Families and Strangers

Saïd Sayrafiezadeh's short story

For many, these weeks are consumed with holidays and families. And while there are people who find this straightforward and uncomplicated, for others of us this is a period for reflecting on our relationships with those whom we love and those whom we want to love.

Saïd Sayrafiezadeh's short story below, featured in our Tehran guide, takes place in springtime, but its thoughtful, quiet prose describing a father and son trying to connect across cultures and continents feels particularly poignant this time of year. The piece is part of Saïd’s short story collection, American Estrangement, which makes a beautiful gift—in case you happen to be in the market.

Happily, I’m also duty-bound to mention that the 20th volume of Stranger’s Guide is now available and is perfect for the hard-to-shop-for person in one’s life. This 200-page collection of our essays, articles and photography from across the world makes a great choice for anyone with an interest in exploring new places and perspectives around the world. We’re including it as a gift to anyone who upgrades to our paid tier!

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Photo credit: Jalal Sepehr from Red Zone series. Iran. 2015.

“A Beginner’s Guide to Estrangement” by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, Stranger’s Guide: Tehran.

I’ve got a 30-day visa, but I’m only going to be using six of them, and the clock’s ticking. It’s already taken me 14 hours to get here to see my dad, starting from JFK, and that’s not including the three hours I spent sitting in the Istanbul Airport at five-thirty in the morning or the extended turbulence over the Caspian Sea that made me rest my face on my tray table. Nor does it include the nine months for me to be approved for the visa, because that’s a separate journey traversed by way of global bureaucracy. When I do finally land, the airsickness is replaced by the jet lag, which kicks in hard and fast, a toxic combination of depletion, dejection, and befuddlement. The light in the airport is bright like dawn, but the airport’s empty like night, and I can’t remember if it’s technically yesterday or tomorrow or today. I suppose I’d been expecting to arrive into some gray, grim terminal, something sepulchral and ‘70s, something Argo, given the extent of my ignorance and preconceived notions. Instead, the place is tubular and shiny and twenty-first century, and hanging above me is a giant sign that announces, with surprising warmth and conviviality, WELCOME TO IMAM KHOMEINI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT.

This welcome sign is the lone thing written in English, and this is going to be Impediment #1 toward a more nuanced understanding. Surrounding me on all sides is a language comprised of swishes and dots, more art than alphabet, drawn in cursive with a calligraphic flourish and reading right to left. Lodged somewhere at the bottom of my suitcase is the Lonely Planet Persian phrase book, which I’d purchased next-day delivery from Amazon, back when I was all-in on puncturing the bubble, and which I’d begun studying in earnest in the comfort of my American home until I realized the amount of effort that was required for even minimal proficiency. Now I’m standing underneath the big good-natured sign, trying my best, with jet-lagged fingers, to pop a prepaid SIM card into my iPhone, because my dad told me the first thing I needed to do was let him know when I’d arrived. “Put my mind at ease,” he’d said; he was speaking for both of us. I can hear a beeping on the other end of the phone line, ever so faintly, as if a truck is backing down a city street, but whether this beeping is an indication of my dad’s phone ringing or a busy signal I have no idea. I keep anticipating that he’s going to pick up at any moment and utter the Persian equivalent of “Good morning” or “Good evening,” something from chapter one of the Lonely Planet Persian phrase book, followed by a mostly convoluted conversation that will be made worse by his accent, my jet lag, his elderliness, and the uncomfortable truth that we don’t really know each other.

With the phone pressed to my ear, I’m aware of a small cluster of government officials about 50 feet away, bearded and dressed in black, sweating despite the twenty-first century air-conditioning, and who are probably wondering what kind of person is in such a rush to make a phone call with a prepaid SIM card. The chance of being suspected makes me feel as if I have something to be suspected of, which I do, of course, but only on an emotional level. They resemble actors straight out of central casting, these half dozen sweaty and dark-haired men, stereotypes to put it another way, but I know that my perspective is the American perspective, and the central casting I’m referring to is Hollywood’s. In other words, the point of view I have is the one I’ve been conditioned to have.

It’s been 15 years since I last saw my dad. It’d been another 15 years before that. Now I’m almost 35 and he’s past 65 and there’s a good possibility that we don’t have another 15-year increment to spare. Six months ago I’d received an email from him, out of the blue and in impeccable English, with the subject line “Catching up,” as if we corresponded regularly, instead of only on my birthday. “Dear Danush,” he began, using my Persian name, which I never use except on official documents, and then without any segue he went into an extended account of how beautiful Iran was in the spring. Mountains, lakes, rivers, mountains. “Perhaps you haven’t ever been made aware of this,” he wrote. Why, I wondered, would I have been made aware? He continued for another paragraph or so, waxing poetic, showing off his ability to turn a phrase in his second language, while probably also allaying the concerns of the censors, who would have been flattered by such a rhapsodic assessment of their country, as would anyone. There was no “catching up” to be had in any real sense in the email, and by the time I’d reached the end of it, I understood intuitively that what my dad was trying to say, without saying it outright, was, “I would like to see you.”

He’d signed it, “Your father,” a formal closing, to be sure, and a debatable one, considering he’s been my father mostly in biological terms, as opposed to my “real” father, by whom I mean my stepfather, Chip McDade, who’s been my father in empirical terms. Chip McDade, who’d moved me and my mom out of our apartment in outer Queens, directly across from a nail salon, Nails Something Some- thing, and all the way up to Upstate, where we lived in a mid-Atlantic colonial with in-ground pool, among other suburban amenities. Chip McDade, who taught me how to throw a football, how to drive a car, and who’d had the foresight to give me his last name, because 9/11 and the Axis of Evil were coming, and why be Danush Jamshid when you can be Danny McDade? “Let the brake out slowly, son,” he would say, the car moving herky-jerky through the Walmart parking lot, after hours on an Upstate evening. Chip has always called me “son,” and I’ve always called him “Chip.” “Hi, Chip.” “‘Bye, Chip.” “I love you, Chip.” When I reference my biological dad, which is seldom, I call him “Dad.” This has never failed to cause a flicker of disappointment to appear in Chip’s eyes. But by “Chip,” I mean my “dad,” and by my “dad,” I mean “the person I’ve never really known.”

And if my dad thinks Iran is beautiful in the spring, the American government doesn’t agree. It thinks the opposite, and it thinks it year-round. Its travel advisory for Iran is, frankly, “do not travel.” Strictly speaking, this is categorized as a Level 4 advisory, as per the State Department website, 4 out of 4 levels, i.e., ascension not possible and, depending on a nation’s foreign policy, a certain kind of accomplishment in its own right. (As a point of comparison, the Level 3 advisory only gently suggests that you “reconsider travel” for a list of countries that somehow includes Lebanon and the Sudan.) I discovered all of this and more one evening, sitting in front of my computer, trying to figure out how to get a visa, snow falling over the mid-Atlantic colonials. Before me lay the unrelenting reality of not only what is, but also what could have been, that alternate reality of Danush Jamshid, persona non grata made flesh, if WASP mom had decided to move to Iran, who knows why, circa 1983, height of the Iran-Iraq War, where she would meet and fall in love with Dad, as opposed to the other way around: Dad immigrating to America from Hormozgan Province to study engineering at Long Island University, where he would meet and fall in love with Mom, who was majoring in English Lit—already incompatibile in terms of career trajectory. “He was handsome and charming,” she’d tell me years later, filling in the blanks of my origin story as quickly, and with as many clichés, as she could. As for the other incompatibilities they shared, those would have included religion, culture, politics, and several more blue-chip relationship benchmarks that would have most likely seemed wholly immaterial within the confines of the inaccurate and nonrepresentational world of the college campus. Anyway, that marriage was no longer, sadly, and Danush Jamshid was no longer, thankfully, the last remaining signs of him being the recessive genes of bushy eyebrows and a dark tint to his skin, but the latter only apparent in a certain light. When asked by well-meaning strangers if I’m of Italian or Greek descent, I’ll take the easy way out and say yes, great-grandfather on my mom’s side or something. No one has yet been able to determine what I’m actually concealing behind the forged last name of McDade, which, during another historical time period in the United States, would have been an ethnic liability of even greater magnitude.

Despite the travel advisory of “do not travel,” the State Department web page for Iran still managed to showcase an optimistic, reverential, and contradictory “holiday letter” to the Iranian people, written several years earlier by then-Secretary of State John Kerry and, by the time of my reading it, dated and irrelevant. That it remained prominently displayed on the website was evidence of continued hope for happier days to come between the two nations—or perhaps it was simply governmental neglect and resignation, like the store that’s gone out of business but still has its sign up. The letter had been composed back when the experts were positive that things had finally taken a turn for the better with Iran, but now no longer, now progress, now new beginnings, now the cover of Time magazine. “This week around the world,” Secretary Kerry had written, “Iranians celebrated the festival of Shab-e-Yalda…” Add Shab-e-Yalda to the list of things about which I’d never been made aware. Kerry’s over-the-top tone extolling the inherent majesty of Iran was similar to what my dad’s had been in his email to me, but Kerry was writing primarily with nuclear weapons in mind, not springtime weather, and he had closed by saying that he remained hopeful that both countries would continue to address their differences so that “all our children and grandchildren have the future they deserve.” Herewith, John Kerry’s attempt to forestall the designation of a brand-new level of travel advisory: Level 5, “seek immediate shelter.”

And suddenly my dad’s answering the phone, bringing an abrupt end to the beeping of the truck on the line, and saying whatever the Persian equivalent is of hello, his voice much older than I thought it would be. I realize that I’m unprepared to speak to him, that I’m in fact mute, and that until a few seconds ago everything was theory from thousands of miles away. All the men from central casting are gone now, leaving me to stare into the emptiness of the 24-hour daylight of Imam Khomeini International Airport. Imam Khomeini being one reason, even in death, why our children and grandchildren might not have the future they deserve. The CIA being the other reason.

“Hey, Dad,” I say. I say it with so much self-assurance and nonchalance that I almost believe it myself. I can hear the easygoing Upstate flowing out of my mouth, American accent times two.

It’s been a long time since someone has said hey to my dad. It’s been a long time since someone has said Dad to my dad. He’s speaking Persian back, an uninterrupted sequence of dashes and dots, which, spoken aloud in real time, shares none of the hand-drawn lyricism of the signs surrounding me. He’s the one who sounds anxious and awkward. Then there’s a pause, and I’m not sure if this is where I’m supposed to continue trying to make myself known or if the line has gone dead. I fear that this phone call is a good indication that what awaits my dad and me will be a reunion of discomfort, miscommunication, and regret. Lovely seeing you once again, we will say, with woodenness and obligation, shaking hands when we part.

But my dad is saying, “Danny?” He has flicked the switch into English, groping for understanding. “Danny, is this you?” He’s chosen not to use my Persian name, which is disconcerting for me, because if not here, then where? If not him, then who? In English his voice is soft and solicitous, dare I say paternal, but his accent is extra-thick and he seems to be adding syllables to single-syllable words, he’s going up at the end of sentences when he should be going down. I have to concentrate, I have to press the phone to my ear, and I can’t help but wonder if my dad was indeed the author of that florid email he’d sent about the natural splendors of Iran, or if he’d copied-and-pasted it straight off of a travel blog.

“Yes, it’s me,” I say, name unstated and nonchalance maintained. We’re just catching up here, loosey-goosey, enacting the inverse of acute anxiety.

“Danny, where are you?” he says.

I tell him where I am. He is relieved to hear where I am. He makes it sound as if there was a chance I wouldn’t have arrived, or that I wouldn’t have been allowed in, or that I wouldn’t be allowed to make a phone call; this is, after all, Level 4. He wants to know how the flight was. The flight was terrible, I want to say. “The flight was great,” I say, because I’m easygoing from Upstate. What I’m really hoping is that he’s on his way to pick me up, to surprise me with some hospitality at the airport, but there’s no way of asking about this without seeming entitled. If I was speaking to Chip, I’d say, Hey, Chip, are you coming to pick me up at the airport? But this isn’t Chip, and my dad is telling me to take a taxi to the hotel. “Don’t get ripped off by the driver,” he tells me. He sounds paternal again. Or maybe he’s just paranoid. I’m impressed that he’s used the colloquialism ripped off. “We’ll have lunch tomorrow,” he says. “Does that sound like a plan?”

“That sounds like a plan,” I say. He wants to know if I have any of my authority papers with me. What authority papers is he talking about? “Any authority papers,” he repeats. Apparently this is how you talk about passports and visas when you’re on the phone and the mullahs might be listening.

“Yes, I’ve brought them,” I say.

“Where are they?” he says.

“They are here,” I say. “They are in my pocket.”

“What are they?” he says.

“What are they?” I ask. They are my visa and passport and driver’s license. What else would they be? Have I forgotten to bring something essential?

Finally, I realize that what he’s asking me is if I have any food allergies.

I don’t know about the rest of the country, but Tehran is slate-gray in the spring. The gray goes with the beige of the buildings. The beige goes with the black of the head-scarves. The only color is the yellow of the taxi I’m sitting inside, speeding through the city, the cabbie flouting the rules of the road, along with the truck drivers, the bus drivers, and the motorcyclists who aren’t wearing helmets. Everyone’s honking, everyone’s in a hurry, everything looks hardscrabble, but every city can appear hardscrabble when it’s overcast and you’re coming in from the airport on little sleep. If it weren’t for the women with the headscarves and those snowcapped mountains off in the distance, the ones my dad referenced when he’d referenced beauty, I could be driving down the Grand Central Parkway right now. When I’m not staring through the window, I’m staring at the back of the cabbie’s head, beige cap on black hair. He knows enough English to know that I need to get to the hotel. He’s about my age, give or take, probably having to drive a taxi for a living because it’s the only way he can make ends meet under the economic sanctions—the economic sanctions being one more reason why our children and grandchildren aren’t going to have the future they deserve. He’d tried to help me with my luggage curbside, but I didn’t want to come across as entitled, and so I did it myself, a big jet-lagged smile on my face. I’m sure he can tell I’m American without me even opening my mouth, unless he’s guessing Italian or Greek. Or maybe he can see straight through the facade to what’s really going on behind Danny McDade. It’s not my fault, I want to tell him, meaning the economic sanctions and whatever else might be my fault. In addition to the exhaustion and befuddlement, I’m operating with guilt and shame, my own and my country’s, the latter about a century in the making. In that alternate reality of mine, the one where WASP mom moved to Iran, circa 1983, tail end of the Cultural Revolution, I can picture in my jet-lagged state how I’d be the 35-year-old cabdriver in this present-day scenario, Danush Jamshid from Hormozgan Province, doing what I can to make ends meet in a country that has an oil embargo, banking restrictions, and frozen assets. I’d be driving from the airport at top speed, flouting the rules of the road because I have nothing to lose, swerving to avoid the pedestrians who are crossing in the middle of the street since they have nothing to lose, either.

In my spare time, I’d be selling knockoff SIM cards, trying to make extra money on the side so I can save enough to get to America, never mind that there’s a Muslim ban, never mind that I’m filled with envy and disdain for the American sitting in the backseat of my taxi who was too petrified to even let me help him with his luggage. I’d be dreaming of Amazon and Walmart and women without headscarves, hoping I’d have the chance one day to study engineering at Long Island University, because I’ve heard it’s a good school, and it’s also my sole chance at circumventing global bureaucracy. And lo and behold, in this alternate reality of mine, Danush Jamshid would somehow have his visa application approved—I don’t know how, this is all flight of fancy anyway—but when he arrives in America that’s where the fancy ends for good and the truth takes over, where he finds he still needs to drive a taxi to make ends meet, nights and weekends, going up and down the Grand Central Parkway in big bad New York City, because that’s what an immigrant from a Level 4 country does when he can’t put his engineering degree to use and he’s overstayed his visa. He’ll be picking up people at the airport who’ll stare at the back of his head, wondering how much English he speaks.

By the time the cabdriver pulls up to my hotel, I would have been more than happy if he’d rip me off. I give him 75 thousand tomans, which sounds like more than it is. I want to say something meaningful, something about how he should never give up on the dream, brother. He tries to help me with my luggage, but of course that’s not going to happen. A moment later, he’s disappeared back into traffic, eight lanes where there should be six, leaving me standing on the sidewalk staring up at my hotel that says HOTEL in English, which I find comforting. It’s a building that’s obviously been designed with the Western conception of the Orient, borderline kitsch to put people like me at ease, with its purple paisley exterior to set it apart from the municipal gray. On top of the portico is a statue of an elderly man in repose, sitting cross-legged and wearing a turban. He looks like a character from Disney, the flip side of fundamentalism, olde worlde and defanged, just returned from having bartered spices on the Silk Road, when times were simpler, before there were centrifuges and enriched uranium. Come inside the hotel, he seems to be saying in mildly accented English, we will neither loathe nor envy you, we are only delighted that you are here to spend some money. He’s either a stereotype or the source material for what becomes a stereotype, and I’m not well versed enough to know the difference. Framing the hotel entrance are two life-sized sculptures of white stallions, rearing with excitement, so that when I wheel my luggage past I can feel like a conquering hero, which I also find comforting. Inside the lobby, there are Persian ornamental vases, six feet tall, and there are Persian rugs on the Persian floors, and there’s an aquarium with Persian fish swimming in a loop. The hotel staff is friendly, bilingual, and all male, and they appear, each and every one of them, to exhibit no signs of monetary distress or international disdain. My dad is picking up the tab for this gaudy hotel, six days and five nights. He’d offered. I’d said no. He’d said it was the least he could do. I was adamant. He was adamant. We went back and forth like this for a while, until I realized he was right, it was the least he could do.

The last time I saw my dad was in Buffalo, New York, of all places, speaking of hardscrabble. I was almost 20 years old then, and I’d taken the train one winter morning to meet him, seven hours door-to-door from the suburbs of Upstate, with my mom and Chip seeing me off on the platform. They were smiling and waving, putting on happy faces. “Have fun,” Chip called, but I could see the forlorn glimmer in his eyes. Then I spent the next seven hours watching the state of New York pass by my train window, mountains, lakes, rivers, thinking about trying to have fun. When I arrived it was early afternoon, and whatever the temperature had been in Upstate, it was half that in Buffalo, the midday wind blowing hard across the platform, and there was my dad waiting for me under the exit sign, smiling and waving, showing Persian hospitality, and dressed in sandals and socks. I was confused by this, the sandals and socks, and the confusion embarrassed me, and the embarrassment overwhelmed any other emotion I might have had the chance to feel. Amid the crowd of departing train travelers, my dad had stood out as conspicuously foreign, and this, as I already knew, was something one sublimated as best one could. I’d worn a jacket and slacks for the occasion, the all-American wardrobe bought at Walmart, because my mom and Chip had insisted I look presentable when seeing my dad after 15 years. The first thing he did, in lieu of a hug, was make a big production out of comparing the height of our shoulders to see if I’d outgrown him yet at the age of 20. As far as icebreakers went, it was a good one, and we’d stood there on the train platform, negative windchill, sandals and socks, acting as if we were buddies from way back, pressing our shoulders together. When my dad saw that I was indeed an inch taller, he was ecstatic. “You’ve surpassed me!” he said. His accent was thick and his syntax perfect and his phrase was infused with double meaning. He was acting casual and upbeat. He was also asserting that, regardless of 15 years of separation, biology could not be expunged.

Then we walked. I was cold and he was not. I somehow knew that to tell my dad I was cold would be to acknowledge that I was an American, fragile, privileged, cloistered, all true and, in this context, unbecoming. There was an Iranian restaurant he was keen on taking me to for lunch, a very special restaurant that would have doogh, the best yogurt drink I’d ever had. “Doogh,” he said, as if I would of course understand what doogh was and why we needed to walk so far to have a glass. I had never heard of this yogurt drink before. I had never heard that yogurt was something one could drink. “Doogh,” my dad kept saying. I wasn’t sure if he was saying “do,” “dug,” or “dough.” I wasn’t sure if I should call him Dad and he wasn’t sure if he should call me Danush, so we wisely avoided the conundrum by calling each other nothing. I asked him if we might pass Niagara Falls on the way to the restaurant, but he said no, Niagara Falls was on the other side. “We’ll do it next time,” he said. Sure, he’d been bouncing from city to city for the last 15 years, engineering job to engineering job, West Coast, Florida, Texas, not to mention Queens, but that was the past, and now, at the age of 50, he was stable, he was putting down roots, he was here to stay in Buffalo, seven hours away by train.

Once my embarrassment had dissipated, curiosity began to take over. I was strolling with a stranger who resembled me slightly, eyes, nose, skin—although mine 10 shades lighter, thanks to the woman in this equation. And yet my dad was the one who had remained single after all these years. For what reason, I did not know. There was a lot I did not know.

“Aren’t your feet cold?” I asked him.

“American winters,” he said, “are nothing like Iranian winters.” He showed me his fingers. His fingers were permanently swollen. “From the Iranian winters,” he said. “When I owned no gloves.”

Because of the cold, there was hardly anyone else on the street. The emptiness made the city look more desolate than it probably already was. Every so often we would pass an American flag in front of a store or house, flapping innocuously, and it occurred to me that out of all the thousands of American flags I’d seen in my life, including my family’s on the Fourth, I had never once been in the presence of someone for whom the flag might one day be flown against. But my dad did not seem to notice the flags. What he did notice were the big changes happening in the city, “revitalization,” he said, mispronouncing it revitatalization, including something new and exciting with the Buffalo Skyway, on the other side that he’d show me next time, that he might have a chance to help design if things shook out the way he hoped. I was impressed that he’d use the colloquialism shook out.

When we finally got to the restaurant, the restaurant was closed until dinnertime. We gazed through the window at chairs on tables, as if the chef might come out of the kitchen and make an exception for us. Then we walked on. My dad knew of another restaurant that had this very special yogurt drink, doogh, that would also be the best I’d ever had. My toes were cold in my loafers and my legs were cold in my slacks and a few times I said something to the effect of, “I’m up for anything,” meaning that I was freezing and willing to eat anywhere.

Soon we were in the business district. The business district looked as if it were going out of business. This time the restaurant was open but my dad stared with displeasure at the menu posted in the window.

“Looks good,” I said, upbeat and casual.

No, it was not good. The restaurant was not at all what he remembered the restaurant to be. He wanted to take me to yet another restaurant, just a few blocks away, one that would have decent doogh, but not the best. He apologized for this in advance. In a city with a population of minimal Iranians, there seemed to me to be a disproportionate amount of Iranian restaurants from which to choose, and I had the sense that my dad had been planning this lunch for a very long time, and the moment was now here, and the moment was all wrong.

The restaurant we settled on was some sort of Persian fusion, nonspecific, all-inclusive, arabesques on the walls, world music playing, college-student waitstaff. I could tell my dad was disappointed and resigned. The doogh here was so-so, he said again, and he ordered it anyway. He said that the ghormeh sabzi was average, the khoresh gheymeh was okay, the bademjan was probably good, because how can you screw up bademjan? I made a show of looking over the menu and murmuring interest and assent. When the doogh arrived, my dad let his sit on the table untouched, as if in protest, a tall glass of pure white liquid with a straw sticking out of it. I sipped mine cautiously, my American palate unaccustomed to exploration and uncertainty, and then something must have clicked inside of me, deep down on that latent genetic level that’s apparently always lying in wait, because I instantly recognized it as one of the most delicious things I’d ever tasted, half yogurt, half salt, hint of mint. I sipped and then I gulped, and then it was gone, and I was sucking through the straw, trying to vacuum up the bottom of the glass. Had I been having lunch with Chip, I would have suggested we order another one right away. Instead, I said nothing, because I didn’t want to seem entitled.

Now that the central dilemma of finding a restaurant had been resolved, and my dad and I were finally sitting face-to-face, his face somewhat similar to my face, it was clear that the only thing for us to do was engage in small talk, prolonged and small, beginning with the arabesques hanging on the walls. This arabesque represents this, my dad said, that arabesque represents that. He was in docent mode, guiding me through the gallery of antiquities in his sandals and socks. I murmured interest and assent. I asked follow-up questions. I waited for the waiter. By the way, my dad said, had he mentioned that the bademjan in this restaurant was good? Yes, he had mentioned that. But thank you for mentioning that again. I will order that because you have now mentioned that. I spoke the way I was dressed, jacket and slacks for maximum courtesy and inoffensiveness. I leaned in close so I could hear his every word, my hands folded, my elbows off the table, the small talk made more self-conscious by my dad’s accent and the world music being piped in and the laughter emanating from the other tables, especially the one right next to us, where a group of college students, about my age, ate from a dozen different plates of Persian fusion food. They were full-on Americans, no question, just dropping in for some culture on a cold winter’s day, but I was sure they knew more about what they were eating than I ever would.

I kept expecting that the small talk with my dad would soon be supplanted with the substantial talk, the talk about what life had been like for me these last 15 years, about what life had been like after he’d left us, Mom and me in our apartment in outer Queens, across from the nail salon, Nails Something Something. But the small talk continued unabated. There had been buildup and now there was anticlimax. I was the adopted child who, upon finally meeting his birth parent, marvels at the shared biology, but aside from that, so what?

“Do you remember,” my dad suddenly asked me, “the time we drove to Long Island for the weekend?” He was telling me about a time when we’d taken a drive one Sunday afternoon, impromptu, the three of us, early summer in the Buick LeSabre, windows rolled down, final destination Mineola, but then we’d changed our minds at the last minute, and we’d continued on to Shelter Island, an additional two hours away. He gazed at me through the recollection.

I racked my brain for the memory. “No,” I said, “I don’t remember that.”

“Do you remember,” he went on, “the time we drove to New Jersey for the weekend?” According to him, the same sequence of events had transpired: the three of us, Sunday afternoon, early summer in the long-ago-discontinued Buick LeSabre, final destination the Palisades, but altered at the last minute.

“That sounds like fun,” I said.

I could see him searching through the database in his head, searching, searching, and coming up empty because, after all, there were only a handful of memories to choose from, and now the small talk was replaced by silence, prolonged and telling, my dad and I avoiding eye contact, while the table of my American peers stuffed their faces with plates of ghormeh sabzi. I thought perhaps I should try to offer my own reminiscences from the past, but all I had were bits and pieces of non-narrative. Do you remember the time you were sitting on the blue couch? Do you remember the time you put the hardboiled egg on my plate?

After a while, my dad asked me if I happened to remember the time we went to Coney Island. There had been no Buick LeSabre for this outing, only the subway, the three of us on the F train coming in from Queens, 40 stops end-to-end. He was looking at me from across the table with an almost pleading look, a please-tell-me-you-remember-this look, how is it possible that you don’t remember this? In his mind it must have felt like this had taken place just last week, the three of us oceanside, me, Mom, and Dad, walking on the boardwalk to buy frozen ice from a vendor, and then my dad taking me on the merry-go-round. How can you not remember the merry-go-round? When I was done with the merry-go-round we went into the water, and the waves were gentle, and I had water wings and an inflatable dolphin that he’d bought for me right after he’d bought me the frozen ice from the vendor. He said he’d shown me how to float on my back, and how to kick my legs, and we played some game with the inflatable dolphin, and when we were done with the water he took me back on the merry-go--round again.

“Do you remember that?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, “I remember that.”

• • •

As it turns out, Tehran is beautiful in the spring. The temperature is just right, and there’s a gentle breeze blowing, and the snowcapped mountains loom so large and look so close. My dad lives about a mile from the hotel if you walk straight down the main thoroughfare, and then turn right, and left, and right again, which I do, thanks to the friendly staff at the hotel who circled points A, B, and C on my map, showing patience with the American. I’m blinking in the sunlight, which seems extra-bright because of day two of jet lag—it’s noon when it should be night—and once again I’m dressed in jacket and slacks for the occasion, because I want to look presentable when seeing my dad for the first time in 15 years, but also because I thought I’d read somewhere that it’s not acceptable for men in Iran to wear short sleeves in public. Apparently I’d been wrong about that, as I’d been wrong about many things, including the grimness, the hopelessness, the ruthlessness that I was so sure I’d been able to perceive blurring past the window of my taxi. Whereas yesterday there’d only been gray, beige, and black, today there’s color everywhere, pastels and primaries, even the women’s headscarves are in color. In that alternate reality of mine, Danush Jamshid would be taking an afternoon break from selling his knockoff SIM cards so that he could meet his dad for lunch, just catching up, he’d be driving his motorcycle at top speed down the main thoroughfare, no helmet needed. Instead, I’m Danny McDade, walking among the people of Level 4, pretending as if I’m one of them, the diaspora having come full circle. I don’t need to speak the language to know that something like happiness can still exist in a nation that has an oil embargo, banking restrictions, and frozen assets. Every few blocks I pass a mural in vivid detail and vibrant color, meticulously painted, five, six, seven stories high, of rainbows, angels, doves, optimism. Later, I will ask my dad to explain the symbolism to me and he will say that these are not symbols but commemoration of the Iran-Iraq War in which a million died.

Unlike the hotel, my dad’s apartment building has not been designed with the Western conception of the Orient. It’s a plain, no-nonsense structure, closer to Queens than the Orient. There might as well be a nail salon across the street. The stairwell is constructed out of pale concrete, making it seem as if the entire building will crumble at the first tremor, and it’s while walking up this stairwell, my loafers making hollow sounds, that I suddenly think that I should have brought something for lunch, just a little box of something to show American hospitality and that I’ve been raised right. “Here’s a little box of something that I picked up,” I’d say. But it’s too late now, and I’m standing in front of my dad’s door, staring at a nameplate handwritten in Persian, which I’m assuming says Jamshid. It’s as beautiful as any of the signs I’ve seen, this one simple word, and I realize that it’s the first time I’ve witnessed my dad’s handwriting, with its calligraphic expertise, its dashes and dots, reading right to left. Then again, it might be the landlord’s handwriting. My dad opens the door, as if he’s heard my footsteps in the stairwell, and he hugs me, right there in the doorway, 15 years gone by like that. He’s not worrying about my height or about icebreakers. I can feel his full weight leaning into me. “How have you been?” he says. He’s saying it into my shoulder. I don’t know if he’s asking me how I’ve been since arriving in Iran, or how I’ve been for the last 15 years.

He’s been aging, that’s how he’s been. He has gray in his bushy eyebrows and he’s stooping a bit. I can still see my resemblance in him, at least I think I can, the inescapable biology, the nose, skin, etc. I wonder if I’ll start to stoop when I’m 65, if that’s what I have to look forward to. Meanwhile, he’s ushering me into his apartment. If he’s anxious about anything, he doesn’t seem it. His apartment is decorated like the hotel lobby, paisley on the walls, Persian rugs on the floor, but the place is sparse and has the quality of a bachelor pad. It feels as if it’s been recently cleaned and before that had not been cleaned in a year. If I were to open a dresser drawer I’d find a bag of potato chips. The living room table has been laid out with bowls of pomegranates, apricots, and pistachios: the source material for what becomes Hollywood cliché. “This is just to get us started,” my dad says. He sounds excited. He’s been waiting for this moment, and now the moment has arrived, and he’s going to make sure the moment is perfect.

I don’t drink tea, but I say I do, and he pours me a cup from a giant bronze samovar that looks ancient and inoperable. If the samovar makes the tea taste better than a teapot, I can’t tell. Then we sit cross-legged on the paisley cushions on the Persian rug, drinking tea and eating pomegranates, apricots, and pistachios, trying to catch up. “Have you ever had pomegranates before?” my dad asks. “Yes, I have,” I say. “These are the best pomegranates,” he says. I’m trying not to get red juice all over my mouth. I’m trying not to get pistachios in my teeth. I’m trying to listen and not make mistakes. I’m in polite mode. I’m 35 years old and I’m not accustomed to sitting cross-legged on the floor.

He’s retired now from engineering. He’s all finished with what his LIU education gave him. He points to his college diploma hanging on the wall. He’s proud of that college diploma in its ready-made frame. It looks like a prop that he’s hung for the occasion, and when I leave, he’ll take it down. He’s done moving from city to city. He’s stable. He’s here to stay in Tehran, 14 hours away by plane.

Halfway through catching up I spill some of the tea on the Persian rug and panic. It looks like raindrops before the hard rain comes. “Sorry about that!” I say, but my dad shrugs. In a bachelor pad you don’t care about spilled tea. The drops sit between us, slowly drying, while my dad asks me if I remember how we had to walk through Buffalo trying to find lunch at a Persian restaurant. “Of course I do,” I say. He asks me if I remember the doogh I drank. “The so-so doogh,” he says. I ask him if he remembers that he’d worn sandals and socks. Yes, he remembers that. He’s laughing, and so am I. Here’s the memory that we’ve managed to create, the funny story about a cold afternoon in Buffalo. Now I’ve got five days left on a thirty-day visa and my dad is telling me that he has big, big plans for us. First we’re going to go to a museum to see the national treasures. Then we’re going to eat at a real Persian restaurant. Then we’re going to take an excursion to the mountains. He pulls the paisley drape back so I can see the top of the snowcapped mountains from his window. “Just an afternoon trip,” he says, because the mountains are deceptively close. I’m sure that when the Americans have grown tired of waiting around for the sanctions to bring about regime change, 40 years and counting, they won’t invade from the sea, but will instead choose to come over those mountains.

“You’ll see,” my dad tells me, “we’re going to experience it all.”