A Very Large Expanse of Sea

There were two big differences between me and my brother: first, that he was extremely handsome, and second, that he didn’t walk around wearing a metaphorical neon sign nailed to his forehead flashing CAUTION, TERRORIST APPROACHING.

When I was a kid and would tell my mom that people at school were mean to me, she’d pat me on the head and tell me stories about how she’d lived through war and an actual revolution […] so, hey, why don’t you just eat your Cheerios and walk it off, you ungrateful American child.

Food was a fixture in our home, and in Persian culture in general. Mealtimes were gathering moments, and my parents never allowed us to break this tradition, no matter how badly we wanted to watch something on TV or had somewhere else we wanted to be.

Though for most guys I was little more than an object of ridicule, occasionally I became an object of fascination. For whatever reason, some guys developed an intense, focused interest in me and my life that I used to misunderstand as romantic interest. Instead, I discovered—after a great deal of embarrassment—that it was more like they thought of me as a curiosity; an exotic specimen behind glass.

I’d become a regular fixture at school, one that most of my classmates could now comfortably ignore. People still enjoyed referring to me as the Taliban as I walked by, and every once in a while I’d find an anonymous note in my locker telling me to fuck off back to where I came from […] but I tried not to let it bother me.

My heart did something weird and I stood up too fast, feeling suddenly stupid and embarrassed. I didn’t even know this guy. He was not—and would never be—even remotely interested in me and I knew this. I already knew this and I was still standing here, being an idiot.

“I mean, I mean—” Travis sighed. His face had gone blotchy with redness. “I mean she doesn’t, like—I just don’t see her. It’s like she doesn’t exist for me. When I look at her I see nothing.”

Anger fled my body. I felt suddenly limp. Hollow.

The only time anyone had ever called me anything close to beautiful was when I was in eighth grade. I’d overheard someone say it. She was explaining to another kid that she didn’t really like me because she thought I was one of those girls who was really pretty and really mean.

There was something in Jacobi’s eyes that was sympathetic in a way I’d never experienced before. It wasn’t pity. It was recognition. He actually seemed to acknowledge me, my pain, and my anger, in a way no one else ever had.

Not my parents. Not even my brother.

I thought Ocean was a nice guy, but I also thought he was naïve. […] I knew that even the most optimistic attitude wouldn’t change the structure of the world we lived in. Ocean was a nice, handsome, heterosexual white guy, and the world expected great things of him. Those things did not involve falling for a highly controversial Middle Eastern girl in a headscarf.

Ocean tried, several times, to say it correctly, and I was genuinely touched. A little amused.

“It sounds so pretty,” he said. “What does it mean?”

[…] “It means sweet. I just think it’s funny. I think my parents were hoping for a different kind of kid.”

Being with me would puncture Ocean’s safe, comfortable bubble. […] [I]n the aftermath of a terrible tragedy, I’d waken up in the spotlight. It didn’t matter that I was just as shaken and horrified as everyone else; no one believed my grief. People I’d never met were suddenly accusing me of murder.

I was sitting in his car, I realized, and it had only just occurred to me to look around, to get a sense of where we were, who he was. I wanted to catalog the moment, capture it in words and pictures. I wanted to remember this. I wanted to remember him. I’d never wanted to remember anyone before.

I leaned into the familiar, comforting sounds and smells of home, holding on to them like a lifeline, and I stared at my mom, who was, unquestionably, a human being of the superior variety. […] Today, I desperately wanted to ask her what to do. But I knew I’d probably get the slap to the back of the head, so I reconsidered.

“It’s like they can’t even think about anything else. People only ever want to talk to me about basketball,” he said. “Like it’s all I am. Like it’s everything I am. And it’s not.”

“Of course it’s not,” I said, but my voice was quiet. Sad.

Ocean was, unsurprisingly, curious about the whole thing. I’d stopped using the word fascinated to describe the way he engaged with me and my life, because the pejorative iteration of the word no longer seemed fair. In fact, his affection felt so sincere that I could no longer bring myself to even tease him about it.

I felt someone staring straight through me. It was rare that I ever felt compelled to seek out the source of a stare, but this one felt different. It felt violent. And that was when I turned around and saw his basketball coach for the very first time. He shook his head at me.

[M]y mother asked him again if he wanted more tea and he said no, thank you, and she poured him more tea anyway, and she asked him if he wanted more food and he said no, thank you, and she filled four large Tupperware containers with leftovers and stacked them in front of him.

I was irritated, but Ocean was angry. I could feel it then, in that moment, that Ocean was even stronger than he looked. He had a lean, muscular frame, but he felt, suddenly, very solid standing next to me. His whole body had gone rigid; his hand in mine felt foreign.

I worried that Ocean would lose everything he’d ever known—everything he’d been working toward since he was a kid—only to discover that, eh, I wasn’t even that great, in the end. Bad deal. […] I was sixteen, I thought. He was seventeen. We were just kids.

It was kind of amazing, actually, not to have to explain everything to him all the time. Yusef wasn’t terrified of girls in hijab; they didn’t perplex him. He didn’t require a manual to navigate my mind. My feelings and choices didn’t require constant explanations.

“Baba,” I said.”

“Hmm?” He turned a page.

“How do you know if you’ve done the right thing?” […]

He watched me for a second, and I knew he was saying, without speaking, that I could tell him what was on my mind. But I wasn’t ready.

“Taking if off,” she said. “It doesn’t make a difference.” She was staring at me now. Her eyes were full of tears. “They still treat me like I’m garbage.”

She and I became friends after that. […] I thought maybe I’d ask her to go to the movies sometime. Hell, I might even pretend to give a shit about the SATs when she was around.

It scared me to realize that I’d done to others exactly what I hadn’t wanted them to do to me: I made sweeping statements about who I thought they were and how they lived their lives; and I made broad generalizations about what I thought they were thinking, all the time. I didn’t want to be that person anymore.

Maybe it was enough, I thought, that I knew someone like him existed in this world. Maybe it was enough that our lives had merged and diverged and left us both transformed. Maybe it was enough to have learned that love was the unexpected weapon, that it was the knife I’d needed to cut through the Kevlar I wore every day.