Darius sat by the pool and tried to wash his face with one hand. I noticed that his left hand and forearm were swollen.

“You’re all bruised,” I said.

“It’s nothing,” he said.

Water kept missing his face and blood continued gushing out.

“Let me do that for you,” I said.

“It’s nothing,” he repeated.

“It seems bad to me.”

I put one hand on the back of his head and filled the palm of my other hand with water. “Here,” I said, “I can do a better job.”

He hesitated and then gave in.

I splashed water into his face several times. Then I picked up a towel hanging on a rope along with some clothes and dried his face around the wounds. The blood kept trickling down.

“I think I’d better take you to a doctor,” I said.

“I’ll be all right,” Darius said through pale lips.

“Look, the blood doesn’t seem to stop.”

“There’s a doctor two blocks away. Just walk me over there.”

“Let’s go then.”

He got up, held his head in his hands for a moment and then straightened up. I took his arm to lead him out.

“We’ll be all right,” I said.

Tony sat on the hard chair in my room, working on his paper with the deadline as Simin and I visited in the courtyard. Darius lay on the bed in his room, his back turned to us, listening to music. The injuries had been minor but the doctor said he should rest in bed for a day or two. He was restless, fidgeting. In another room, through a half-opened door, I could see my father lying on a mattress, his face slumped into misery, sulking even in his sleep. Ziba slept tentatively beside him as if ready to jump up at any moment.

“Oh, I’m glad we have a moment to ourselves, some peace and quiet,” Simin said, looking down at a pillowcase she was embroidering.

“Yes,” I said, not feeling the peace and quiet. Those rooms seemed to be gates to larger worlds, with each of the figures pulling at me, wanting something. And I still had not recovered from visiting with a horde of relatives that had dropped in one by one all morning and stayed through lunch. My uncle was conspicuously absent. I did not actually introduce them to Tony. They just looked him over and tried to say something welcoming and he nodded back at them politely. They asked me the usual questions about him—what he was doing sitting there working, why was he taking me back so soon, how come I had not taught him Persian. They gripped my arm, kissed me on the cheek, touched my hair. I thought of the time when I had met Tony’s family and had been struck by the absence of touching.

Some of the relatives had brought children and the house was covered with debris and toys they had strewn around—watermelon seeds, cucumber peels, a mutilated rag doll half-hidden behind a bush, a plastic car without wheels. And all the noise the children had made running around the yard, in and out of rooms, falling and crying, losing a pacifier and shrieking, climbing on adults’ laps.