It has been over fifteen years since I last heard her voice on
the phone, reassuring me all would be fine and that I should not worry. She
said our faith in the benevolence of God and what is to come should be our
anchor. I remember for the following few weeks I kept wondering if I should
call again, knowing she was not feeling well and probably not in a condition to
talk until one evening my mom told me she had passed on.
It is not an exaggeration to say there is not a single day
since then that I do not think about my youngest aunt, Haleh, at some point
during the day. A cross between an older sister and younger mother, I still
listen to a song I first heard her sing during her first visit back from
Spain. Completely captivated by her voice as she played her guitar, swaying her
shoulders from side to side, as an 11 year old boy I imagined how some day I’d
get to learn Spanish, play guitar and sing like her. Upbeat, funny and full of
life I still remember her taking me to the movies to watch Snow White and the
Seven Dwarfs, women’s basketball game and other events where she’d sing and
tickle me as I sat by her.
I didn’t see my aunt again until a few years later when I
moved to Catalunya too, where she had gotten married and settled near Barcelona.
It seems strange now when I think she was only 28 at the time, but her young
age never stopped her from being a voice of reason, a guide throughout my life
even many years after I left and our contact was limited to few letters and
phone calls a year or occasional visits.
Each year, and specially as I get close to the anniversary
of her passing, I go through many “what would she say” moments. I ask her
questions, tell her of my dilemmas and then listen to her voice softly advising
me, with a couple of funny inserts in between. Then, and
almost without fail, I get the urge to listen to El Vendedor, the song I
most vividly remember her sing. I listen to it over and over, dissecting the
lyrics as I try to remember each wall and perspective in her beautifully
decorated living room where she’d sing the song.
A short walk with her along the city’s old Gothic quarter is enough to make me smile. She, as always, covers me with a blanket of warmth, knowing
what I care to say, saying what I care to know…
In the calm and quite of her smiling face, along the imaginary
streets where she paces, something lurks, something chases; something I have never forgotten about, from a time I have never written about.
I become sixteen again:
Drowning myself in her love
Cleansing myself in her strums
Clothing myself in the meandering melodies of her amorphous
songs;
I’ll see you again one day
To float adrift in the plain of your white
O! Queen of unforgettable hearts,
Poet of untenable loves,
Poet of untenable loves,
Troubadour of unforeseen roads, I am
The shapeless raft of the seeker of your peace
Trans-ported through ether and space,
Cast in the shadow of the parallel of your rhymes
Crossing your path in the perpendicular of time
