Diary: My fiancé's visa is nearly done.

March 15th, 2024

The ides.. how eerie.

I can't help but reflect on how much I've hated March throughout my life. And yet, in the last.. 4 or 5 years that hatred has shifted to anticipation. Funny how that works.

I had been waiting for the conclusion that yesterday brought for a very long time. My fiancé and I submitted the last piece of information for his visa. The process is now entirely out of our hands.

2 busses, 3 different trains into London, 30 minutes of walking… and all of 3 minutes in a waiting room later: It's over.

I should also mention we had to do all of that again to get back, though it went much quicker the second time as we weren't getting lost at every transportation change.

I'm laying in bed next to my soon to be husband wondering if there will be anymore curve balls thrown our way, or if the wait and struggle truly is over. I suppose I should just be grateful I get to lay next to him finally, without an illusory clock ticking above our heads for when we must part again; Never truly being able to settle and feel Comfortable...

This process has left me wary of any and all possible hiccups in the system.

How are you supposed to anticipate anything, when your country doesn't even employ human beings to guide you through the process? That question has been relevant a little longer for me than I'm comfortable with.

I'm sure one day I will look back on this with nostalgia. When we grow old and familiar, and a little cynical with each other, will I look back at our exhausting 20’s and think, man, was that fucked up or what? Probably. I feel lucky and cursed at the same time.

But with the sound of snoring next to me welcoming the dawn, its mostly lucky.

Update: I remembered I saw a poem on the train to the Depot yesterday that I think will really encapsulate the feelings to come:

He can’t take his mother in the suitcase,

the smell of khoresht in the air, her spice box

too tall to fit. Nor will it close when he folds

her sajadah into its corners. He can’t bring

the way she rose and blew out the candles

at supper’s end, rolled the oilcloth up, marked

the laying out of beds, the beginning of night.

He knows the slap of her sandals across

the tiles will fade. He tosses photographs

into the case, though not one shows her eyes;

instead, she covers her mouth with her hand

as taught, looks away. He considers strapping

the samovar to his back like a child’s bag;

a lifetime measured in tea from its belly.

Finally, he takes her tulip glass, winds

a chador around its body, leaves the gold rim

peeking out like a mouth that might

tell him where to go, what is coming next.

- Marjorie Lotfi

This was the first link I found it at. It was displayed on the Jubilee line.