"Hi, I'm inquiring about an Iranian passport renewal."
*
Good news: I easily found a place in which to take passport photos. I wore a long overcoat and a "roosarie" headscarf, which is the modern way to veil in Iran. I asked the camera woman if any of my hair was showing. "No, no hair is showing," she confirmed, as everyone in the store gawked at me. She snapped the photo then went to the back to develop it as everyone continued to stare at me (how do women who veil every day stand this kind of judgment on a daily basis?). She returned with four identical passport photos. I looked at them, pleased. Then I noticed... wait a second, my lips were probably too red. I was wearing makeup. That wasn't allowed. I told the camera woman I had to retake the photos. So I went to the bathroom and scrubbed off my makeup and put my roosarie back on and we did the photos all over again. By this time, everyone in the store had gathered around to watch. She went to the back and developed the photos again and she returned and gave me the four-pack. She rang me up on the register, I paid her and left. As I was walking down the block, I noticed it...
Bad news: My roosarie was swept to the side and a bit of my neck is showing.
FAIL.
*
Good news: My father found my identification card confirming my relationship to him at the eleventh hour. And, surprise of surprises, he found a cache of old veiled passport photos we took of me back when I was 12 years old. These photos will work. And now that I have the identification card, I'm all set!
Bad news: My identification card is expired too!
*
"What are you calling about again?" asked the person on the other end of the line at the Pakistani Embassy.
"A passport renewal for Iran," I said. "Is it possible to get one in 15 days?" I explained how my identification card also needed to be renewed.
"The passport renewal is possible in 15 days," he says. "But we can't process the renewal until your identification card is renewed. They can't be done simultaneously."
"Okay, how long will it take to renew the identification card?"
"That one is more difficult," he said. "We have to actually send that one to Iran to be confirmed with birth records. It can take a couple of months."
*
And thus, my friends, it is confirmed: There is no possible way I will make it to Iran in May.
I called my mom. "You *will* go," she consoled me. "It just may be in a few months, not now. There must be a reason for this that we don't know about yet."
My mother's sister's husband (my maternal aunt's husband--the people I'd be staying with) was just told that chemo therapy was useless for his type of cancer. I had already purchased a DVD of Celine Dion music videos for him as a gift, because he is in love with Celine Dion. Now I don't know what to do with it. He could be dead in a few months. "Let's focus on what we need to do right now," my mom continued. "It would make him so happy to have that Celine Dion DVD, but we need to find a way to get it to him." A DVD of an unveiled woman singing and dancing will never make it through the mail system of the Islamic Republic. How does one smuggle this kind of thing to a dying man? The very fact we must go through this effort makes me angry. "We'll find someone who is already going to Iran," my mom insisted. "They'll take the DVD for us." So she began her round of phone-calls.
My father's uncle's cancer gets worse and worse by the day. Soon, he won't be able to speak, much less take me to the grave of my grandmother, the woman he murdered.
But these are things I cannot control, so I turn to everything else I can.
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