She is going to paint her new room orange. Orange is a brilliant color, a fall color, the color of October, the color of her headscarf. I tell her that change is good, that moving to a new house is an exciting renewal. And she says it won’t be the same. You won’t smell the same old paint, or the damp wood of the terrace, or the buried smell of antiquity of a place you’ve lived in for 10 years. Ten years, she says, and looks at me with her sharp green eyes.
She is right. When you leave a home, you never hear the same sounds, the sounds that put you to sleep, the cracking noise of the doors opening and shutting. You won’t hear the walls that spoke your fears and pains. You won’t feel the same warmness, the same heat. You won’t find the old memories, the memories you built out of every object, out of the details of your mother’s skirt against the kitchen wall. You won’t breathe the same air. You won’t be the same.
Orange is a beautiful color for you Nura, I say. I will help you paint your room. I want you to build new memories. I want you to call it home. Call it home Nura.
So I tell her about my home. I tell her that H and Maman sold my home in Tehran and then they told me over the phone. And my sister and I cried because we felt homeless. I tell her that I will never get to see it again. I will never get to feel and touch and smell and breathe and understand home again.
But we learn to move on. We learn to love again. To feel again. To rebuild our dreams, our memories, our faiths. We learn because we adapt and we get used to things. We simply get used to it.
Orange. It will be perfect, Nura. Just perfect.
They are moving out this week. She is packing her memories. She is packing the bits and pieces into a suitcase. And her new room will be orange because she is an October baby.