Surrounded by a sea of seemingly grey stones beside the ocean, Razieh is searching for something while dressed in pink. “I’m looking for a stone,” Razieh says, before opening her hand to reveal a golden-coloured rock. “Something like this.” It’s something Razieh never knew she could find when she first moved here, and assumed all the rocks were the same. “All the stone have a different colour and material,” Razieh smiles, before picking up a few rocks from the beach to showcase how unique they all are. She discovered that about two years ago, and almost every week since, Razieh’s been searching for one specific sort of stone. “For example, this one,” Razieh starts to raise the golden one up. “If you look in the sun.” But before she can line it up with the sun, Razieh needs to put away the AirPods she’s been holding in the other. “I speak with my sister,” Razieh says, explaining how she was using her wireless earphones to have a phone conversation. It turns out that stopping to ask Razieh what she was doing on the beach was interrupting a call she was having with her sister, who had been on the other end of the phone the whole time. “Her name is Anna,” Razieh says. “In other country.” Given Anna lives on the other side of the world, Razieh comes down to the edge of the ocean that separates them to be as close as she can when they connect over the phone. “I’m feeling good, because I know she’s good. She’s going to work. She has a family. She’s happy,” Razieh smiles. “When she’s happy, I’m happy.” Razieh is even happier to know she’ll find one of these golden stones, which she keeps as a souvenir of their happy conversations. “I have a lot of stones,” Razieh says, describing how she keeps a collection of them on a shelf in her home. Before she returns to her call, Razieh holds the rock up to the sky to show why she chooses this sort of stone. Parts of it are translucent and glow gold when the light hits it. It’s a reminder that no matter how far you find yourself from the one you love, the same sun will always shine on you both.
