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Dastan’s apartment is rarely completely dark: With the curtains open at night, the way he prefers them, the ambient light from Georgetown’s buildings, cars, and streetlamps filters in through the windows and casts shadows throughout the room, outlining Dastan’s shoulders and back as he stretches out next to Tamina in bed. She runs two fingers down his spine, and he turns his head and smiles at her. He doesn’t know what she’s about to ask.
She flattens her palm on his skin; underneath the pad of her thumb, the tip of her middle finger, the base of her little finger, and the heel of her hand she can feel some of the pockmarks and scars that mar Dastan’s shoulders and back. He’s completely relaxed beside her: The group of people whose touch Dastan enjoys is small, and Tamina considers herself fortunate to be a member of it. She also knows that this ease will disappear, and she hopes only temporarily, when she says what she’s about to.
She takes a breath. “Dastan, who”—she’s planned this, she’s chosen her words, and she fumbles them anyway—“who did this to you?”
He goes tense, which she was expecting, but he doesn’t shake her off. She tries to tamp down her relief, because this could still go wrong in any myriad of ways. Dastan answers with a question, typical: “Why do you want to know?”
Because I love you, you idiot, and I want to know the bad stuff just as much as the good stuff. Which is true on a day-to-day basis, but not precisely what’s driving her here. Or, at least, it's not the only thing driving her here. “Because I’m meeting your parents tomorrow, and even though you haven’t said a word against them so far, I need to know whether to hate them or not.”
There’s a pause, and then this seems to sink in. Dastan turns over to face her, which throws her hand from his back, but he doesn’t seem to have intended it. “No,” he says. “Oh my God, no. You should definitely not hate them. You should…the opposite of hate them. I guess that would be love them, which is a little much to ask on a first meeting, but…yeah. You shouldn’t hate them. They didn’t do…any of that,” he goes on, more quietly. “It happened before they adopted me.” Her eyes must go wide, because Dastan adds, “I wasn’t adopted as a baby,” though Tamina isn’t sure that really makes anything better. “It’s a long story. Just…it wasn’t them, OK?”
“OK,” she says, and suddenly her eyes are stinging, and it’s stupid: it’s not her pain to cry over, plus she did ask, and she knew the story would be ugly no matter what, and anyway Dastan shouldn’t have to be the one to comfort her in this situation. Tamina blinks the tears away as best she can, and when she reaches for Dastan again, he settles himself along her body, on his stomach so that she can trace his vertebrae like she was doing a few minutes ago, like they've both always enjoyed. He’s not as relaxed as he was before, but some of the tension has also seeped away. “OK,” she repeats, quietly.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Dastan’s parents are completely unhateable.
Sharaman Mirza is soft-spoken and kind, exactly as Dastan described him. In Mr. Mirza, Tamina can see Tus’s strong, stocky build and curly hair; the red in Tus’s hair, though, as well as his lighter coloring are, according to Dastan, from Tus’s Irish-American mother, who died in childbirth. Out of habit, Tamina very nearly calls Dastan's mother "Mrs. Mirza" even though she knows better—but Ms. Kianfar says, “Nasrin, please—anything else makes me feel ancient.” Nasrin is nearly as tall as her husband, slender and stunning, dressed unpretentiously and (even Tamina can tell) expensively in a dark red sheath. It’s easy to see where Garsiv got his height and his cheekbones, if not his fashion sense. Their family isn’t a visual match—too many varying sets of genetics at work, and Tamina remains amazed that someone as elegant and poised as Nasrin could birth someone as clueless as Garsiv—but their mannerisms are identical: they lean forward when they speak, they're inveterate hand-talkers, they talk over one another and interrupt and nobody seems to mind.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Tamina’s on call that night, after she and Dastan get back from dinner, and because it’s a Friday, the shift is busy with undergraduate stupidity. Dastan spends most of the next day and evening in the darkroom—he has a project due Monday, and despite the fact that the rest of the world has moved on to digital files and Photoshop, Dastan retains a stubborn and monogamous love for film, developer, and a darkroom. (She has to think it can’t be good to expose himself to all those chemicals, but with Dastan you learn to pick your battles.) Sunday night, he finishes up his project while Tamina goes to a potluck at her friend Bailey’s for another friend’s birthday. Dastan and Tamina don’t really see each other until Monday night, at which point he is exhausted from having done most of the work for a semester project over the course of three days and she has a ton of reading to do for Tuesday, her heaviest class day; then she’s on call again Tuesday night. The upshot is, they don’t have a chance to talk until Wednesday, and half of that conversation is, “So, what have you been up to for the past week?” which is apparently what happens when you have a busy schedule and a boyfriend with a habit of doing everything school-related at the last possible minute.
They have dinner, Tamina a salad with walnuts and dried cranberries, Dastan the thick soba noodles he likes, and catch each other up: Dastan’s project (everything came together just fine; his professor thinks he has a strong MFA portfolio; Dastan still isn’t sure he wants to do grad school), Bailey’s asshole boyfriend (still an asshole), Bis’s mom is sick again (not a surprise, but worrisome), Tamina somehow wound up on call both nights next weekend (she’s trying to trade with somebody), Garsiv might actually have a girlfriend.
“Seriously?” Tamina says, spearing an errant cranberry.
“He was really cagey about it. Whatever night you’re on call, I’ll go over there with beer and World of Warcraft, and see what I can get out of him.”
“Unless he’s got plans with this girl,” Tamina points out.
“In which case she’s definitely a girlfriend. I don’t know of anything else that could pull Garsiv away from Warcraft.” Tamina laughs, because it’s true, and Dastan says, “So my family didn’t scare you away?”
She’s pretty sure it doesn’t matter that Dastan is smiling as he asks the question.
“No,” Tamina says. “Not at all. I’d already met Tus and Garsiv, so that wasn't a big deal, and your parents seem great.”
“They are,” Dastan says, and looks down at his noodles.
Tamina feels like there’s something she needs to say or to ask—some kind of code to unlock whatever Dastan hasn’t told her—but she doesn’t know what it is. In the silence, she picks at one of the walnut slivers left on her plate.
“I was actually adopted twice,” Dastan blurts out.
As soon as it leaves her mouth, Tamina really, really wishes that her initial response wasn’t, “What?”