Darius the Great Is Not Okay (Darius the Great, #1)

by Adib Khorram

Persians are genetically predisposed to like tea. And even though I was only half Persian, I had inherited a full-strength tea-loving gene sequence from my mom.

Everything tasted gross out of plastic, all chemical-y and bland.

Mom only ever cooked Persian food on the weekends, because pretty much every Persian menu was a complicated affair involving several hours of stewing,

Persians have very strong feelings about the proper applications of rice. No True Persian ever popped theirs.

Farsi has different ways of talking to people, depending on the formality of the situation and your relationship to the person you’re addressing.

My knowledge of Farsi consisted of four primary vectors: (1) familial relations; (2) food words, because Mom always called the Persian food she cooked by its proper name; (3) tea words, because, well, I’m me; and (4) politeness phrases,

Mamou’s picture kept freezing and unfreezing, occasionally turning into chunky blocks as the bandwidth fluctuated. It was like a garbled transmission from a starship in distress.

There are no Persian celebrations that do not involve enough Persian food to feed the entire Willamette Valley.)

This, despite Chapel Hill High School’s Zero Tolerance Policy toward sexism.

wondered why he called it that. What made him call Iran home, when he knew I was born and raised in Portland.

Stephen Kellner of Kellner & Newton was not very pleasant at 3:30 in the morning.

Persians are notoriously picky about their tea—like

kissed her on both cheeks, left-right-left,

Maybe she was trying to fit a lifetime of missed hugs into the one car ride.

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

There were no camels anywhere in sight,

Taarof is a Farsi word that is difficult to translate. It is the Primary Social Cue for Iranians, encompassing hospitality and respect and politeness all in one.

This was not the first time Dad and I had been stuck spectating at a taarofing match we couldn’t understand.

It was an awkward but legitimate question for one Persian to ask another. I was related—distantly—to several Iranian families in Portland. It was usually through marriage,

When it comes to keeping track of our family trees, Persians are even more meticulous than Hobbits. Especially Persians living outside of Iran.

Tah dig is the layer of crispy rice from the bottom of the pot. It’s universally acknowledged as the ultimate form of rice. More than one family has forgotten their arguments when it came time to divide the tah dig.

Persians have mastered the ancient and noble art of the awkward family photo—in fact, we probably invented it.

I had never seen a soap opera in America, so I had no frame of reference, but the Iranian soap operas were absurd.

I really loved my grandmother.

Dr. Howell likes to say that depression is anger turned inward.

Watching you learn to cope with a world I can’t always protect you from. But I wish I could.”

“Being your dad is my first, best destiny.”

“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.”

“It’s okay not to be okay.”

My mother was strong and enduring as the Towers of Silence.

“I care what everyone thinks, Sohrab.”

I loved Mamou’s hugs, and her cooking, and her laughter. I loved it when she let me help her with the dishes. I loved it when we sat together and drank tea.