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Dhabih Eng, a close childhood friend of Amin, shared the following at Amin’s memorial gathering in Bellevue on Sunday.  Thanks also to Dhaibh for the pictures below.

I want to thank the Amirkia family for this opportunity for us to share some thoughts about their son and our friend Amin.  I think Amin would have preferred us not to focus on him so much as he never wanted to be the center of attention.   But we are here for his family and for each other and I hope he will let this one pass.

In any human relation, one person’s view of somebody is always slightly different than someone else’s view of that same person. We have a different perspective on what makes up a person, all of which are facets of the truth, yet none are the whole picture.

I share these thoughts with you today in an attempt to add who I knew Amin to be to our collective understanding of this bright soul.  There are some in this room who were lucky to know him much better than I and some who maybe only knew of him through his wonderful family.  And while my perspective of him is only a little part of the man he was, this is the Amin I knew.

I want to thank all involved for so quickly putting together the tribute website for Amin at aminamirkia.org.   It has been a few years since Amin moved to China and having the opportunity to see pictures of his times since then has really been wonderful.  It has been such a special way to feel close to him and the outpouring of love and sympathy from people all over the world is really a testament to the kind of effect he had on all those he came across, whether it be family, friends, co-workers or acquaintances.  He was incredibly loved.  Not only because of the many attractive qualities he displayed but because in his interactions with people, the amount of respect and love he afforded everyone was not only genuine but without prejudice.

While I feel lucky to have been able to take a small number of trips with Amin in the past, as each new album was added showing an event, or some travel somewhere, the same thought that kept coming to my mind was “I wish I was there with him.”  Amin was someone I just wanted to be around.  My wife and I were lucky to have been able to spend a little time with him earlier this year when we were visiting my brother in Beijing, and even though we had just seen him a couple weeks earlier when he was visiting Seattle, to see him again was such a joy for both of us.  My only regret was that it was for just one evening and our final time together.

There was little that gave Amin more joy than spending time with the people he loved, and of the people he loved, the ones he loved most was his family.  There was a video shared on the tribute site taken hours before his passing where he is waiting with family for the birth of his cousin May’s child.  You could just see the joy on his face.  While without doubt he was very excited for the imminent birth of his new baby cousin, it was the same happiness that was evident anytime I saw him around his family, whether at home with his parents and brother and sister or with his cousins or aunts and uncles.

Although he was a little younger than me, I looked up to him a great deal, especially in our adult years.  Amin had grown into an incredible young man that possessed many of the qualities I wish I had and he was example and role-model to me in many aspects of living life with integrity.

His unwavering dedication to his goals was paramount and his ability to have a vision for his life and do what was necessary to set out towards that vision was inspiring.  His staunch steadfastness in the Baha’i Faith, this Faith on which he shaped his life around and dedicated much of his time to was plain for everyone to see; and not because he talked about it, but because he lived it through action.  He was someone who truly understood what it meant to value deeds over words.  In fact, he hardly spoke of the service he was performing and on the rare occasions that he did, it was only to try to inspire others to join him in the challenge of changing the direction of the world.

He was someone who showed friend and stranger alike the utmost respect in both his manners and speech.  It’s funny, I’ve known him for 20 years and still when we’d visit each other the first 10 minutes of conversation with him started with many of the same pleasantries and formality I would normally expect from a 70 year old Persian man.  Of course, he enjoyed joking and teasing us too from time to time but if you were ever on the receiving end it was only because he felt close enough and loved you and was never out of malice.

I think more than anything, what stands out to me when I think of my friend, it is his constancy in truth.  Every word he uttered, every letter he wrote was firmly established on a foundation of truth and honesty.  He would always be guarded in speech to be sure that he didn’t inject any preconceived notions or assumptions into a conversation; a trait that made his career choice a natural fit.  He would never say something if he didn’t believe it, nor waste false words on appeasing his audience.  Sometimes to my disappointment.  There were times like when we would get together for 1am steak dinners at 13 coins in Seattle and I would seek his advice on some drama I had gotten myself into.  In truth I was just looking for someone to take my side on a matter and tell me how right I was.  Instead in the most loving way without me feeling like I was being accused of anything, he would break down step by step the ways in which he would have handled the situation differently and through that showed me how incredibly wrong I was.  While I may have initially left those nights feeling like I didn’t hear what I wanted, very soon after I always knew I heard what I needed.  And for that I am always thankful.

Amin also loved to remember moments from the past.  He would often randomly and repeatedly bring up funny episodes that happened to us either weeks or years before just so we could laugh about them again.  I loved his sense of humor.  It was so nice to see the story one of his friends shared on the site while at a restaurant in response to a photo that was taken in which his face was partially blocked, Amin mentioned it was on purpose because if he were to run for President one day, he wouldn’t want it to be known that he’d been in a Xinjiang restaurant.  For a long time too he would insist that I owed him a large sum of money, and he enjoyed playing the role of mafia enforcer who was out to collect.  I was going through some old emails from him last night and he would sign off some of them with “where’s my money?” and “don’t forget my money”, and in response to an invitation to a gathering we were having at our house, he wrote : “I might stop by to pick up my money. Please have it ready so I don’t have to make a scene. “

I want to thank Mr. and Mrs. Amirkia and his family again for allowing us the time to share a few words.  None of us have the context to really understand what you must all be going through at this time, and while I truly thought of Amin as my brother, it can never approach or come close to what he must mean to you and the sorrow your separation from him brings.  And yet in the past couple weeks your family has been so gracious, selfless and loving to the rest of us, by opening your home wide open to all of us from the very beginning, by serving us tea and fruit and allowing the rest of us to mourn by your side.  I hope that we may all in some way return this honor and favor, and if we are to fall short of this, that God will make up for what we lack.   Amin is who he is in large part because of the family he was raised in, and from the integrity and honor you and your extended family have shown during this time, it is clear that there is still much we can learn from you, and for me, you have always been and will continue to be a family I can learn much from.

To say Amin is in a better place doesn’t begin to describe his current state of being and the elation and joy he is no doubt encompassed in.  Ours is a one sided sadness.  Separation from those we love is unbearable and how much more when they’ve passed onto the next life.  But Amin is now closer to us all now than he ever was and in that I take comfort.

When comforting a mother who had lost her son, Abdul’baha, the son of Baha’u’llah, the founder of the Baha’I faith, writes in the voice of that child:

“…lament not, O Mother, and be not grieved; I am not of the lost, nor have I been obliterated and destroyed. I have shaken off the mortal form and have raised my banner in this spiritual world. Following this separation is everlasting companionship. Thou shalt find me in the heaven of the Lord, immersed in an ocean of light.”

I close with this:  Amin may have joked that I owed him money, but in truth I owe him so much more than that and I look forward to paying him back, when he comes collecting.

Amin’s physical remains were laid to rest earlier this afternoon in a befitting funeral in Bellevue, Washington, USA.  Some 500 family, friends and admirers from throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia – including Amin’s beloved China – bid farewell in an emotional and most-dignified funeral.  After prayers, readings and chanting of the Baha’i Prayer for the Dead, Amin’s casket was carried by pallbearers to his grave site for interment.  While difficult to say farewell, Amin’s casket was lowered to the ground amidst a shower of prayers, flowers, tears and along with flower petals from the Baha’i Holy Shrines in Israel as well as a sprinkling of soil from China.

Many, many family and friends who loved Amin gathered to say their final farewell.

As friends and family have gathered from around the world in Bellevue, Washington for Amin’s funeral and memorial gathering, we ask for your prayers during this difficult weekend.  We hope to continue to share updates here with those of you unable to attend.

Thanks to cousin Maryam and her husband Zhou Hai from Beijing, China for these pictures.

By Maryam Tirandaz, Beijing, China

In order to sit down and write this, I had to get inspiration.  Inspiration about Amin would naturally come by sitting down to a pile of tangerines (or other fruit) and indulging.  He used to call the little tangerines you find in the fall in Beijing “God’s little nuggets of goodness.”  My husband and I just smile in quiet remembrance of Amin when we see fruit.   Amin was an equal opportunity lover of fruit and he would rotate his favoritism.  One month, it would be pears; he just couldn’t get enough of them.   The next, it would be pomellos.  Of course, mangos were the king of fruit.  I remember when we went to Malaysia together and had half a day to just browse a mall; we spent the whole time looking for dried mangos to take back to Beijing… he LOVED dried mangos!

Of course the purpose of this note isn’t to laud the beauty of fruit.  It is to celebrate Amin.  He was one of a kind.  Yes, all of us who have become “aminamirkia.org” addicts know how wonderful a person he was.  He was a very private, humble person so many people may not know the extent of his golden character.  He was a true gentleman.  In his short thirty years on this physical plane, he managed to touch the lives of pretty much everyone he came in contact with.  Naturally, the young girls immediately noticed how handsome, well-groomed and sweet his demeanor was.  However, he was much much more than that.  He tried with all his might to live a good life.

There are several traits that Amin had that stand out in my mind.  He was sincere to the core, he was impeccably clean and organized, he strove for perfection and as a result was extremely disciplined and he was all love.

How many of us can still hear Amin saying “No Tarof, No Tarof, Really, Really…” when he talked with us?  We used to think that Amin was all tarof.  That he always bent over backwards to do things for us.  But the reality was that he was always sincere.  There was no tarof.  He never did anything he didn’t really want to do.  If he wanted to work-out instead of joining us for dinner, he did.  If he had an appointment he would never cancel just to sit around with us.  If he didn’t feel like calling, he wouldn’t until he really felt like it.  He was sincere in his interactions with everyone.  Yes, he did bend over backwards to do things for us, including take care of my parents while they visited Beijing, coming to stay with me when I was pregnant so that I wouldn’t be alone when Zhou Hai was away, or insisting to pick up the bill when we went out.  He did all of these things out of his sincerity.  No tarof, really.

Anyone that took one look at Mr. Amin Amirkia could tell how special a person he was.  He was an “aqa”, a true gentleman.  He was always impeccably clean, tidy and stylish.   We had the bounty of having him live with us for some time.  We knew when he did the dishes because the way the dishes were put in the drying rack was only as Amin would.  Each dish was always at a perfect angle and spaced exactly the same distance apart.  He was amazing.  We never saw him disheveled.  Even when we all got up during the fast in the mornings to have breakfast together at 5:30am, he was well put-together.  He had shoe horns in his shoes.  Always dry-cleaned his shirts and he used to joke that the barber would laugh at him because he was so particular about the way his hair (or rather each hair) was cut.   Unfortunately, he suffered as a result, because the world around him was anything but clean.  I remember one day he came to our house recounting how crowded the subway was.  He was literally packed in like a sardine.  He said there was no way to fall because everyone was squeezed in so close to each other.  Then with his sweet laughter he said that the guy up against him had actually sneezed in his face but he had no choice but to stand straight there, as he always did.  No doubt he suffered in situations such as these.
One would think that someone who paid such close attention to his appearance would have a closet full of clothes.  On the contrary, he lived a simple almost sparse life.  After he passed, as we went to pack up his apartment, we marveled at how simply he lived and at how little there actually was in his closet.

There is no one I know that was more disciplined than Amin.  He would work until odd hours of the morning, come home and instead of calling it a night, he would go for a run around the neighborhood.  No matter how tired he was.  He treated his body and his soul with dignity.  We used to joke and say that we don’t think anyone has ever seen Amin slouch.  He strove for perfection and he was disciplined in his approach to perfection.  He strove for perfection in his work.  He would make sure that any document that he touched had undergone his special attention.  He strove for perfection in his appearance.  He was very careful about keeping his body in tiptop shape.  He strove for perfection in his spiritual life.  Dedicating himself over and over again to his faith and serving tirelessly.  His friends recount how he would sometimes travel almost two hours each way in order to get to a Baha’i study circle that lasted only a couple of hours itself.  Furthermore, in order to prepare for that study circle, he would write out the words he didn’t know and learn the vocabulary for each lesson he would cover.  He rarely did things on a whim.  He either did something well or didn’t do it at all.  He was committed to working, living and staying in China.  Difficulties in finding a job, language obstacles, loneliness, or pollution never were going to stop him or send him packing home.  He endured, he strove, he never complained and was profoundly humble.  He was an example for all of us.

Yet his discipline and goal of perfection didn’t make him a dull person.  He had a very special sense of humor.  He would say the funniest things at the most opportune moments and sometimes would play pranks on friends.  His sharp wit always made us laugh.  He enjoyed life and was joyful.  I remember a trip we took to Vietnam together.  We stayed at a luxury villa with the Farids.  He and Vafa shared a room and from my room I could hear the music blaring while he showered, it was the Beatles.  He often listed to music while he showered and loved music, whether it was classical, Persian classical, Chinese classical or even Chinese pop music.

Amin had a heart of gold.  I remember when he was a toddler.  He was so affectionate and loving.  He had a special way to kiss and that memory has stayed with me to this day.  He used to squeeze his face into your cheek and just stay there.  It wasn’t really a kiss; it was more like gluing his face up to yours.  It was the sweetest.  Of course, those days of kissing only lasted while he was a little toddler.  In his adult life, he made sure to always keep a proper distance from everyone.  Nonetheless, it was clear how much he loved us all.  Anyone who ever held a conversation with him knows how he strove to put one at ease and focus attention on that person.  He really cared about everyone.  He adored his parents, grandmother, siblings, aunts and uncles, cousins and most of all the new generation of babies in the family.  He had a particular soft spot for children and babies.  He would often talk about Arman and Ava, Lily, Tia and Kia, Aria, Daria and Paya, Omid, Shayan, Ruhi and I’m sure his soul will take great care of Zayn.  There weren’t many young men his age that adored children as much.  He used to take pictures of and play with random Chinese children and come home to show us.  The children felt so at ease with him because they could feel his sincerity, kindness and love.  It was the sweetest thing to watch.

The day before he left for Hong Kong, Amin was at our house for a family dinner celebrating the Moon Festival.  He was the last person to leave that night and right before he left he asked to borrow a carry-on suitcase.  After being offered several choices, he picked one of Zhou Hai’s bags.  After we heard that we will not see Amin again in this physical world, we realized that the last time that bag had been used was by another of Zhou Hai’s friends who had taken it on pilgrimage.  As a beautiful example of dramatic poetry, Amin packed his bag that had come from the Holy Land and took his last journey to be with His Beloved.

He used to sit with us until all hours talking, strategizing, advising, laughing and eating.  There were many nights were I had to call it a night because I didn’t have the endurance he did to stay up and talk more.  We will miss Amin immensely!  We can still hear his infectious laughter in our house.  We will make sure that Ruhi grows up knowing about her Dayee Amin and how wonderful he was.  Amin was always a man of his word.  When we came back in September from our trip to the US, he came over the day after we arrived.  We were jet-lagged but Amin was so excited to see us after two months.  We told him how much we missed him at the family reunion that was held at his parent’s house and how wonderful it was to be with his mom and dad.  He said that he wished he could have been there but that he was going to do everything he could to go back to the States at the end of summer/ early fall.  He wanted to see his parents, Laila, Ashkan, Arman and of course, the newest addition to the family, Ava joon.  Amin was a man of his word.  Through a tragic and strange set of circumstances, he has made it back to those he loved.

We love you Amin joon.  You will forever be in our hearts and we will try to serve Him, in your name, as we know you would want.

Maryam, Zhou Hai & Ruhi

Several of the photo albums on the site have been updated with pictures of Amin received from friends and family.  This includes the following album which are of Amin during the last few years in Beijing including cousin Maryam’s & Zhou Hai’s wedding in summer of 2011.

From Mark Pan

Amin was the most seriously-whimsical person I’ve ever met.  His polite, well-spoken demeanor lived hand in hand with his hilarious sense of humor.  I doubt any other person could be so polished and refined as to make a lasting good impression with everyone he met, and also cause such chaotic laughter among his friends with the pranks he pulled and jokes he told.  I will never forget how frustrating it was to argue with Amin, or how wonderful it was to see him arguing with someone else.  He had a sharp mind and confident intellect that made him a great debater.  He was constantly smiling and laughing, and making those around him laugh as well.  He made me laugh so often, and  when I think about some of the things he used to say or do, he still does.  That is what I’ll miss most about him.

From Preston Martin

It was fall 2004 and I had just moved to Seattle from South Florida. I was a long way from my home, my family, and my friends, and the reality of this separation was just starting to sink in. At the time I was in a relationship with someone from Bellevue who had gone to school at Interlake HS. One night we headed out to reconnect with her friends at a small party. It would be my first introduction to the group. As we walked up I could hear singular voices punctuated by group laughter. I suddenly got the impression that this was a tightly knit group, and I was going to be the outsider.

That was the night I first met Amin. He greeted me with a sincere and welcoming smile that I will never forget. We chatted for a while, quickly getting beyond the typical small talk.  Amin listened attentively and responded in a deliberate and thoughtful way. It was evident that he was sincerely interested in getting to know me. That conversation set the tone for the rest of the evening. I felt welcome and comfortable as I continued to meet new people.

From that first encounter I’ve always had admiration and respect for Amin. He carried himself with grace and maturity beyond his years, and he seemed to be mindful of his path forward when others (including myself) were trying to figure out what to do in life. I always appreciated our conversations, which, I admit, were more polished than I might normally have. I would catch myself listening more closely and making attempts to cut back on “dude”,”bro”, and “sweet”. I suppose I was trying to show my best side, which I now recognize was just a reflection of my respect for Amin. I’ve come to realize that my
admiration and respect for him has certainly had an influence on actions and decisions in my life beyond what I can even comprehend, and will continue to do so.

Although Amin was a world away, I thought of him often. His passing has made me realize just how much of an impact he’s had on my life, and on the lives of our mutual friends. I feel blessed to have known Amin, and will undoubtedly think of him, and honor his memory, for the rest of my life.

From Jeannette La-Thompsen

I’ve only known Amin for a few years, but the stories that I hear about him make me feel like I’ve known him for much longer. I’ve been privy to in inside jokes between their group of friends and now I can’t go to Dairy Queen without thinking of Amin. While traveling to China with my parents and my husband (one of Amin’s oldest friends) I was lucky enough to spend some time with him.

Amin was such a gracious host and took us all around Bejing for fun sights and great food. Two of my most striking memories of him is once he found out there was a special art exhibit that I wanted to go to he led us straight to the art district and on a wild goose chase for a tiny, tucked away gallery. After speaking to many people we were able to find the small gallery, only to find out that it was currently closed for a private event. Dan, my husband, had told me many times of Amin’s gift of gab, so it was no surprise that he talked our way in to the gallery. Seeing that exhibition was a long time dream of mine and I’m so thankful that he went so far out of his way to do something like that for me.

Secondly, during this same trip, I told him  that I needed to buy a stuffed panda hat. He took us all throughout the markets looking for this panda hat. He negotiated for me in Chinese and as we left, in the most dead pan voice, but with the biggest smile he said to the vendor “next time, don’t rip me off.” And she burst out in to laughter. I had heard so much about his dry humor and to see it in action still brings a smile to my face.

He was a wonderful friend to so many and I know that he will be missed by all.