ONE
I come back to you, every time I lose something/someone, I come back to you. But that’s life. A series of losses until you lose yourself completely. I would have said you put a spell on me if I believed in magic. Alas, years of therapy has made me a hard core materialist. But look at us! We have both changed so much. Can you even recognize me? I have lost count of my gray hair strands. You on the other hand are taller, much taller than my vague memory remembers. You had almost reached the top of our three story house when I left. The truth is I had promised myself to never return, to the scent of your magnificently large white flowers. Do you remember? Every year, beginning in spring my anticipation would start. Everyday I examined your branches carefully for a sign of a bud. In summers you endowed my enthusiastic eyes with three or four flowers, too colossal to fit into the two tiny palms of my hands. Unlike you, magnolias of the global North have more flowers than leaves, faded pink or bright white. Streets and alleys in residential areas are filled with blossoms for weeks in the spring. Its’ not just flowers, but also money. There is so much there you would not believe it. Maybe that’s why I am determined to go back. Or because once you leave, you are always on the go. There is no arrival for an immigrant. I am itinerant, forever in a state of transient. You are just a stopover. You are the remainder of him.
***
I told Mr. Fox that earth is a wonderful place. Looking from this very angel, my head tilted flat on one ear, on the wooden table. Looking into the sun on the other side of tall full windows of the cottage, setting on Georgian Bay.
Not so wonderful from the fringes of Tehran, where the last magnolia of my childhood neighborhood is dying out suffocating from pollution.
I can feel the softness of my hair on the surface of the counter table, under my cheek. Father used to say its like silk. He pets my hair, says its like a golden fall.
I could be home, right here. On this piece of land that we have rented off some Airbnb, on the northern hemisphere. The sun is my bae, my homey. Waves tumble against the floating deck that that I’m lounging on. Like the children in my family that must be running around, playing and screaming in the background. And the silver lining of the lake on horizon is as reassuring as a big hug after you have ran too fast and hit the ground. Your elders pick you up. Running their wrinkly hands on your back. They got you.
***
I got you. Is what I told you as I was trying hard to wrap my hands around you. Pressing my cheek against your rugged wooden skin. You gave us five gigantic white blossoms that year. With each petal the size of the palms of my hands.
I was not supposed to tell anyone about you. Or about the magic of the house. Growing up I didn’t have birthdays until I was twelve, when we moved out of that house. As in I had birthdays but my school friends were never invited. Mother wanted us to have a normal life. I was perhaps nine. It’s one of the most horrific memories of my childhood but I am not sure if it has actually happened or I have inherited the trauma of many other families in my community. Anyways this is how it goes. They broke into the house. As buff and masculine as it gets. Dressed in bulky gear. Black helmets. Chunky black gloves. It was as if they dehumanized themselves through not letting us see their face. Their eyes. They all my mother’s drawers into the middle of her bedroom. Her bras and panties. Techniques of intimidation. They wanted to take her shame away. They found no haramness but one VHS film. Sabrina. The story of a poor miserable eastern European girl who earned a living from stripping, in search of a normal life. She danced in cheap cabarets. They shouted at my father who stood in front of the talkative one, liking small than usual. “How can you explain this obscenity? How can you call yourself a Muslim?” My father was a very devout man. The prayer saying, meditating, wine drinking, charity driven type. His resentment for them grew stronger over years. Hatred is like a pest. Poison. It eats from within, takes over soil until your roots begin to rot. We all rot here, despite the magic of the house. Not because of you. You are still the most beautiful magnolia I will ever know. I got you. You help me find father, and I promise I will revive your burnt branches.
