Am I nothing but pictures?

I gaze at the photos. My mum is smiling and gazing at the camera as if she is looking at me in front of her. All the pictures give me the same feeling, not only my mum but also my dad and brother. The whole small family that I have in the other part of the world, so far away from me physically during the days and so close in my night dreams, look at me so vividly from inside the photos.

They take the pictures for me, just to send them to me. I know this. I feel it with all my heart. In all of them I see my mum holding one of my photos in her hand and looking at the camera with eyes so full of hope and love that shakes me from the depth of my heart. I saw the birthday cake on the table and all different pictures of me all around it. Every time I get new photos from them, I notice that my photos hanging on the walls are changing. As if it is I growing on the walls of that house. I go to school on the walls, I celebrate my first birthday away from home, Norooz comes to me in Los Angels, I graduate and the list goes on. The walls have seen it all. They are following my change, my growth, and my progress like those old days. When I was going to school, when I was taking the entrance exam,etc. Walls follow me. They track me at each and every step carefully, passionately, not allowing the distance to stop their chase even for a moment.

I talk to my mum and I say that I have noticed how quickly they change all those photos. How the house is filled with my photos, in front of the dining table, in the living room, in my parent’s bedroom.

I hear: “ I speak to you every day. I see you here every minute. Your photos are everywhere. This feeling that you come down the stairs in the morning is always with me. At nights I look at your photos and imagine that you are still in your room upstairs, talking on the phone, reading books with that music coming from your room! “ Laughs and continues: “ Dokhtar koochoolye nazaninam , tu hamishe baray e man hamoon koochooloo hastei. Hamishe kenar e mani, man bahat dard e dal mikonam, miram too otaghet mikhabam va fekr mikonam ke ein tooee hanooz posht e ein miz dar hale kar ba computer. Mummy joon aksat mesle eine ke khodet einjaee.”

I redirect the conversation to another path, to the fact that I am sending a new film with a passenger coming to Iran. I call this” Passenger Haunt”. Waiting like a falcon to land on any passenger I smell to be heading for Iran. I do not want to make a dramatic scene by allowing the hidden voice of my cries in the depth of my throat to come out. I do not want to spoil this moment of happiness. Let her feel happy that she is talking to me, let her feel that I am happy in this land and GOD help me to show her I am successful, vivid and satisfied. Let this anguish pain of all that melancholy and “doori “leave the doors of our houses.

Moments later I hang up the phone with a broad smile and with lips formed to send my longing kisses. They fade as soon as I hear the beep:” Beeeeep….”. I sat and look in the mirror curiously: “ Am I nothing but a photo any more? What kind of a life it is if I am nothing but a bunch of silent or moving pictures for the source of this beating heart of mine, my mother who gave birth to me on that pleasant twilight of May?”

Katayoon Hadizadeh

Temecula, Aug. 8^th 2002