Sons and Other Flammable Objects

by Porochista Khakpour

  But no wife and no work, and still he could not sleep. Somehow in recent years he had developed peculiar discomforts with the very ritual of sleep. First of all, for the first time in his life, when he was actually sleeping, he was having nightmares routinely. Since Xerxes had moved out—he chose to blame it on his son’s departure, another in the long list of Xerxes’s crimes—he had had bad dreams every night, vivid ones, pure horror, that he always remembered. It was possible that he had had bad dreams before, but just didn’t remember them. After all, he remembered being in his thirties and at an evening party in Tehran, where everyone, drunk as hell, was recounting dreams, and he realized he was silent with nothing to share because he had never remembered a single dream. When he finally confessed this to the rest of the guests, everyone laughed. Oh, c’mon, yes, you do! they insisted. Not a single one, he swore. Oh, please, certainly you do, Darius, in your childhood! He shouted back finally, My childhood is blank white, dead black, no dreams! and that shut them up. Sometimes he was sure people just made up their dreams for conversation’s sake, especially at parties when there was nothing to say but something fantastic and wild and indisputable that would elicit a safe response: laughter, nodding, oohing, ahhing, life-affirming sour nothings.

  That, sadly, was then. Add America to the equation and, like a live-in visitor who claims he’ll crash for a night and stays forever, in came the dreams! Then add Xerxes, age eighteen, seeking out the farthest point from his family, the East Coast, and in came the nightmares—and always, always the worst sort. Whereas those guests had recounted their subconscious yarns as involving animals and abstract images and colors and foods, his dreams felt deadly realistic. They were real in that Darius—starring always as his very real self—was always involved in something fairly normal, enacted in a feasible manner, ending with a horrific outcome that was entirely possible in real life. No goblins, no demons, no hellfire. It was simpler than that. He was always in some highly authentic danger or, worse, helpless to assist someone in the face of danger. Eden Gardens was there, his wife, Xerxes, and …

  There was a young girl, who came and went, the object of the bad dreams’ worst crimes. In his dream life, there she was, a female that he assumed was the daughter he had never had—Xerxes’s phantom younger sister perhaps, a nonbeing never contemplated by Darius or his wife because, especially in a life postexile, who could go through that again, put another being through that, even more so when this child’s—a foreigner’s—future would be even more unknowable to them than their own. But apparently they were nobler people in his dream life—they had bothered to have a second child. And indeed it had fucked up their lives, because this little girl was always in danger. She left nightmare material in every corner of Darius’s mind that she roamed. She was a skipping little thing, often in a sundress in what Darius regarded as suitable girl colors (pink, red, orange, lavender, white), head adorned with what he envisioned as the classical Persian ringlets, although sometimes they’d rebel, haloing wildly around her face and down her shoulders, framing her golden skin, highlighting her bright brown eyes. She’d talk excitedly with her hands, constantly laughing, never pausing, nimbly dashing with those thin fragile limbs, galloping and skipping and acting out, being alive as if it were an art rather than just a given. She was something. Until some abstract nightmare villain would strike and suddenly there she was on a deathbed, in tears, skin gray and eyes foggy, sighing her last breaths—or in a dark room tied up, crying for parents who would always arrive too late—or in the car of a sinister silhouetted man who had offered her poisonous candy, offering her his lap—or in a disaster, a fire, an earthquake, in which she’d be the sole victim when the doorway collapsed—her screams, her final cry, the last thing for a father’s ears until he’d snap himself awake and, like the movies, wake up forced upright, drenched in a cold sweat, asking a silent night what the hell he did to deserve that. Oh, his imaginary daughter and her many imaginary deaths. A perfect girl—and that was the problem exactly, because nothing in the world was more in danger than perfection.

  His son was thankfully, painfully, imperfect and as he got older the imperfections became more cemented. Darius was grateful for the grim reality of his son.

  He could imagine what she would be like if he was visiting her, in her first home. She definitely wouldn’t be living in a place like Xerxes’s but in a reasonably priced, say, $600-a-month apartment, with real windows and a real view—of Southern California, of course—and recently vacuumed carpeting, a teapot, vegetables, gratitude, and enthusiasm. Thank you, Father, she would say, in Farsi even, for everything that you instilled in me, for providing a good example, for giving me ample love, which has now translated into me living a happy normal adult life in a home that I selected with your approval in mind, and thank you for everything, thank you most of all for having created me, even after what you went through with my brother, thank you for putting up with the bitching—oh, this girl wouldn’t even say “bitching,” she’d consider that vulgar—and the odd hours, and Mother’s cravings and her fits, and the expense, because of course in conceiving me, it was a choice, and for you having made that decision I will live every moment of my life in tribute to my gratitude. He would laugh and say, Oh c’mon, you didn’t need to say that. She would say, Oh yes, I wanted to say that. But I don’t mean to annoy you with my effusions, so forgive me. He would chuckle, plant a kiss on her head, and at her suggestion they’d take a long walk through the city, laughing at all the lonely, lost, loveless families, and all the while he’d be joking, Oh, Shireen, sometimes I just want to slap some bad sense into you! Like, be bad, you good good girl!

  Shireen. He imagined that would be her name. “Shireen”: sweetness. Even her name would contribute to the joke.

  He was still thinking about that other road not taken, the daughter he never had but often lost, when the son he did have stumbled in an hour and a half later, looking flustered in a way his father had never seen before.

  “I got the paper,” his son muttered, tossing a section onto the floor.

  “I see.”

  “What have you been up to?” his sole offspring had the nerve to ask.

  “Sleep.”

  “You sleep a lot, huh, suddenly.”

  “As much as I can. It’s my one freedom, Xerxes.”

  “I’m an insomniac,” his son said, grinning wildly.

  “I’m not surprised. Maybe if you ate better.”

  “Right,” Xerxes laughed, sitting on the floor. He was suddenly more drunk than he thought. He had alternated Scotch with vodka gimlets just for the hell of it, and here he was very much on the border of that very hell of it.

  “I am,” Xerxes declared, and after the slightest pause, exclaimed, “great!”

  He was focused on great! great! great! when his father killed the happy buzz: “What?!”

  “Didn’t you ask how I was, Dad?”

  “No, no, I did not.” His father’s voice was like a chain saw cutting through the inconsequential.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes.

  His father wondered whether he should again say that his son looked sick, even though for once there was color in his cheeks. He looked messy but invigorated, wind-whipped, maybe even happy.

  “Dad,” Xerxes said suddenly, “maybe we should get out of here. It’s nice out, cold but tolerable, pretty, even. It’s Christmastime! Maybe we can take a walk through the city for a little bit?”

  He was amazed—his son had channeled Shireen. He was for a second moved by his son. The outdoors had done him good and now here he was wanting to be with his father, wanting to share an evening with his father. There was nothing he wanted more at that minute.

  But he strained the sentiment through their most commonly used communication contraption, the Opposite Day translation apparatus. “I don’t really want to,” Darius said, measuring out his response, “but I will if we must, if you are insisting.”

  “Afraid so,” sighed his son, understanding a
nd thus reciprocating by sucking the buzzed joy out of his voice. He found them almost endearing, those moments when the old illogic still applied.

  New York: dry and icy when not wet and slushy, and steel blue when not dead gray—those were Darius Adam’s first impressions of the city. The holiday element just made everything look glary, blurred, hasty. Scattered baubles of Christmas lights here and there arranged to scream their usual nonsense mantras, fat old men in red suits carrying giant bags full of padding, flying plastic deer with neon-red rubber noses, overfrosted dancing cookies and candy canes. The usual American nonsense, his father thought. He had lived well over twenty American-nonsense-Christmases and every year when it came, he’d realize it all over again: this country is absolute glorious bullshit.

  Xerxes insisted they stop at a nut vendor, something he’d never done. “It’s a very New York thing, they say,” he said. Admittedly the hot cashews, coconuts, and peanuts raised a ridiculously good smell over the usual city stink, but Darius wasn’t sure he trusted the whole operation. Who were these dark-skinned men with their steaming nut carts, with scarves wrapped tight around half their faces, with their Yankees caps, questionably clean fingers, and wretched accents?

  But he was starving and knew he could not count on his son’s apartment for sustenance. Xerxes ordered for them.

  “Thank you,” Darius said staring bleakly at his $1.75 worth of greasy hot nuts. He looked at the nut vendor for a good minute, just standing there, and finally asked, “Where are you from?”

  Xerxes tried to suppress an eye roll—of course his father would ask that—he had already asked three cabbies (one Bangladeshi, one Tunisian, one Israeli—his father claimed all three were lying). Basically any man who was ethnic-looking to him, possibly Persian-looking, with a strong accent and a service job—which required he be polite and appease Darius’s “curiosity”—was a target.

  “I am from New York,” the man gruffly answered back.

  “New York? Really? No, I mean where are you really from?”

  “Okay, New Jersey.”

  That was that. It was the second time during his trip that he had gotten an uncooperative answer. The first time was on the plane ride over when he had suddenly turned to the olive-skinned woman sitting next to him—attractive, his age, very likely Middle Eastern, probably a Persian Jew with her sternly made-up face, corporate blazer, and hard-hitting gold jewelry—and said, Hello, my name is Dareeoosh. Daree-oosh Odd-damn. May I ask where you are from?

  I am from the United States of America, she had said, like you? It was chilling how she added that. He had no idea what to make of it, so he smiled and was grateful when she pretended to be asleep for the rest of the flight. Maybe you shouldn’t ask that, his son had said when he told him about it.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t ask that,” his son said after they left the nut vendor.

  Darius grunted. New York. Hidden identities everywhere. Of course. It was as he expected and more, clichés coming alive at every step. Cabs pushing and shoving like giant yellow roaches, much in the style of a third world country, much in the style of his country actually, lawless and rowdy and efficient. The people and their attitudes, everyone constantly running into him and then insulting him, stepping on his feet, pressing up against him on the subway, asking him questions like what time is it but never waiting long enough for an answer. The bagels, hot nuts, black coffee, fast food, faster food, food on the go, whatever could be eaten while speed-walking. It was uncivil. And now throw the Christmas lights into the occasion—it was blinding. He could barely see the city, much less gather the resolve to hate it properly.

  His father paused on Ninth Street; it was decorated with white-lit doves carrying banners that said “Peace.” He squinted his eyes.

  “Nice,” said Xerxes.

  “Strange,” his father finally said.

  Xerxes again asked, “Dad, the other day I asked about the whole bird thing. Remember?”

  That was his son. Deathly stubborn. He turned so he could look his younger double square in the face, employing every intimidating facial muscle he could enlist.

  “Xerxes,” he said, “I remember.” He had no idea how his son even knew. It was one of the loose ends, one of the unfinished complicated parts of his past that he couldn’t resolve, another enigma in his own world that could never rematerialize now, since they had lost their Iranian roots, something that would require not only a boat or a plane, but a time machine, and maybe an old brain, maybe subtitles for himself suddenly, to explain how the hell, how truly in the hell, he and his childhood and that old country could have wreaked such havoc.

  We all have a topic that we avoid—the one that might keep us up at night should it pop up in our heads, the one we have spent a lifetime struggling to block, Darius Adam would write it himself just like that, if he could.

  “So, yeah, the birds, Dad, the birds,” Xerxes was saying, like a windup doll. “What was it about the birds. …”

  It was no good—his son was making him lose control. If anyone could make him take that leap into the bad zone, it was Xerxes. He had, after all, rehearsed it many times in his head, he in tears, often hysterical and bowing into the tiny hands of Shireen, who worshipped birds, who wished on stars, who didn’t understand her father’s hardness, his fears, his dark old ways … he’d be on his knees apologizing to her, Sweet sweet Shireen, this is something that makes a man unfit for kids, his own past kidhood and how he spent it … Shireen, he might say, at least I know what my hell will be like. She would be in tears, too, and beg him for the full story, and he would say it in a whisper, not his, but some ethereal voice-over which would somehow soften the blow, perhaps even make the bad parts imperceptible, ultrasonic, subliminal, for the ears of his young sweet Sweetness—and now suddenly for his older harder Xerxes, though in a more guided voice that came closer, was more willing to be grounded, and yet more likely to crash down to earth, he spoke:

  Here you go, you asked for it … so. Back when we were kids, back in the old country, we boys had some games. I was barely a teenager when I first remember participating, but a lot of us boys did it, from really young through high school. It was a neighborhood game and as far as I know, it never left our neighborhood.

  And it will not leave this conversation.

  It was more or less a game we kept secret from the adults but maybe they knew and maybe we even learned it from one of them. I don’t remember. I don’t even remember how long I participated. I really just remember this one summer, the summer when your grandfather died—I played it a lot then. It’s funny, I’m saying “playing.” There wasn’t a lot of play involved.

  In the old country, we had doves. For all I know, this could have happened in every neighborhood throughout time—except I’d say only we had the doves. I know here they’re rare or seen like some big deal, but in the old country they were nothing, nothing more than white pigeons. They were everywhere. I’m telling you now, it was no big deal. We’d meet in this courtyard, late at night, in the summer. We’d capture doves, one by one. We’d shove them under our shirts sometimes—we thought this was hiding them, or else a good way to capture them, I don’t remember exactly why. I did it because the others did it. Anyway, we’d be giggling with the tickles because of their feathers, all flapping like crazy. We’d get pecked and scratched in the belly. These doves might be doves of peace to you, but they were not so innocent. They could fend for themselves—they could fly, damn it—and they could hurt us, too.

  Somebody would bring the cage, and somebody, the kerosene. Bear with me here. One kid was in charge of the kerosene. Sometimes the kid had gloves and sometimes, would you believe, he didn’t. But that kid—he’d be older usually, a hard kid, a pro or something (but not harder than the guy I’ll tell you about next)—he’d go around and slap the doves with a little oil. You didn’t want too much, because with this type of thing you wanted it to last. There would usually be about a half dozen of us, boys and birds. The birds wouldn’t do mu
ch more than flap a little. Sometimes it seemed like they liked it, the kerosene feel, like it was a lotion of some sort, soothing or something. I don’t really remember though. Maybe they flapped more, maybe they knew, maybe they were just crazy from the smell. The smell wasn’t great. You kids don’t even know what kerosene smells like. Anyway, I can’t remember how much time would go by because we were too excited at that point, in the dark courtyard. There were no lamps. We were the ones with the lights. We thought, I suppose, that we had no choice. We had to make light. In our thinking—just thinking, different than knowing, different even than believing—out of death came hope.

  You can trust that sentence as much as you can trust any sentence.

  Anyway, the hardest boy of all, not necessarily the oldest, but the boy who’d done it enough, would be in charge of what came next. He’d take the bird, pop open the cage, lift it in the air, take a lighter from his pocket, say Ready? This might be the point where the coward of the bunch—and he’d be ridiculed for this forever (it was never me!)—this kid, often one of the younger ones but not the newest, though definitely one who’d seen it before and didn’t want to see it again—this kid would go running out and away. (We’d find him later and threaten him and he’d never say a word and would you believe, sometimes he’d even join again the next year.) So we’d repeat, Ready! And that hardest boy would light the flame underneath the bird and the fire would catch—and because we’d put just the right amount of kerosene, not too much, it would spread with a certain slowness. You can imagine. You can imagine what was happening to the bird. The boy would open the cage door and the thing would go flying, madly, wildly, desperately, like all hell, like a star, a big big wow, off off off away into the distance. They were our lights. Sometimes if you were lucky you’d see the ball of fire go go go and then come down, still in flames—we called those shooting stars. It was all about stars, you see, hope burning bright and gone, a promise we made and killed. For once, it was in our very hands. That was it. Would you believe—