fishy business

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.