Darius the Great Is Not Okay

Darius played soccer as a young boy but gave it up after being diagnosed with depression; the medication he was initially placed on dulled his perception and response time. He’s therefore initially anxious about playing soccer with Sohrab because the sport is in his mind associated with his failures and his father’s “many disappointments in [him]” (108). To his surprise, however, Darius discovers that he’s now a good player; he continues to play soccer with Sohrab for the duration of his stay in Iran (where the game is popular), and even considers trying out for his school team when he returns to America.

As a motif, soccer is linked to Darius’s rediscovery of his Iranian heritage, his growing confidence in his own identity and talents, and the way his friendship with Sohrab affirms these things. The Team Melli jersey Sohrab gives to Darius encapsulates this, symbolizing both the boys’ friendship and its effect on Darius; the first time he puts it on, he remarks that it “[makes] him feel like [he] belong[s]” (181). Consequently, after the boys argue, Darius considers leaving the jersey behind, calling it his “Persian camouflage” and saying he “never should have tried being something [he] wasn’t” (291)—Iranian, but also everything Sohrab says he is, from a good brother to an understanding friend. Darius chooses to take it back to America “[j]ust in case” (292), underscoring the way his time in Iran and with Sohrab has changed him.

Darius is a fan of fantasy and science fiction—most notably, J. R. R. Tolkien and Star Trek. He scatters allusions to both throughout discussions of his daily life, nicknaming the water boiler at Tea Haven “Smaug the Terrible” after the dragon from The Hobbit and referring to his male relatives’ pattern of balding as the “Picard Crescent” after Captain Picard. Darius’s interest in science fiction also spills over into an affinity for space; he uses the language of black holes and singularities to describe feelings of hurt or shame; calls a pimple “Olympus Mons”; and describes his grandmother’s hugs as “easily the best in the Virgo Supercluster” (265).

As a motif, these references serve as a shorthand for Darius’s status as an outsider because an interest in science fiction and fantasy is stereotypically associated with being “geeky” and unpopular. It’s also an indication of how Americanized Darius is as a second-generation Iranian American; although globalization has provided Western series like Star Trek with new audiences around the world, Iran’s official policy since the 1979 revolution has been to resist these influences. This makes it all the more noteworthy that Darius so often talks about his impressions of Iran in terms of works like The Lord of the Rings, as when he describes entering the Dowlatabad Garden wind tower as “stepp[ing] into a world of Elven magic. Into Rivendell, or Lothlórien” (246). On the one hand, these references to fantasy realms reinforce the idea of Iran as a foreign or otherworldly place unlike anything Darius has ever experienced. On the other hand, by linking Iranian and Western culture in this way, Darius makes sense of his own identity as Iranian American.

Lastly, Star Trek plays an important role in the context of Darius’s relationship with his father. As the novel opens, an interest in the show is one of the few things Darius feels he has in common with his father, and the two make a point of watching an episode together every night. Darius is therefore deeply hurt when Laleh begins to join in, seeing it as yet another sign of favoritism on his father’s part; by contrast, after clearing the air with his father, Darius finds that he can better tolerate Laleh’s presence. In this sense, the show serves as a barometer of the strength of Darius and his father’s relationship.

Food is a motif that underscores Darius’s similarities to—and differences from—his purely Iranian family members. Although Darius enjoys many traditional Persian meals, his familiarity with American culture and food gives him an outsider’s perspective on why people might find dishes like fesenjoon “suspicious”:

It looks like the sort of primordial goo that could generate new amino acids, which would inevitably combine to initiate protein synthesis and create brand new life forms. […] [N]on-Persians (and even some Fractional Persians) tended to regard fesenjoon with suspicion, which is a shame, because it’s just chicken, ground walnuts, and robe (134).

Darius also personally dislikes some foods, such as dates and cucumbers, that “true” Iranians enjoy, which is a source of insecurity for him. On the flip side, his discovery of new foods like sekanjabin—a specialty of Babou’s—underscores his growing understanding of and identification with the Persian side of his family.

The azan is the Muslim call to prayer, which is broadcast from mosques five times each day. Although Darius is not Muslim (or religious at all), he immediately takes a liking to the sound after arriving in Iran. For him, it comes to represent a feeling of connectedness to other Persians, living and long gone: “I imagined everyone in the Jameh Mosque kneeling to pray, and all the people in Yazd heeding the call, and even farther out, a neural network spread throughout the entire country and to the Iranian diaspora across the whole planet” (220). Sohrab shares this sentiment as well, despite being Bahá'í.

The Team Melli jersey that Sohrab gives to Darius is one of several gifts exchanged over the course of the novel: Darius brings his grandmother Darjeeling tea from the US; he gives Sohrab a pair of cleats before leaving Iran; and Babou and Mamou give Darius a teapot and a pair of cleats for his birthday. These gifts are significant because they reflect the personality of the person receiving them; for instance, the birthday presents Darius’s grandparents choose for him affirm his interests in soccer and tea. In this way, the motif of gift-giving is intertwined with the idea of being seen and accepted.