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.”
Playing soccer/non-American football with Sohrab, Asghar-Samwise-Frodo, and the rest of my team was genuinely fun. Even if Asghar and the other guys had all decided to call me Ayatollah.
I hated it at first, but as far as I could tell, none of them knew the real reason.
“It’s because you are in charge,” Sohrab said. “That’s what I told them.”
Our team cheered my new nickname whenever I nailed a tricky pass or managed a good save. I almost started to like it.
Almost.
But no matter what, Sohrab always called me Darioush.
We played until my calves burned and my lungs were in danger of experiencing a non-passive failure. We played until Asghar had to hunch on the side of the field, hands on hisknees, and fight the urge to vomit. We played until Hossein and Ali-Reza got tired of us scoring goals on them. And we scored a lot of goals.
Asghar and the other guys made us promise to play again the next day. Sohrab said yes right away. Apparently he was something of a fixture on the field, though he had missed several games since he started hanging out with me.
He had given that up for me.
He didn’t have to do that.
Ali-Reza pretended like he might not return—he had suffered a crushing defeat, after all—but I knew he would be back when Hossein said, “Different teams next time.”
Sohrab hung back, kicking the ball around with me while the others cooled off and headed for the locker room.
I knew why he was doing it. But he didn’t say anything or make a big deal out of it.
That’s the kind of friend he was.
