Packing Begins......

The last time I packed boxes and suitcases, I was crying. I was reflecting on my long journey through life, packing boxes and suitcases for the past 28 years. Moving out of my parents’ house, moving to America, moving to Iran, moving back to America, moving back to Iran, moving back to America, moving back to Iran, and finally moving back to America, packing, leaving, crying. When I arrived at my sister’s house last year, I was thinking how tired I was of moving, moving, and moving, and never really arriving to stay for good. I reflected that everything in life gets better with practice; that you get used to everything. The only thing you never get used to, the only thing that the more you do, the worse you get at it, and the less you want to try it again, is saying good-bye. Each time it gets harder, because by now you are familiar with the pain that awaits you, loneliness, homesickness (wherever that home was), missing your family, missing your friends, missing the places and people you left behind. Over the past year, I have missed Tehran so much. It was a hometown I got to know again--on a very intimate level this time. I miss the afternoons of Tehran. In winter I miss the trays of piping hot red beets (laboo) on street corners. In spring I miss the green baby almonds (chaghaleh), and the gorgeous sweet fresh white berries (toot sefid) which come around in June, displayed in huge, heaping trays everywhere. I miss seeing the hundreds of happy families going for an evening picnic in Park-e-Mellat, carrying their food, their carpet, and their badminton sets. I miss the smug-ridden town, offering the deafening sound of honking horns on a constant basis. I miss the grid-locked traffic, where each car you pass has a group of young men and women in it, playing different kinds of loud music, talking in an animated fashion, and laughing. I miss the smell of nazri food, a gorgeous bowl of beautifully decorated sholeh zard. I remember when we were children, people offered this food to us in real white bowls with red-rose (gol-e-sorkhi) pattern. My mother always had us deliver the bowls to their owners with a red rose from our garden in it. Ah, the smell of those velvet roses and their nearby Persian Jasmines still have me drunk with memories of a childhood which was nothing short of perfect. I miss all traditions that make Tehran my hometown. I miss the vendors who, as you got ready to pay for your purchase, offered whole-heartedly, “mehman bashid,” be my guest. I have the boxes and the wrapping material ready. I’m sitting here looking at them. This time when I move, I won’t cry. I am going to a beautiful new home, a home that will have room for all of us to be and do as we are accustomed. It has beautiful trees all-around, and you can see the green hills from its windows. It is a home for which I have waited for many years, maybe my whole life. My own home. I already know where around that home I will plant my pomegranate and fig trees, the ones that will bring prosperity to my Iranian home. I don’t cry this time. I now live in my old, new, hometown; a place of which I have many good memories, and freer and lighter than I have been in years, I have every intention of making many many new good memories here. I still miss my beautiful ugly Tehran, but I feel my city of childhood, love, and so many memories, has blessed me with good wishes for moving on, for building this new life. I pick up a piece of bubble wrap, and carefully wrap the first item. I am smiling.