The Chronicals of Alaraf

“…So, anyway. I went to Afghanistan after I was brutally rejected, estranged, and gaslit by endless fake profiles saying ‘ashaghatam’ & ‘astaghfirullah’ intermittently….I figured I only loved him because he was novelty, so if I went to the source I would either find another autistic combat medic with fewer dark-triad traits, or find the man who trained his better qualities and smack him into flying straight,” Baron shrugged, speaking candidly to Yasamine, Dean of Horticulture, who knew Baron was not the brightest hammer in the box of crayons.

“You went to AFGHANISTAN over LETO2?!”
She was going to need more constant comment tea, which was secretly Persian and knows it, unlike Baron, who found out far later in life. They met after both joining an organization known as SA&D  ~Secretly Asian & Dramatic~ but after three sessions, it evolved into a Baha’i campfire talk and became far less dramatic.

…Anyway, when Dean Yasamine had her head in her hands from sheer incredulity, Baron thought he managed to sneak a hit off the vape hidden in his hatband…

“I saw that,” Yasamine replied. “What are you going to do about Dr. Lauper?”

His dead partner’s half-sister.
The one completely stuck in Alaraf after the death. He kept her graduation photo in his hatband.
The surviving sister many tried to give a normalish life: by entirely lying to her through letters about his own activities over the past fourteen years, instead sharing writing duties with Wolf d’Artagnan and his brothers from Germany, simply rewriting the travels of his dead Bundesnachrichtendienst training partner as if they were his own.

…The very last thing Dr. Lauper needed was to know her secret author was a pet to rich men who laughed at him but never touched him…and to those who arrived to watch the spectacle yet refused to extract and rescue.

Yasamine sat in thought, then wordlessly pulled a copy of the faculty newsletter and slid it across the desk. It seldom changed from month to month:

PERSIAN POLITICAL SCIENCE PROFESSOR REPRIMANDED FOR STARTING PROTEST AGAINST CORRUPT PERSIANS

The article detailed how a tiny grey Persian cat stubbornly sat in the town square, continuing the exact same protest he had maintained since 2010: later adding “Free Palestine” to his signs.

He was apparently on NKR: National Kitty Radio: frequently, where he met with his own professors at 3 a.m. to discuss Rothbert Reichkatzen books with Rothbert Reichkatzen himself, and Noam Catsky, who never stopped being his college advisors, in a manner absolutely not comparable to Tasawwuf whatsoever.

“Have you considered mending with the lion in the basement?” Yasamine asked, forcing a cup of valerian-and-chamomile tea into Baron’s remaining open hand. “Drink.”

“What is it?”

“Liquid anti-anxiety,” Yasamine replied.

“A college full of moggy mufti and I need courage to visit a Persian cat in a whitewashed library basement?”

“Clearly…or you would have already,” Yasamine said. “Tea isn’t getting warmer.”

“Babakhshid… Es tut Mihr leid,” Baron apologized.

“That was only half Persian,” Yasamine sighed.

“I know,” Baron replied. “Do you mind if I break the fourth wall again?”

“I can’t bloody well stop you,” Dean Yasamine glowered.

“Excellent. There is a hidden Rabbi on campus listening in RIGHT NOW to our Totally Persian Conversation, studying the advancement of the kitty-cat Caliphate. His name is Jerusalem Jones, but I call him Jerry. You wouldn’t have met him yet…he only comes out for Star Trek quiz nights and Jewish holidays.”

“Oh no,” Yasamine replied.

“Indeed,” Baron said, rather proud of himself. “Although I didn’t visit the cat in the basement, I did sneak into his office. I only left a candle.”

“Was it a Zoroastrian candle or a Yazidi one?” Yasamine asked thoughtfully.

“The correct one. On day eight of it quietly burning, unattended, in his office, every person of Jewish bloodline on the entire campus was suddenly drawn, like moths, without conscious knowledge…to the office of Darius.

As a result, the little grey kitty found himself with far more enrollment in his Levant classes.
Jerry began wandering the campus again, his yarmulke tucked discreetly beneath his “adventure” hat, pausing in doorways and hallways as if listening for something that had not yet been spoken aloud.

And somewhere, in a basement office where a candle had once burned without witness, the air remained warm, patiently, waiting for the day someone would finally remember how to ask in ~Proper~ Persian.