My own dark, Persian hair was baking in the sun. If I crackedan egg over it, I could have shaken scrambled eggs out of my curls.
That would have been gross.
The Yazd in Mom’s old photos gave me a holodeck vision of it: crisp and static and perfect. The real Yazd was messy and bustling and noisy. Not loud, but full of the sounds of real people.
“This is your first time to Iran?”
“Huh? Yeah. I think my mom was kind of scared to come. You know, ’cause my dad is American. And we hear lots of stories.”
“I think it’s not so bad, you know.”
I thought of Customs Officer II, who I had imagined stringing me up to the ceiling and interrogating me before he decided to let me go.
“Um. Yeah. It wasn’t so bad coming in.”
I reached for something else to say, but I came up blank.
Sohrab didn’t seem to mind, though. It was a comfortable silence between us. Not awkward at all.
I liked that I could be silent with Sohrab.
That’s how I knew we really were going to be friends.
We took another left, past a furniture store and down the street, until Sohrab pointed to the green awning above his uncle’s grocery store. After our blinding journey through the sunlit streets of Yazd, it seemed almost dark inside, despite the warm golden walls.
The first thing I noticed was that Sohrab’s amou’s store looked almost exactly like the Persian grocery store back home: tightly spaced aisles filled with stacks of dried goods and canned goods and bottled goods in the middle, a longrefrigerator filled with dairy and meat on one wall, and produce on the others.
I don’t know why I expected any different. Or what different would have looked like.
The second thing I noticed was Sohrab’s uncle, who stood behind the counter. He was the largest Iranian I had ever seen: taller than Stephen Kellner but heavier too. He seemed to take up half the store, though part of that could have been his wild smile, red and huge as a carved watermelon. His mouth curved up the same way as Sohrab’s, with one side a little higher than the other.
I could tell he was a True Persian by the density of his luxurious chest hair, which stuck out of the collar of his shirt.
“Alláh-u-Abhá, Sohrab-jan!” he said. His voice was low, like the drone of a thousand bees. “Chetori toh?”
“Alláh-u-Abhá, amou.”
Alláh-u-Abháis the traditional Bahá’í greeting. It means something like “God is the most glorious.”
I hadn’t realized Sohrab was Bahá’í.
“This is Darioush. Agha Bahrami’s grandson. From America.”
Sohrab’s uncle turned his smile toward me. I didn’t think it was possible, but it got bigger somehow.
“Darioush, this is my amou Ashkan.”
“Nice you meet you, Agha... um...”
“Rezaei,” Sohrab said.
“Nice to meet you, Agha Rezaei,” I said.
“Nice to meet you, Agha Darioush. Welcome to Yazd.”
“Thanks.”
“Babou sent us to get some robe for Mamou.”
