Darius. Babou’s… Agha Bahrami’s grand

“From America.” Sohrab nodded and handed me one of the knots he was working on. I held the hose as Sohrab took the end and wove it back through the loops. He had short, proportional fingers. I noticed them because I always thought my own fingers were weirdly long and skeletal.

Sohrab shook the hose to loosen it. I grabbed another knot for him.

“Um.”

Sohrab glanced at me and then back at his work.

“Are we related?” I asked.

It was an awkward but legitimate question for one Persian to ask another. I was related distantly-to several Iranian families in Portland. It was usually through marriage, but I had a third cousin, once removed, in Portland too.

When it comes to keeping track of our family trees, Persians are even more meticulous than Hobbits. Especially Persians living outside of Iran.

Sohrab squinted at me and shrugged. “I live close.”

It had never occurred to me that Mamou and Babou could have neighbors.

I mean, I knew there was a whole city around them, but the other residents of Yazd had always been abstract. Even the photographs I had seen were usually devoid of human inhabitants Mamou and Babou had always existed in their own cuboid universe: the two of them, and the walls of the computer room around them.

Sohrab pulled the last tangle out of the hose. And then, before I could stop him, he pointed the sprayer toward me and squeezed the handle. I held up my hands and shouted, but the water just dribbled out.

Sohrab laughed. I liked Sohrab’s laugh: It was loose and free, like he didn’t care who heard it.

When he squeezed my shoulder, his hand was warm, even though he’d been handling the clammy hose. “Sorry, Darioush. It’s not on yet.”

I tried to glower at Sohrab, but it was impossible, because he was squinting again and I ended up laughing instead.

I decided I liked Sohrab.