Things Left Unsaid

Kian Rahimi was fifteen years old when he learned how one moment can change a person’s life forever.

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For the longest time he had wanted nothing more than to be like his older brother, Mehdi. He had always looked up to him. Two years his senior, Mehdi was brave in a way Kian never could be. He stood up for what he believed in, had the kind of charisma that is rare—so much so that everyone who knew him wanted to be close to him so that Mehdi could rub some of his charm onto them and maybe they’d feel lighter, less restricted by their own self-doubt.

It was on the ride home from court, their dad silent in the driver’s seat, his hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were white, their mum crying silent tears as she looked out of the window, that Kian realized he didn’t want to be like Mehdi anymore. That much confidence—such an abundance of it, at such a young age, as a brown boy in a white city—meant trouble.

It started small. Sneaking out of the house in the early hours, taking Mum’s car (never Dad’s) even though he was underage, or smoking weed at the back of school at lunch.

It wasn’t any of these things that got him sent away. Comparatively they were minor, though they added up. Soon the police knew Mehdi Rahimi, he was a recognized name, a notorious troublemaker. No one—not their teachers, the police, or even their parents—ever asked why he wanted to make trouble though. Why anyone would want to make trouble.

People are not born inherently bad or rebellious. It comes from somewhere. Kian still wonders, sometimes, whether he could have had the power to stop what happened to Mehdi all those years ago. Back then, they lived in Kirk Ella, on the wealthier side of Hull, East Yorkshire. Their driveway could fit four cars if they wanted. Their house was detached, three-story. They were new money, that much was clear to everyone. They stood out on their street. His dad’s impractical convertible sat out front, barely used. It was like his dad forgot they lived in England, in the North, and that the good weather only lasted four months of the year if they were lucky.

“This country,” his dad would begin, “it’s nothing like back home. Always rain, rain, rain.” Kian often wanted to retort, Well, why did you move us here? But he never did.

Every Sunday when he played footy with his friends it would pour down and they would play anyway, their feet sliding against the mud. He longed for the sun on his face, felt his mood perceptively lift when it did. He wondered if this longing, this need for sun, was in his blood, and whether his body knew he wasn’t from England, not really, not biologically. That Iran, with its scorching summers, was the climate that his physiology was accustomed to—even though he had only been there a handful of times and was not fluent in his own language.

His dad pulled into their drive that day and they got out of the car. Betty, their opposite neighbor, gave them a sad nod as they returned as a three, and not a four.

His mum, who was often so chatty, always luring her sons into the living room to watch TV and spend quality time with her, said nothing the whole car journey. She went directly to her bedroom and shut the door with a barely audible click.

“I’m going for a drive,” his dad said, picking up the key to his convertible from the side table by the door.

“Now?” Kian said. “Mum’s upset.”

His dad looked at him, sharp-eyed, raising a furry eyebrow. “We’re all upset.”

“Can I come?” As he said the words he knew they were wrong. But he didn’t want to be alone in this big house, not when Mehdi wasn’t in it and his mum was upset.

His dad shook his head and left. He didn’t even bother to shut the front door properly; it was left ajar.

Two years in prison.

Mehdi’s face had crumpled at the news. His usually smooth face, quietly confident, broken.

“The sentence can be halved with good behavior,” their lawyer told them afterward. “So one year, really. I know it’s not what we wanted, but it could have been much worse.”

Kian imagined his brother in prison, as it’s portrayed on TV, being forced into a gang, or beaten up in the showers or something. He imagined Mehdi lonely, wanting his family. He felt his eyes prickling, so he slapped himself hard across the face and focused on that pain instead. He tried to think of anything other than his brother being incarcerated for one whole year.

*

Mehdi had been in prison almost three months when Kian was told he would be changing schools. The summer holidays were nearly over, and it was supposed to be his final year at Foxview before he went to college. It was his mum’s idea. She said Foxview was the reason his brother had ended up the way he had. “The teachers,” she said. “They all hated him. And they’ll hate you too.” Kian argued, pleaded with her to let him continue at Foxview, where all his friends were. When that didn’t work, he tried to reason with her.

“Just because the teachers didn’t like Mehdi doesn’t mean it’ll be the same for me.” He raised his voice at his mum, panic mounting in his chest. He had never shouted at her before, but it was unfair. He was being punished for something Mehdi had done—something Mehdi had done for him, but it wasn’t like Kian had even asked him to do it.

He missed his brother so much it hurt. He wrote to him. Every week. Sometimes he would send two, even three letters in a row before he got Mehdi’s response back. He needed to tell him every little thing, like when his mate Teddy had eaten ten double cheeseburgers from McDonald’s, one after the other, on a dare, and how his face had gone all yellow afterward, and he’d taken a sip of his milkshake, which had tipped him over the edge and he’d had to run to the toilets before it was too late. They’d all laughed, Kian included, but all the while he’d been conscious that his brother was in prison and his mum was always red-eyed, his dad stressed and distracted. His unabashed laughing had turned to guilt, and he’d stopped.

He rarely allowed himself to think about the specific moment leading up to Mehdi’s imprisonment. His friends didn’t either, though they might allude to it, make it sound smaller, like it hadn’t marked all of them, like it didn’t affect the way they walked down the street, their gazes low.

Despite his parents’ increasing strictness—the way Kian was expected to be perfect, so he didn’t end up the same as Mehdi—he felt something chipping away at him. The day his mum told him that he would be moving schools she had her back to him. She was dusting the fireplace, like she didn’t care that she was ruining his whole life because of something his brother had done.

They were in the front room, “the guest room” his mum called it, their sofa white leather, bulky, curved, and thick on the arms. In the middle of the room was a glass coffee table with gold Iranian ornaments on it and a large empty fruit bowl that his mum would fill with at least five different fruits for visitors. On the shelf beneath the coffee table, intricate glass plates, small fruit knives. The floor was covered with a large red Persian carpet that they’d imported from Tehran. His mum was always ready for visitors, but they barely had anyone round anymore. Over the past year the room had been used only for lawyers and police.

And when his dad came in, presumably having heard Kian’s tone increase, he glanced from Kian to his wife, a stern look on his usually soft face. His dad had let his stubble grow into a beard. It was thick and dark and made his face appear much rounder. He had been dedicating himself more to Islam since Mehdi had been taken away, though in doing so he had become more reclusive. He spent many evenings after work in the mosque, returning home late and going straight to his office before bed.

“Enough, Kian—it’s been decided. And don’t talk back to your mother,” he said in Farsi, in a harsh tone that was unusual for him. It was easier for Kian to argue with his mum, but with both his parents on the same side, he knew none of his pleading would be of any use.

He would not go to the end-of-year prom with everyone at Foxview, people he had been with since primary school. He would not play footy with his best friends at lunchtime, like they always did. He was sentenced to a friendless year at North Oak, a school that was notoriously predominantly white. He compared it to Mehdi being in prison, like they both were put away somewhere for a year where they’d be miserable, but then he realized how ungrateful he sounded. They weren’t the same, but maybe this little punishment was his just deserts. Maybe it was God’s way of punishing him for his part in Mehdi’s imprisonment.

North Oak was divided into two sites, one for years seven to nine, and one for years ten and eleven a mile away in another building. Kian was in the latter. It was a shabby school; most of the classrooms were in huts intended to be temporary, though they had been there since the late nineties. The science block, however, was newly built, with underfloor heating and silver-speckled tiling. It was there, Kian would soon discover, that people congregated in winter to keep warm during lunch. The uniform they were made to wear was basic: black trousers, white polo shirt, black sweatshirt. Because he’d enrolled at the last minute he didn’t have the North Oak badge on his sweatshirt, and his mum rang up reception to explain that the shop was out of stock. They told her a plain one was okay for the first few weeks, which she told Kian, relieved—like he cared.

He began year eleven knowing no one. As he walked through the entrance and along the long tarmac strip leading to the main building, he noticed that everyone was together in clusters. It was only really then that he realized how lucky he had been at his old school that he had never felt this acute aloneness. No one was brown or Black here, but that was unsurprising. Foxview had more Asian students; his best friends, Koyer and Ahmed, were Pakistani and Bangladeshi. They had been friends since primary school and were like family to him now, especially after what they’d been through together; he couldn’t ever imagine not having them in his life.

Eyes were on him: some inquiring gazes, some hateful stares. Kian thought he heard someone walking past say “Fucking Paki,” but he didn’t know if he was imagining it. He probably wasn’t.

A boy shoved past him, knocking his backpack off his shoulder. Ahead of him, the shover turned, his face pink, his blond hair gelled up at the front. “Look where you’re fucking going, dirty Paki,” he said to Kian and spat, inches from where Kian’s backpack was. The friend he was walking with began singing a mock Bollywood song at the top of his lungs. People around him first stared—and then laughed.

Instantly Kian thought about turning round and going back home. His jaw was tight and angry. This triggered something within him, reminded him so acutely of a moment he was trying to keep repressed. He considered punching both boys in their faces, but knew he was so weak he’d only end up getting beaten up himself. He used to practice boxing with Mehdi, and the impact of his punches had always made Mehdi belly-laugh.

“Is that all you’ve got?” Mehdi would say, lifting the pads. “Come on—give it your all now.” Kian would punch with all his force, and only then would Mehdi say, “Better, but you need to practice.” He wished he had practiced after all. He imagined beating the prick up and getting carried out of school, rejoicing, arms in the air. Instead he collected his bag from the floor and put one foot in front of the other.

When he was nearer the entrance he heard someone say, “Hey. You all right?”

Kian turned to see a boy with short mousy-brown hair and acne on only the right side of his face. His facial expression was earnest, but Kian still didn’t trust him. He didn’t know what to say in response, so he shrugged.

“You’re new here, right?” the boy said. Kian nodded. “I thought so. Don’t let it get to you; they’re dickheads to everyone.”

“Great,” Kian mumbled. “I’m Connor,” the boy said. “I’m Kian.”

A girl approached them, looped her arm into Connor’s. She had her polo T-shirt tied in a knot on the front so that her stomach was showing. There was a mole above her belly button and when Kian noticed it, he quickly looked away, embarrassed for some reason.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

Kian took this as his cue to leave, but then Connor said, “Jordan and Rob are bothering the new kid.” He later found out that Jordan was the one that shoved him. Rob was the one that did the shit singing; apparently he was the school “jokester.” Rob was rarely in actual fact funny.

She rolled her eyes and turned to Kian. “A bit late to move schools in our final year, isn’t it?”

“It’s a long story,” Kian said.

“Mysterious,” she replied. “Well, if you want any advice from us: avoid those two. I don’t think they’re right in the head.”

“I mean,” Connor began, “they’re bad, but you’re being a bit dramatic.”

“Didn’t you hear what they did to Shirin? She had to go to the hospital.”

“It was an accident, wasn’t it?” Connor said.

“Well, you shouldn’t be throwing mud balls at people in the first place—that’s what my mum said when I told her.”

Connor turned to Kian. “Becky overexaggerates things. You’ll be fine here.”

Kian wasn’t so sure but said, “I know I will.”

When he went to his first class and sat in his designated seat, head bowed, scratching at the skin around his nails, it was the word Paki that he couldn’t get out of his head. It was so often thrown around, sometimes casually, sometimes affectionately, mostly with malice. The way Jordan had said it—like it was so repulsive he needed to get it out of his mouth quickly. Kian hated how his head continued to spin long after the moment, and how he couldn’t stop his internal berating for not defending himself. He wished he had done something to show everyone that they couldn’t just push him around or treat him like shit on their shoe. He detested how weak he was, how confrontation frightened him. It reaffirmed that he had learned nothing from Mehdi going to prison, that even after months of rehashing the event that got his brother sent away, he still wasn’t able to defend himself.

Then the classroom door opened and a girl walked into the room. She asked the teacher if he had any whiteboard markers they could borrow, because Ms. Brewin’s had disappeared from her classroom. His teacher chuckled and said her whiteboard pens always disappeared. The girl laughed, an obligatory laugh more than anything else. She stood awkwardly, her jumper sleeves pulled down over her hands, balancing one foot on top of the other as Kian’s teacher bumbled around to find her some markers. Her gaze remained down and her dark hair covered her face, until she tucked a front strand behind her ear. Her lips were a pale pink, and the color struck him because he had never seen someone with lips that shade before. He knew he was staring, and that was fine, until she looked toward him and they locked eyes. This continued for three beats before they both looked away quickly. His heart was pounding suddenly, and it was both peculiar and embarrassing. Her eyes were hazel, so distinctly Iranian and beautiful. He doodled on his workbook until she left, and it was only when the door clicked shut and the teacher began the lesson again that his heartbeat steadied to a normal rhythm.

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From Things Left Unsaid by Sara Jafari. Used with permission of the publisher, St. Martin’s Press. Copyright © 2025 by Sara Jafari.