You shake your head. You don’t have your scale here to measure your portions, and you don’t even know the macros on some of this stuff. Baba made khoresh bademjan, which is your favorite, but it doesn’t have nearly enough protein in it. Khanum Varga made the rice, and she makes the best tahdig—even Maman grudgingly admits that—but you’re avoiding white rice right now because it’s way too many carbs.
It’s not all Iranian food, though. There’s lots of white Bahá’ís, too, and a few Black folks, and lots of immigrant families, not just Iranians. So you were able to fill your plate with some smoked chicken breast from a Black family who always brings really good barbecue to potlucks, and a big salad from a white family doing the whole vegan thing, and some roasted asparagus from who knows where, but probably an Iranian judging by how overcooked they are.
You salivate over the beautiful golden macaroni and cheese someone brought, but that’s definitely not on your plan. Your body fat is stubbornly hovering just above 10 percent, and if you could only get down to single digits, you know your abs would show, a four-pack at least if not the full six.
“I’m good, Maman,” you say, sticking to English more out of annoyance than anything. You didn’t go to the gym today—not on a holy day—and given the amount of food here, you really should’ve, but even Coach Nico says rest days are important. You just should’ve timed things out better.
“You barely eat anything anymore.” She reaches for the rice paddle, scooping up a heap and catching a bit of the crispy tahdig with it, the golden brown wedge gleaming with oil, and tries to plop it onto your plate, but you swing it away.
“Nakon, Maman!” you say, that cold fire of anger rising up in you again. You don’t even know why. You’ve lived your whole life with your mother showing her love with a full plate and an offer of seconds. You know she’s genetically incapable of not feeding you. But suddenly you can’t stand it: You don’t want her carbs, you don’t want her love; all you want is some space for once. “Can you just leave me alone?”
Your voice cracks as you say it, but still, it was loud, too loud for the Bahá’í Center. This isn’t the gym back at school.
Your mother blinks and sets the rice back down.
“Farshid Nafari,” she says, voice low. “Behave yourself.”
“Then stop treating me like a little kid! Or a pig you’re fattening up for… for…” What holiday do they eat pigs at, anyway? “My plate is already full! Would you stop nagging me?”
The room goes quiet as everyone looks your way. Shame warswith anger inside you. Why does Maman have to make everything into a fight? Why does she keep trying to control you?
If you don’t get away, you think you’re going to explode.
You grab a fork and make your escape.
Nadeem finds you in one of the classrooms at the back of the center, eating in the dark. He snaps on the light.
You used to have Sunday school classes in here, not because Sundays mean much to Bahá’ís, but because that’s the day most people have off because you all live in America, where they supposedly have separation of church and state, as long as you don’t count Christmas being a federal holiday.
Everything felt so much simpler back in Sunday school, memorizing the months of the Bahá’í calendar, learning prayers set to music, making Ayyám-i-Há decorations out of construction paper.
Now the whole place feels like a weight, your mom dragging you here to clean the center on the weekends feels like punishment, your dad buried in emails from the Local Spiritual Assembly feels like abandonment.
You don’t know what’s wrong with you.
“You ever planning on coming out?”
Ice floods your veins, but Nadeem graduated from Meadowbrook last year and goes to KU now. He doesn’t know what happened yesterday in conditioning. He doesn’t know about his poor word choice.
Conversation and laughter flood in through the door, along with the soft sound of someone playing guitar. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between a Bahá’í celebration and a secularmehmooni. But there’s not as much dancing at the former, you suppose, and way more white people.
When you don’t answer, Nadeem flops into the seat next to you, but it’s lower than he realized, built for ten-year-olds, and he nearly knocks the table over, so you have to steady it before your chicken goes flying.
“Careful,” you say even though the danger’s passed.
“I can’t believe we used to sit at these.” He looks around the room wistfully. Nadeem always liked Sunday school better than you, loved to show Maman and Baba how quickly he’d memorized the Obligatory Prayers or how he could still recite a dozen other prayers in Persian, English, and Arabic. You only know them in English.
“Thank God we don’t have to anymore,” you say.
“It wasn’t so bad.” Nadeem gives your shoulder a squeeze. “Whoa, is that muscle?”
You sit up a little straighter and try not to preen. Maybe your gains are finally showing a little bit after all. Maybe your shoulders have finally upgraded to B-tier.
“Maybe.”
Nadeem releases you. “Baba said you were going to the gym every day. Are you getting your homework done?”
You sigh. “Yes,Maman.”
