The last of my shorts for Cal--I really have no idea how effective this is, because I rarely visit my characters as kids and I'm using a culture I've only recently become familiar with. Any suggestions would be marvelous. Click the spoiler for a glossary.
[spoiler]Mamajoon -- "mama" is mother and "joon" is an honorable suffix--Big Mama, or grandma.
Bizhan/Rustam -- two ultra-glam heroes of the Persian Book of Kings.
Laylat al-Qadr -- the holiest night of the year, when many Shi'a believe the Qur'an was revealed to Muhammad.
SAVAK -- Muhammad Reza Shah's secret police, who were basically thugs.
Haraam -- something forbidden in Islam, like pork or alcohol.
Jan -- Diminutive. Kind of like the Japanese "kun" or "chan".
Isa -- the Arabic word for Jesus.
Basjid -- teenage boys hired by the religious hierarchy in Iran to beat people up (non-hijabi women, people with pets, and other things that are "forbidden").[/spoiler]
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“I’m going to hurl you somewhere,” he replied,
“Beyond both worlds, where you can’t hide.”
- Abolqasem Ferdowsi
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Glitter was Haroun’s favorite thing.
He made a poster about bees for his teacher, Mrs. Deer, and it had been the best in the class—even Kevin, who thought bees were stupid, agreed. He and Mamajoon had read books at the library and cut out pictures and made glue-line insects with gold glitter. When it came back with a big red A taped to the front, he sat at the kitchen table, scraping off the gold and spreading it across his wrists. It make his skin sparkle—like a prince, like Bizhan, like Rustam. When he squeezed his eyelids half-shut and let his vision blur, he could pretend he was a nobleman with arms stacked in royal jewelry, instead the simple being marked on his desk nametag.
Haroun Yazdani, Grade Two. Favorite Color: Magenta. Favorite Food: Pizza.
His mother was sitting across from him, staring into a glass of wine. It was Ramadan—Laylat al-Qadr—and here she was, drinking. Hamid-from-Pakistan didn’t eat during Ramadan, not even during milk break. And his parents never, ever drank wine.
“They beat your father for having a bottle of champagne in the backseat,” she always said. “And so I will drink where they cannot find me.”
The they was always changing. Sometimes it was the parliament—the majlis—and others, it was the mullahs, SAVAK, her old neighbors, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. Someone was always at fault. Someone was always to blame for her Americanized attraction to the haraam. Though they were an ocean away, they bore police batons long enough to torment her across deserts and wavescapes, rivers and endless fields of wildflowers. A gulf, a mountain range, and then some. Everyone she knew had been beaten for one thing or another, and the memories flickered constantly in her head—not painful, just persistent.
Mamajoon teetered into the room and began peeling onions over the sink, her creaky bones trembling beneath thin skin.
Haroun coughed. Some of the glitter flew into the air like bejeweled dust motes, landing on the top of his mother’s wine. She barely blinked before taking another sip, coating her insides with sparkles. “Mrs. Deer liked our bees, Mamajoon."
“Did she?” The last of the onionskin fell into the sink, falling away from wet fruit with an audible creak. “Well. It had to be good. We read every book in the whole damn building.” Hamid-from-Pakistan’s family never swore, either. “You should go outside, Harounjan. Play with the other boys. If you stay cooped up with girls all day, you’re going to turn into one.”
“He’ll be––”
Mamajoon silenced her daughter with a look that said, I know a woman who is about to be beaten for being a boring mother.
Haroun nodded and kissed them both on the forehead before leaving. His mother always tasted powdery and slightly acrid; her make-up stayed on his lips long after he went to school or to bed or out to play. When it faded, he knew he’d been away from home too long.
His brother and his best friends—Rakesh and Jake—had congregated behind a bush next door, all staring at something on the ground. They were in fifth grade and knew everything. Amir could be mean sometimes, but Rakesh and Jake were gods in t-shirts and blue jeans. Rakesh was Indian and a Webelo; Jake was Pentecostal. He was always trying to bring them to the church to dump water on their heads. Sometimes, after talking about Isa, his eyes would mist up. “You should come,” he’d say.
“But we’re Muslims!”
“We are not Muslims, Haroun. Mama says.”
Jake and Haroun would look at the ground, not knowing which one of them should be hurt.
But today, Jake had left his pamphlets at home, and had brought a single box. The wise men themselves were staring at it in wonder as Rakesh hawed at it with his Boy Scout knife, his thick black hair glistening with little rivulets of sweat.
Amir glared at Haroun as he knelt on the fringes of their circle, the dry grass poking at his knees—a way of preparing him for the angry red lines that would appear when he stood up. Rakesh tore at the box and the sound of ripping cardboard echoed down the empty street, against sports cars and garage doors. He looked up at Haroun, grinning. “You ready, Rajkanya?”
When they were together, no one bothered to call Haroun by his name anymore. He was Rajkanya. Princess.
“For what?”
“You can’t tell anybody what.”
A shiny lump of yellow plastic emerged from cardboard scraps—a squirt gun, bathed in protective cellophane.
“Bought it with my allowance,” Jake said, nodding proudly. “Ten whole dollars.”
Not only did Jake love Isa, but he was filthy rich. No one could tell whether or not these things were mutually inclusive—the kneeling, the new jeans, the halo, the curly red hair.
Haroun’s mama’s-boy heart began to beat wildly in his chest as he watched Rakesh slide his knife under an edge, peeling off its shell. “We’re not supposed to play with those.”
Amir glared at him. Haroun could feel his throat close, could feel a small line of sweat at his temples. “Mama says we’re not supposed to play with those.”
“Mama’s wrong sometimes.”
“Not about these,” he said. “She says people who play with guns are naughty, they’re mean, they’re awful—like the basjid, do you want to be like the basjid?”
“I think she’s making stuff up.”
Haroun felt tears spilling over his eyelids. Rakesh and Jake were staring at him, rajkanya on their lips. “Mama doesn’t make stuff up!”
“You’re such a baby.”
“Mama doesn’t lie to us!”
“What do you know?”
Haroun looked at his brother, through a window of swirling saltwater. “I know a lot of things.”
“Bet you don’t know how to––”
“Ay, Amir, he’s just a kid.”
Amir crossed his arms over his chest, reminding everyone that he was just a kid, too. Rakesh reached through the bushes for the tip of the hose, which squealed as he twisted the tap on.
Water began to flow. The gun became darker, casting shadows of ghoulish moving light on the grass, little swirling ghosts that licked at Haroun’s sandals and up his legs. There were a few things that he didn’t know about, but his parents were no longer mysteries—a lifetime of ears flattened against doors transferred to memories that weren’t his, but came to him in dreams. Fires, machine guns, and broken, brittle bones. Women and children and men, too, running and shouting. And of course, the inevitable jarring shake of detonation.
Dreams like these were so much more vivid when you lived a life in which the most dangerous thing that had ever happened to you was getting your foot caught in the shoe cubby at the McDonald’s PlayPlace.
The shadows on the grass began to glitter, and the last of mama’s powder dissolved in his mouth.
He felt sick.
