Come On In Page 2

  * * *

  On the way to the airport, I say goodbye to the road. I am not reconciled to the idea of leaving. I cannot separate myself from these islands, but my cheeks are wet and taste of salt. The salty sea that surrounds these islands is retreating from me.

  * * *

  At the airport, I say a farewell to my uncles and aunts whose homes have been my own ever since I learned the meaning of family. Their faces, their smiles, their smells, and their stories are home. I hug my cousins extra hard.

  My brother, I save for last.

  I stand in front of him and hold on tight to his hand. Seven years stretch between us. Our conversations have been awkward and uncomfortable, as if we don’t speak each other’s language, but there are times when we don’t need language to speak. I remember the times his warm back comforted me when I most needed it. I remember his weird snorting laughter when I told a joke no one else would laugh at. I remember fighting over the last fry in the box. I remember him singing me to sleep once.

  I have been trying to learn the planes of his face, afraid that I will forget it and him. Afraid that I will forget the scent of him that I define as brother: the smell of sunshine, sea, and a sweetness I haven’t been able to find elsewhere.

  I have been running away from this moment, but time has caught me in its grasp and refuses to let go until I live through it.

  You see, I have been haphazardly saying goodbye to everything—even to the stones in the backyards—but only at this moment do I realize the immensity of goodbye. Only at this moment do I realize the brutality of it. What is goodbye? Does it mean I will see you again? Or perhaps I love you? Or perhaps it means hold on to me and don’t let me go, because I am not certain I will be myself anywhere but here. I don’t know. I haven’t lived long enough or experienced enough to have the answers.

  My father says we need to go, but I cling to my brother harder, scared because the hurt in my chest is far more severe than anything I have felt before. Perhaps this is the prelude to some kind of death I do not yet have the language to articulate. My brother puts his arms around me and hugs me back as I cry. I cry as I have never cried before. I cry as I never will again.

  Finally, even though I am not ready, my brother pulls away. He tries to wipe my tears but more keep falling. He attempts a smile and fails. His eyes are wet too.

  “I will look after your flowers,” he says. “Your hibiscus flowers. I will take care of them.”

  I blink hard and nod. “I will come back,” I promise. I might not be the same person when I do, and my family will change with time, but one thing will always remain the same no matter what: This place is, and always will be, home.

  “We will be waiting,” he says, and lets go.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Dear Reader,

  My parents and I moved to Canada from Fiji in August 2001. I was seventeen years old and not at all willing to leave behind my entire life and everyone I knew. In Fiji, we lived on a sugarcane farm in a small village called Vitogo. In “All the Colors of Goodbye,” I give you a fictionalized version of what my goodbyes looked like.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Nafiza Azad is a self-identified island girl. She has hurricanes in her blood and dreams of a time she can exist solely on mangoes and pineapple. Born in Lautoka, Fiji, she currently resides in BC, Canada, where she reads too many books, watches too many Kdramas and writes stories about girls taking over the world. Her debut YA fantasy, The Candle and the Flame, was released by Scholastic in 2019.

  THE WEDDING

  Sara Farizan

  “You look wonderful, Darya,” Mom said as she pushed back my shoulders so that I would stand up straight. She was always lecturing me about my posture and how important it was that I carry myself like a lady. For the sake of the family and the photos that would be taken of us, I was wearing a dress to my cousin Shayla’s wedding. I still hadn’t quite figured out how to be comfortable with, as my mom would say, my “burgeoning womanhood.” I felt like a neon-pink sausage, waddling around in high heels that squeezed my feet. I could feel a blister forming on my pinkie toe already.

  “I still can’t believe you’re wearing this,” my sister Tara said, pointing her phone in my direction. I didn’t smile for the photo, but she was grinning from ear to ear. Tara liked to glam up, put on makeup, wear dresses, and today she’d gone all the way with a lavender dress and popping bright-red lipstick. She looked good. She did it for herself and not for anyone else’s approval, but it wasn’t really my bag nor did I think it ever would be.

  “If you put that online, I will never forgive you,” I said through gritted teeth. The most I did in the grooming department was tweeze my eyebrows, and even that could be dangerous. Sometimes they were uneven or too thin, as I never knew when to stop plucking. Lately, I’d let them grow and do their own thing.

  “Look at my beautiful daughters,” Dad said, approaching us in the hotel lobby. He was in good spirits but had dark circles under his eyes. He’d done most of the driving from Boston to Montreal the day before, and we’d arrived later than the GPS had said we would. So far, Montreal felt like Europe and North America had gotten together and had a baby that wore a lot of denim and liked hockey. This was, of course, a generalization as I’d been in the country for less than twenty-four hours, but most people at the hotel had been very friendly and polite, so that stereotype about Canadians seemed to hold up.

  Dr. Hamid Sadeghi, my grandfather, stood beside my dad, a little shorter and more fragile than his son, whom he once towered over. My grandfather looked handsome in a navy blue suit. His eyes were wide, and he reminded me of a kid who was about to meet Mickey Mouse at Disney World.

  “Darya,” Grandfather said. “You look...”

  “Better than usual. I know.” I was dressed like this at the sofreh aghd, the wedding ceremony, but I guess my being gussied up was still a shock to my family. What did I normally look like, to warrant this kind of enthusiasm? I mean, I usually wore jeans and a T-shirt, but it wasn’t like I dressed only in burlap sacks or anything.

  “No. You don’t look happy,” he said. “You don’t have to wear that if you don’t want to.”

  I loved him so much I thought my heart might burst.

  “She can’t show up to the reception in a T-shirt. What would everyone say?” Mom was fussing with a blow-dried piece of my hair that was out of place. She’d spent most of the morning tugging at my hair with a flat iron to make sure I was as presentable as possible. My hair was thick and curly, which might look good on other people, but I always forgot to use the fancy leave-in conditioner Mom bought me. My hair without conditioner gave me a Cousin Itt from the Addams family quality. It was yet another way I managed to disappoint her.

  “Yes, we wouldn’t want the Iowans and Iranians we’ll probably hardly ever see again to start talking about Darya’s fashion choices,” Tara muttered. “How will we sleep at night?”

  “Don’t be fresh,” Mom said to Tara. She let go of my hair and looked at me like I was a Wendy’s Spicy Chicken Sandwich when she had ordered coq au vin from a fancy French restaurant. Not what she’d had in mind, but satisfactory. “Shall we go?”

  Tara, Mom, and Dad walked ahead to find the ballroom. I trailed behind with Grandfather and held his hand.

  “When did you grow up?” Grandfather asked me.

  “I didn’t. It’s these shoes,” I replied.

  “It’s not the shoes,” he said. “Your older sister always talks back to your mother. But you don’t. You’re sophisticated.”

  I laughed a little. Sophisticated wasn’t a word I would associate with myself, considering Cap’n Crunch Berries was my breakfast of choice and I still wore Batgirl pajama bottoms to bed. “Are you excited?”

  He nodded. “I want to make sure my brother and I have time together,” he said. “He wasn’t at the ceremony. I’ve talked to him on the phone, but the last t
ime I went to visit him in Iran was so long ago. Maybe this is the last time we’ll see each other. I don’t know.” That was the reason the bride and groom were having their wedding in Canada—so that my great-uncle and his wife could attend. Travel bans really put a damper on festive occasions. It was why I wasn’t putting up a stink about what I was wearing. I squeezed his hand.

  I wanted him to have all the time in the world.

  A crowd of well-dressed wedding guests were mingling in front of a table outside the ballroom. I saw Dad hugging his sister, my aunt Mahnaz, who was wearing a maybe-not-super-age-appropriate red dress. I thought she wanted to make a big splash this weekend. She’d been waiting for her only daughter, Shayla, to get married for a long time. Aunt Mahnaz would complain to my dad on the phone about how worried she was that Shayla might be single forever, which to me hadn’t sounded bad at all. Now that Shayla had finally found a husband, Aunt Mahnaz was going all the way with an extravagant wedding, no matter what country it had to be held in.

  “Hello, Baba,” Aunt Mahnaz said with absolute joy as she hugged my grandfather. When she let go of him, she noticed me, and her mouth opened in shock. When we’d visited each other on Thanksgivings over the years, I had always worn my typical attire of ill-fitting, punk rock wear. “Darya, you’re so dressed up! I love it!”

  I sensed a theme. Everyone preferred this fake version of me. Actual me wasn’t enough. Lately I felt that way about everything that I was. I wasn’t Persian enough (on Dad’s side), I wasn’t Turkish enough (on Mom’s side), I wasn’t feminine enough, I wasn’t straight enough, I wasn’t gay enough, and these days, I got the impression that my government was telling me I wasn’t American enough. I was born and raised in the States, but I still got asked where I was from. I knew people didn’t mean Massachusetts.

  “Hi, Aunt Mahnaz,” I said as I hugged her, letting go of whatever annoyance I felt at everyone who liked this hyper-feminized version of me. “Congratulations!”

  “Thank you, Darya joon. I am so happy this day has come,” she said. I’d never seen so many of Aunt Mahnaz’s teeth at one time before.

  “Is Majid here?” Grandfather asked with a slight crack in his voice. He looked around.

  I’d met my great-uncle and his wife, Narges, once. They’d visited us five years ago in Boston after my grandmother passed away. I hated everything about that time, especially how ripped apart my grandfather had been. It was like he’d aged ten years overnight. But it would have been even worse if my great-uncle hadn’t been able to come see my grandfather in his time of need. I didn’t know much about the law, but I hoped someone who did would make sure the travel ban was temporary.

  “They called from the airport,” Aunt Mahnaz assured him while rubbing his shoulder. “Customs took a little longer than expected, but they will be here. Paul sent a driver to pick them up.” Paul, Shayla’s groom, hailed from Iowa. The two of them met in Washington, DC, where Shayla was a human rights attorney and Paul worked for a nonprofit focused on saving the environment. I thought they’d met through a dodgeball league for do-gooders or something.

  “Good, good,” Grandfather said before taking a deep breath. The only other time I’d seen him this on edge was at the hospital when we didn’t know if Grandmother was okay or not.

  “Come. I’ll show you to our table,” Aunt Mahnaz said, taking my grandfather by the arm and leading him into the ballroom. I joined my sister who was staring at the tiny placards on the table.

  “Where are Mom and Dad sitting?” I asked her.

  “They’re at table two,” Tara said as she picked up the placard with her name on it. “We’re table eleven,” she said as she found the card with my name on it and handed it to me. “You know what that means.” She rolled her eyes. I think she assumed that, because she was eighteen, she wouldn’t be assigned to the kids’ table anymore.

  To be honest, I dug a kids’ table. There was always a chance you’d be served macaroni and cheese, plus no one wasted breath on small talk. Kids’ table talk was very direct. Questions like, “How old are you?” and “Do you like dogs?” and my favorite, “How come your eyebrows are so thin/bushy?” depending on the day.

  Tara slowed her pace, probably so that I could keep up with her in heels as we walked into the ballroom. The giant crystal chandelier overhead lit an empty wooden dance floor, tables with centerpieces made of white flowers, and a small bar with guests lined up to get a drink. Servers flitted from guest to guest, serving hors d’oeuvres to women in stunning dresses and men in tuxes, while the DJ played some jazz at a low volume.

  We arrived at table eleven to find two young boys already seated. One looked about twelve and the other maybe six. They looked like they were related to one another and like they belonged to the groom’s side of the family.

  I sat down next to the six-year-old while Tara sat across from the twelve-year-old, who blinked a lot when he saw Tara. I’d been told by my bandmates that Tara was super hot, which creeped me out, but I understood that this poor kid wasn’t prepared for puberty to hit him all at once.

  The six-year-old stared up at me. His nose was running, and he was wearing a red bow tie with suspenders. His round cheeks were begging to be pinched, but I hated when people did that to kids. Grown-ups should at least ask permission before they grabbed baby flesh.

  “Are you here to marry Uncle Paul, too?” the little one said to me.

  “No. He only gets to marry one person,” I said. “I’m Darya.”

  “I’m Wyatt. I have a Spider-Man game on my mom’s tablet. I can’t play it now because it’s dinnertime, but I can show it to you later and we can play.”

  “Wyatt, that’s all I want to do. Ever.” The kid and I were going to get along fine.

  “You found a friend on your wavelength,” Tara said, giving me a golf clap.

  “Jealous?” I asked her. I think she was a little. Wyatt was adorable.

  “That’s my brother, Craig,” Wyatt said, pointing to the boy who was mooning over my sister. “He’s allergic to nuts so we can’t have any peanut butter in the house. But that’s okay because I love him.”

  “That’s my sister, Tara,” I said, nodding in her direction. “She’s allergic to joy but Mom says that’s because of something called hormones. I love her, too. Sometimes.”

  “You’re hilarious,” Tara muttered. “Maybe I will post that photo of you in a dress after all.”

  I glared at her. She laughed and took her phone out to take another photo of me.

  “Hi,” Craig said, introducing himself to my sister. “Uncle Paul said you’re from Boston?”

  “Yup,” she said, looking at her phone and not giving him much to work with.

  “That’s cool. I guess you must be Patriots fans. I’m a Vikings guy. Well, not really. Football isn’t my jam. I’m into basketball. Snowboarding, too. There must be great snowboarding and skiing near where you live because it’s cold most of the time. We have that in common. Cold climates. Winter’s my favorite season. Do you like winter?”

  Tara smiled at her new admirer’s rambling. “Winter’s rad, Craig,” she said with a charitable grin before she turned her attention back to her phone. Craig beamed, as his very white cheeks turned cherry red. Oh what power she wielded over the male species. I hoped she did some good and smashed the patriarchy with it.

  Suddenly, we heard a jovial yell in Farsi. I turned to see my grandfather cradling his brother’s head with reverence in his hands. Grandfather was smiling with tears running down his cheeks. The two men held each other, and everyone around them became very quiet, as if not wanting to interrupt the moment.

  “Why are they crying?” Wyatt asked me.

  “They’re happy to see each other,” I whispered to him.

  “But they’re crying. You cry when you’re sad,” he whispered back to me.

  “They’re a little sad too, I guess,” I choked ou
t, keeping my tears at bay. I was wearing mascara, a rare occurrence, and I didn’t want to spend the rest of the wedding looking like a raccoon. My grandfather and my great-uncle backed away from each other a little, still holding on to one another’s arms as they spoke in Farsi. Now they were smiling through the tears.

  “How come?” Wyatt asked, leaning into me a little.

  “Well, you know how you love your brother Craig?” Wyatt looked at his brother and nodded. “Imagine he lived somewhere very, very far away.”

  “Like in outer space? On Endor?” Star Wars fans start so young.

  “Sure. Like he was hanging out with Ewoks on Endor and you were on Naboo.”

  “Can I be on Endor? That’s more fun.”

  “Okay, you were on Endor and you couldn’t visit your brother because you weren’t allowed on his planet.”

  “Because of Darth Vader?”

  I didn’t feel equipped to explain a condensed history of foreign policy, world events, or unfettered xenophobia to a six-year-old. Maybe we’d see each other at another family function when he was older and we could discuss it further.

  “Something like that,” I said.

  “Oh,” Wyatt said quietly.

  “But, you’re here with your brother. My grandfather is here with his brother. And we’re all here to celebrate your uncle Paul and my cousin Shayla. On the planet of Earth.”

  He considered this as he watched my grandfather greet his sister-in-law, Narges Khanoum. My parents walked over to them and they embraced one another.

  “Okay,” he said. The room became noisy again as people introduced themselves to one another and reconnected with old friends and relatives.

  “I’m going to go say hello to them,” I said to Wyatt. “Be right back, young padawan.”

  I walked over to my grandfather and his brother, Majid. Grandfather wiped at his eyes and smiled wide when he saw me.