Satsuma Tree.

Some of my earliest memories are of my grandfather.

My family lived with my grandparents in Iran until I was four years old. Each morning, my grandfather would leave on his bicycle to buy fresh bread, fruit, and vegetables from the local market, returning with bags balanced on the back. To me, that bicycle was simply part of who he was.

Alireza

The bicycle and satsuma tree that became the subjects of this drawing. Iran, 2000.

A few years ago, his health began to decline. As dementia gradually took more and more from him, much of the world became unfamiliar. Yet there were a few things he never seemed to lose connection with. One was his roses. The other was a satsuma tree in the garden.

Over the years, the tree had grown wild, its branches stretching across the entrance to the house. Visitors often had to duck beneath them to enter, but whenever anyone suggested trimming it back, he refused. The tree remained exactly as he wanted it.

Living thousands of miles away and unable to return to Iran for many years, I wanted to create something for him. The bicycle had long since disappeared, but in my memory it remained inseparable from the house, the roses, and the satsuma tree. Bringing them together in a single image felt like a way of preserving the parts of him that time could not erase.

After the drawing was presented to him, I was told that it caught his attention and made him smile. Whether he recognised it as my work, I will never know. What mattered was that, for a moment, it reached him.

He passed away a few months later.

This piece is dedicated to him, and to the memories that remain long after other things have faded.