Tribute by Dhabih Eng

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.