And then he sees a stiff blind horse and thinks it’s the saddest thing he’s ever seen. But he doesn’t know what to do to help him. He can’t just leave it there in the bloody field. But he doesn’t have a way to help either and he wants to keep going. Suddenly he starts to talk himself into caring less about it. Little by little, to make sure his heart doesn’t break, he makes himself immune to the pain of the horse with its “shut eyes underneath the rusty mane.” Then he says, “He must be wicked to deserve such pain.”
Just like that. It’s the horse’s fault. I don’t believe that, reader. I think Roland is a dumb kid who just wants to forget he ever saw the horse.
My mom usually gives me an egg sandwich to eat, but people hate the smell of egg sandwiches so I eat it in the bathroom.
* * *
The librarian at the Edmond Library is a woman named Helen Brown, and she is the kindest person I have ever met, and would never leave a horse in a field or blame it for anything.
Mrs. Brown gave me my library card. I am allowed to check out thirty-five books and can visit the library every two weeks. That is seventy books a month. In one year, I will read 840 books. I don’t care what they are about, only that they contain English.
Mrs. Miller says this is the only way to learn.
One time, I found a book on Persians in the myth section.
It said:
Akhtamar—The largest of four islands in Lake Van (Turkey). According to folk legend, an Armenian princess lived on the island. Every night she held a lamp so that the boy she loved could swim from the mainland to meet her. One night her father caught her and smashed the lamp. The boy was lost in the lake and drowned. Locals claim to hear his dying words, “Akh, Tamar!” to this day.
* * *
THE LEGEND OF MY sister’s cleverness is a family story that people mention anytime they want to call me mazloom.
Mazloom is a word I can never tell you what it is in English.
It is someone who is cute and pitiful.
Mazloom is a puppy. But not a happy puppy, a kicked puppy.
Mazloom is something you just want to hold and say sorry to. A victim.
When I was four and wanted to cry, I knew they would laugh at me—what grief could a chubby toddler feel?—and I knew I could not run, so I would clench my fists and roll my eyes up to look at the ceiling as if maybe the tears would go back down into my eyes. I would stand in one place and tremble and wish the welling tears would just dry up. But tears are like genies. They will never go back into the bottle.
My sister would say, “Akh, he’s so mazloom! His cheeks, and those little fists.”
In the story they would say, Khosrou was always so mazloom that he had no idea when his sister would trick him. When Masoud would bring home a box of Orich candy bars, he would run and put his portion into the pockets of his clown. She would say, “Khosrou, let’s have a race to see who can eat their candy bar first.”
At this time, Khosrou loved his sister and would agree to anything she proposed.
He would shove the entire candy bar into his mouth. She would say, “You’re so fast. I can’t keep up.”
As soon as he had swallowed the Orich bar, she would reveal hers and nibble it slowly while his mouth watered. “Mmm. This is so good. I’m just going to enjoy it forever.”
Khosrou’s fists would clench and his eyes would roll up to the ceiling.
That’s it.
She was very clever.
* * *
HERE IN OKLAHOMA WE DON’T talk very much.
She hates Ray and wants our dad back.
I don’t know. We just don’t talk. What else is there to say? She is the best student the teachers have ever seen. They can see it in her eyes. They are not begging eyes. They are watchful and hungry. They want something that—for now—school can give. If she gets A+ in everything, and starts a club, and builds an after-school program, and scores perfect on all the state tests, they will have to love her. But she doesn’t understand that people are immune to the happiness of others too, not just their pain. They’re numb to everything. They don’t even see her.
I think she thinks I forgot our dad and accepted Ray or something.
* * *
THE HISTORY OF THE CLOWN’S underpants is a secret history and I will never tell it. But if you think people are stupid and mazloom and all you ever do is take from them, then they eventually learn how to survive you.
They learn to hide away everything they love, where you can’t touch it. And they won’t just hide it someplace easy to find, like a clown’s pockets, or anyplace in this world.
They’ll create a new world, with its own language, and they’ll hide everything there—all the favorite jokes they won’t say around you, all the best books, the spot on the wall that looks like a keyhole, being safe and free and comfortable—all those things, and you won’t even know they exist.
And when you’ve gotten your hands on the one Orich, and you’ve laughed at the badly hidden tears, you won’t even know there was a secret zipper in a bus pillow where the rest of the bars were really hidden. Not some obvious clown. You won’t know because you believed the weak can’t do anything.
But hiding is something to do while you wait to get stronger.
Deep hiding.
Hiding so sneaky that it’s hidden below tears that you think are trying to hide themselves—but they’re actually decoy tears. Not real ones.
Why did I even start talking about desserts?
I don’t remember.
I guess the point of all this is to say I don’t like the cream puffs here in Oklahoma, which they call Twinkies.
* * *
HERE IS A LIST of foods we discovered in America:
Peanut butter.
Marshmallows.
Barbecue sauce. (You can say, “Can I have BBQ?” to a kid’s mom at potlucks and they’ll know what you mean.)
Puppy chow. (Chex cereal covered in melted chocolate and peanut butter and tossed in powdered sugar. They only give it if you win a Valentine friend.)
Corn-chip pie (not a pie). (Chili on top of corn chips with cheese and sour cream (not sour).)
Some mores. (They say it super fast like s’mores.)
Banana puddin. (They don’t say the g. Sometimes they don’t even say the b.)
Here is a list of the foods from Iran that they have never heard of here:
All of it.
All the food.
Jared Rhodes didn’t even know what a date was.
* * *
I HAVE A NEW FATHER here in America. Did I mention this already? It’s called a “stepdad.” His name is Rahim, but he tells Americans to call him Ray. My sister says the only reason Mom married him was to give me a male role model so I’d know how to grow up into a man, and so we wouldn’t be on welfare.
Ray is thin and doesn’t have a beard—the opposite of my dad. My dad drinks alcohol, but Ray quit when he quit smoking (my dad is a chimney). My dad quotes the great Persian poets—Rumi, Hafez, Ferdowsi. Ray only reads the Bible.
Ray cuts his hair kind of like Bruce Lee, because he says Lee is the only martial artist who deserves to be feared. Ray is a third-degree black belt in tae kwon do. I would rather face a villain with a gun than a man with Ray’s 360 back kick. There is no one in Oklahoma as good at fighting as Ray.