kayip | (no subject)

July 4, 2012
10:35 PM EST

"Solomon, I said turn it off," the woman across the table hissed at her son. The boy, probably in his early teens, was listening to a small radio with a small group of others his age, and Behrooz could just about make it out from across the room.

"- in the second bombing in two days –"

It stops. The boy's switched it off, and hands it to his mother, who just puts it under her chair and returns to talking to the friend she was sitting with. Behrooz turns his attention back to Sareh, who was sitting on a mat on the floor instead of a chair, her paper plate in front of her.

"I can get you a chair, you know."

She shrugs, picking up a frosted sugar cookie from the plate. "Do you like mom's contribution?"

He stares at the cookie on his own plate, and is in the middle of saying "It looks good-" before he pauses. "We sell these, don't we?"

It makes her grin, which is something he hasn't seen much of in these last two days. But the smile vanishes quickly, along with the conversation in the room, when something like shattering glass and a loud pop you didn't need any sort of special hearing to notice came from the floor above. A man near the stairs stands to get up, but the Imam calls out to him.

"Wait."

No one speaks, and there's the sound of breaking glass again, and the screech of car wheels suddenly forced into motion. After the popping sound snaps through the air again, the Imam nods, and people put down their plates to head upstairs and look around.

The main hall – where prayer a little while earlier – was darkened, the only light filtering in through the front windows from the streetlamps outside. Immediately, however, the light was more fractured – a couple of the windows were broken, and something was glowing dully from the entrance carpets. Behrooz could tell what it was without needing to get any closer, but he went forward anyway.

"It's – fireworks," a man in front of him mumbled. Behrooz knelt closer, and carefully picked something up out of the embers.

"Duct taped to rocks," he held it out as the lights came on, and the charred marks on the front carpets became visible.

"They made up their minds awfully fast," a woman commented, folding her arms.

"Well, FOX News was blaming us about fifteen minutes after-"

"That could've started a fire –"

"Enough." His voice was quiet, but everyone fell silent quickly enough. The Imam took the rock – and shredded remains of the firework, from Behrooz's hand, and stared at the windows. "This is all easily fixable, hamdulillah." Looking more directly at Behrooz now, "Go back downstairs, brother, we can take care of this."

Behrooz steps back, and nods silently, and the younger members of the group start heading back toward the stairs. Sareh walked a little quickly to catch up with him.

"Too bad they lit them, we could've used those fireworks."

He just stares at her for a minute, but she seems unperturbed. Farid walks past them, mumbling something to his sister in Persian. She doesn't respond.

"Really, we could use them, you know? Lots of people do that for mid-Sha'ban, and it's the Fourth of July, anyway."

"I think that would have defeated the vandalism part, Sareh."

She shrugs, but folds her arms as they head back down the stairs. Solomon has turned the radio on again.