Cops and Robbers

Five little boys play cops and robbers in the cul-de-sac. The boys had mostly played indoors early in the summer, before Debra—the mother of Mason, who watches them all for a small sum and many favors—demanded they spend more time outside, away from screens and out of her house. Within days they ran out of their own ideas for games—a sign of weak imaginations, or a fault of overstimulation, according to some of the parents. Finally, one father teaches the boys cops and robbers.

"Better than hide-and-seek," he'd said, "better than plain old tag. It gives the whole thing motivation. You get to put people in jail, they get to break out. You get to tell a story."

And though some of the parents object among themselves to the name of the game, or the implications of the roles played, the children adore it. They play it over and over, in every configuration, and all find their favorite parts to play. Mason and Kevin like to be cops, Zach and Dariush like to be robbers. Liam switches day by day, enjoys being the one who chooses which side is bigger. Early on, the one little girl on the block joined in, kept the teams even, but she hated the additional role-playing the boys introduced over the weeks. They like to make elaborate arrests now, kneel on the back of the caught robber and pull his hands together before throwing him into the "jail." Debra will not let them actually tie each other's hands, but once a cop has wrested a robber's wrists to touching, the robber knows they're effectively glued—unless he's a cheat. For a few weeks there are no cheats. Then one Tuesday, the game mutates extraordinarily. The boys have all been watching, or sneaking peeks at, cop shows on TV. Dariush has been whispering to Zach about a new plan. The cops, three that day, press their foreheads against the brick wall of Liam's home, while Zach and Dariush run around the corner. When the cops are done counting they dash around the side of the house only to find Zach and Dariush standing proudly in the middle of the lawn, not hiding at all, but holding brightly colored water guns.

"Bang bang bang bang!" the two robbers yell over the soft spraying of the water. Kevin and Liam fall down laughing, shirts soaked, but Mason is furious.

"That's not how the game works! Robbers don't shoot cops!"

Dariush steps forward, pumping his gun, and aims it at Mason's face. "Bang! Bang!"

Niloufar and Houshang had emigrated for many reasons, but the one that featured the strongest in their own minds was "education." It was a simple, faultless answer. The education system in the U.S. was more prestigious, they could make more money, and their children would have more options in life. They would mention the other reasons for leaving sometimes, but only selectively; some reasons being kept from some people, and a few reasons not agreed upon between the two. Neither was ashamed of where they had come from, both hoped to make enough money to return often for extended visits, and their disagreements on how much to assimilate had been minor. Niloufar had thought Houshang was too responsible and ambitious to drink, he had never touched a drop at the little secretive parties they used to go to, but it turned out he had only been being extremely cautious—he liked beer with his dinner, if he was allowed it. Houshang had thought Nilou, like many of the women they knew in Tehran, only wore her scarf because of the law; she had always taken it off when they were indoors, regardless of who was around. But when they came to the U.S. she kept wearing it outside their home as though she was truly devout, and when he had asked her why she persisted with the habit she had given him a wounded look, then turned away and said sarcastically that it was between her...