Darius the Great Is Not Okay

“As a people group, Persians are genetically predisposed to like tea. And even though I was only half Persian, I had inherited a full-strength tea-loving gene sequence from my mom.” 

Tea is one of the most important motifs in the novel because it is an integral part of Persian culture. On the face of it, Darius’s own love of tea would therefore seem to affirm his own Iranian identity, but as the story progresses, it emerges that Darius enjoys many non-traditional teas. This is initially a source of insecurity for Darius but becomes representative of his uniquely Persian American identity, which combines elements of both cultures.

“When she was a baby, I tried to talk to Laleh in Farsi too. But I never really got the hang of it, and Mom’s friends kept correcting me, so after a while I kind of gave up. After that, me and Dad talked to Laleh exclusively in English. […] That left the two of us in the dark whenever we were at gatherings with Mom’s friends. That was the only time Dad and I were on the same team.” 

The fact that Laleh speaks Farsi and Darius does not is a source of insecurity for Darius; it’s responsible for much of his sense that he isn’t truly Iranian, and it likely exacerbates his feeling that Laleh is his parents’ favorite child. The bright side, as Darius sees it, is that the shared language barrier is one of the few things he has in common with his father, creating a bond between them (at least when they’re around other Iranians). Even this connection is fragile, however. Stephen has had more exposure to Iranian culture than his son, and the fact that he fits in in ways that Darius doesn’t (e.g., by playing Rook) is a source of pain for Darius during their trip to Iran.