“Parvin,” I replied. His hand grasped mine, and I felt a little better.
“Welcome, welcome,” Aghayeh Khosrowshahi, our new teacher, said from the front of the class, making his w’s sound like v’s. “To all the new students, don’t worry, we will be going slowly to get you up to speed. Each of you is already sitting next to your study buddy, who will help you get caught up. Oh-key?” His wild bushy white eyebrows made him look more like a mad scientist than a language instructor.
“Oh-key,” he continued. “Please turn to page sixty of your poetry books. Today we will be learning about Layla and Majnun, the precursor to Romeo and Juliet. It is written by Nizami.”
Amir opened his book up in the middle of our desks, sharing with me until I got my own. Aghayeh Khosrowshahi gestured to a boy up front to start reading out loud in Farsi. “Befarmain, Bobak.”
“Once there lived among the . . . ??? . . . in Arabia a great lord, a . . . ??? . . ., who ruled over the Banu Amir,” Bobak read easily in Farsi. “No other country flourished like his and . . . ??? . . . carried the sweet scent of his glory to the farthest horizons.”
I struggled to catch up. There were a lot of new words that I hadn’t seen before. Which line were we on? I think Amir could sense my eyes roving all over the page and pointed at the corresponding Farsi script with his thumb. Aghayeh Khosrowshahi called on the next student, and they picked up where Bobak left off, reciting in flawless Farsi.
Amir used his finger to track each word as it was spoken so I could follow along, which was nice of him. I moved closer to get a better look, and I smelled rosewater, and something deeper, like cologne. I followed his fingers, reading the poetry as quickly as I could but always a word or two behind. By the time it was my turn to read out loud, though, no amount of silent coaching from Amir could help.
“If prayers remain . . . unanswered, do we ever reflect that it may be for our good?”
My tongue felt fat in my mouth, the Farsi I’d learned from last spring gone thanks to summer break. I had no idea what I was even saying.
“We feel sure that we know our needs . . . yet the future is veiled from our eyes,” I stumbled out loud in Farsi.
The hardest thing about reading in Farsi is that the vowels aren’t written the way they are in English. There is an a and a u vowel, although sometimes the u becomes an o, v, or w sound, so it’s basically an ambush in every word. There isn’t really an i sound like the i in Ireland. Instead of an i, Farsi uses a y, which is actually an ee sound in English. That’s why my name is spelled Parvin, even though it should have been spelled Parveen—because someone from Iran (pronounced EE-ran) decided that’s the English translation.
To read a word out loud, you have to guess what the sounds connecting each consonant are or know the word already. Like spelling Washington “Wshngtn.” Sometimes there are little accents and squiggles to help you figure out pronunciation, but there weren’t any in this advanced book. By the time I got to reading the last word out loud, I was so frustrated I wanted to throw Amir’s stupid Farsi book across the room.
“It’s okay, khanoum,” Aghayeh Khosrowshahi said kindly when I finished. I could feel moisture prickle at the corner of my eyes. How many times was I going to be humiliated in front of an audience this week? Amir went after me, his pronunciation perfect. I looked at his skin, at how much tanner it was than mine. It wasn’t fair—he was definitely full Iranian. His parents probably even spoke it at home.
By the time class was done, I felt like my brain had been thrown into a salad spinner. Hanna, Hamid (pronounced Ha-MEED), Morteza, and even little Laleh looked dazed, too.
“For homework, please translate the first five verses of the poem in chapter two to English. And no parents!” Aghayeh warned. Drats! I had been banking on Dad’s help.
Hanna approached my desk. “I didn’t understand half of what Aghayeh Khosrowshahi said. Did you?”
I shook my head. “Amir had to help me.” I gestured to him. “Amir, this is Hanna, from my intermediate class.” I didn’t know if I’d actually talked to Hanna before. She was definitely too cool to hang with me. At least this class was putting me in the orbit of a high school senior.
“Hey, Hanna,” he replied.
Hanna smiled. “I think your dad’s my dentist. Well, I guess I’m gonna go bang my head against a wall and hope I can finish this homework.”
“Godspeed,” I said solemnly. Because I was going to have to do the same thing.
“Khodafez!” Bye! Hanna walked away.
“So, when do you want to meet?” Amir asked.
“What do you mean?” Maybe if I told Dad how hard class was today, he’d stop for ice cream on the way home out of guilt.
“For your homework? I’m supposed to help you complete assignments,” he said, looking at me like I was stupid.
“Oh.” I hadn’t counted on Amir actually being my study buddy. I thought that was just something the teachers had said to make us feel better about the switch. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say. No, thank you, I’d rather fail since there are literally no grades in this class?
Amir sighed. “Listen, I agreed to tutor the intermediate students because that means I won’t have to help my dad out at his dental office. We can just meet for half an hour, okay?”
It was as if Amir had read my mind. Meeting for half an hour was just enough to help me in this class, but not enough to become a drag.
“Yes, please,” I replied quickly.
He slung his bag over his shoulder and walked out with me. “Which school do you go to?”
“Polk,” I replied.
His eyebrows raised in surprise. “Same. Are
