Family Theme Analysis

Dad never really talked about his own diagnosis for depression. It was lost to the histories of a prior age of this world. All he ever said was that it happened when he was in college, and that his medication had kept him healthy for years, and that I shouldn’t worry about it. It wasn’t a big deal.

By the time I was diagnosed, and Dr. Howell was trying to find some combination of medications to treat me properly, Stephen Kellner had been managing his depression so long that he couldn’t remember what it was like. Or maybe he’d never had Mood Slingshot Maneuvers in the first place. Maybe his medication had recalibrated his brain right away, and he was back to being a high-functioning Übermensch in no time.

“You can’t keep trying to control him,” Mom said. “You have to let him make his own decisions.”

“You know how he gets treated,” Dad said. “You really want that for him?”

“No. But how is making him ashamed of everything going to fix it?”

“I don’t want him to be ashamed,” Dad said. “But he’s got enough going on with his depression, he doesn’t need to be bullied all the time too. He wouldn’t be such a target if he fit in more. If he could just, you know, act a little more normal.”

“I love you, maman.”

Grandma and Oma, Dad’s moms, didn’t say that very often. It’s not that they didn’t love me and Laleh, but they were full of Teutonic reserve, and didn’t express affection very often.

Mamou wasn’t like that.

For Fariba Bahrami, love was an opportunity, not a burden.

I swallowed away the lump in my throat. “I love you, Mamou.”

Nearly every car parked on the street (or occasionally up on the curb) was light-colored and angular, makes and models I had never seen before.

I wondered where Iranian cars came from.

I wondered what Stephen Kellner thought of Iranian cars, and how they compared to his Audi.

I wondered if he was still asleep. If he’d wake up and we’d be able to get along, the way he wanted.

And then Sohrab said, “Ayatollah Darioush,” and all three of them laughed.

At me.

I thought I understood Sohrab.

I thought we were going to be friends.

How had I misjudged him so badly?

Maybe Dad was right.

Maybe I would always be a target.

Even for things I couldn’t help. Like being from America. Like having a foreskin.

Those things were normal back home, but not in Iran.

I would never fit in. Not anywhere.

Mamou popped the lid and unsealed the tea. “It looks good, maman. Thank you. You are so sweet. Just like your dad.” She pulled me close and kissed me on both cheeks.

If I had been drinking tea at that moment, I would have imitated Javaneh Esfahani and shot it out of my nose.

No one had ever called Stephen Kellner sweet.

Not ever.

I mean, it was inevitable that Laleh would acquire a taste for Star Trek—eventually. She was my sister, after all. And Stephen Kellner’s daughter. It was in her genetic makeup.

But I thought I would get to keep that bit of Dad to myself for a little while longer.

It was the only time I ever got to be his son.

“Mamou thought it was too much driving to come here. To see this. But it’s important for you to know where you come from.”

I didn’t understand Ardeshir Bahrami.

Yesterday I wasn’t Persian enough because I didn’t speak Farsi, because I took medicine for depression, because I brought him and Mamou fancy tea.

He made me feel small and stupid.

Now he was determined to show me my heritage.

Maybe Ardeshir Bahrami experienced Mood Slingshot Maneuvers too.

I was used to being a disappointment to Dad, and being a disappointment to Babou didn’t seem that different. But I hated that he was disappointed in Laleh too, for something she couldn’t change.

I swallowed.

Babou looked up at me. There was something sad and lonely in his eyes, in the way his mustache drooped over his frown.

I wanted to tell him I was still his grandson.

I wanted to tell him I was glad I was getting to know him.

I wanted to tell him I was sorry about his brain tumor.

I didn’t tell him any of that, though.

And even though I hated getting shuffled around and grabbed by my love handles, my rubbery constipated face did relax into a smile.

I had never been surrounded by my family before. Not really.

When Dayi Jamsheed started herding us together into a big group photo, my eyes started burning. I couldn’t help it.

I loved them.

“You are not very Persian,” he said. “Not like Laleh.”

I looked down at my Team Melli jersey, which I still had on over my button-up.

This was the most Persian I had ever been in my entire life, and it still wasn’t enough.

“You are more like your dad. He doesn’t like them either,” he said. And then he grabbed a cucumber for himself and wandered off.

“It was hard for me, you know? Moving to America. When I left here, I was sure I was going to come back. But I didn’t. I fell in love with your dad and stayed, even though I never really felt at home. When you were born I wanted you to grow up American. So you would feel like you belonged.”

I understood that. I really did.

School was hard enough, being a Fractional Persian. I’m not sure I would have survived being Even More Persian.

My grandfather seemed so small and defeated then, bowed under the weight of history and the burdens of the future.

I didn’t know what to say.

The singularity in my stomach was back, pulsing and writhing in sympathetic harmony with the one I knew lived deep inside Babou.

In that moment I understood my grandfather perfectly.

Ardeshir Bahrami was as sad as I was.

“You don’t keep the leaves in?” Mamou asked.

“It gets bitter if you let it steep too long.”

“Oh. Thank you, maman. I love this tea.”

I loved my grandmother.

Before, she had been photons on a computer screen.

Now she was real, and full of the most amazing contradictions.

I wanted to know more.

“What I like to do is use oil on my fingers, instead of water,” Dad said. “That way they don’t stick as much. It’s messy, though.”

The Bahrami men nodded in approval.

I wasn’t jealous of him.

Not really.

Maybe Dad’s place had been empty too.

Maybe he’d figured out how to fill it.

Maybe he had.

“It made me into a zombie. That’s why I couldn’t tell you stories. I could barely tell the time of day.”

I didn’t know.

“I lost myself for a long time, Darius. I didn’t like who I became on those pills, but they saved my life. They kept me here. For you. And your mom. And by the time I was doing better and Dr. Howell tapered me off, your sister was born and I just...things were different. She was a baby, and she needed me. And I didn’t know if you even wanted stories anymore. If you were ever going to forgive me.”

“Dad...”

“Suicide isn’t the only way you can lose someone to depression.”

[...]

“And it kills me that I gave it to you, Darius. It kills me.”

There were tears in his eyes.

Actual human tears.

I had never seen my father cry before.

Dad had never hidden his depression from me. Not really.

But I never knew how close I had come to losing him.

How hard he fought to stay with us, even if it made him into a Borg drone.

I didn’t want to lose him.

And he didn’t want to lose me.

He just didn’t know how to say it out loud.

I think I understood my father better than I ever had before.