I want money

My oldest sister, Zhaleh, who is twenty years older than me has been living in Australia for the last two years. She has a condo, here, in one of the suburbs of Denver that I check on every couple of months. If all goes well, she should be here living in Colorado in about six months. I do miss her. She has always been like a second mother to me. My sister has two daughters one is my age and lives in Australia. The other daughter who is five years younger than me and is the closest person to me in my family has been living in Kuwait with her family for the last year. Her name is Ziba. As she and her family still have connections in the US sometimes they ask me to help them with some things here. It makes me sad that they probably won’t ever live in the States again. I miss them all so much and feel a sense of loss since they left the US.

Ziba called me a few days ago and asked me to go to her mother’s apartment and look for either hers or her mother’s birth certificate. She said that they should be in the set of drawers in her mother’s bedroom. I knew it was important to her to find one of the birth certificates at least, otherwise, Soudi, one of my sisters who lives in Iran will have to go to our hometown which is a seven hour drive from where she lives and try to get a copy from the place where births and deaths are registered. Who knows if they still have those records and it would not be free to get copies of them.

Yesterday after work, I drove to my sister’s place. I opened the door to her very clean and beautifully decorated apartment all in pastel colors so indicative of her taste. It always makes me feel good to go there. It looks so relaxing. I went to the bedroom, located the set of drawers and began to search. I opened the first drawer. It was filled with bags and envelops. I thought, if I’m lucky the birth certificates would turn up pretty quick. I looked through everything in the first drawer, insurance papers, car papers, tax information, bank accounts, pictures, letters, cards, more pieces of paper and so on. I thought, note to self, clean out the drawers in your office. This is way too much paper for someone to go through when you die. I, especially, looked through everything that I found in Persian. I came across a packet filled with the letters that my sister’s husband had written. I, immediately, recognized the handwriting. Tears came to my eyes remembering how he was killed. I had not seen his handwriting since I was a teen-ager. He was a prominent Baha'i in my hometown who was imprisoned, tortured and executed, because he was a Baha'i by the Islamic Republic of Iran who has persecuted the Baha'is since they came to power. I saw letters from my mom and dad who had been written to my sister. Each letter started with “To the light of my eyes, Zhaleh”. That was how my parents addressed their children in the written form. It is a Persian expression. I, always, thought it was a powerful expression. There were letters and cards from my sister’s daughters. There were a lot of drawings from her grandchildren to their grandma. There were cards and letters from old friends. There were even stuff from me. I looked through them, but I didn’t find either one of the birth certificates or copies of them. I moved to the second drawer. This drawer had more documents and photo albums. I looked through the pages of the photo albums. There were a lot of old pictures. I saw pictures of me when I was little along with other family members. I saw a picture of my mother when she was eighteen years old holding my sister, Zhaleh, who was only a year old at the time. My father and uncles were in the picture. They all were so young. My dad and one of my uncles have passed on. It was a picture taken about sixty years ago. I thought I like to have a copy of this picture. I need to remember to borrow it from my sister when she comes back. I continued looking. There were more papers and documents that I had to sort through. When I was almost done with the second drawer, I came across pages of writings in my handwriting in Persian. They were all poems that I had copied from a book of poems by Hafez, one of the famous Persian poets, years ago. I sat on the bed and started to read the poems. The poems were so beautiful. I hadn’t read them in a long time. Before I knew it twenty minutes had passed. I thought to myself, go back to work. I looked through everything in the second drawer and I didn’t find the certificates. That was it. There were only two drawers. I thought, I probably missed them. I probably didn’t look through everything with enough care. So, with frustration, I started to look at everything all over again examining each piece of paper. At that point, I was tired and hungry and I was thinking, Ziba really owes me for this. What does she owe me? A dinner out? No, that won’t do it. A gift certificate for a massage? No, that won’t do either. A gift certificate to one of my favorite stores? No, that wasn’t good either. None of those options were good enough for the frustration that I was feeling. I thought she owes me money, that’s right, money. That’s what I want. I, then, remembered the song “Money, that’s what I want” by The Flying Lizards and started singing it to myself. “The best things in life are free. But you can give them to the birds and bees. I want money. That’s what I want. That’s what I want…” After a little diversion of singing, goofing off and laughing, I continued to look. Finally, I had gone through everything that was in that set of drawers twice. I had not been able to find the birth certificates. I started to look in different places in the bedroom like the bookcase, the nightstand and boxes in the closet, but didn’t find anything. So, finally after two hours of searching, I had to give up. I drove home humming “I want money. That‘s what I want…“.