Memories are tricky things.
They can fade or fester.
You have to seal them up tight like pickles and keep out impurities like how hurt you feel when you open them. Or they’ll ferment and poison your brain.
* * *
SOMETIMES IN A VILLAGE in Iran, or Edmond, Oklahoma, a dog and a cat will have such a vicious fight that both of them are changed forever. The cat limps where the dog’s teeth got it right in the hind leg. And part of the dog’s nose, cut by the cat’s claw, dries up and stops working.
The cat and dog make some kind of boundary and stick to their territory, so they can pretend they won a kingdom the size of half a town, when really they lost a limb the size of the other half.
This was Hassan and the physician, who would not even share a butcher between them. Hassan would go in the evenings after closing his store, and purchase from the butcher’s wife, while the physician went in the morning to shop from the butcher’s son. Neither asked about the other, even though everyone knew their veiled comments about the villains in town were attacks. If you asked the butcher himself, he’d say, “Don’t worry about that,” because he was the kind of person who hated gossip and just wanted to work. And then he might say, “A man can hold two hearts in the same hand and not let them touch.”
And if you asked him what that meant, he would just tell you he needed to get back to work.
The many-hearted butcher was right, of course. Hassan and the physician’s feud wasn’t good for anyone. And so most of the town ignored it.
Like Mithridates the town became—little by little—immune to the bickering. And so it never solved itself. No one ever said, “Akh, Doktor, please!” or “Akh, Hassan, enough with this madness.” And so the bitterness fermented in its jar in the dark cellars of their minds.
Love and lives are complicated, so I will tell you only two things that happened over the next few years, though you can imagine a thousand little slights between the physician and Hassan.
First, Hassan and Aziz had a baby girl—my grandmother, my mother’s mother—and the only person who didn’t visit was the physician. He left it to the nurses to care for Aziz in her bed.
“If anything had gone wrong,” said Hassan, seething.
“Nothing has gone wrong, Husband. Look at these pudgy arms.”
And second, Hassan began to come home in the evenings complaining of angels.
“A shaft of white light from the ceiling,” he would say, “but deep in the back of the shop, where there are no windows.”
“It appears suddenly?” asked Aziz as she held Ellie (who was called Ehteram then, which is really but who later became Ellie and so let’s go with the one you can read).
“So bright I close my eyes and still see it burned into my vision. And a headache for hours after.”
When the complaints began to include a dry snapping sound, Aziz’s worry became desperate.
She was not yet twenty and her daughter was not yet two when the love of her life collapsed. She found him behind a row of timing belts when she brought a lunch of scallion pancakes. There are moments in your life where you are alone with two cups and you have to pick one to drink.
There are moments when the decision will change everything.
Farhad on the mountain.
My dad at the breakfast in Dubai.
My mom in the safe house.
You’ll hear about those later.
For now, there is this one, Aziz with a fallen husband. To let him die was unthinkable. But to beg the physician to save him was equally so, since Hassan would only wake up to hate her forever.
In the short minutes, Aziz decided it was better for him to be alive, to love Ellie, if not to love her. She ran across town, knowing the physician would relish every moment of Hassan’s wife begging for his life.
The story of Aziz and Hassan is a love story with poison in it. When the physician came to their tiny house, he saw his opportunity. He gave Hassan a bottle of medicine and left as quickly as he could.
For three days, Aziz fed Hassan the medicine, and for three days, he got worse and worse, until he died in her arms.
In the morgue they discovered that Hassan did not die of disease or from the collapse in his shop.
Aziz realized it was the medicine that killed Hassan. Can you imagine what that felt like? Like your heart is an engine flooded with black acid, drowned and clenched and clotted.
She ran back home from the morgue to find the medicine bottle, to give it to a judge, to convict the physician who had murdered her husband. But when she returned, the window of her kitchen was broken, and all the evidence was gone.
Maybe the lesson is that you never know the damage you might do, when you’re trying to help. Or that a feud is a profoundly stupid thing.
There is no lesson maybe.
* * *
HERE IN OKLAHOMA PEOPLE don’t poison each other except with canned green beans that have a vague medicine flavor. I don’t think they taste it, because they’ve gotten used to it, little by little.
At church potlucks they play a secret game of dumping random cans of food in casserole dishes and pretending their grandmothers gave them the recipe. Jell-O is their favorite. Campbell’s mushroom Jell-O goes on everything. So does Velveeta, which is a cheese Jell-O that only sort of hardens.
My mom is scared of their unnatural foods. She whispers to us that it’s why the cancer rate is so high in America. It’s a bored disease for rich people. I told that to my science teacher once—that preservatives cause cancer—and he laughed. He said the science was a little more complicated than that. My mom’s a doctor and he is just killing time before coaching volleyball, so eat all the Fritos and corn syrup you want.
My mom makes cream puffs like they had at Akh Tamar and someone always asks what kind of store-bought whipped cream she used. One lady wouldn’t even believe you could make your own by whipping heavy cream. Like people in history didn’t have whipped cream until a company started selling canisters that squirt out runny foam.
Anyway, this story is embarrassing so I’ll tell you a few things first.
One, I have a cap now, which is what they call hats.
A baseball cap, even though mine is for a football team called the Miami Dolphins. I have never been to Miami and never seen a dolphin. My newest friend likes them. My mom bought it for me so that we can declare our friendship. Other kids like the Cowboys, and can never be best friends with a dolphin.
The second thing to know is that I did not cry, even though when you’re imagining this story, you’ll probably imagine tears on my face when they took me to the hospital.
Well, don’t.
* * *
AT THE POTLUCKS OF poor people churches in Oklahoma, the BBQ is always good. My friend who supports Miami wasn’t there, because his family goes to the big church across town where they serve banana puddin and put out, like, seven different kinds of Pringles, which are the best chip.
This story happens during the time Ray didn’t live with us, because he’d broken my mother’s jaw and we spent Christmas in First Baptist Hospital. He bought us Pringles and Peanut M&Ms for dinner from the hospital vending machines, and my sister and I told the police it was an accident. And by the summer, they were divorced.
That was just the first time, though.
Anyway.
Summertime potluck.
Good BBQ.
Terrible everything else.
No Ray.
One Dolphins cap.
A youth pastor named Jonboy used to roam around the buffet with a group of high school kids, smiling for the old ladies and asking if any of them needed work done on their lawns.
He had a truck—which all good men in Oklahoma have—with blue neon lights shining underneath it—which they don’t.
He argued with his dad, the head pastor, about the difference between old country music, which had grit, and new country music, which had music videos.
Jonboy didn’t like me.<
br />
His blue truck lights meant he represented the Cowboys.
Some weeks he would refer to matches I hadn’t watched. That particular dinner, he saw me by the BBQ and told me the Cowboys would beat the Dolphins again next week.
I said, “Pfft. The Cowboys are the worst team in the league.”
Jonboy blinked at me. One of the high school boys named Wes laughed. It turned out the Cowboys had won the Super Bowl last year, so they were the best team in the league.
Wes had a brother my age named Bobby, who was standing behind me. He snatched my cap and ran back to Jonboy with it.
“Hey!” is a stupid thing to say that I said.
I looked around. All the grownies had their plates and were sitting at the tables talking about horses or whatever.
“Give me my cap,” I said.
Jonboy was a refrigerator-size man wearing a silk Hawaiian shirt that would fit me like a tent. Wes was a wiry hillbilly.
Bobby was a scrub. He gave the cap to Jonboy.
“Give it,” I said.
“Or what? What’ll you do?” said Wes.
I stared at Jonboy. He grinned at me.
“Careful,” said Jonboy. He had a peanut butter cream cookie in his hand. He held it like he was going to smash it inside the hat. “I might ruin it.”
I couldn’t tell if he was “joshing me,” which is when grown-ups pull a kid’s leg.
“It would be an improvement,” said Bobby.
I didn’t know what was supposed to happen.
I didn’t even know the Cowboys played the Dolphins.
Jonboy brought the cap and the cookie close together.
“Crush it,” said Wes.
But Jonboy said, “Just say the Dolphins suck and you can have it back.”
I was alone. My new friend would never know I said it. It’s the sort of lie that wouldn’t cause any harm—and some people say it is not a sin to do that. But then, some people say Edmond, Oklahoma, looks like Italy in the springtime. Some people are idiots.
I reached into the tub of BBQ and grabbed a handful of sloppy pulled pork.
Jonboy’s eyes got serious.
“Give me my cap,” I said. A drop of BBQ sauce fell from my hand.
No one ever explains their sense of humor. You have to guess if they’re serious. In Oklahoma they call these Mexican standoffs, where everybody has a gun on everybody else.
“Don’t,” said Jonboy.
“Crush it!” said Bobby.
“I’ll throw it,” I said.
“Say the Dolphins suck,” said Wes.
“The Cowboys suck,” I said.
Jonboy smiled and put the cookie into the cap, and started crunching it in his fist.
I threw the pork as hard as I could.
It splattered all over his silk Hawaiian shirt.
Bobby cackled so loud that everyone turned and looked. I ran up and grabbed my hat with my clean hand.
“You ruined my shirt,” said Jonboy. His voice was suddenly adult—calm and disappointed. His smirk was gone. It was like he was his dad all of a sudden.
“You ruined my cap,” I said.
“Look,” he said. And he showed me the peanut butter cookie. He’d crushed it in his hand under the hat.
“That’s not fair,” I said. He’d tricked me. Now I was the bad one.
“This shirt was expensive,” he said.
But I had told him I would throw it. I didn’t lie. I said I would.
* * *
I thought, My mom doesn’t have the money to pay for the shirt.
I didn’t even like football back then.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
But Oklahoma sports stories are all tragedies.
So Bobby snuck up behind me again and snatched my cap again and ran out of the fellowship hall.
I chased him.
I heard Jonboy shout after us, “Bobby, give it back!”
Here is everything I remember after that:
I hit the double doors of the church and left a smudge on the glass.
Outside was a summer night chill.
I caught Bobby in the parking lot before he even reached the park on the other side.
I tackled him to the gravel.
I grabbed for my hat.
It was under him.
I was on top.
I turned him over. He was laughing.
I grabbed for my hat.
My hand still had sauce all over it.
He had bent the bill in half.
He thought it was hilarious.
I was going to punch him, but I felt a shoulder smash into my back.
It was Wes.
He had his arms around my waist, trying to pull me off his brother.
Bobby started shouting.
His lip was bleeding.
I was screaming, “Pedar sag. Meekoshamet!” They didn’t understand me.
Wes pulled at my waist.
I had my hat scrunched in one fist, and Bobby’s ear in the other.
Jonboy shouted something, who cares what.
I hated all of them.
Wes pulled until he slipped and had me just by the arm.
I tried to wrench my arm away from him.
I wanted to punch Bobby square in his nose.
I didn’t think I had punched him yet.
Wes yanked on my hand that was holding the hat. I wouldn’t let go of it. Wes tried to pry my fingers off of it. He finally pulled so hard I felt my thumb snap and separate to go with him.
A white light, like a shooting star, blinding pain.
He pulled again.
I felt all the muscles in my hand stretch and tear around my thumb, like he was pulling a drumstick off of a roast chicken. I screamed and let go of Bobby.
Wes and I fell to the ground.
Jonboy ran out of the church along with the pastor and my mom. He said, “What do you boys think you’re doing out here?”
And that is all I remember before going to the hospital.
* * *
IF I WAS SCHEHERAZADE, I would stop here and say, “O great and clever king,” except I’d say, “Reader … I have never lied to you, even when a lie would save me the humiliation of the truth.”
And then I’d skip over the part in the hospital when the doctor said, “Hold on, son,” and snapped my thumb back into place.
It’s not lying if you leave it out.
The next Sunday the team of Cowboys beat the Dolphins.
Wes never spoke to me again. Bobby said it was because I was probably one of those people who sue Americans for money and he had to protect himself. Pastor Jonboy saw me in the church hall and said, “Whoa! Guess we should call you Lefty now.”
I didn’t say anything. Nothing I remember anyway.
He grabbed my cast and said, “Here, lemme sign it.”
I don’t have any other memories involving these people, so you can forget them.
The only reason I’m telling you this was that as Jonboy tried to use a ballpoint pen to sign my cast, as he scraped back and forth over my wrist so he could write, “Go Dolphins!” I thought of Aziz and wondered what horrible thing she’d left out of her story. I thought, Maybe she’d had to go to the hospital to see her husband—and his murderer was chatting with nurses in the hall. I dunno. There was so much left unsaid in her story, that we saw playing in her eyes, as she spoke only part of it.
We don’t owe anyone our sadness.
Bones break over and over and you can get used to it.
Like Mithridates with his poison, you could even break your bones on purpose, put your arm in a drawer and slam it. Little by little, they still fuse back stronger.
Eventually, you might even become unbreakable.
Just knowing they could never hurt you—that would scare people.
Somewhere in their animal brains they know you’ve become a different kind of creature.
If anyone ever grabbed you, their fingers would shatter.
I know what you�
�re thinking.
You’re thinking, What about hugs? What about Mithridates’ lonely curse?
You might even say, “We don’t owe anyone our sadness, but the sharing of it is what friends do. It makes the sadness less. Friends don’t care if you like the same football squad.”
And you’re probably right, brilliant reader.
You’re right.
I cried in the hospital when they pushed my hand on the X-ray table.
And I cried again when they set the bone.
And I cried the whole time Wes was pulling me off of Bobby.
I didn’t understand any of it.
I even cried when I threw away the hat.
* * *
THERE IS AN AMERICAN filmmaker named Orson Welles who said, “If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.” And Doctor Hamond (pastor, not a doctor) says, “It’ll be alright in the end, folks. If it’s not alright, then it’s not the end,” which means Doctor Hamond thinks the world is going to end at his birthday party.
But my point is don’t worry.
Scheherazade lives at the end of the thousand and first night.
This is not a Persian love story anyway.
It ends in America. And it will have a happy ending.
But this isn’t the end, so Khosrou and Shirin died bloody, Aziz became a widow, and I spent a summer with a bag around my arm every time I showered.
That’s it.
Those are the facts.
* * *
LIKE I SAID, RAY WASN’T around for a while because my mom divorced him after Pastor Hamond told her it was okay—that Jesus would forgive her because Ray had broken her jaw—and we went to live in an apartment complex behind a gas station where the kids would run up behind me and punch me in the ear on my right side—where my cast was—so I couldn’t do anything about it.
I got hit in the jaw about twice a week, but nobody ever broke it, because none of them had a third-degree black belt.
A few months later, Ray went to Pastor Hamond and told him he was repented—which meant he was sorry—and Pastor Hamond told my mom she should marry him again, because we didn’t have any money and it was worse to Jesus if we were on government welfare.
Everything Sad Is Untrue Page 8
