payment page
Ardeshir Bahrami, or Babou as he’s known to his family, is a strong, proud, traditional Persian man who wants nothing more than to raise successful children and celebrate holidays and Persian traditions with his family. When it becomes apparent that his health is deteriorating because of his brain tumor, his daughter Shirin, and her family—Stephen, Darius, and Laleh—fly from the United States to Yazd to be with Babou. Babou is delighted to meet his grandchildren in person for the first time, but their visit also illuminates how far removed his family is from him and from the culture he loves so much. Darius, for example, cannot speak Farsi. Babou laments that his grandchildren’s half-heritage means they will never be fully Persian.
Over the course of the novel, Babou’s mental and physical health deteriorates even as Darius ascends into his namesake greatness. Babou grieves time lost as he prepares to pass the torch to his grandson. He is desperate to make Darius understand his ancestry’s grandeur so that it can be preserved. At the Tower of Silence, a sacred burial ground where generations of Darius’s ancestors remain, Babou laments modern burial practices. The Tower symbolizes the relationship between Babou and Darius. Babou is a bearer of the rich Persian culture of which he is so proud. As traditions, such as sky burials in the Tower, are abandoned, so too are the land and culture, with their history and traditions, forgotten. Darius realizes there is significance in preserving his culture, just as the Tower of Silence, though no longer in use, is preserved and revered. When Babou says goodbye to his family for the last time, it is with a sense that though he will expire, his culture will persevere.
