The Space Between Us by Zoya Pirzad

Author:Zoya Pirzad [Pirzad, Zoya]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi
Tags: belonging, Iran, otherness, close-knit community, Iranian social conventions, marriage, Armenia, prejudice, pride, Caspian Sea, Iranian-Armenian author
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Published: 2014-02-06T05:00:00+00:00

In the car I put on some music that Martha liked. After a few minutes, she said, “Edmond, please turn that off.” No one said anything until we got to my aunt’s.

My aunt’s house was as it always was on Easter nights. Arsham showed me the dyed eggs. “Remember how we used to fight over these?”

I was just thinking Is there anything we didn’t fight about? when Arsham said, “Is there anything we didn’t fight about?” and his plump body shook with laughter.

Arsham is two years younger than me. When we were kids, he was skinny and much taller than I was. All of the children, both in our family and at school, were in awe of him. He loved hunting and sports and any game that offered the possibility of breaking something. If we were left alone, he would yawn and make fun of my toys and collections. Almost every time we were together we fought. I don’t know how old I was when we finally became friends. Maybe it was the day we went to the movies together. When the hero’s best friend was killed we both cried, and when we got back home, we dueled with Grandmother’s knitting needles, just like the hero and his buddy. For years now we had not just been cousins but also very good friends. For a moment I considered telling Arsham about Alenush.

I had just opened my mouth when Arsham picked up two colored eggs from the basket. He gave one to me and said, “What’s the wager?”

I lifted up my egg and brought it down on the pointed round top of his egg. Nothing. His turn, and my egg broke under his blow.

Arsham laughed. “You still can’t beat me.”

Arsham’s little daughter, chubby and curly-haired, arrived on the scene and said, “Playing with eggs is for kids, not for grown-ups.”

She took the egg carefully from her father, put it back in the basket, and looked at me. “Uncle Edmond, now that your egg is broken, you don’t need it anymore, do you?”

She took my egg, looked around furtively, put one finger to her lips and said, “Shhh…now I have five.” Then she skipped out of the room.

Arsham started laughing. “Naughty child!”

“Like father, like daughter,” I said.

He laughed harder. “You remember?”

One Easter, when we were children, we invented a game where whoever collected the most broken eggs was the winner. One year, Arsham had vanquished more eggs than usual but his own remained undamaged. Later he showed me the egg he’d used in the game. He had persuaded the neighborhood carpenter to make him a wooden egg, and Arsham had very cleverly painted it so that no one would know he was cheating.

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