Being born as part of the Iranian diaspora cased by the 1979 revolution means there’s a lot of family I have never met nor, unfortunately, will never have a chance to meet.

One is my uncle Nooraldin Ostadi from my mother’s side. I know little of my uncle outside of this photograph and a few stories from my mother. Apparently, when my uncle was 4 years old he fell 12 meters off the roof on top of a stray dog which broke his fall and saved his life. The dog did not survive. Besides a few scratches and bruises, he was ok but they attributed his aberrant behaviour to head drama.

Uncle Nooraldin had a rough life growing up as an indigenous and religious minority in rural Iran. He would always get into trouble with the local bullies, teachers, and law enforcement. In his early twenties, he was detained by Iranian police for simply gawking at an aristocratic, Muslim man’s daughter. It’s legend that during his detention for his heinous non crime he kept calling out to the officers to let him use the washroom and when he was denied he pissed under the station’s beautiful Persian carpet at a failed attempt to hide his relief from the authorities. This resulted in many lashes.

I asked my other uncle who would be Nooraldin’s younger and only brother about his final encounter with Nooraldin. It was before my family was getting ready to leave Iran by train from Taft to the airport in Tehran. My uncle said Nooraldin was living in a relative’s orchard tending his pet goat and cats. My uncle gave him some money and took him into town where Nooraldin spent all of it on feed for his animals and a box of cigarettes. My uncle said his final goodbye to his older brother before him and the rest of my family left for a better life in Canada.

I always sensed a deep sadness whenever Daei (Farsi for uncle) Nooraldin was brought up. God rest his soul. My uncle Nooraldin was left behind.

My father was the last to see him in 1999 which was a few months before his death. My father described him as still joking, laughing, and swearing a lot when he visited him in Yazd. Nooraldin showed my father his swollen foot and asked him to go into town to buy some sort of medicine or spirit called Camel Thorn. He then kindly asked my father to buy him some cigarettes.