We sat there for thirty minutes until the vice principal came and drove us. He gave a speech, but I couldn’t hear it because Brandon Goff wouldn’t let me take the spitballs out.
* * *
I SHOULD INTRODUCE MYSELF.
Name: Khosrou Nayeri
Age: 12
Hair color: I dunno, black.
Favorite movie:
You know what? I’m not going to introduce myself. You will know me by my voice. In your mind, we are sitting together. You’ve given me your eyes. I could show you a hill, with patches of grass. Or a peanut butter sandwich. I could help you hear the bells on the neck of a sheep. Ting ting ting.
In here, you host me. I am your guest and you probably think of me like you think of yourself—human. We’re so close. You can maybe hear my heart beating, scared. I have one, just like yours. I’m scared all the time.
If you saw Khosrou Nayeri on a class sheet, it wouldn’t even look like a name to you.
Male or female.
Elvish or Klingon.
You couldn’t even say it. It has that kh, which is a thrashing sound, like you’re trying to hawk up a loogie. It’s just spit in your mouth. The sound a warthog makes. And the r after the s, that’s one you have to roll on your tongue, like a cat’s purr.
But I’m no beast.
I’ll be a good guest and pay for your hospitality with tales of adventure. You can call me Daniel if you want. The other name? Don’t bother with it.
Khosrou. You wouldn’t like it.
It was a king’s name, actually.
Khosrou the First was born in Ardestan—my Baba Haji’s village—fifteen hundred years ago. He defeated the Romans at Antioch and when they begged for peace, he gave it to them. The legend goes that one winter he was tired of the cold rain, and so he commanded his artists to create a new season.
The shah of shahs wanted spring.
And so the great craftsmen of the day made a giant rug 150 feet long, woven with gold and silk and gems. The soil was made of gold, the rivers made of crystals. The petals of flowers were rubies, sapphires, and amethyst. The leaves were emeralds. The spring carpet of Khosrou defied the weather of the world.
It lay at his feet.
About a thousand years before Europe discovered toothpaste, Khosrou stepped onto a magic carpet that shined brighter than a meadow in May.
That’s the legend.
Khosrou. That name ain’t for your mouth.
But the hero’s always less than his legend.
Khosrou’s just a twelve-year-old kid with a big butt.
You can call him Daniel.
When you think about it, the king could stand on the jewel-encrusted carpet—the kaleidoscopic radiance of human greatness—and yet, if he stuck his head out a window, it’d still be raining.
* * *
YOU MIGHT BE THINKING, “What kind of twelve-year-old talks like that?”
And I would say, “The kind of twelve-year-old that speaks three languages.”
All my life, people have told me I speak weird. In Iran, my Farsi was baby Farsi (because I was basically a baby) so I made up my own language.
My mom said it was brilliant so my sister and cousins tried to prove I was faking. They asked me the word for a bunch of things like “ladder” and “chicken” and they wrote them down. Then two days later, they asked me again, and guess what? I said the same words because my new language wasn’t some punk baby babble.
Also, maybe because it’s not that hard to remember fifty words somebody asked you two days ago.
* * *
The only words I still remember from that language are “finigonzon” (beautiful girl) and “finigonz” (beautiful boy).
That is not one of my languages anymore.
In Italy I spoke gibberish Italian because we lived in a refugee camp with Roma and Kurds. The people didn’t want us there, so if you said, “Buena sera,” they’d say, “Good evening,” back because they didn’t want us to stay. They didn’t even want us to learn Italian.
In Oklahoma I spoke like a kid who learned English from a book. When I pronounced the word toilet “twa-lette,” everybody thought I was slow or something. When I used old words like parlor instead of living room, they thought I was trying to act superior.
It’s been three years and my English is A+ now.
It’s easy to tawk lahk one them Okies. Just gotta loosen yer jaw a bit ’n’ never let yer teeth touch. Mostly, it’s slow and comfortable, imaginin’ you own a house and it has a porch and yer sittin’ on it.
Or you can watch the black people on TV and talkin’ like them ain’t hard. If you’re around ’em, just nod and go, “wut up.” No question mark. (Nobody in America likes grammar Nazis. Not even the neo-Nazis who live in Owasso, Oklahoma.)
Then be cool.
And don’t talk too much, and they’ll be “chill.”
If it comes up, you can tell them a joke about the weather or yo’ mama. I wrote a bunch of these down in my notebook when I heard them at recess. So I could always refer back to that if we’re about to be friends.
One rule in Oklahoma is that if a grownie talks to you, speak like an Okie. If a finigonzon talks to you, be “chill.”
So I speak well now. And I’ve memorized tons of words.
But if you want the kid version of the story, here goes:
Golly gee, hiya! I’m just a dumb kid who likes ice cream. I was born in Iran—happy face! To a family so wealthy that my grandpa’s grandpa was called a king in the history books. There was murder and intrigue and Ferris wheels in the desert, and a house full of swans, a sapphire blue river, and a chest full of gold doubloons—we’ll get to all that.
Then my mom got caught helping the underground church and got a fatwa on her head, which means the government wanted her dead—“oh-no” face!
We had to sneak out of the country, but my daddy stayed behind—disappointed face, maybe not-even-all-that-surprised face.
We were guests of the prince of Abu Dhabi for three hours, then homeless. There I cut my head open and they sewed it back together. And then we went to a refugee camp in Italy where I became a great thief, until we got asylum in Oklahoma, where we try to act normal—raised-eyebrow face like you don’t believe it.
I think I skipped the part where my grandmother (mom’s mom this time) tried to assassinate her husband, failed, and was exiled instead. And most of the blood. And the secret police. And the torture.
Sigh face.
Listen.
The quick version of this story is useless. Let’s agree to have a complicated conversation. If you give me your attention—I know it’s valuable—I promise I won’t waste it with some “poor me” tale of immigrant woe.
I don’t want your pity.
If we can just rise to the challenge of communication—here in the parlor of your mind—we can maybe reach across time and space and every ordinary thing to see so deep into the heart of each other that you might agree that I am like you.
I am ugly and I speak funny. I am poor. My clothes are used and my food smells bad. I pick my nose. I don’t know the jokes and stories you like, or the rules to the games. I don’t know what anybody wants from me.
But like you, I was made carefully, by a God who loved what He saw.