Sometimes I thought about getting the sides faded, or maybe growing my hair out and doing a man-bun.
That would drive Stephen Kellner crazy.
Captain Picard was delivering his first monologue of the episode when thedoot-dootklaxon of Mom’s computer rang through the house. She was getting a video call. Dad paused the show for a second and glanced up the stairs.
“Uh-oh,” he said. “We’re being hailed.” Dad smiled at me, and I smiled back. Dad and I never smiled at each other—not really—but we were still in our magic forty-seven-minute window where the normal rules didn’t apply.
Dad preemptively turned up the volume on the TV. Sure enough, after a second, Mom started yelling in Farsi at her computer.
“Jamsheed!” Mom shouted. I could hear her even over the musical swell right before the act break.
For some reason, whenever she was talking over the computer, Mom had to make sure the sound of her voice reached low Earth orbit.
“Chetori toh?” she bellowed. That’s Farsi for “How are you,” but only if you are familiar with the person you are speaking to, or older than them. Farsi has different ways of talking to people, depending on the formality of the situation and your relationship to the person you’re addressing.
The thing about Farsi is, it’s a very deep language: deeply specific, deeply poetic, deeply context-sensitive.
For instance, take my Mom’s oldest brother, Jamsheed.
Dayiis the word for uncle. But not just uncle, a specific uncle: your mother’s brother. And it’s not only the word for uncle—it’s also the relationship between you and your uncle. So I could call Dayi Jamsheed my dayi, but he could call me dayi also, as a term of endearment.
My knowledge of Farsi consisted of four primary vectors: (1) familial relations; (2) food words, because Mom always called the Persian food she cooked by its proper name; (3) tea words, because, well, I’m me; and (4) politeness phrases, the sort you learn in middle school foreign language classes, though no middle school in Portland has ever offered Farsi as an option.
The truth was, my Farsi was abysmal. I never really learned growing up.
“I didn’t think you’d ever use it,” Mom told me when I asked her why, which didn’t make any sense, because Mom had Persian friends here in the States, plus all her family back in Iran.
Unlike me, Laleh did speak Farsi, pretty much fluently. When she was a baby, Mom talked to her in Farsi, and had all her friends do the same. Laleh grew up with the ear for it—the uvular fricatives and alveolar trills that I could never get quite right.
When she was a baby, I tried to talk to Laleh in Farsi too. But I never really got the hang of it, and Mom’s friends kept correcting me, so after a while I kind of gave up. After that, me and Dad talked to Laleh exclusively in English.
It always seemed like Farsi was this special thing between Mom and Laleh, likeStar Trekwas between Dad and me.
That left the two of us in the dark whenever we were at gatherings with Mom’s friends. That was the only time Dad and I were on the same team: when we were stuck with Farsi-speakers and left with each other for company. But even when that happened, we just ended up standing around in a Level Seven Awkward Silence.
Stephen Kellner and I were experts at High Level Awkward Silences.
Laleh flounced onto the couch on Dad’s other side and tucked her feet underneath her butt, disturbing the gravitational fields on the couch so Dad leaned away from me and toward her. Dad paused the show. Laleh never watchedStar Trekwith us. It was me and Dad’s thing.
“What’s up, Laleh?” Dad asked.
“Mom’s talking to Dayi Jamsheed,” she said. “He’s at Mamou and Babou’s house right now.”
Mamou and Babou were Mom’s parents. Their real names were Fariba and Ardeshir, but we always called them Mamou and Babou.
Mamouandbaboumean mother and father in Dari, which is the dialect my grandparents spoke growing up Zoroastrian in Yazd.
“Stephen! Laleh! Darius!” Mom’s voice carried from upstairs. “Come say hello!”
Laleh sprang from the couch and ran back upstairs.
I looked at Dad, who shrugged, and we both followed my sister up to the office.
MOBY THE WHALE
My grandmother loomed large on the monitor, her head tiny and her torso enormous.
I only ever saw my grandparents from an up-the-nose perspective.
