Mamou was rinsing rice at the sink. It was a huge, double-basined one, and the windows above it faced out into Babou’s garden. It made me all prickly and nervous.
I wondered if Sohrab was supposed to come help Babou again.
I wondered how I was going to avoid him.
“You’re up, Darioush-jan.”
“Yeah. Um.” I realized I had not wrapped the tin of FTGFOP1 First Flush Darjeeling or anything. “I brought you something. I meant to give it to you yesterday, but...”
“You were too tired yesterday, Darioush-jan. It’s okay.”
Mamou dried off her hands and took the tin.
“It’s tea?”
“From Portland. Well, I mean, it’s from a place called Namring, in India. But it’s from a store in Portland. My favorite.”
Mamou popped the lid and unsealed the tea. “It looks good, maman. Thank you. You are so sweet. Just like your dad.” She pulled me close and kissed me on both cheeks.
If I had been drinking tea at that moment, I would have imitated Javaneh Esfahani and shot it out of my nose.
No one had ever called Stephen Kellner sweet.
Not ever.
I said, “I hope you like it.”
“You have to make it for me sometime.” She set the tin on the counter and led me to the table, where she had arranged the tea tray with sweets. “Darioush-jan, do you like qottab?”
Qottab are these little pastries filled with crushed almonds and sugar and cardamom, then deep-fried and coated with powdered sugar.
They are my favorite sweet.
According to Mom, Yazd is pretty much the dessert capital of Iran, and had been for thousands of years. All the best desserts originated there: qottab,and noon-e panjereh (these crispy rosette things dusted in powdered sugar), and lavoshak (the Iranian version of Fruit Roll-Ups, but made with fruits popular in Iran, like pomegranate or kiwi). Yazdis had even invented cotton candy, which was called pashmak.
I was fairly certain that, if you traced the lineage of all the desserts in the world, each and every one originated in Yazd.
With one side of my family coming from the dessertcapital of the ancient world, I was doomed to have a sweet tooth.
It wasn’t like I ate sweets all the time or anything. I couldn’t, not with Stephen Kellner constantly monitoring me for dietary indiscretions. But even when I only ate dessert once a month, I never lost any weight.
Dr. Howell said it was a side effect of my medications, and that a little weight gain was a small price to pay for emotional stability.
I knew Dad thought it was a lack of discipline. That if I ate better (and hadn’t given up soccer), I could have counteracted the effects of my medication.
Stephen Kellner never struggled with his weight.
Übermensches never do.
Someone knocked on the door. A familiar knock.
My stomach squirmed. I thought about how I had accidentally kept Sohrab’s cleats.
“Darioush, can you get the door please?”
“Um.” I swallowed. “Okay.” I licked a bit of powdered sugar from my fingers, but Dad was watching me, so I grabbed a napkin and wiped the rest off. I had only eaten one qottab, which I thought showed excellent discipline on my part.
Sohrab was standing there, holding my Vans in his right hand, looking at something on his iPhone with his left.
