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Summary
Chapters 32–35
Chapter 32: The Virgo Supercluster
While Stephen plays Rook with the Bahrami men, Darius wonders how Stephen has so easily assimilated with them. Darius and Sohrab approach Darius’s older cousin Navid, who asks why Darius never played football with them. Navid is surprised to learn that Ali-Reza still plays, as he’d heard he was moving. Sohrab explains that Ali-Reza was supposed to move but didn’t because his dad lost his job. Though Ali-Reza had been unkind to him, Darius sympathizes with him and understands his anger at not being able to move away. Darius wonders if all Persian boys have father issues. Sohrab tells Darius he’s so good at soccer because he’s Persian. The cousins decide to teach Darius to play Rook. Later, Mamou hugs Darius, and he appreciates how good her hugs feel. He wishes he could take her back to America with him. That night, while going to bed, Darius notices Laleh sleeping and considers asking his dad to watch Star Trek with him, but ultimately decides not to. He sees the cleats he requested for Sohrab laid out on his bed. Shirin comes in and tells Darius she’s happy he’s made friends with Sohrab. Darius is sad he’ll have to leave because he has never had a friend like Sohrab.
Chapter 33: The Age of Bahramis
The family dresses to visit the Atashkadeh Fire Temple. Darius has to wear a white hat, but his curls are so long that Mamou has to pin them for Babou to get the hat on. Babou looks into Darius’s eyes repeatedly, effusive that he will see the temple fire. They visit the Atashkadeh, a Fire Temple with a flame that has been burning inside for 1,500 years. The temple’s arches surround a mirror-like pond. When Babou turns pale and returns to the car, Mamou insists Darius go ahead. Looking at the dancing flames, Darius wonders about all of his ancestors who came before and those who will come after, and laments that he’ll likely soon lose Babou. At home, Darius finds his mom looking at photo albums of her and Stephen in college. Darius is surprised to see his dad once had long hair. Darius stares at a picture of his dad lovingly holding a baby, thinking it’s Laleh. He’s surprised to learn the baby is himself. Shirin admits it’s her favorite picture of them and Darius wishes he and Stephen still got along.
Chapter 34: Magnetic Containment
Darius takes Sohrab’s wrapped cleats to his house but is surprised to see a strange car in front. Darius knocks but no one answers, so he walks around the side. Confused because he was expected, Darius observes Sohrab’s uncle Ashkan in the kitchen, so he knocks. Ashkan welcomes him in but is clearly distraught. Darius takes his shoes off when he enters, as is the custom, and hears Sohrab’s mother sobbing in the living room. Sohrab is holding her tightly. Uncertain, Darius asks if he can make them some tea, but Sohrab angrily yells at Darius to get out. Ashkan scolds Sohrab in Farsi, prompting Sohrab to announce that his father is dead while speaking angrily to his uncle. Sohrab tells Darius his father was killed in prison and asks what is in the box Darius is carrying. Darius tells Sohrab about the cleats, but Sohrab slaps the box away. Horrified, Darius apologizes as a wounded Sohrab yells that Darius is always crying even though nothing bad has ever happened to him. Sohrab tells Darius that no one wants him there, which rings painfully in Darius’s ears.
Chapter 35: First, Best Destiny
His own shoes forgotten, Darius flees Sohrab’s house and runs blindly through Yazd in his socks. He cuts his feet while climbing the fence to the bathroom roofs where he once sat with Sohrab. As he sits alone, the azan sounds, and Darius thinks about what he’s lost in Sohrab. Darius sobs, angry with himself, wishing he could disappear. Suddenly, he hears his father’s voice. Stephen knows what has happened and has been looking for him. Darius cries and Stephen tells him not to, but Darius says he can't help it. Stephen says he wants to ensure he doesn’t lose Darius to depression. Darius screams that he’s never been good enough for Stephen, who just wants him to be normal, and that Stephen won’t even watch Star Trek with him anymore.
Stephen promises that Darius has always been good enough and that he’s always loved him. He references Star Trek, saying Darius is his “first, best destiny.” Darius asks Stephen why he stopped telling him bedtime stories. Stephen is sad to realize that Darius remembers when he stopped reading to him and admits he’s scared he can’t protect Darius from everything bad in the world. Darius assures Stephen he won’t commit suicide, and Stephen confesses that he himself almost did. He explains that he began taking depression medication when Darius was small and that the medication turned him into a zombie. He felt so out of it that he couldn’t even tell Darius stories. By the time Stephen got back on track, he thought Darius hated him. Stephen cries, hugs Darius, and tells him it’s okay not to be okay. They talk about Sohrab, and Darius says he’s the best friend he’s ever had. For the first time, he feels his dad truly understands him.
Analysis
Sohrab’s emotional explosion aimed at Darius is a perfect storm of triggers that send Darius back into a deep depression. Because rejection hurts him so badly, Darius hesitates sometimes to reach out, but he’s gone out on a limb by bringing his new friend a gift. When he hears the news that Sohrab’s father is dead, Darius reaches for his primary way to show love, by making tea, but Sohrab attacks him for it. Sohrab uses the worst possible words to Darius—"no one wants you here"—triggering Darius to spiral mentally and emotionally. Because Sohrab has helped Darius finally begin to understand his own value and because he’s Darius’s best friend, their fight makes Darius despair with feelings of worthless. Darius plunges into a low point of his depression. Instantly, everything about Darius’s outlook goes dark. He comments that the buildings and streets that once appeared vibrant now look drab and dirty. He becomes self-destructive, running through the streets barefoot and lacerating his feet. Internally, Darius berates and attacks himself with negative thoughts related to his value and assigns self-blame.
On the rooftop, Darius’s depression is so triggered by the sound of the azan and the memory it sparks of his time there with Sohrab that he’s unable to see the situation logically. Darius is trapped in a perverse form of self-pity as he genuinely feels bad about the unkind words Sohrab said, but rather than considering the circumstances in which they were uttered, he uses them to further lash at his own wounded spirit. His emotions won’t allow him to slow down and understand that Sohrab was severely traumatized at the moment and acted out in ways he didn’t mean. Unlike Darius, Sohrab has no coping mechanisms and no understanding mentor to help him navigate his grief and anger. Not knowing what else to do at this point of his mental struggle, Darius wishes he could escape into one of his fantasy worlds, like The Lord of the Rings or Star Trek. This is part of the appeal that shows like Star Trek have for Stephen and Darius. They provide an escape from the real world, an escape where the good guys eventually win—something that often seems impossible in the real world. Darius responds this way because of his depression and fragile self-esteem. He is unable to adopt the distance and perspective he needs to understand that Sohrab’s words were never about him. Given his depression and his inability to rescue himself, Darius is in real psychological duress. Only Stephen, who understands his son more than Darius realizes, can help him out of this struggle.
Darius and Stephen’s moment on the rooftop is climatic because their unspoken truths and traumas are revealed, allowing Darius to reframe some of the most traumatic memories of his life. Those memories are traumatic because no one had ever communicated to him what was really happening, leaving him to fill in the missing spaces with negative stories about himself. When Stephen tells Darius not to cry, and Darius finally opens up and explains what he truly believes his father thinks of him, Stephen realizes he must expose his deepest, darkest fears in order to bridge the divide. Deep down, Darius truly believes he will never be good enough for his dad. Darius’s ability to be honest about his feelings spurs Stephen to do the same. Darius asks for the truth about why his dad stopped reading him bedtime stories, and Stephen finally explains that his need to protect Darius plunged him into deep depression. Clearing up the misconception heals the broken relationship between father and son, resolving the confusion Darius has been trying to process ever since he was a child.
