For me nature is everything. All that there is. Both within and without. The seen and the unseen. It’s all that matters. It’s all that we are. It took me years to see the link and I’m still discovering. As an immigrant, you tend to see differences more than similarities. But where nature leads, we are all one. One body. One soul. Just one. You just need to close your eyes and let the vibrations take you on a journey. A journey to the self. A journey to the other. A journey into the beyond.

I visited Peru three years ago and like all good tourists, I went on a hike that after four days and three nights took me to one of the New Seven Wonders of the World: Machu Picchu. It was a journey through green plateaus, into sacred valleys and up to silent mountain peaks. It was somewhere there, in the early hours of a misty morning that I found it: my very own Peruvian beauty. Hand-woven with love by an old lady whose eyes was speaking poetry to me. Every thread every colour has a story to tell. Stories of the shepherd boys and girls who couldn’t go to school because they had to put out Alpacas to pasture. I put it on right in front of her and have never taken it off ever since. It’s been with me everywhere I go. Reminding me of the mountain tops that echoed my own childhood years when we also had to leave school for a few months and take refuge in the mountains to survive Tehran’s bombardments. It’s my very own piece of nature that accompanies me through life. It’s what reminds me every minute of every hour of every day that life on earth will be lost if we lose touch with nature, if we lose touch with ourselves. Let’s keep this chain unbroken. Let’s wake up from this nightmare. Let’s survive this madness one more time.