“I’M NOT GOING,” I shouted, stomping up the staircase.
“PARVIN,” Dad shouted back. “NO STOMPING.” Stomp-stomp. Too late. Stomp-stomp. I stomped past the kitchen and up to the second floor, where I slammed my door.
There was zero chance I was going to stupid Farsi School.
■ ■ ■ FARSI SCHOOL 11:00 A.M.
I had lost the Farsi war. I was so mad I had to go that I turned into deadweight. Mom had to practically force me into a pair of jeans and wash my face for me, and I refused to even buckle my own seat belt in the car.
It’s not that I didn’t love my Iranian heritage or anything. It’s more that I wanted to spend my weekends like a normal high schooler, and that did not involve going to some moldy basement in Northwest DC where everyone could see my red eyes and stretched-out curls after crying all weekend. I didn’t even have lip gloss on, which was a first.
“All right, everyone,” Aghayeh Hazemi began from the front of the classroom. He was the school administrator, and we rarely saw him unless we had to hand him monthly checks from our parents. Where was our old teacher, Khanoumeh Rezai? Not that I was anxious to see her again. She always motioned to slap me upside the head because I sucked at conjugating verbs. “There are no irregular verbs in Farsi.” she’d yell. “So why do you always get them wrong, Parvin?”
“As many of you know, Khanoumeh Rezai has retired—” Aghayeh Hazemi began. I locked eyes with Hanna, an older girl in my class, and she gave me a big grin. Hanna was by far the coolest person in Farsi school, and rumor had it she spent weekends going to hookah bars with Saudi princes who couldn’t get enough of her dark skin, full lips, and sunflower eyes. I couldn’t believe she just smiled at me. I guessed Hanna wasn’t a big fan of Khanoumeh Rezai, either.
“So,” he said. “I know you’re only in intermediate Farsi, but given the circumstances, we’re going to be joining your class with the advanced students.” There were only five kids in my intermediate class, and we all groaned, except little Laleh, who was nine years old and easily the best in our group. Most of us could barely get through the alphabet, much less the poetry we had to read. Advanced Farsi would be a bloodbath.
“Don’t worry,” Aghayeh Hazemi replied. “The advanced students have volunteered to help you transition into their classroom and be your ‘study buddies,’” Aghayeh said with air quotes, his Iranian accent making it sound like “eh-study buddies.”
“Great,” I said flatly. I didn’t have to pretend to be a quiet human being at Farsi school. There was nobody here I was trying to impress. I put my head back down on my desk, wondering if Wesley even knew where Iran was on a map.
“Awesome,” Hanna echoed, in my same flat voice.
“Sigh,” said Hamid, a high school junior who hated coming here as much as I did.
We looked back to see if Morteza was going to chime in, but he had already fallen asleep. Laleh shrugged.
“Cool,” she said gamely. Suck-up.
“All right, follow me. Befarmain!” Aghayeh Hazemi said, opening the door.
As we walked through the hallways, I jealously eyed the younger grades that basically got to go to the playground or do arts and crafts as long as they spoke in Farsi. That’s where I’d started, and most of the students I’d begun with had dropped out by the time we had to learn to read and write.
The alphabet was probably the hardest part of learning Farsi from English, since it reads from right to left and has different letters. Not only that, but written Farsi is a completely separate language from spoken Farsi. It’s like reading medieval English versus speaking the way we do now. The kids who’d grown up speaking Farsi were just as screwed as non-speakers like me when it came to reading and writing. Learning ketabi, or “bookish,” Farsi had really thinned our ranks.
Dad had driven me to class as usual, and I knew he was still hanging out in the parking lot with the other Iranian parents as they cracked pumpkin seeds between their teeth and chugged black tea, gossiping about who was marrying whom and who was trying to risk a visit back to Iran. I bet the real reason he made me go to school was so he could hang with other Iranians for two hours. After all, Sundays were pretty much the only time I ever heard Dad speak Farsi other than when he’s ordering kabob from somewhere.
Aghayeh Hazemi opened the door to a classroom at the other end of the building and motioned for us to go in. Instantly, ten heads swiveled to look at us. Most of the kids in this class were older, though there were a couple who could have been younger. Those were probably the kids who had been born in Iran. The majority of my classmates had been born here, like me, and had never gotten a chance to speak Farsi unless it was with their parents. Or when we were thanking our relatives for the money they gave us at Iranian New Year.
But unlike me, almost all the kids at school were full Iranian, not half. I recognized a couple classmates from seeing them at Iranian New Year parties, but nobody I knew well enough to say hi to.
Sprinkled throughout the classroom were five empty seats, none of them together. Hanna gave me a sad shrug and headed to sit next to the only girl with an open seat. I put my head down and grabbed the closest open chair.
“Hey,” the guy next to me said. He had deep brown eyes and eyelashes that were even longer than mine. “I’m Amir.” He held out his hand.
Amir was as Iranian as it got. He wore a gold chain (classic Iranian-boy jewelry) and a long-sleeved Adidas shirt. Why were Iranians obsessed with
