“Yeah. See you.”
I didn’t hold out much hope for Dad and me continuing our nightlyStar Trektradition, but I went in search of Babou’s computer anyway.
Across from Laleh’s room was a sunroom—though it was dark now—with a huge window covered in Venetian blinds and a well-loved beige couch in front. Against the opposite wall, alarge television stood on an antique wooden table. DVDs and cases orbited in a ring around it, mostly Farsi-language dubs of Bollywood movies.
On either side of the television, and above it, the Bahrami Family Portrait Gallery extended into a new wing.
Fariba Bahrami loved photographs.
One picture was of Mom in the hospital, cradling a newly born baby Laleh. Dad had his arms wrapped around them both, looking ridiculous but somehow still radiating Teutonic stoicism in his light blue scrubs. Beneath Dad’s elbow, there stood a young, still-squeaky me, bouncing on my toes to catch a glimpse of my new baby sister.
There were so many pictures. Some were of Dayi Jamsheed and his kids, and Dayi Soheil’s family. I recognized them from pictures Mom had showed me. Others I recognized from home, because Mom had sent them to Mamou, like one of Laleh from last Halloween. She was dressed up as Dorothy fromThe Wizard of Oz.
Laleh was totally obsessed withThe Wizard of Ozlast summer. The Judy Garland version. She would watch it and then run around the living room a few times and then watch it again, all day long.
Mom braided Laleh’s hair last Halloween—her curly Persian hair made perfect pigtails—and she’d found a blue-and-white gingham dress. Dad had brought home bright red sneakers with lights in the soles for Laleh to wear as her Ruby Slippers.
Mom and Dad took Laleh trick-or-treating, while I was assigned to monitor the house and disburse candy as necessary.
I was not cool enough to be invited to the parties where theSoulless Minions of Orthodoxy celebrated Halloween. In fact, I wasn’t even cool enough to get invited to a mid-level party. I was a D-Bag, in social status if not in name quite yet. So I sat at home, watchingStar Trek: First Contact(the scariest of allStar Trekfilms) and giving out Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups to the neighborhood kids as they wandered by.
Despite his opposition to my own dietary indiscretions, Stephen Kellner insisted there was no finer candy for trick-or-treaters than Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
At least we were not the house with raisins.
“What are you looking for, Darius?” Mom watched me from the doorway, cradling two cups of tea. They were the glass kind, the ones with gilded rims and no handles. Many True Persians used cups like that, but I had never mastered the trick. I always burned my fingers.
“The computer. I thought maybe Dad and I could watchStar Trekon it.”
“Probably not, with the Internet censors.”
“Oh.”
Mom sat on the couch and patted the cushion next to her. I took my tea from her, but then I put it on the coffee table before I scorched my fingerprints off.
“So? What did you think of Yazd?”
“Well. It’s different. But not as different as I thought it would be.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I mean, it’s not likeAladdinor anything.”
Mom laughed.
“And it’s more modern. Sohrab has an iPhone, even.”
Mom sipped her tea and let out a long, contented sigh. She ran the fingers of her left hand through my hair and stared at the Bahrami Family Portrait Gallery until she found a photo of my tenth birthday party.
“Your hair,” she said.
When I was ten, I had decided I wanted to wear my hair like Lt. Commander Data, theEnterprise’s android operations officer. Every morning, Mom helped me blow dry my hair and brush it back into perfectly straight lines, and then gel it until it was as stiff as a bicycle helmet.
“The Android Look was not a good one for me.”
Mom laughed.
“What are we going to do for your birthday this year?”
