But Babou fussed with my cap a little more, even though Mamou had already gotten it settled. He looked me in the eyes from time to time, like he was looking for something, and thought maybe—just maybe—I had it in me after all.
Babou hummed to himself as he smoothed out my shoulder seams and rested his hands on them.
“I am glad you are here to see this, Darioush-jan.”
Maybe I wasn’t such a tourist.
Maybe this was something Babou and I could share. Our very ownStar Trek.
Maybe it was.
“Me too.”
The Atashkadeh is Yazd’s Zoroastrian Fire Temple.
It wasn’t like a mosque or church, with services every week. It was only used for special celebrations.
But it had a fire burning inside all the time.
The fire inside the Atashkadeh had been burning for fifteen hundred years. According to Babou, it came from sixteen different kinds of fire—including lightning, which was pretty amazing if you thought about it.
We were all in light clothes: Mom, Laleh, and Mamou withwhite headscarves and manteaux, and me, Dad, and Babou in our white caps.
Even Stephen Kellner, noted secular humanist, dressed up to go.
The Fire Temple wasn’t as tall as the Jameh Mosque, or even the baad gir of Dowlatabad Garden. It was only two stories high, surrounded by trees. A still, perfectly circular pool mirrored the cloudless blue sky above us.
“Wow.”
What the Atashkadeh lacked in height, it more than made up for in majesty: Five arches, held up by smooth white columns, fronted it, and a Faravahar was carved into the top. The winged man shone in unblemished stone stained blue and gold.
I wondered how it stayed so vibrant in the Yazd sun, which bleached everything else to blinding white.
When we parked the car, Mamou let me and Laleh out from behind her, but then she got back in.
“Um.”
“You go ahead,” she said. “Babou is not feeling very well.”
I looked past her at Babou, who had gone pale, despite the golden sun pouring in the car windows.
It must have been bad, if he was going to stay behind.
He had been so excited to show us the Atashkadeh.
Mom led us up the wide stone steps to the temple, and showed us where to slip our shoes and socks off.
It was silent inside, a silence so intense, it squeezed my head like a too-small hat.
Even Laleh could tell this was the kind of place to keep quiet.
A tinted glass portal separated us from the inner sanctum, where a giant bronze chalice held the ancient fire.
I thought about Babou, waiting in the car. How many times had he come here to see the dancing flames?
How many times had his grandparents stared into the same fire?
And every other Bahrami. Going back generation after generation, through revolutions and regime changes, wars and invasions and pogroms. How many of them had stood where I was standing?
