“My grandfather was buried here,” Babou said. “He was named Darioush also. And my grandmother too.”
I sucked on the tassels of my hoodie as he led me around the tower, following the crumbling wall that enclosed us. We stood within a stone ring, a hundred feet across, with a gentle slope from the outer walls down toward the center, where bodies were once laid to rest in concentric circles: men on the outside, women in the middle, children in the center.
It was empty now. There hadn’t been a sky burial in decades, not since it was outlawed. And there was no one else around, because tourists don’t like getting up so early in the morning.
I wondered if I was a tourist.
It felt like a tourist thing, coming to see the Towers of Silence.
And it had felt like a tourist thing, going to visit the ruins of Persepolis. Even if they were part of our family history. Even if they were our heritage.
How could I be a tourist in my own past?
The wind was strong and cool. It stirred the dust we kicked up with our shoes, and blew my hood up around my hair.
I pulled it back down and let my tassels fall out of my mouth.
Babou sighed. “Now we have to put them in cement. It’s not the same.”
“Oh.”
He stopped and pointed across a valley to another mountain. “There is another one. See?”
“Yes.”
“Many of Mamou’s ancestors there.”
“Wow.”
“Our family has been in Yazd for many years. Many generations, born and raised here. And then put here when they died.”
Our family was woven into the fabric of Yazd. Into the stones and the sky.
“Now your dayi Soheil lives in Shiraz. And your mom lives in America. Even Dayi Jamsheed talks about moving to Tehran. Soon maybe there will be no more Bahramis in Yazd.”
My grandfather seemed so small and defeated then, bowed under the weight of history and the burdens of the future.
I didn’t know what to say.
The singularity in my stomach was back, pulsing andwrithing in sympathetic harmony with the one I knew lived deep inside Babou.
In that moment I understood my grandfather perfectly.
Ardeshir Bahrami was as sad as I was.
He rested his hand on my neck and gave me a soft squeeze.
That was as close to a hug as he had ever given me.
I relaxed against him as we studied the landscape below us.
That was as close to a hug as I had ever given him.
YESTERDAY’S ENTERPRISE
Like I promised, when we got back from the Towers of Silence, I took Laleh to Ashkan Rezaei’s store. We swung by Sohrab’s house along the way. He squinted when he opened the door.
“Hi, Darioush! Hello, Laleh-khanum.”
