Darius the Great Deserves Better - Adib Khorram Page 0,33
scent.
I kind of wanted to go number three.
But Saturday night in Portland meant Sunday morning in Iran, and that meant Sohrab would be awake.
It took a couple rings before he answered.
“Hello, Darioush! Chetori?”
“I’m okay. How’re you? What did you do today?”
“Maman made kuku sabzi and took it for Mamou. We spent some time there.”
“How was it?”
“It was okay. Quiet. Babou was sleeping the whole time. Mamou says he is not eating much anymore.”
My chest squeezed.
And I had this really horrible thought: that the waiting was worse than Babou actually dying.
That it would be easier for everyone if he just passed away quietly.
I hated that I thought that.
I was so ashamed of myself.
“What’s wrong, Darioush?”
I shook my head and bit my lip to keep from crying.
What kind of person thinks that?
“Darioush?”
“Sorry.” I cleared my throat. “I had an ugly thought, that’s all.”
Sohrab studied me for a second. “I have those too, sometimes.”
“Yeah.” I sniffed. “How’s school?”
Sohrab sighed. “Maman doesn’t want me to go anymore.”
“Really? Why?”
“The police have been bothering Amou Ashkan a lot lately. She’s worried they will start to bother me too.”
Sohrab’s Amou Ashkan ran a store in Yazd.
“But why now?”
“I don’t know, Darioush. Sometimes they just do. To remind people they can. Or because people are unhappy, and they say it’s the fault of the Bahá’ís.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
And then I said, “I wish you could be here instead.”
Sohrab got this sad smile.
“Sometimes I wish that too.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. You know, it’s hard for Bahá’ís to go to university here. To make a future. And we have to do military service.” He chewed on his lip.
We had talked about Iranian compulsory service before. I hated that it haunted his future.
I hated that he had to worry about his future.
It made my own worries seem small and inadequate.
“My mom has a sister who left Iran. Khaleh Safa. She and her family went to Pakistan and became refugees. Now they live in Toronto.”
“Oh. Wow.”
“My dad always said, he didn’t understand why anyone would want to leave Iran. And I used to agree with him. But now I think about Khaleh Safa a lot.”
“You want to move, then?”
“I don’t know. I wish I could go to United States for university.”
“I wish you could too.”
Sohrab chewed on his lip.
“Enough sad things. How is Landon?”
The back of my neck prickled. “He’s okay.”
Sohrab looked at me, like he knew there was more.
Sohrab always knew.
“We talked some. About stuff.”
He kept looking at me.
“Sex stuff.”
Sohrab’s eyes got big for a second and he let out this little cough.
“Oh.” Sohrab’s camera wasn’t good enough for me to tell if his face was getting red, but his voice was distinctly pinched when he said, “Are you . . .”
He couldn’t finish the sentence, though.
“No. We just talked. Landon . . . he wants to.”
“What do you want?”
“I don’t know.”
Sohrab looked away for a minute. He shifted in his chair.
I could tell he was uncomfortable.
Sohrab didn’t have many walls inside, but one of them was about sex. He always got nervous if the conversation veered anywhere near the topic.
I felt kind of bad, bringing it up.
So I said, “I just want him to be happy.”
And Sohrab said, “I want you to be happy too, Darioush.”
“Thanks.”
A silence hung between us, laden with the things we couldn’t say out loud.
I swallowed.
“Mamou and Babou don’t know.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know how to tell them.”
“I know.”
MIRROR UNIVERSE
Our next soccer match was an away game, against Poplar Grove High School down in Salem.
After school, we grabbed our away kits and boarded the bus waiting in the student parking lot. I ended up in the middle of the bus, with Chip right across the aisle from me. At the front, Coach Bentley cleared her throat.
“It’s your first away game, gentlemen,” she said. “I’m not going to bore you with the Code of Conduct or anything. You all know what’s expected of you. So why don’t we go make it three and oh?”
We all cheered. The airbrakes hissed, the door hinged shut, and the bus lurched into motion, but Coach Bentley stayed standing, swaying as the bus mounted the speed bumps at the parking lot’s exit.
“Some of you have been asking about recruiters.” She glanced around, her eyes lingering on Gabe. He was, empirically speaking, our best player, and had a real chance of getting scouted. “I suspect there will be some today. I know it’s pointless telling you not to feel pressured. But I hope you’ll remember that this isn’t a singular opportunity, for any of you. There will