I thought of you just like I said...

When I wear her pearls around my neck, I feel her sitting beside me from her home in Dubai.

Standing in Aziz's room, to the left of the balcony window, in an old wooden closet with two doors that open outward, she kept the few belongings she had. She opened the right closet door on one of those lazy afternoons when everyone was laying down, fast asleep in some corner of the house. I sat on the ground, my back against the wall facing the closet.

I love watching her. There is a warmth in her soul, a fire that has lasted through the worst. Women of her strength tend to tuck their flames in the farthest corners of her heart, away from view. But my aunt has used her strength to build up her fire. It is her warmth that keeps her company and gives her solace.

As she reached into her closet, she pulled out her necklace, and I told her that they were beautiful.

"You can have it if you like it. I don't wear it," she said with a smile on her face.

I was drawn to them. I felt like she was giving me a part of herself. So I held them between my fingers and placed them against my neck.

"They're not real, but they're nice," she said not realizing that I thought they were beautiful because they had once been placed around her neck, and not because of their physical appearance as pearls.

I held them between my fingers and told her that when I wear them, I'll think of her.

Two night ago I wore the pearl necklace around my neck to a concert, and I felt her there beside me. Moments when the music filled up the room, and lifted my mind through the curls and spins of its sounds, I would see her sitting in front of me lighting a cigarette while laughing and saying "Shokoofeh, cigarettes are bad for you," just as she set it against her lips and took in a breath. I would see her standing in the kitchen pouring herself a cup of tea, or getting ready to leave the house.

But most of all, I would see her telling stories with all of us sitting around her. Stories of her students who would outsmart her, of her walks home from work in Dubai. Stories from her childhood during the revolution, or the power of her sixth sense to warn her against danger.

With the music filling the room, I would feel her build her stories around my neck through the pearl necklace, tying each pearl together with the smoke of her cigarette and melting the clasp in the back to hold it tight with her warmth. And though she's far, her pearls stem from her heart to my neck. She's always only a necklace away.