An Emotion of Great Delight

worked, as I sat. I’d tuned it out, most of it. I thought about Shayda, who was at the mosque; they had a youth group on Friday nights. I hadn’t gone, despite her insistence that I accompany her, and I was regretting that decision then. I watched my mother place dirty bowls in the dishwasher, watched her shoot my father an irritated look as he stalked across the living room—a look he didn’t catch. I glanced at him, at his two tufts of dark hair, at his salt-and-pepper beard.

He was in a frenzy.

That morning, my father had needed to move my brother’s car, because Mehdi had blocked the garage with his Civic. My dad was in a hurry, running late for work, and asked me to fetch my brother’s keys. I did, because I knew precisely where they were: in a pocket of his discarded jeans, lying on his bedroom floor. It was still early, and Mehdi, who was in college, did not have class for at least another two hours. I snuck into his room while he was sleeping, stole his car keys, crept back downstairs. Placed the keys in my father’s hand.

Too often, my mind stopped there.

I could seldom convince my brain to remember what happened next. I didn’t want to remember. I didn’t want any of these memories, these distorted loops of sounds and images. I didn’t want to remember that it was me, me who betrayed my brother. I handed those keys to my father, my father who kissed me on the cheek and said, Merci, azizam, and promptly discovered a six-pack of beer in my brother’s back seat.

My dad waited all day to lose his mind.

His anger festered while he was at work, his imagination spiraling. He managed to convince himself of all kinds of things, all without my brother’s assistance, without the clarity that might be provided by a single conversation. I’d heard his theories that night, sitting at the kitchen table while my mother stirred the stew with a wooden spoon.

“He’s drinking, doing drugs, maybe selling drugs—”

“Mansour.” My mother spun around, horrified. “Een harfa chiyeh? We don’t know what happened,” she’d said in Farsi. “There’s still a chance the alcohol didn’t even belong to Mehdi.”

My father laughed out loud at that. His eyes were flinty, furious.

My mother was angry, too, but she said she wanted to wait until Mehdi got home, wanted to give him a chance to explain himself.

Calm down, she said.

My dad very nearly exploded at the suggestion.

Let’s talk to him first, she said.

My father went purple.

Talk to him? Talk to him? I don’t need to talk to him. You think I don’t know? You think I don’t know? He thinks I’m an idiot, that he can hide things from me, that I don’t know what he smells like every day, what his eyes look like? Everyone thinks I’m stupid, that I don’t know what’s going on? Talk to him? Talk to him about what?

My brother hadn’t been home all day.

My parents were still waiting for him to get back, waiting to ambush him. I’d let him know, of course. I’d texted him. Told him what happened.

I’m so sorry, I’d written.

I’m so sorry

I didn’t know

Baba had to go to work

I didn’t know

I’m so sorry

I’m so, so so so sorry

Mehdi, I’m so sorry

It’s okay, he’d written back.

It’s not your fault.

I’d stared at that message a thousand times, pressed the screen to my throat on desperate nights. I could never have known how things would escalate. Could never have anticipated the proceeding argument, the explosive screaming match that met my brother’s reluctant arrival back home.

It was late.

I remember, when my dad threw open the front door, that the crickets would not quiet. Streetlamps were bright and blurry, streaking the sky in the distance, cold air piercing everything. I remember, when my father told him to get out, Mehdi did not hesitate. My mother screamed. My brother shoved on his shoes, his face grim with determination, and though my mother begged him to be reasonable, begged him to come back inside, Mehdi did not hear her. He wasn’t looking at my mother. He was looking at my father, my prideful father who did not seem to understand that he and his son suffered from the same affliction, that my brother would not break.

Mehdi left.

My mother chased her firstborn child into the dark, chased him barefoot down the driveway. My mother, for whom propriety and privacy meant a great deal, ran through our neighborhood screaming his name. If Mehdi was the sea, my father was an immovable object, human stone standing in the living room, unwilling to be eroded.

I retreated to the stairs, sat on the narrow, carpeted step with my arms wrapped around my shins, cried with my head buried in my lap.

Mehdi was killed, not ten minutes later, by a drunk driver.

I came back to my body with a sudden gasp of awareness, startling at the cold drip. Tentative raindrops tested out the sky, the trees, the slope of my nose, made way for the others. It wasn’t much, just a drizzle. Still I shivered, violently.

I didn’t know where I’d left my phone.

I had no intention of actually looking for it; I just wanted an excuse to walk, clear my head, think in peace—and I hoped that the mehmooni taking place at my house would be diverting enough to buy me some time. My feet walked a familiar pattern, a pattern my feet knew but my mind could not remember. I stared occasionally at the sky, searching for the moon.

It was true, I thought. I did want my father to die.

My heart sagged a little more in my chest.

I realized, when I was suddenly blinded by a dot diagram of lights, that I’d walked into a local park. I’d been to this park a hundred times with Zahra, the two of us pretending to be children, sitting on swings and climbing backward up the slide. We sat in the sand and discussed school