A Good Country

by Laleh Khadivi

  The party thinned out and a little light came through the eastern part of the sky. The girls had disappeared long ago but Rez didn’t mind. They found two deck chairs and some fruit and Arash told him the story of Malcolm.

  I met him at a coding conference for high schoolers. He could walk then. He was a computer geek who lived in the hood. And then he was a bystander.

  Rez didn’t say anything.

  First I bought weed from him because I didn’t have anywhere else to get it. Then I started to score from him because I knew it helped him out. He’s a nice guy. Why shouldn’t we be friends? Love thy brother. It is in all the old books.

  Yeah. Love thy brother.

  Rez said the words and looked at Arash and wondered if he loved him. He sat with the question for a moment and waited to feel an answer. Arash was a good guy. He made Rez feel good, better about himself, about the life around him, about the world he knew and the world he didn’t know. Rez liked to be with him, to watch him move from place to place in a single mood, with a single perspective. Maybe not love exactly but he felt something for Arash, something bright, open, possible.

  The music had long stopped and the still water of the pool made the quiet dawn even more so.

  Time to go.

  Let’s do it.

  They walked around the quiet house and looked for someone to thank but found only sleeping people, in tangles and alone, passed out on couches and beds and floors. Arash put a few nuggets of weed in the key bowl and they walked the hilly streets down back to the car. Rez leaned the passenger seat back and Arash tuned the radio to the BBC. Rez pressed his eyes closed in mock agony.

  Dude … really … what are you? Someone’s dad?

  It helps me stay awake. You want me to stay awake, don’t you?

  Rez leaned his head against his shoulder and let the noise of the voices go in and out of his ears … and today, further attacks by a group known as the Islamic State or ISIS or ISIL. Forty-seven killed in Aleppo after serious fighting with Assad-backed militants. In a YouTube video the group has announced their intentions to take over Syria and Iraq in pieces as part of a larger effort to establish a fundamentalist Islamic state in the region. Their trucks, full with devoted jihadis, pulled into Aleppo as the first front, followed by weapons and explosive specialists …

  12

  Summer passed fast and then it was August and they were almost seniors. They filled the last days as best they could, pool parties and backyard BBQs and other activities without consequence. Rez learned to relax in front of mothers and fathers, to listen sincerely to the broken English of old aunts as they talked about back home this and now we are here that. He said sincere hellos and good-byes and thank yous and could do it while stoned. He watched Arash spot people for hotel rooms on their trip to Palm Springs and pay for rounds of golf at the country club in Huntington, where they were the only dark-haired people on the green besides the gardeners. His generosity came and came and came. Paying for a cab home for Omid if he got too trashed. Ordering pizzas when everyone was high and desperate. He listened as Arash told his mother everything—skirt around the drugs and girls, but only just—and Ms. Dobani always winked and smiled knowingly at her son before kissing his head and saying, As long as your grades are good, go, have fun. We didn’t move here for you to spend your days in a box.

  Rez tried it. He stopped sleeping in and woke up early to meet his mother in the kitchen and talk to her as she made breakfast. He forced himself over the fear and told her what club he went to the previous night and the fake ID he used and the half-naked girls dancing on platforms. She stayed quiet but stayed open and he went on and talked about Arash and how none of them had girlfriends yet and he didn’t have one but wanted to and after a few weeks she began to tell her own stories of afternoons smoking apple tobacco in the cafés in the north of Tehran and long evenings driving in cars with her sisters and boys from their high school class. Rez could barely believe she’d ever been a teenager. Within the month they were talking, back and forth, story to story, every morning as she set out the breakfast and his father joined them and they ate together in one long silence.

  By the time school started he was nearly a completely different Rez. The only thing that came back to him from the old life was the waves. He thought about surfing every time he drove on Highway 1, every time he stared at the flat cool vista of the sea from a far hilltop, from the balconies of parties held at houses built into cliffs along the coast. When it got really bad, he texted Matthews and they figured out where the swell was best and went out in the water and waited for waves and smoked and talked and rode.

  After one easy session at Thalia Street, he dug around in his bag for something to put on his head and saw the hat he’d borrowed from Arash the night before and slipped it over his sand-crusted hair and waited. It had the words SAND NIGGER arced across the top of it. Matthews stared at him.

  Really?

  Sure. Why not?

  First the white boys and now immigrants? I had no idea you were such a social butterfly.

  It’s sand niggers for me. All day long.

  In tenth grade someone had spray-painted the words on Arash’s car. Rumor was it was Jeddidah Paxton, whose uncle was just back from two tours in Iraq with PTSD. Bright orange spray paint and big soft capital letters. SAND NIGGER. The school couldn’t find anyone to punish so they held an assembly about discrimination, which made no difference because Arash, smart about everything, ordered a series of flat-brimmed baseball caps with an image of a camel on the front, and SAND NIGGER written above it in the same font as the Camel cigarettes, except this camel boldly smoked something else. For a while the hats were a hot commodity and everyone in the school, regardless of where they came from, wanted one.

  Matthews’s face stayed blank and Rez looked back and challenged his stare.

  What?

  Nothing.

  13

  Spring 2013

  The bombs went off before noon on a Monday and by lunchtime parents swarmed the campus with quick steps and tight eyes. Everyone was confused. There had been explosions before, bombings, public massacres—the Paris subway. Madrid subway. London subway, a kindergarten in Connecticut, a military base in Houston—but they had never canceled school. Except for the first time, in first grade, when the planes crashed the Towers and Rez helped his dad stick American-flag bumper stickers on all their cars.

  Rez and Arash went to the student parking lot and sat in the low leather seats of Arash’s car and tried to come up with ways to spend their afternoon. Their parents checked in with them and they said everything was fine and that they were going be at the other’s house, studying, when they knew they were going to just fuck off, play video games at Neema’s pool house or go hang out with the girls at the mall. They considered going to Malick’s to work out on his fancy exercise equipment or drive up the coast in Omid’s new Land Cruiser, just to be in the car on Highway 1, going slow, seeing, being seen. If they had the time, they would drive all the way up to Huntington to hang out with Arash’s older cousin Abbas, who made it a point of reminding them Dennis Rodman was his next-door neighbor.

  Arash pulled his bag of weed out from under his seat, packed a pipe, and passed it to Rez.

  In-N-Out?

  Nah.

  Hassan’s house?

  Nope. He’s probably still in class. Unless UCI is closed too.

  I don’t know, man, where do you want to go?

  Rez looked up at the clear sky, saw a little wind blow through the palms and oaks, and thought of waves.

  How about the cove? I could bring a few boards, call Matthews. Teach you …

  Arash inhaled and exhaled and said nothing. Rez had mentioned the cove once or twice before and this was always Arash’s reaction. Today, as Rez said it and thought about it and knew the apostles were probably already there—no one wasted a half day like this when there was surf—it came to him why Arash never agreed, never wanted to go and check out the waves. Turf. Turf gav
e Rez the strange fear in his gut as they drove around Compton, made Matthews say Be careful, kept the Mexicans hanging out with the Mexicans and the Vietnamese with the Vietnamese and the Indian kids with the other Indian kids. It was like that in all the grades at all the schools, all over the malls and probably in the brick colleges and glass offices and cookie-cutter homes. All on their own turf. With their own clans. Just like in some stupid fifties movie. Turf. Where some people can go and others cannot. Why was that? What for? Rez understood it in the water, in the way the surfers raced new guys off the waves so they could have the best for themselves, to secure your own spot, and the chance at glory. It meant something, Rez knew, but he was getting stoned now and Drake was coming into Rez’s head heavy with bass and suggestions of hookups and put-downs, and he could not think any further, so he let go the tangle of thoughts and stared out the window as parents of middle schoolers and freshmen walked across the lacrosse field, arms around the tiny shoulders and enormous backpacks and it all looked so weird to him, cars and parents and kids leaving at this time of day, the sun directly overhead, no shadows for anyone.

  A hand smacked the window of the car and Rez and Arash jolted. Knuckles rapped the glass. Peter Matthews stood outside, his face red, tap tap tap. Rez rolled the window down.

  Dude, what’s your—

  It was Boston, the bombing. Kelly’s brother was running it, and now he is at the hospital and the police called his mother to say his legs are fucked-up and he might die. The news says it looks like a terrorist attack. Al Qaeda or Taliban or something, they don’t know yet and Kelly is freaking out and shouting about fucking up the first sand nigger he can find … He said you, Rez, you and Arash better watch out, that’s what he said … A lot of people might be dead, the news said it was bad, like really bad, like body parts in the street bad … Kelly keeps saying his brother wouldn’t even be in fucking Boston if Arash hadn’t taken the test that got him into MIT and all cheaters should go to hell and … and …

  Ok. Ok. Ok. Dude. Ok.

  You should go. Get off campus …

  Ok. Chill out. We’re going.

  Matthews was still talking, his face puffy with excited eyes, as Rez rolled up his window. In less than a minute they were off campus and up the coast to Newport. They didn’t listen to music or talk until Arash finally pulled into an empty movie-theater parking lot because his hands and knees were shaking too much to drive. They looked out separate windows.

  This is not good. Not good at all.

  Rez sat quietly. His friend’s fear was new to him and he felt himself grow nervous—about what, he could not say.

  14

  The brothers left bombs, pressure cookers rigged with nails and screws, on the sidewalk along the race route. Brothers from Chechnya. Their parents arrived in Boston when the younger one was only a few years old. A bad time to move children already traumatized by war, the expert psychologist explained to the news anchor. It is common to find radicalization among adolescents and young adults who experience traumatic dislocations in childhood, some abrupt move across continents or cultures that takes the child from a known environment, often multigenerational and multinurturing to an unknown environment where they must rely solely on the nuclear family, with both mother and father suffering their own transitional difficulties …

  Three days after the bombing they were tired of going to the pool, to the mall, to the library but they didn’t want to go back to school. Arash called Javad who said cool and gave them the key code and told his brother to relax, said he remembered Paul and was sad to hear it. He told them not to worry, the anti-Muslim thing would die out. No one knew where Javad lived and they should chill and make some food or go swimming in the roof pool.

  Did you tell him about the test? That you took the SAT for Paul?

  He knows.

  Arash parked seven blocks away from the house and he and Rez walked down one street after another until they were on the thin street that paralleled the beach and Arash punched in the code and a light flashed green and then they were in a big room with black marble floors and the three glass walls that separated them from the sea.

  They left their smokes back in the car and out of boredom Rez searched the fridge for a beer and the freezer for some vodka. Arash shook his head.

  He doesn’t drink. He’s practicing.

  The flatscreen went on and on and Rez, exhausted by the roll of images, turned away and looked around at the apartment. It was unbelievably clean. All in good taste—the modern furniture, the marble floors, the framed black-and-white photos of L.A. street scenes: taco trucks, dried-up concrete riverbeds, graffiti. Nothing with a human face in it. Rez tried to remember something about Javad, Arash’s oldest brother, twenty-eight, a success by anyone’s measurements. Stanford graduate. Invented something to do with SIM cards. Sold his first company at twenty-three for an amount unfathomable to all parents, immigrant and white alike. The last time Rez saw him was when he spoke at their homecoming assembly in tenth grade. He was tall, like Arash, with the same narrow Syrian face and the same symmetrical features that made them look like the icons Rez had learned about in school. Javad’s hair and eyes were lighter, brown and green, like Arash’s mom’s, and he wore the relaxed clothes of a man who didn’t have to wear suits. At the assembly he had talked about generosity. About his work with orphanages in Afghanistan and Syria and how at the end of the day money could only do so much, at the end of the day you had to give your heart as well. Rez remembered now: vintage Nikes with nice pants and a chill shirt. Dressed up but not ass kisser. He reminded Rez of Kelly Slater, the pro surfer Rez saw once, signing boards at a competition in Huntington, who had the same calm attractiveness, an attitude of belonging wherever he stood.

  So they watched TV for one and then two hours and the never-ending news spun accusations and suspicions and eyewitness accounts around and around. At one point Rez heard a noise like a small cough and looked at Arash and saw that he had started to cry.

  Man, it feels like I fucking did it. Like I fucking left those bombs. Like whatever happened to Kelly’s brother is my fault.

  These things happen. You didn’t do anything wrong.

  Then why do I feel like this?

  Rez had nothing in his head, nothing in his mouth. He sat quietly beside his sobbing friend. What could he offer? What could he offer Arash to make him stop hating himself?

  Come on, A, let’s go for a swim.

  I’m good.

  Wanna go back to the car and have a smoke?

  Sure.

  They walked the seven blocks to the car and smoked with the windows down and smelled the salty air and listened to the waves and then went back and punched in the key code a second time and this time they kept the television off and Rez’s phone started ringing with text messages from Kelly telling him Watch the fuck out and Justice will be served and Sand niggers will be forced to go home. Start packing … and then a row of emojis: A knife with blood dripping. A pistol. A rifle. A smiley face with a camouflage helmet. Then there were the rumors, texts from Elissa and Sophia and Matthews with news and ideas and questions. I heard he’s dead. Oh my god. They are having a candlelight vigil at the church on Pico tonight. People are saying someone was after Kelly and that is why the bomb was there then … What is going on? What if he is dead?!? OMG OMG.

  Who’s texting you?

  Arash looked at Rez, his smooth long face all eyes, the eyes all worry.

  No one, just my mom.

  Next to the sliding glass door was a small table with a wooden backgammon board and they played as the tide came in and the sun dropped and the apartment filled with that gold light you only get at the beach. Rez caught the dice, threw the dice, made his moves, and looked around the house warm with light and design and intention and thought about how he wanted to be, after high school, after college, when his life was his own. Once all he wanted was to play soccer, drafted by a team in the Champions League, live the celebrity-athlete life. Then all he wanted w
as to surf, to be left alone on one beautiful beach after another, without attachment to family or future, the waves his only challenge. But no matter how he reached for that self, it did not reach back and he grew tired of craving that which did not crave him. Now he sat in this house and saw another kind of life for himself, one in which he would not have to forgo his parents’ dreams for him, or forgo the sea. He imagined himself made of one part who he was and one part whom he wanted to be. He lost another game of backgammon to Arash and kept his thoughts to himself. The front door opened and Javad walked in. He threw his keys in a bowl, came to stand beside them, and put his hand on his brother’s shoulder. For a moment they all looked out the window at the ocean, and Javad shook his head in what seemed like appreciation.

  Beautiful sunset. Another day passed. Khodarashokr. Praise be to Allah.

  15

  Events. Events in response to other events. Think about it. Nothing since the big bang has happened without a reason. And even the big bang might have come from something, because of something. One thing makes another thing, and then that thing makes the next thing. Look at these kids. These two brothers, still kids. They don’t know themselves yet. They are acting in response, in reaction, passionate reaction to something that set them off, made them commit to violence. They would not be here if the United States had not invaded Iraq in 2003. The United States would not have had the fertile ground for the lie it told about Iraq, weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein, etc., etc., if not for Osama bin Laden and 9/11. Osama bin Laden would not have been able to recruit those men to learn how to fly planes and then crash them into buildings if not for propaganda about the persecution of the global Muslims, Afghanistan after the Russian invasion, Chechnya in the nineties, Bosnian genocides, or any instance of Islam under attack by the West, one culture trying to extinguish another. History is always a story of cause and effect. Those kids—