Darius’s insecurity surrounding his identity has many sources, but perhaps the most obvious is his experience as a second-generation Iranian American. Although Darius takes pride in his Persian heritage, his identification with that heritage is complicated by several factors. For one, Darius is only half Iranian; his father’s ancestry is European. More significant is that Darius has never been to Iran or seen his mother’s family in person, presumably because the tense relationship between Iran and the United States has made travel between the two countries difficult for much of his life. Lastly, unlike his sister, Darius doesn’t speak much Farsi.

The result is that Darius grows up never feeling at home. Although his mother will eventually tell him she worried that knowing Farsi would make him less likely to fit in, the truth is that Darius’s ethnicity alone makes him an outsider; at school, for instance, he’s the target of Islamophobic bullying despite not actually being Muslim. At the same time, Darius often struggles to identify with the Iranian side of his family. He loves Star Trek and The Lord of the Rings; he dislikes certain Iranian foods and traditions (ghormeh sabzi, Chaharshanbeh Suri, etc.); and he often finds himself excluded from conversations amongst his relatives when they lapse into Farsi.