“English is okay.”
“Oh good. Uh. I’m Darius. Babou’s... Agha Bahrami’s grandson.”
“From America.” Sohrab nodded and handed me one of the knots he was working on. I held the hose as Sohrab took the end and wove it back through the loops. He had short, proportional fingers. I noticed them because I always thought my own fingers were weirdly long and skeletal.
Sohrab shook the hose to loosen it. I grabbed another knot for him.
“Um.”
Sohrab glanced at me and then back at his work.
“Are we related?” I asked.
It was an awkward but legitimate question for one Persian to ask another. I was related—distantly—to several Iranian families in Portland. It was usually through marriage, but I had a third cousin, once removed, in Portland too.
When it comes to keeping track of our family trees, Persians are even more meticulous than Hobbits. Especially Persians living outside of Iran.
Sohrab squinted at me and shrugged. “I live close.”
It had never occurred to me that Mamou and Babou could have neighbors.
I mean, I knew there was a whole city around them, but the other residents of Yazd had always been abstract. Even thephotographs I had seen were usually devoid of human inhabitants.
Mamou and Babou had always existed in their own cuboid universe: the two of them, and the walls of the computer room around them.
Sohrab pulled the last tangle out of the hose. And then, before I could stop him, he pointed the sprayer toward me and squeezed the handle. I held up my hands and shouted, but the water just dribbled out.
Sohrab laughed. I liked Sohrab’s laugh: It was loose and free, like he didn’t care who heard it.
When he squeezed my shoulder, his hand was warm, even though he’d been handling the clammy hose. “Sorry, Darioush. It’s not on yet.”
I tried to glower at Sohrab, but it was impossible, because he was squinting again and I ended up laughing instead.
I decided I liked Sohrab.
Here’s the thing:
Every Iranian knows someone named Sohrab. If they don’t, they know someone who knows someone named Sohrab. Back in Portland, one of Mom’s friends (who we were not related to) had a nephew named Sohrab.
Now I had a Sohrab of my own.
The name Sohrab comes from the story of Rostam and Sohrab in theShahnahmeh,which is basically theSilmarillionof Persian fables and legends. It has other stories too, like Feridoun and his three sons, and Zal and the Simurgh (which is the Persian version of a phoenix), and King Jamsheed, but none of them are as famous as the story of Rostam and Sohrab.
Rostam was a legendary Persian fighter who accidentally killed his own son, Sohrab, in battle.
It was deeply tragic.
It was also deeply ingrained in the DNA of every Persian man and boy, which is probably why all Persian boys work so hard to please their fathers.
I wondered if all fathers secretly wanted to kill their sons. Just a little bit.
Maybe that explained Stephen Kellner.
Maybe it did.
“Sohrab! Darioush!”
“Bebakhshid, Agha Bahrami.”
