Dear Yasi,

I’m staying in Korea a little longer than expected due to an unexpected health emergency.

I underwent a minor surgery last week and it went well.

I googled the Caspian Sea where both of your parents came from.

I saw images of people playing and bathing in the water. I feel the heat, smell and the grains of sand. I imagine your grandparents, your parents and yourself looking at the sea together.

Today I found a small box in a room where my mother had kept my things from when I was growing up. Inside, there were numerous handwritten letters I received from my middle school and high school friends. During recess, my friends and I used to pass notes to each other on small pieces of paper. We especially paid attention to our handwriting to make it prettier or cuter.

This was a way of showing how much we cared about each other. Reading these letters, I was struck by powerful nostalgia for those times. I remember how these early friendships felt like the center of my world.

After reading your last letter about your reunion with your middle school friend and looking at my old friends’ letters, I have a strong urge to write you a handwritten letter. What if I write in Farsi to you? Would it be more personal than writing in English?

I never had a chance to learn Farsi but this interests me. I wrote a short letter for you in both Korean and Farsi. I translated Korean into Farsi through an online translation program and then wrote it by hand. I found myself wondering about the nuances of certain Korean words I used in the letter, and how they would be translated and understood in Farsi.

I hope these meanings come through in the translation.

PS. Can you teach me a few words in Farsi when I am back in September?

Kyoung

Dear Kyoung,

I opened our drive. I glanced over knowing I was late. (It always takes me too long to answer, as if I get lost in all the time zones in the world.)

And I couldnt’ help it.

I saw Farsi and I went there, in disbelief.

Your handwriting was beautiful. I really couldn’t understand how it could be that suddenly your hand knew farsi, so clearly.

I imagined that you had found a friend, a young Iranian who wanted to write with you.

Your scribbles had the accent of my earliest friendships. I felt like I was back in the first years of school.

I used to wait for the day to begin or end
for friends to come or for fam to pick us up,

there was a stream, running through the chaotic streets of Tehran,
The edges protected by bricks,
the center grounded with stones, big and small.

It wasn’t water to swim in or even to get close too.
Tehran was too polluted by the time we found the streams.
They were mostly there, between the streets and the side walk,
It seems like, The streams were there so you’d learn how to jump.

Those days we were too small.
Sometimes I’d sit on those bricks, with the deepest friendship I found in elementary school.
The real world seemed to be running too late
so we had time,
that’s all we had.

And even though we were 8 or 9,
Deep in my heart I know
our conversations were braided by poetry and philosophy.

Kyoung, thank you for the tenderness of your hand
and all the ways you witness.

My thoughts are with you. I got worried about the emergency and I hope you are recovering.

I can’t wait to see you soon, Kyoung
To have coffee in this faraway place.

Yasi

PS
I had promised myself to keep it short this times
and now I will be searching for stones
“I had to find a way to write it
as it was to fly away (with me)
She was held”

Dear Kyoung,

I went back in images.
This year I didn’t make it to Iran and it sits heavy on my heart.
So I was suddenly there,
in images images from a year ago.

Dear Kyoung, I wish I could be with you, seeing the Caspian Sea a new, through stories, left with Images.

I had a question that came in days where I missed Iran the most and it felt the furthest away:

How do you measure the life of a house plants.

How about all these clippings that I hold to live with the presence of my friends?

My grandmother has always had her world of plants.

And if she makes her a carrot juice, she shares the process with the plants

Kyoung, I’ve known that I can’t smuggle her plants from Iran.
They are the invasive species they police at the borders

And yet I want to try, try to continue her plants infinitely

Kyoung, did I ever tell you? When we were kids, doing our homeworks at hers (or actually just doodling)

She would sharpen our pencils in the kitchen
With her knives,
brought from her hometown

Small, small, that I lost it to the Capsian sea.

Yasi