Category: new york

This space has remained blank for more than a week now, as a kind of tribute to the dead fish i suppose — in any case because i was unable to actually write down the bad news: our fish died. Sahar woke me up with this bad news on Sunday morning. The gentle Chinese man was right, and we kind of killed a fish. Reading the comments on the last entry i guess that some of you felt it coming… Yes, we got the fish in an Iranian shop. Not the nice Iranian shop we first went to, that in fact did not have any fish. Teh shop-keeper advised us to get a plastic fish. He showed us paintings of haft-sin – at least 7 symbolic objects which start with an s in Farsi – that his son made while he was on the front in the Iraq-Iran war. A soldiers’ way of doing haft-sin. Not there, but in a smaller Iranian shop with a shop keeper we didn’t really trust, who waived away concers about bowls and chlorine and water temperature and assured us that he had been keeping a whole bunch of fish for more than two weeks now.

What more can i tell you about our fish? We didn’t get to know it well, and then i’m not really sure i understand these creatures anyway. The shop keeper had put a black bag around the transparent plastic bag to make it easier to carry home, and to me it seemed that the fish needed light so we got rid of the black bag. And to me it seemd that the water was too cold, so i held my hand against the bag. Maybe that killed the fish. And as we walked home, we passed Macy’s and still needed some stuff for our Norooz preparations, so the fish visisted the whole of Macy’s from the 8th floor till the basement and back to the 8th again. Maybe that killed the fish. And then we developed a grand plan of going to Central Park after Norouz and free the fish in one of the ponds. Maybe it overheard us, dreaded the idea and committed suicide. When we finally got home and put the fish in its bowl (with declorinated water) it definately seemed anxious and restless.

Oh, the Chinese man was right. Setareh was right. Do you know what the fish symbolises in the haft-sin? Life. Oh dear.

Okay, where to start. We need at least one goldfish for haft-sin. And we wanted to visit China town and then go for the fish in the Iranaian shop, but unexpectedly we ran into this fish shop in China town with all possible brands and sizes and colors of fish. After we made our aesthetic decision, the sweet Chinese shopkeepers refused to sell it! After decades of easy gold fish shopping for Norouz, for the first time Sahar confronted the challenge of fish RIGHTS… and she was lost… So in the middle of China town we found ourselves up against the Animal Liberation Front, disguished as fish shop keepers. The man, so friendly and entirely dedicated, explained to us, the ignorant, that the cute little bowl we wanted to buy would make the tiny fish we wanted dizzy and frantic. Mind you, we were having this conversation in a small shop that looked like an aquarium ànd was filled with aquariums overpopulated with fish. But of course we didn’t want to make our tiny fish dizzy and anxious. As we were thinking about the possibility to get a bigger fish bowl, the man kept on discouraging us: we would need de-clorinated water or the fish would die, and a water warmer cause we didn’t want to put the fish in cold water, and… Sarah had no clue that preparing the whole haft-sin business would be so difficult and ethically challenging… And if you’re still a bit lost by now with what exactely we are doing in New York these days: in a few days it is Norouz, Iranian new year, and to celebrate we need to set haft-sin which means a gathering a number of things on the table which symbolise all things good for the new year.

So in the end the Chinese man and woman, who were such sweet-hearts, flatly refused to sell us the fish, reluctantly sold us an (empty) bowl, and advised us to go home and think about it a bit better, taking a lot of pride in their dedication not to sell fish to the ignorant. Our New York haft-sin adventure continues… sahar & sarah