I recognized Hoda when she was around 7 or 8 years old.
There was a big age difference between us — I’m older.
I remember she was a very energetic little girl, very lively, as we say here.
At one point, she wore a large number of thin plastic bracelets that were in fashion, and she was always running around, laughing, playing here and there.
As time went on, the years brought us closer.
We started to develop a friendship, and she became almost like family to me.
I felt she was part of my family, even though there was no blood relation.
My mother and her mother were friends.
That friendship had many layers.
One of them was our shared love for art.
Hoda was a graduate in Visual Arts, specialized in printmaking — an incredibly talented artist.
We also shared life itself: we lived through many moments together — beautiful, happy, joyful ones, and others that weren’t so easy.
And that friendship kept growing over time.
She was a very expressive person.
She always said what she felt.
I also remember her loud, unmistakable laugh when something was funny
To me, she was a very beautiful woman.
My sister Siria and I used to say she looked like an actress from a Turkish series, with a wonderful smile
She was passionate about many things.
Among them, she dedicated her life to the Bahá’í Faith.
Her family had come to Mendoza from Iran, as Bahá’í pioneers.
She devoted much of her time and life to that cause.
And she truly inspired great admiration — for her knowledge of the Faith, her generosity, her warmth.
I don’t think there was anyone to whom she wasn’t willing to offer her friendship.
She inspired deep admiration.
We shared many moments when we were young.
Later in life, I wasn’t always living in Mendoza, and she got married and moved to Spain just a few years later.
It seemed like our friendship might become distant, but we stayed in touch — sometimes more, sometimes less.
But in the most important moments of life, we were connected.
Sometimes we spoke two or three times a week — or even more.
I remember those never-ending voice messages.
It was truly a family-like bond for me.
A very dear friend, someone I admired, full of values and a strong attitude toward life.
She was a resilient person.
>I believe her life was full of challenges.
There are people who — for reasons we may never understand — suffer deeply.
To me, she suffered a lot.
Even so, she had such a strong character, dreams, and plans — always present, always alive.
And the mark she left on me is the one of true friendship.
She was always there.
And now, even more so, I will try not to miss her too much…
If I could tell the world something about Hoda, I’d say she was a woman of great power.
She had many talents — intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and artistic.
And to me, that power, her being, and her soul live on — tangibly — in her little son, Drazen, whom I’ve known since he was born and love dearly.
I believe that we will love him forever, because he is part of Hoda.
So, well…
To close, I’d like to share a short line from a song that I love and that reminds me of Hoda:
“Even if you hold on to the moon,
even if you lie down with the sun,
there are no more stars than those you choose to let shine.
The sky will take on your color.
We will meet again.”