Back Home

The conclusion of the New Year feast (Nowruz) comes to an end on the thirteenth day of the new year (sizdeh be dar), wehn Iranians go on a picnic and cast away the sprouted wheat (sabzeh) in running water, casting away the evil along with the sabzeh. On the following day, life goes back to normal again.

This year sizdeh be dar fell on Good Friday, which was lucky for Iranians living outside Iran, like our friends in London, who insisted that we postpone our departure so that we could join them on their picnic. However, schools in Iran reopened last Saturday (and I doubt that any picnic took place in rainy London), so we left as planned on Thursday evening and arrived in Tehran on Friday 2 April at 2.30 am.

Being back in London initially felt strange, but after a day I felt as if I hadn't been away at all. To me this is a familiar sensation: I experience it every time I return to Athens, where I grew up; to Kassos, where my parents were born and where I spent my childhood summers; to London, where I spent most of my adult, married life, and now to Tehran, where home now is.

As we boarded the cab for Heathrow , under the pathetic fallacy of hail, I remembered Aqa jun, Hossein's father, and the last glimpse I had of himin this life. He was in the cab then leaving for Heathrow, and I stood in the doorway waving goodbye. He spent two months with us in the spring of 2006, and exactly a year later he passed away.

What is life, except a series of hellos and goodbyes.