
"Hello. I'm Ramin," the boy next to him says.
Isaac looks into the boy's wide, dark eyes, and recognizes in them his own terror, which he has been trying to suppress all afternoon. The boy's hand is cold, the fingers like bits of ice.
"How old are you?"
"Sixteen."
Two years younger than his son Parviz. "Your parents know you're here?"
"My father is dead. And my mother is already in jail. It's been two months."
"They won't keep you long," Isaac says. "You're just a boy."
Ramin nods, takes a deep breath. The reassurance - which Isaac offered out of fatherly instinct rather than actual belief - seems to have calmed him.
"Why do you think they're keeping us here?" the boy continues. "Are they trying to decide which prison to send us to?"
"Keep it down!" A guard's voice pierces the hush that has settled about the room, like dust. "Don't aggravate your case!"
They obey, sit in silence. Isaac imagines Ramin's story. His family could be related to the shah. Or maybe he is one of those hot-blooded communists, protesting the new Islamic regime as they had the old monarchy. Or maybe it's simpler than all that. He could be a Jew, like Isaac, or worse, of the Baha'i Faith, believing that all of humanity is one race, and that there is a single religion - that of God." p. 6-7
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