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.
