AN OVERABUNDANCE OF FOOD
We held Babou’s memorial at the Portland Persian Cultural Center.
The PPCC (an acronym that always seemed hilarious to me as a child) was a converted mattress store, with a big tiled common room in front and offices in the back for meetings and small gatherings. There was a tiny bookstore, which mostly just had cookbooks and Farsi language learners and pamphlets for local activities.
And then there was the kitchen, which had required the most extensive remodeling.
Iranians are notoriously exacting when it comes to kitchens. Mom used to talk about remodeling ours, at home, but she hadn’t mentioned it for a while. Not when our savings were drained, and the dishwasher was still broken.
Mom showed her ID to the security officer at the door, who beeped us in.
It made me feel weird, that the Portland Persian Cultural Center had to have a security guard.
Apparently there had been lots of windows broken, and even some harassment incidents, before I was born. And after too, but Mom always said the worst was right after 9/11.
For as long as I could remember, the PPCC had security officers at the doors and little cameras tucked into the corners of the ceiling. But those hadn’t been around when Mom first found the place, and invited Dad to a Hafez reading for their third date.
Dad was supposed to be here, but his flight got delayed out of LAX, and he didn’t know when he’d make it home.
“Can you take these?” Mom passed me a huge cardboard box full of tiny vases with jasmine blossoms in them.
I missed the smell of jasmine in Babou’s garden.
“Yeah.”
I took the box in one hand and offered Laleh my other. She rested her fingers in my palm, and I led her to the kitchen, which was also the staging area for decor.
The nice thing about the Portland Persian Cultural Center was, it was already an explosion of all things Iranian: Photographs of Iran lined the walls, many of them faded pre-revolution images of Tehran and Tabriz and Shiraz. There were even some of Yazd. Paintings of Nassereddin Shah—the least controversial figure in Iranian portraiture—hung in a few spots. (Not that he was without controversy, but still. He predated the Islamic revolution and even the Pahlavi dynasty that had preceded it.)
Tinny speakers in the ceiling played the Iranian equivalent of elevator music.
“You thirsty, Laleh?”
“Yeah.”
I poured her a cup of water and went back to help Oma and Grandma carry in the aluminum trays of rice and kabob from Kabob House, this Iranian restaurant in Beaverton.
No gathering of Iranians would be complete without an overabundance of food.
Everyone wore nice dresses—Mom’s was black, but not mournful—while I was in gray dress pants and a dark blue button-up. Underneath I had on my jersey from the Iranian national soccer team, Team Melli.
Sohrab had gotten it for me, when I visited Iran. It made me feel closer to Iran, and Babou, and playing Rook, and sitting in silence drinking tea.
I grabbed a paper towel and wiped my eyes.
I kept crying at weird times.
I had never lost someone I loved before.
I didn’t know how to deal with it.
“Darius? Hey.”
There was one other Iranian at Chapel Hill High School: Javaneh Esfahani.
She was a senior, and now that we didn’t eat lunch together, I barely ever saw her. She was in AP classes during the day, and busy with Associated Student Body after school.
Javaneh wore a sleek black dress with a red blouse over it and a dark red headscarf. She had on new glasses too, cat-eye ones with green highlights on the frames.
“Oh. Hey.”
“You look like you could use a hug.”
“I guess so.”
Javaneh snorted and pulled me in.
I couldn’t remember ever hugging her before. She felt warm and comfortable, like your blankets when you first wake up in those late fall days before you turn the heat on, and you can’t imagine ever getting out of bed because you know the floors are going to be cold.
“How’re you doing?”
“Okay. Trying to keep it together for my mom.”
She nodded. “When my grandmother passed away, my dad had a really hard time too.”
“That sucks.”
“Yeah. I still miss her sometimes.”
I sniffed. Javaneh pulled a couple Kleenexes out of her huge black purse.
She was still in high school, but she already had the voluminous purse of a True Persian Woman, the kind that opened into an alternate dimension.
“Thanks.”
“Sure.” She looked behind me. “I think someone is here for you.”
“Oh?” I turned to find Landon standing in the doorway. He was dressed all the way up, in a dark suit with a white shirt and gray tie.
He looked impeccable.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” he said, and wrapped me in a hug. I melted into him.
We didn’t kiss, though. I think maybe he was trying to figure out what the rules were, surrounded by a bunch of Iranian strangers.
Maybe he was.
Maybe I was too.
When we pulled apart, I said, “Javaneh, this is my boyfriend. Landon.”
Javaneh beamed and offered her hand.
“Javaneh Esfahani. I go to school with Darius.”
Landon’s shoulders relaxed as he took her hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“Same.” Javaneh glanced toward the big room, and her eyes bugged out for a second. “Oh, no. My parents are trying to help.”
Landon blinked. “Is that bad?”
“My parents are, like, Olympic-level taarofers.”
“Oh no,” I agreed.
Landon looked between us. Despite my best attempts to explain taarof—the complex set of Social Cues that governed all interpersonal relations between Iranians—he had yet to grasp it fully.
“Wish me luck.” Javaneh squeezed my arm and hurried out to stop her parents from taking over the entire memorial.
Landon held my hands and looked me up and down.
“You got rid of your nails,” he said.
Grandma helped me take off the polish. Turquoise nails felt too happy for a memorial.
Too gay.
I would never get to tell Babou I was gay.
I hated my own cowardice.
“Didn’t seem like the right occasion.”
“You still look nice.” He played with a few locks of hair that had fallen over my forehead. “Are you doing okay? Really?”
“I’m okay.”
Landon fussed with my shoulder seams.
And I had this feeling, like I was annoyed with him for some reason.
Dr. Howell said it was normal to feel things—ugly things—when I was processing grief.
I tried not to let it show.
“You ready to head out there?”
I took a deep breath.
“Yeah.”