“Almost ten. Come on. Before the kitchen gets taken over.”
Dad poured me a cup of tea and sat next to me as I ate my sangak and feta cheese.
Noon-e sangak is a flatbread baked on a stone. It’s kind of chewy, unless you toast it—which I did, using the gleaming, deluxe toaster oven Mamou kept on the counter. It was all brushed steel with digital readouts and touch-sensitive controls.
It was the U.S.S.Enterpriseof toaster ovens.
Back home, we had bacon and eggs for breakfast on holidays (or on days when Mom was craving bacon, which usually happened if she was stressed at work), but you couldn’t get bacon in Yazd. It wasn’t halal, which meant it was forbidden in the Islamic Republic of Iran. So I ate flatbread and cheese for breakfast, just like every other teenage boy in Iran. Just like Darius the First probably did when he was growing up.
I felt very Persian indeed.
“Happy Nowruz, Darioush,” Mom said, kissing me on the head while I washed my dishes from breakfast. She was back to using my Iranian name.
“Happy Nowruz, Mom.”
She had her hair in curlers, and she was wearing a long, puffy white robe. My stomach experienced a gravitic inversion.
“Uh. Are you dressing up for the party?” But I already knew the answer.
“Just a little bit.”
“Should I dress up too?”
“Whatever is fine. It’s just family. Wear something casual.”
I knew she was lying.
“Okay.”
“Where’s your sister?”
“Watching Iranian soap operas with her grandfather,” Dad said without looking up from his sketchpad. He had been refining his sketches of Persepolis ever since we got back. “He said it would improve her Farsi.”
I kind of wanted to go watch Iranian soap operas with my grandfather and improve my Farsi too.
“If we’re not careful, my father may try to kidnap her,” Mom said.
“Where was he when Laleh was two?”
Mom leaned down to kiss Dad on the temple, which I had noticed was her favorite place to kiss him when other people were around.
“The shower is all yours, honey,” she said.
Dad pulled Mom down for another kiss, this one at the corner of her mouth, which was how Dad liked to kiss Mom when they had an audience. “Thanks.”
As soon as Mom went into the living room, I turned to Dad.
“Persian Casual?”
Dad flipped his sketchpad closed.
“Persian Casual,” he agreed.
Persian Casual covers a wide gamut, from slightly more-formal-than-business-casual to just-shy-of-black-tie-or-full-military-dress. Button-up shirt and dress pants are the bare minimum; maybe a suit jacket, depending on the crowd. Back home, it meant a tie too, but no one wore ties in Iran. It was considered a “Western” fashion.
Dad ran out of room in his luggage for any of his suit jackets, and I didn’t fit in mine anymore, so that left us at a disadvantage as far as looking more impressive than everyone else.
That was the whole point and purpose of Persian Casual, as far as I could tell: to make sure you and your family looked more impressive than everyone else, usually by tricking people into thinking the occasion was more casual than it really was.
