“Sure.” Agha Rezaei stepped out from behind the counter and squeezed himself into one of the aisles. He asked Sohrab something in Farsi. Sohrab turned to me.
“Mamou likes more sour or more sweet?”
“Um.”
My ears burned.
I didn’t know there was more than one kind.
I didn’t know what my grandmother liked.
“I’m not sure.”
“This one is better,” Agha Rezaei said, and pulled down two garnet bottles of robe. He led us back to the counter, talking to Sohrab in Farsi. Unlike Mom, Agha Rezaei didn’t pepper his sentences with English words—it was pure Farsi, and a lot harder for me to track. He kept saying “baba,” but that was all I could follow. Something about Sohrab’s dad.
“Agha Darioush. You want faludeh?”
“Amou makes the best in Yazd,” Sohrab said, pointing to the freezer behind the counter.
Faludeh is rosewater sorbet with thin starchy noodles. It sounds weird, but it is actually delicious, especially when you drizzle it with sour cherry syrup and lime juice.
“Are you going to get some?”
“I can’t,” Sohrab said.
“How come?”
“We are fasting. We are Bahá’í. You know what Bahá’í is?”
“Yeah. Mom has some Bahá’í friends back home. How long are you fasting?”
“Until Nowruz. We do it every year, for the last month.”
“Oh.”
I couldn’t eat in front of someone who couldn’t eat with me.
“I’m okay for now. Can we come back after Nowruz? Then we can both have some.”
Sohrab squinted at me. “Sure.”
We paid for the robe—well, Sohrab paid for it—and said good-bye.
Agha Rezaei promised to have fresh faludeh for us when we came back.
“Maybe I can bring my sister,” I said as we headed back to Mamou’s, the bottles clinking in their plastic bag at my side.
“Laleh. Right?”
“Yeah.”
“How old is she?”
“She’s eight. How about you? Any sisters? Brothers?”
“I don’t have any,” Sohrab said.
“Oh. Do you want one?”
