It was like we had been living in this static bubble of joy, but it had undergone a subspace field collapse, and now everything was covered in a melancholy residue.
Our perfect moment had evaporated.
I didn’t know how to get it back.
I had a hard time sleeping that night.
When I was in eighth grade, in the middle of Yet Another Prescription Change, there were nights I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, feeling like I was being smothered.
I felt like that again. Like the weight of a dark matter nebularested on my chest, and every sad thought kept echoing in my mind, poised on the event horizon of the singularity of my life.
I wanted to cry. Or howl.
But it was late, and the whole house was asleep.
So I turned my pillow over to find a cool spot and tried to sleep.
Around two in the morning, someone knocked on my door.
I reached for my trunks and slipped them on under the covers.
“Come in?”
The door creaked open. Mom stood silhouetted in the hall light.
“Mom?”
She just stood there.
“Is everything okay?”
“No,” she said. “I just heard from your Dayi Soheil.”
My heart thudded.
“Babou passed away.”
ACROSS TIME AND SPACE
There was no going back to sleep after that.
I put on some clothes and went downstairs to put the kettle on.
When we visited Iran, Babou showed me how Iranians make tea. And then he drank it while clenching a sugar cube between his teeth.
I was crushing cardamom pods when I couldn’t hold in the tears any longer.
The thing is, I knew Babou was dying. We had known that for months.
But it didn’t hurt any less, losing him bit by bit, because it still felt like we had just lost him all at once.
There was no more Ardeshir Bahrami.
There was a hole in the center of our family.
Oma and Grandma trudged down the stairs, Oma in her robe and Grandma in her pajamas.
“I’m so sorry, Darius,” Grandma said. She took both my hands, and then pulled me in for a brief hug. “Don’t cry.”
