I’ve been thinking. I’m tired, but I can’t decide whether it’s a physical exhaustion or mental or both. But…I’ve been thinking…about death…about being gone…about being physically nonexistent.
I wonder if I want to be missed, if I want to be gone, if I want to be absent when my mother calls my name to do the laundry, to wash the dirty wishes…Do I want to be gone and not be there to answer her, to tell her I love her, to tell her having me was worth it?
I’m walking down an empty, dark street and I’m wondering about tomorrow and the day after that. I know I have too much to do, too much to live for, too much to write, too much to say, but I’m allowing my mind to think about this concept of death, this eternal absence…But why? Is it because I’m tired of waiting?
So after a lot of thinking, contemplating, wondering, questioning, I decide that I don’t want to be missed. They, those who know me, will miss me. I will miss me, won’t I?
It’s a quiet night and I’ve done all my talking already…
Go to sleep, the voice inside my head says, you’re tired…

Nura asks me if I’m going to be one of those writes who kill themselves after they write best-sellers, like Earnest Hemingway. I laugh and say I would never have enough courage, nor would I be able to let go of life. I tell her I’d be too preoccupied thinking of what I’d miss if I did commit suicide.
When I was a freshman, my English teacher said I write like Hemingway. Now my friend wonders if I’ll live like him. I reassure her that I’d never kill myself.
I’m wondering why writers go crazy or put a bullet in their heads. Is it the enormous amount of thinking that becomes too exhausting? Is it the loneliness that drives them to the edge? Or is it simply because they reach a point where they think what they write is pointless?
Maybe it is pointless, but so is life. If there was ever a point in life, it’d be happiness. Live to be happy. That’s my point: I write to be happy. It’s like a formula, a formula that doesn’t require much thought.
So I guess my answer to her is, if writing doesn’t make me happy and I find no substitute, then maybe a bullet will become an option. But for now, writing is my only option.

As a kid, I loved going on our roof. My little cousin and I used to play hopscotch with a piece of chalk. Sometimes I took my pots and pans and placed them on the edge of the walls. Then I poured water in them and pretended to make soup for my mom or imaginary guests.
That was then, when home was a brownish three-story building, a roof to watch the sky from, a window to the outside world.
Now, our apartment is being sold to a family of six. There are three college boys and a little girl. They’re going to be the first strangers of our building.
My aunt cries because strangers are moving in, because she won’t be going up our stairs, saying hello to us. My aunt cries while newcomers walk up to our apartment and unpack their belongings.
I’m not okay with this. I’m not okay with this change. I picture my house in my head and replay what I remember of it. But there are gaps, holes that need to be filled. How do you fix a delapidated image?
That home was a key, a key to the streets and valleys of Tehran, a key to eleven years of childhood.
I picture my uncle, locking the entrance door late at night when everyone is asleep. What is he thinking? How many more times will he get to put the lock on before he too leaves?
I hope that little girl won’t have to watch her family break apart like I did. I hope she feels welcomed into our little home. I hope she feels safe, safe enough to call it…home.

They’re selling our house in Iran. They’re selling our house, our room, our kitchen, our memories. They’re selling it. I don’t believe it; I can’t. That was my safety, my home, my comfort zone. I built memories, I hid stories, I played in those rooms, I laughed, I cried, I lived. I lived in that house.
I feel like I’m losing something big, too big to comprehend, too big to define. I’m losing a home. I feel homeless. I’m sitting in a home miles and miles away, and I feel homeless…
Why didn’t anyone tell me? Why didn’t anyone tell me I’d never see my home again?
Someone else is going to live there now. Someone else is going to make memories there. Someone else is going to sleep under that roof, the roof that protected me, that secured me, that told me I lived there, that I belonged there…
I want to go back now. I want to see it one last time before they put a price tag on it, before they hand over the keys, before they shut that door…I want to go back…
Why didn’t anyone tell me?!
A home is priceless. The memories are priceless. You can’t put a price tag on a house that kept your secrets, that kept your lies, that let you in and out, that held you when there was a storm or thunder or rain…it’s priceless…
So does this mean I have to say good-bye to home now? Goodbye Tehran? Goodbye home? What does this mean?
Sold. It is gone. It was gone. And I knew this the very first time I walked out of that door…

To be alive, we need love, sex, food, you know, the basic needs of survival. To live, we need a beating heart. We need that heart to beat so we can walk, run, dance, think, write, imagine, speak, decide, believe, choose, operate, cure, provide, secure, love, feel…
We take our beating hearts for granted. We take all we have for granted because we don’t know any better. Because we haven’t felt what a life without a working heart means. Because we never got the cancer that the woman on TV got. Because we never had to face death.
Just think. This heart is beating, we’re breathing, we’re living, we’re moving. If this heart were to stop beating, there’d only be a corpse, a dead body, a nameless skeleton…
We are greedy. We are insatiable. We want more than a beating heart, a good leg, a strong pulse, a smart brain. We want to be loved, that is the heart we seek, the heart that can love, the heart that speaks the language of…love.

Mother isn’t here for me to tell her happy mother’s day. So I’m going to tell her that I love her, even though she already knows. I’m going to tell her she means the world to me. I’m going to tell her what she knows already.
I love you. Thank you. I’m nothing without you.
Happy Mother’s Day to all you beautiful mothers who chose the hardest job, who gave us the most amazing gifts, who whispered the sweetest things, who sang us the most beautiful songs, who gave us your warmest kisses.
Thank you maman.

She slashed both of her wrists “accidentally” she says. Apparently she was a little drunk after five beers.
We are worried about her. Was this a failed attempt at suicide? Will she try it again?
There are so many days when we just want to end it, when we want to free ourselves from whatever’s trapping us inside. At times like these, no remedy seems to exist, no panacea, no pain reliever that would wipe out every bad feeling. At times like these, temporary solutions don’t come to mind.
But can we just end it? Wouldn’t that be selfish? Wouldn’t that be the easy way out?
Talk to them. Talk to them so they know they’re not alone, so they know they don’t have to suffer alone. Talk so that hopefully there won’t be a next time.

La la la…
I hum to myself.
We walk down Old Town, like we’ve done many times before. The city is in motion; cars move, couples drink wine outside of restaurants on sidewalks, singles walk to unknown destinations. No one is still, not even the sky that’s now beginning to form rain drops.
In this dark night, faces illuminate this quiet town. Their smiles and grins make me happy. A man makes music from wine glasses that are half-way filled with water. He plays a Chinese song as he swiftly moves his fingers across the edge of each glass. A girl next to me has tears in her eyes. She too thinks it’s a beautiful melody…
La la la…
The houses we pass by are mesmerizing. Or maybe it’s what we perceive them to be that’s mesmerizing. Or maybe what’s mesmerizing is the idea of owning these houses and standing on their balconies while holding a cup of coffee. Otherwise, a house is just a house…
So…La la la, that’s what I hum as I make my way through this town, as I watch little children and think I would never want to have one, as I watch parents make their way through…
These little stories are real. This city and these faces and these cars are real. The moon is real. I don’t write fiction; what I tell is real. I’m always trapped in reality whether I like it or not.
Sometimes humming la la la makes my realities endurable, even beautiful…

My heart feels heavy. Tears are welling up in my eyes tonight. Suddenly I’m reminded of homesickness. I’m reminded of painful good-byes and tears that never come to an end. I’m thinking of mother and how she’ll have to say good-bye to her child again.
I’m crying because I don’t want my brother to see his mother leave again. I don’t want him to cry. I don’t want him to remember how he lost her once. I don’t want him to remember the mother figure that his little eyes didn’t get to see.
I don’t know how you feel. I can never possibly know. But I know it wasn’t fair to you. I know it wasn’t just. I know you were too little, too fragile to be away from her, without her good-night kisses, without her lullabies, without her touch, without her embrace, without her loving voice. How were you supposed to understand? How were you supposed to know she still loved you even though she wasn’t there to tell you? How were you supposed to accept her again when she came back?
Don’t cry my darling. Mother loves you. Mother doesn’t want to leave. Mother loves you…

A suitcase stores more than just shirts, dresses and pants. A suitcase stores memories, smells, emotions. It tells stories of trips across the globe. It tells the story of a family who leaves without knowing why. Or the story of the mother and father, who run away, swim across cold waters, pass through mountains and hide from gunmen to cross the border. Or the story of a confused, young bride, who leaves her widowed mother to see things she has never seen before.
Inside this suitcase, lie secrets, untold tales and pieces of the past. We’ve carried them with us all our lives, through crowded airports and planes, through unfamiliar towns, through valleys and streets.
Mother is leaving tomorrow. Her red suitcase is already packed, ready to cross the ocean, ready to tell another story, store another memory and unveil treasures. Mother is leaving and her suitcase sits by the door…when will we stop repeating stories?