Laleh stretched and yawned and leaned against me, burying her face in my side.
Normally, I enjoyed when Laleh did that. Being a pillow felt like the kind of thing a big brother was supposed to do.
I did not feel like a very good big brother that morning.
I shifted and twisted until Laleh got annoyed and leaned against the window instead.
Finally, Mamou and Mom came out. Mom took her seat next to Dad, while Mamou took the passenger seat.
“Where’s Babou?” Dad asked.
“He forgot his tokhmeh for the trip,” Mamou answered.
Mom said something to Mamou in Farsi.
“Yes. Every time!”
Babou hurried back out with a huge bag of tokhmeh and buckled himself in.
“Okay,” he said. “Bereem.”
Sohrab was waiting for us in front of his house. It was hard to see much in the dawn light—the sun was rising behind the house—but with the curtained windows glowing, it looked warm and cozy.
I scooted into the middle spot so Sohrab could sit by me. Laleh huffed and wiggled a bit closer to the window.
“Hey,” I said, once Sohrab was finished saying hi to Mamou and Babou in a long stream of Farsi that seemed to consist mostly of taarofing.
“Good morning, Darioush.”
“Ready to go?”
He clicked his seat belt.
“Ready to go.”
Ardeshir Bahrami was a madman behind the wheel.
There were no handles to hold on to—Dad called them “Oh-Shit-Handles,” even though he was categorically opposed to colorful metaphors—so I gripped the seat cushion and tried not to flatten Sohrab or Laleh whenever Babou executed an unexpected lane change.
Mom and Mamou, who were no doubt acclimated to Babou’s driving, swayed with the Smokemobile’s inertia. And Stephen Kellner, who loved to drive his German Road Machine at unsafe velocities, was right at home, leaning into each turn like a race car driver.
The streets were still mostly empty as we merged onto the highway, but Babou drove as if he was dodging enemy fire, pulling off one evasive maneuver after another.
It must have been a Social Cue.
Like I said, it was supposed to be a six-hour drive to Persepolis.
Ardeshir Bahrami made it in four and a half.
When we finally pulled into the parking lot, my body had to adjust to sub-light speeds before I could pour myself out of the Smokemobile’s backseat and follow Sohrab to the ticket office.
I think ticket offices are some sort of universal constant, whether it’s the ruins of Persepolis—“Takhte Jamsheed,” Sohrab kept calling it, the Throne of Jamsheed—or the International Rose Test Garden back home. One day, when humans colonize Mars, there will be a ticket office to see Olympus Mons.
The real one. Not the smoldering caldera of my former pimple.
Babou glowered at the cashier and started arguing about the price of admission. Haggling over prices was another PersianSocial Cue, one I had observed when I went with Mom to the Persian Grocery back in Portland.
Laleh had spent most of the drive asleep against the humming window.
