When I was a kid in Isfahan, I would tell my mother that someday, I would build her a castle at the top of Mount Sofeh. I could see it from my window. A castle in the sky. I didn’t know that life would make a liar out of me. I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t forget. I just never managed it. I wrote you a book instead. I know it isn’t even close.
It seems like only yesterday that I believed
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I would shine.
—Billy Collins (approximately), “On Turning Ten”
The people of the world say that Khosrou is an idol worshipper
Maybe so, maybe so
But he does not need the world
And he does not need the people
—Amir Khosrou
I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
ALL PERSIANS ARE LIARS and lying is a sin.
That’s what the kids in Mrs. Miller’s class think, but I’m the only Persian they’ve ever met, so I don’t know where they got that idea.
My mom says it’s true, but only because everyone has sinned and needs God to save them. My dad says it isn’t. Persians aren’t liars. They’re poets, which is worse.
Poets don’t even know when they’re lying. They’re just trying to remember their dreams. They’re trying to remember six thousand years of history and all the versions of all the stories ever told.
In one version, maybe I’m not the refugee kid in the back of Mrs. Miller’s class. I’m a prince in disguise.
If you catch me, I will say what they say in the 1,001 Nights. “Let me go, and I will tell you a tale passing strange.”
That’s how they all begin.
With a promise. If you listen, I’ll tell you a story. We can know and be known to each other, and then we’re not enemies anymore.
I’m not making this up. This is a rule that even genies follow.
In the 1,001 Nights, Scheherazade—the rememberer of all the world’s dreams—told stories every night to the king, so he would spare her life.
But in here, it’s just me, counting my own memories.
And you, reader, whoever you are. You’re the king.
I’m not sucking up, by the way. The king was evil and made a bloody massacre of a thousand lives before he got to Scheherazade.
It’s a responsibility to be the king.
You’ve got my whole life in your hands.
And I’m just warning you that if I’m going to be honest, I have to begin the story with my Baba Haji, even if the blood might shock you.
But don’t worry, dear reader and Mrs. Miller.
Of all the tales of marvel that I could tell you, none surpass in wonder and coolness the one I am about to tell.
* * *
COUNTING THE MEMORIES.
Baba Haji kills the bull.
* * *
My very first memory is blood, slopping from the throat of a terrified bull, and my grandfather—red-handed—reaching for my face. I would have been three at this time.
Maybe I have memories before that. I don’t know.
If I did, they’d be flashes of tile patterns, or something.
I can make it up, if you want.
But really, it was the blood. And the bull braying. And the gurgling sound.
People ask, “Really? Really was it blood?”
They ask because they don’t believe me.
They don’t believe because I’m some poor refugee kid who smells like pickles and garlic, and has lice, and I’m probably making up stories to feel important.
I don’t know what the American grown-ups have for memories, but they can’t be as beautiful as mine.
So they laugh. They don’t touch me. But they roll their eyes. “Okay,” they say.
“It is,” I say. “It’s one of two memories I have of my Baba Haji.” I promise. I haven’t been careless with it. My heart clenches it like a fist.
Like gripping a ball bearing as hard as you can. The fingers dig into the palm and you don’t even know if it’s still in there. The knuckles are white and you’re afraid it fell out and you didn’t even notice. You’re just clenching nothing until your nails cut into your palm and you bleed.
The memory is small. Barely a few pictures. His face is one still image.
* * *
IT BEGINS IN A big gold car. It isn’t real gold, just painted the color. It was so big the seats were two couches on wheels.
The car drives on a dirt road through a desert in the middle of Iran. Specifically, on the road to Ardestan.
That doesn’t mean anything to you, probably, if you even bothered to pronounce it. I could have said, “on the road to skip-this-word-you’re-a-dumdum-stan,” and it’d be the same. It was a desert in a faraway land.
You want a map?
Here’s a map.
When I say the words, people think it may as well be Mars. Or Middle Earth. I could say we drove a chariot pulled by camels and they’d believe me.
But it was a Chevrolet. And we were normal back then.
I wore sneakers with Velcro and had a dad.
He had a bushy red mustache and could make weird faces to be funny. He would blow out his cheeks and furrow his eyebrows like a super serious chipmunk.
He drove. My mom sat beside him and handed us pieces of pistachio cardamom cake. The road went up and down like an ocean.
On either side was sand that could suck down half the car before we could even get out. Some places, the sand blew over so you couldn’t see any road at all.
My dad drove so fast it was like a boat going up a wave and crashing down the other side. My sister and I would shriek as our butts lifted off the seat. My mom would say, “Akh. Masoud, slow down. You’ll kill your children.”
But this was the road my dad knew by heart, because he was born in Ardestan, and he was going home. He drove hungry for his mom’s stew and yogurt. His dad was my Baba Haji.
This trip happened every weekend for a while. So this part isn’t my first memory. I’m just telling you how it happened every time.
The drive would have happened before I saw Baba Haji slaughter the bull, but I’m not certain. The cake could have been rose and honey. My mom could have said, “Akh, Masoud, not this again.” His mom could have made kebab and yogurt.
But those aren’t differences that make a difference.
The next image is parking outside of the stone walls of my grandfather’s courtyard. I see myself, because this part is not my own memory. It was described to me by my mom. So imagine from up by her head, looking down at me. I’m three years old.
I wore corduroys. I carried my stuffed sheep, Mr. Sheep Sheep, in one hand and a stick in the other. I wanted to be a shepherd. My cheeks were chubby, and people pinched them constantly, so I scowled a lot. I was the serious chipmunk.