“Merci,”Dad said.
Farsi and French use the exact same word for “thank you.” Mom had never been able to adequately explain why.
I tucked my passport back into my borrowed messenger bag and snapped the clasp shut before following Dad. Behind us, Laleh clung to Mom’s hand, dragging her feet so her shoes squeaked on the tile floor.
“I’m tired,” she reminded us.
“I know, sweetie,” Mom said. “You can rest on the way to Yazd.”
“My feet hurt.”
“I can carry her,” I said, but then I had to stop, because another Customs officer stepped right in front of me with his hand up.
“Come with me, please,” he said.
“Uh.”
My first instinct was to run.
Unlike his predecessor, Customs Officer II did not look sleepy at all. He looked keen and alert. His eyebrows contracted into a sharp arrow above his long nose.
“Um. Okay. Mom?”
Mom called to Dad, who hadn’t noticed I’d been stopped. Shetried to follow me, dragging Laleh, who skidded across the tile floor on her rubber soles, but the officer held up his hand, careful not to touch her.
“Only him.”
I wondered what I had done that made him single me out.
I wondered what made me such a target.
I wondered what it was he wanted.
Mom said something in Farsi, and the officer answered, but again, it was too fast for me to make anything out. Not that I could have made out much, unless they were talking about food.
Customs Officer II shook his head, took me by the elbow, and led me away.
There is an episode in the sixth season ofStar Trek: The Next Generationcalled “Chain of Command.”
Actually, it’s a two-part episode, so it’s “Chain of Command, Parts I & II.” In it, Captain Picard gets captured by Cardassians at the end of Part I, and spends most of Part II getting interrogated and tortured. The interrogator, Gul Madred, shines four lights in Captain Picard’s face and keeps asking how many there are.
Every time, Captain Picard answers “four,” but Gul Madred tries to break him by insisting there are five.
Customs Officer II led me to a small room.
There were four fluorescent lights in the ceiling.
When he sat down behind a large wood-grained desk—the kind where it was obviously not made of wood, but covered with something that looked like it—my heart thundered.
Unlike Customs Officer I, Customs Officer II did have the full and resplendent beard of a True Persian.
“Passport?”
His voice was deep, crisp, and heavy.
I dug through my Kellner & Newton Messenger Bag, wishing again for my old backpack, my fingers fumbling for the passport I had slid inside only a few minutes before.
“Why are you in Iran?”
