Persian Love Quotes

We’re not here to argue with you about the wisdom of our alliance that has kept the Persians at bay for forty years. An argument requires a measure of equality between those in the dispute and Samos is not the equal of Athens.

Farsi Couplet: Mun tu shudam tu mun shudi,mun tun shudam tu jaan shudi Taakas na guyad baad azeen, mun deegaram tu deegari English Translation: I have become you, and you me, I am the body, you soul; So that no one can say hereafter, That you are someone, and me someone else.

I died a lot to live a little with you

I belong to no religion. My religion is love. Every heart is my temple.

She offered her mouth to him, as if enchanted. A Persian princess, a little Indian, a fox, a morning glory, a lovely wisteria--it always pleased them when you told them they looked like something, like something else.

Love is simply creation's greatest joy.

Our lives pass from us like the wind, and why Should wise men grieve to know that they must die? The Judas blossom fades, the lovely face Of light is dimmed, and darkness takes its place.

From moment then to moment their desire Gained strength, and wisdom fled before love's fire; Passion engulfed them, and these lovers lay Entwined together till the break of day.

They who love to inform themselves, are never idle. Though I have no business of consequence to take care of, I am nevertheless continually employed. I spend my life in examining things: I write down in the evening whatever I have remarked, what I have seen, and what I have heard in the day: every thing engages my attention, and every thing excites my wonder: I am like an infant, whose organs, as yet tender, are strongly affected by the slightest objects.

I sometimes think the Pussy-Willows grey Are Angel Kittens who have lost their way, And every Bulrush on the river bank A Cat-Tail from some lovely Cat astray.

In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life. An intense love, a veritable tornado sweeping across the plains—flattening everything in its path, tossing things up in the air, ripping them to shreds, crushing them to bits. The tornado’s intensity doesn’t abate for a second as it blasts across the ocean, laying waste to Angkor Wat, incinerating an Indian jungle, tigers and everything, transforming itself into a Persian desert sandstorm, burying an exotic fortress city under a sea of sand. In short, a love of truly monumental proportions. The person she fell in love with happened to be 17 years older than Sumire. And was married. And, I should add, was a woman. This is where it all began, and where it all ended. Almost.

Alexander, of whom men tell many legends, lived by his own. Achilles must have Patroklos. He might love his Briseis; but Patroklos was the friend till death. At their tombs in Troy, Alexander and Hephaistion had sacrificed together. Wound Patroklos, and Achilles will have your blood.

Farsi Couplet: Ba khak darat rau ast maara, Gar surmah bechashm dar neaayad. English Translation: The dust of your doorstep is just the right thing to apply, If Surmah (kohl powder) does not show its beauty in the eye!

you’re already naked in this world in this time in this life beacause your next love your next hunger you next laughter and even your next tear may never come

Every man is capable of doing good to another, but to contribute to the happiness of an entire society is to become akin to the gods

Am I beautiful? It is for you alone. Say that you love me, for without you I cannot live.

Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer.

Is he weeping?" said the one with the softest heart.

In the words of a Persian sage: love is a disease no one wants to get rid of. Those who catch it never try to get better, and those who suffer do not wish to be cured.

Jafaa. In Persian, this very poetic word refers to all the wrongs you do to those who love you.

Beauty is dad kissing mom's hand when it cramps. Beauty is seeing a Persian woman dance. Ugly is not the absence of beauty. Ugly is the inability to identify it. The inability to be surprised by it. It is the persistent reluctance to be made a child by it. Beauty is simply the manifestation of love.

Mother is gone. When one person is missing from the table, the whole world feels empty, hollow, echoing with voices of the past. All of us, from that time, have changed. Love is so short.

Some people have described Ava as religiously non-observant, but I think she's starved for love. She must have been deprived in her youth. That's why she acts out. Deep down, she didn't have a good opinion of herself. Not that she's perfect. I just think she could use a hug.

Do I grudge my lord the herb that will heal him, because another gathers it? No, let him be healed.

I'm sure love has its own means of survival, its preferred host, its ideal temperature, its own law of thermodynamics. Why else would women crave hot baths?

On the back part of the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brilliance. At first I thought it was revolving; then I realised that this movement was an illusion created by the dizzying world it bounded. The Aleph's diameter was probably little more than an inch, but all space was there, actual and undiminished. Each thing (a mirror's face, let us say) was infinite things, since I distinctly saw it from every angle of the universe. I saw the teeming sea; I saw daybreak and nightfall; I saw the multitudes of America; I saw a silvery cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; I saw a splintered labyrinth (it was London); I saw, close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me; I saw in a backyard of Soler Street the same tiles that thirty years before I'd seen in the entrance of a house in Fray Bentos; I saw bunches of grapes, snow, tobacco, lodes of metal, steam; I saw convex equatorial deserts and each one of their grains of sand; I saw a woman in Inverness whom I shall never forget; I saw her tangled hair, her tall figure, I saw the cancer in her breast; I saw a ring of baked mud in a sidewalk, where before there had been a tree; I saw a summer house in Adrogué and a copy of the first English translation of Pliny -- Philemon Holland's -- and all at the same time saw each letter on each page (as a boy, I used to marvel that the letters in a closed book did not get scrambled and lost overnight); I saw a sunset in Querétaro that seemed to reflect the colour of a rose in Bengal; I saw my empty bedroom; I saw in a closet in Alkmaar a terrestrial globe between two mirrors that multiplied it endlessly; I saw horses with flowing manes on a shore of the Caspian Sea at dawn; I saw the delicate bone structure of a hand; I saw the survivors of a battle sending out picture postcards; I saw in a showcase in Mirzapur a pack of Spanish playing cards; I saw the slanting shadows of ferns on a greenhouse floor; I saw tigers, pistons, bison, tides, and armies; I saw all the ants on the planet; I saw a Persian astrolabe; I saw in the drawer of a writing table (and the handwriting made me tremble) unbelievable, obscene, detailed letters, which Beatriz had written to Carlos Argentino; I saw a monument I worshipped in the Chacarita cemetery; I saw the rotted dust and bones that had once deliciously been Beatriz Viterbo; I saw the circulation of my own dark blood; I saw the coupling of love and the modification of death; I saw the Aleph from every point and angle, and in the Aleph I saw the earth and in the earth the Aleph and in the Aleph the earth; I saw my own face and my own bowels; I saw your face; and I felt dizzy and wept, for my eyes had seen that secret and conjectured object whose name is common to all men but which no man has looked upon -- the unimaginable universe. I felt infinite wonder, infinite pity.

Three teen daughters, Sarah, Zoe, and me, holding our tongues, hoping Father will speak, say something comforting, tell us our love will see us through. Anything to end the silence.

He's such a dear, Mr. Garnet. A beautiful, pure, bred Persian. He has taken prizes." "He's always taking something - generally food.

You first," Tommy said. They stood in the great room of their loft on either side of the futon, where the huge cat, a crossbreed between a Persian, a dust mop, and possibly a water buffalo, was actively shedding.

When evil come on those we dearly love, never shall we betray them.

A broken hand works, but not a broken heart.

That is the life of the gods, who only seem to die like the sun at his setting. But do not ride too fast across the sky and leave us all in darkness.

Iran. Hot for certainties, but all us women get are rhymes. Always a metaphor; always a clever turn of phrase; always quoting poets without giving a direct answer. Give us definitive wedding dates. That's certainty! Those are the certainties we ache for--as certain as the sunlight that our sun-loving botany aches for.

You talk books away," he said; "why don't you write one?" "I am too fond of reading books to care to write them, Mr. Erskine. I should like to write a novel certainly, a novel that would be as lovely as a Persian carpet and as unreal.

The lover I am; it befits me to burn; but what is the reason for your weeping and burning? The candle replied: ‘Oh my ill-fated lover, a honey-sweet [shirin] friend went away from me. Someone like Shirin has deserted me; there is fire on my head, as it was on Farhad’s.’ The candle continued, while a painful flood each moment gushed down on his yellow cheeks: 'Pretender, this love is not your game, as you have no patience, no strength to stand. Untouched you shrink from a single flame, whereas I stand still until I am consumed. If the fire of love has scorched your wings, look at me: it burned me from head to foot.

I can’t help but notice how desperate, how incompetent, a physician can feel not being able to save the life of their own beloved. Saving lives — something you’re trained for, something you do automatically — suddenly seems impossible.

Paintings of Jesus with long hair and a full beard and of first-century Jews in Persian turbans and Bedouin robes are fantasies of later artists. The Hellenistic world created by Alexander the Great was remarkably homogenous in style. From Britain to North Africa, from Spain to India, people affected Greek manners. The earliest paintings of Jesus depict him as the Good Shepherd with short hair, no beard, and wearing a knee-length tunic. This is probably far more what Jesus looked like than the paintings we know and love. The apostle Paul admonished men not to let their hair grow long (1 Cor 11:14), which he would hardly have done if the other apostles or the Sanhedrin had worn their hair long; he certainly would not have written that if Jesus had worn his hair long.

The name Mithras is related to Modern Persian mihr, meaning ‘love’ and ‘sun.

I doubt he’d ever in his life lain down with anyone for whom he had not felt some kind of fondness. He needed love as a palm tree needs water, all his life long: from armies, from cities, from conquered enemies, nothing was enough. It laid him open to false friends, as anyone will tell you. Well, for all that, no man is made a god when he is dead and can do no harm, without love. He needed love and never forgave its betrayal, which he had no understanding of. For he himself, if it was given him with a whole heart, never misused it, nor despised the giver. He took it gratefully, and felt bound by it.

The Persian Version Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon. As for the Greek theatrical tradition Which represents that summer's expedition Not as a mere reconnaisance in force By three brigades of foot and one of horse (Their left flank covered by some obsolete Light craft detached from the main Persian fleet) But as a grandiose, ill-starred attempt To conquer Greece - they treat it with contempt; And only incidentally refute Major Greek claims, by stressing what repute The Persian monarch and the Persian nation Won by this salutary demonstration: Despite a strong defence and adverse weather All arms combined magnificently together.

Zeal for the advancement of religion is different from a due attachment to it; and that in order to love it and fulfill its behests, it is not necessary to hate and persecute those who are opposed to it.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance. 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence, The sound must seem an echo to the sense. Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows, And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows; But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar. When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The line too labours, and the words move slow; Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain, Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main. Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise, And bid alternate passions fall and rise! While, at each change, the son of Libyan Jove Now burns with glory, and then melts with love; Now his fierce eyes with sparkling fury glow, Now sighs steal out, and tears begin to flow: Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found, And the world's victor stood subdu'd by sound! The pow'r of music all our hearts allow, And what Timotheus was, is Dryden now.

Pretty Words" Poets make pets of pretty, docile words: I love smooth words, like gold-enamelled fish Which circle slowly with a silken swish, And tender ones, like downy-feathred birds: Words shy and dappled, deep-eyed deer in herds, Come to my hand, and playful if I wish, Or purring softly at a silver dish, Blue Persian kittens fed on cream and curds. I love bright words, words up and singing early; Words that are luminous in the dark, and sing; Warm lazy words, white cattle under trees; I love words opalescent, cool, and pearly, Like midsummer moths, and honied words like bees, Gilded and sticky, with a little sting.

Love and mercy – and not mauling await you there But standing outside the door your suppositions bar you like a bolt. Don’t set fire to this thicket be silent, heart! hold your tongue, for your tongue is a lick of flame.

I would not tell this court that I do not hope that some time, when life and age have changed their bodies, as they do, and have changed their emotions, as they do -- that they may once more return to life. I would be the last person on earth to close the door of hope to any human being that lives, and least of all to my clients. But what have they to look forward to? Nothing. And I think here of the stanza of Housman: Now hollow fires burn out to black, And lights are fluttering low: Square your shoulders, lift your pack And leave your friends and go. O never fear, lads, naught’s to dread, Look not left nor right: In all the endless road you tread There’s nothing but the night. ...Here it Leopold’s father -- and this boy was the pride of his life. He watched him, he cared for him, he worked for him; the boy was brilliant and accomplished, he educated him, and he thought that fame and position awaited him, as it should have awaited. It is a hard thing for a father to see his life’s hopes crumble into dust. ...I know the future is with me, and what I stand for here; not merely for the lives of these two unfortunate lads, but for all boys and all girls; for all of the young, and as far as possible, for all of the old. I am pleading for life, understanding, charity, kindness, and the infinite mercy that considers all. I am pleading that we overcome cruelty with kindness and hatred with love. I know the future is on my side. Your Honor stands between the past and the future. You may hang these boys; you may hang them by the neck until they are dead. But in doing it you will turn your face toward the past... I am pleading for the future; I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men. When we can learn by reason and judgment and understanding that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute of man. ...I am sure I do not need to tell this court, or to tell my friends that I would fight just as hard for the poor as for the rich. If I should succeed, my greatest reward and my greatest hope will be that... I have done something to help human understanding, to temper justice with mercy, to overcome hate with love. I was reading last night of the aspiration of the old Persian poet, Omar Khayyám. It appealed to me as the highest that I can vision. I wish it was in my heart, and I wish it was in the hearts of all: So I be written in the Book of Love, I do not care about that Book above. Erase my name or write it as you will, So I be written in the Book of Love.

If I were asked to enumerate the pleasures of travel, this would be one of the greatest among them - that so often and so unexpectedly you meet the best in human nature, and seeing it so by surprise and often with a most improbable background, you come, with a sense of pleasant thankfulness, to realize how widely scattered in the world are goodness and courtesy and the love of immaterial things, fair blossoms found in every climate, on every soil.

THE INTEREST WITHOUT THE CAPITAL The lover's food is the love of the bread; no bread need be at hand: no one who is sincere in his love is a slave to existence. Lovers have nothing to do with with with existence; lovers have the interest without the capital. Without wings they fly around the world; without hands they carry the polo ball off the field. That dervish who caught the scent of Reality used to weave basket even though his hand had been cut off. Lover have pitched their tents in nonexistence: they are of one quality and one essence, as nonexistence is.

I wish I were like the fall...I wish I were like the fall I wish I were like the fall, silent, with no desires at all My wishes' leaves would one by one turn sallow-gold My eyes' sun would grow cold The heaven of my breast would fill with pain And suddenly a storm of grief would seize my heart Like rain my tears would start And stain my dress Oh...how lovely then, if I were like the fall Feral and bitter, with colours seeping into one another, so beautiful - In Love with Sadness

I am too fond of reading books to care to write them, Mr. Erskine. I should like to write a novel certainly, a novel that would be as lovely as a Persian carpet and as unreal. But there is no literary public in England for anything except newspapers, primers, and encyclopaedias. Of all people in the world the English have the least sense of the beauty of literature.

It is said that in every Persian carpet there is an error created by the weaver to avoid making a mockery of the belief that only Allah is perfect. Writing a novel is the quest for a perfection every writer knows can never be achieved, but is obliged to "Set out to write a masterpiece.

Political writers argue in regard to the love of liberty with the same philosophy that philosophers do in regard to the state of nature; by the things they see they judge of things very different which they have never seen, and they attribute to men a natural inclination to slavery, on account of the patience with which the slaves within their notice carry the yoke; not reflecting that it is with liberty as with innocence and virtue, the value of which is not known but by those who possess them, though the relish for them is lost with the things themselves. I know the charms of your country, said Brasidas to a satrap who was comparing the life of the Spartans with that of the Persepolites; but you can not know the pleasures of mine.

The chicken kebab is moist and fragrant; the chicken chunks fall apart when I bite into them, and the aromas of turmeric and parsley flood my senses. I have to close my eyes to take in all the flavors- spicy, salty, meaty. The doogh is equally delicious; I swear I've never drunk something so creamy, so minty, so refreshing.

-On sharing the love story of the Persian prince Khushraw and the niece of the queen of Armenia Shirin (who were looking for each other but in opposite directions): "Both lovers then departed, looking for each other in opposite directions, a theme universal in its pathos, because we all spend our brief lives doing just that, even if we physically share our beds with the same person every night for years. Always we carry an image in our head of a better person, of an ideal person, which blurs our chances of finding happiness.

Friendship is perfect when virtuous men love the good in one another; for virtue gives more delight than beauty, and is untouched by time.

should like to write a novel certainly, a novel that would be as lovely as a Persian carpet and as unreal. But

Suppose That I'm Inevitable Suppose that I'm inevitable Even the veins of my right hand Cross you from the drafts. On my smooth nails The breeze Which is not from the sky Is curving you Either the veins of my right hand Is running short On my pulse. Rolled along my fingers Vanished Not repeated forever For the second. I'm a half Since the first. The veins of my neck cross you all. If the warmth of my ten fingers Seized on your torn pieces of breath All is over With the dead-end alleys all in oblivion. (TRANSLATED FROM ORIGINAL PERSIAN INTO ENGLISH BY ROSA JAMALI)

What benefit have the Hindus derived from their contact with Christian nations? The idea generally prevalent in this country about the morality and truthfulness of the Hindus evidently has been very low. Such seeds of enmity and hatred have been sown by the missionaries that it would be an almost Herculean task to establish better relations between India and America... If we examine Greek, Chinese, Persian, or Arabian writings on the Hindus, before foreigners invaded India, we find an impartial description of their national character. Megasthenes, the famous Greek ambassador, praises them for their love of truth and justice, for the absence of slavery, and for the chastity of their women. Arrian, in the second century, Hiouen-thsang, the famous Buddhist pilgrim in the seventh century, Marco Polo in the thirteenth century, have written in highest terms of praise of Hindu morality. The literature and philosophy of Ancient India have excited the admiration of all scholars, except Christian missionaries.

The roses have all gone; "Goodbye," we say, we must; And I shall leave the busy world one day; I must. My little room, my books, my love, my sips of wine, All these are dear to me, they'll pass away, they must.

Love stories abound in all cultures: Romeo and Juliet, Orpheus and Eurydice, Tristan and Isolde, and in the Middle East, we find the stories of Yusuf and Zuleika, and Majnûn and Laylá. The story of Majnûn and Layla- was (and still is) widely known throughout the Islamic world. However, in the hands of Persian Sûfî poets, the story became transformed into a symbol of the love of a human being for Allâh. In Sûfîsm, questing for Allâh is similar to the European Grail quest in which the Knight quests for a Chalice (the cup being a symbol of the female sexual organ). Laylá, in Arabic, comes from the word layl meaning 'night'. The association of the Divine Feminine with Darkness and the Night is ubiquitous.

It is a remarkable fact that the people who do things by hand still find time to add to their work some elaboration of mere beauty which makes it a joy to look on, while our machine-made tools, which could do so at much less cost, are too utilitarian to afford any ornament. It used to give me daily pleasure in Teheran to see the sacks in which refuse is carried off the streets woven with a blue and red decorative pattern: but can one imagine a borough council in Leeds or Birmingham expressing a delicate fancy of this kind? Beauty, according to these, is what one buys for the museum: pots and pans, taps and door-handles, though one has to look at them twenty times a day, have no call to be beautiful. So we impoverish our souls and keep our lovely things for rare occasions, even as our lovely thoughts - wasting the most of life in pondering domestic molehills or the Stock Exchange, among objects as ugly as the less attractive forms of sin.

Did God set grapes a-growing, do you think, And at the same time make it a sin to drink?” The Persian merchant yelled, “Of course not! That wouldn’t make any sense!” “Give thanks to Him who foreordained it thus— Surely He loves to hear the glasses clink!

Men’s novels are about how to get power. Killing and so on, or winning and so on. So are women’s novels, though the method is different. In men’s novels, getting the woman or women goes along with getting the power. It’s a perk, not a means. In women’s novels you get the power by getting the man. The man is the power. But sex won’t do, he has to love you. What do you think all that kneeling’s about, down among the crinolines, on the Persian carpet? Or at least say it. When all else is lacking, verbalization can be enough. Love. There, you can stand up now, it didn’t kill you. Did it?

My mom was a sayyed from the bloodline of the Prophet (which you know about now). In Iran, if you convert from Islam to Christianity or Judaism, it’s a capital crime. That means if they find you guilty in religious court, they kill you. But if you convert to something else, like Buddhism or something, then it’s not so bad. Probably because Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are sister religions, and you always have the worst fights with your sister. And probably nothing happens if you’re just a six-year-old. Except if you say, “I’m a Christian now,” in your school, chances are the Committee will hear about it and raid your house, because if you’re a Christian now, then so are your parents probably. And the Committee does stuff way worse than killing you. When my sister walked out of her room and said she’d met Jesus, my mom knew all that. And here is the part that gets hard to believe: Sima, my mom, read about him and became a Christian too. Not just a regular one, who keeps it in their pocket. She fell in love. She wanted everybody to have what she had, to be free, to realize that in other religions you have rules and codes and obligations to follow to earn good things, but all you had to do with Jesus was believe he was the one who died for you. And she believed. When I tell the story in Oklahoma, this is the part where the grown-ups always interrupt me. They say, “Okay, but why did she convert?” Cause up to that point, I’ve told them about the house with the birds in the walls, all the villages my grandfather owned, all the gold, my mom’s own medical practice—all the amazing things she had that we don’t have anymore because she became a Christian. All the money she gave up, so we’re poor now. But I don’t have an answer for them. How can you explain why you believe anything? So I just say what my mom says when people ask her. She looks them in the eye with the begging hope that they’ll hear her and she says, “Because it’s true.” Why else would she believe it? It’s true and it’s more valuable than seven million dollars in gold coins, and thousands of acres of Persian countryside, and ten years of education to get a medical degree, and all your family, and a home, and the best cream puffs of Jolfa, and even maybe your life. My mom wouldn’t have made the trade otherwise. If you believe it’s true, that there is a God and He wants you to believe in Him and He sent His Son to die for you—then it has to take over your life. It has to be worth more than everything else, because heaven’s waiting on the other side. That or Sima is insane. There’s no middle. You can’t say it’s a quirky thing she thinks sometimes, cause she went all the way with it. If it’s not true, she made a giant mistake. But she doesn’t think so. She had all that wealth, the love of all those people she helped in her clinic. They treated her like a queen. She was a sayyed. And she’s poor now. People spit on her on buses. She’s a refugee in places people hate refugees, with a husband who hits harder than a second-degree black belt because he’s a third-degree black belt. And she’ll tell you—it’s worth it. Jesus is better. It’s true. We can keep talking about it, keep grinding our teeth on why Sima converted, since it turned the fate of everybody in the story. It’s why we’re here hiding in Oklahoma. We can wonder and question and disagree. You can be certain she’s dead wrong. But you can’t make Sima agree with you. It’s true. Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. This whole story hinges on it. Sima—who was such a fierce Muslim that she marched for the Revolution, who studied the Quran the way very few people do read the Bible and knew in her heart that it was true.

The lovely thing about gonorrhea is microscopic, he thought. Reduced to its cellular structure it takes on a spectacular beauty, all stained glass and Persian carpets, shadings and meltings away, subtle shapes interlocking, unfolding, receding into dimness, then recurring boldly at just the right moment. A man holds his injured penis gently, the boy-mouth curls in self-disgust while the fingers that lately gripped a gun and squeezed out streams of bullets are grown suddenly tender, sad and pitying, lifting the sickness up and out, resting it on the burry palm. Were he to weep it would be now when the sweet bird of his youth lies moist of beak, wizening of wing.

Between friends is no need of justice, for neither wrong nor inequality can exist. He described the degrees of friendship, up from the self-seeking to the pure, when good is willed to the friend for the friend’s own sake. Friendship is perfect when virtuous men love the good in one another; for virtue gives more delight than beauty, and is untouched by time.

I am too fond of reading books to care to write them, Mr Eskine. I should like to write a novel certainly, a novel that would be as lovely as a Persian carpet and as unreal. But there is no literary public in England for anything except newspapers, primers, and encyclopædias. Of all people in the world the English have the least sense of the beauty of literature.

am too fond of reading books to care to write them, Mr. Erskine. I should like to write a novel certainly, a novel that would be as lovely as a Persian carpet and as unreal. But there is no literary public in England for anything except newspapers, primers, and encyclopaedias. Of all people in the world the English have the least sense of the beauty of literature.

James Buchan’s The Persian Bride combines a moving love story, a political thriller, and a history of modern Iran in a beautiful novel about the relationship of two people caught up in the Iranian revolution: John Pitt, a young man from England who arrives in Isfahan, Iran, in 1974, and seventeen-year-old Shirin, one of John’s students, whose father is a general in the shah’s army.

Five Poems" 1 Well now, hold on maybe I won't go to sleep at all and it'll be a beautiful white night or else I'll collapse completely from nerves and be calm as a rug or a bottle of pills or suddenly I'll be off Montauk swimming and loving it and not caring where 2 an invitation to lunch HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT? when I only have 16 cents and 2 packages of yoghurt there's a lesson in that, isn't there like in Chinese poetry when a leaf falls? hold off on the yoghurt till the very last, when everything may improve 3 at the Rond-Point they were eating an oyster, but here we were dropping by sculptures and seeing some paintings and the smasheroo-grates of Cadoret and music by Varese, too well Adolph Gottlieb I guess you are the hero of this day along with venison and Bill I'll sleep on the yoghurt and dream of the Persian Gulf 4 which I did it was wonderful to be in bed again and the knock on my door for once signified "hi there" and on the deafening walk through the ghettos where bombs have gone off lately left by subway violators I knew why I love taxis, yes subways are only fun when you're feeling sexy and who feels sexy after The Blue Angel well maybe a little bit 5 I seem to be defying fate, or am I avoiding it?

English. I believe the ultimate gauge of success is this: Does the text free the reader? Does it contribute to our physical and emotional health? Does it put “golden tools” into our hands that can help excavate the Beloved whom we and society have buried so deep inside? Persian poets of Hafiz’s era would often address themselves in their poems, making the poem an intimate conversation. This was also a method of “signing” the poem, as one might sign a letter to a friend, or a painting. It should also be noted that sometimes Hafiz speaks as a seeker, other times as a master and guide. Hafiz also has a unique vocabulary of names for God—as one might have endearing pet names for one’s own family members. To Hafiz, God is more than just the Father, the Mother, the Infinite, or a Being beyond comprehension. Hafiz gives God a vast range of names, such as Sweet Uncle, the Generous Merchant, the Problem Giver, the Problem Solver, the Friend, the Beloved. The words Ocean, Sky, Sun, Moon, and Love, among others, when capitalized in these poems, can sometimes be synonyms for God, as it is a Hafiz trait to offer these poems to many levels of interpretation simultaneously. To Hafiz, God is Someone we can meet, enter, and eternally explore.

Of all the streets that blur in to the sunset, There must be one (which, I am not sure) That I by now have walked for the last time Without guessing it, the pawn of that Someone Who fixes in advance omnipotent laws, Sets up a secret and unwavering scale for all the shadows, dreams, and forms Woven into the texture of this life. If there is a limit to all things and a measure And a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness, Who will tell us to whom in this house We without knowing it have said farewell? Through the dawning window night withdraws And among the stacked books which throw Irregular shadows on the dim table, There must be one which I will never read. There is in the South more than one worn gate, With its cement urns and planted cactus, Which is already forbidden to my entry, Inaccessible, as in a lithograph. There is a door you have closed forever And some mirror is expecting you in vain; To you the crossroads seem wide open, Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus. There is among all your memories one Which has now been lost beyond recall. You will not be seen going down to that fountain Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon. You will never recapture what the Persian Said in his language woven with birds and roses, When, in the sunset, before the light disperses, You wish to give words to unforgettable things. And the steadily flowing Rhone and the lake, All that vast yesterday over which today I bend? They will be as lost as Carthage, Scourged by the Romans with fire and salt. At dawn I seem to hear the turbulent Murmur of crowds milling and fading away; They are all I have been loved by, forgotten by; Space, time, and Borges now are leaving me.

As the ninth-century Persian mystic Imam Junaid said, “A Muslim is like the earth; even if impurities are thrown on it, it will blossom into a green pasture.” We are called to be like a date tree, so rooted in the love of God that when people throw stones at you, you reply with fruits that taste sweet. Do not live your life in reaction to what people have done to you, but live your life in gratitude for all that God has done for you.

Sirs, call to mind what by help of the gods you have already done. Bethink you of the battles you have won at close quarters with the foe; of the fate which awaits those who flee before their foes. Forget not that we stand at the very doors of Hellas. Follow in the steps of Heracles, our guide, and cheer each the other onwards by name. Sweet were it surely by some brave and noble word or deed, spoken or done this day, to leave the memory of oneself in the hearts of those one loves.

An intense love, a veritable tornado sweeping across the plains—flattening everything in its path, tossing things up in the air, ripping them to shreds, crushing them to bits. The tornado’s intensity doesn’t abate for a second as it blasts across the ocean, laying waste to Angkor Wat, incinerating an Indian jungle, tigers and everything, transforming itself into a Persian desert sandstorm, burying an exotic fortress city under a sea of sand. In short, a love of truly monumental proportions.

When a man seats before his eyes the bronze face of his helmet and steps off from the line of departure, he divides himself, as he divides his ‘ticket,’ in two parts. One part he leaves behind. That part which takes delight in his children, which lifts his voice in the chorus, which clasps his wife to him in the sweet darkness of their bed. “That half of him, the best part, a man sets aside and leaves behind. He banishes from his heart all feelings of tenderness and mercy, all compassion and kindness, all thought or concept of the enemy as a man, a human being like himself. He marches into battle bearing only the second portion of himself, the baser measure, that half which knows slaughter and butchery and turns the blind eye to quarter. He could not fight at all if he did not do this.” The men listened, silent and solemn. Leonidas at that time was fifty-five years old. He had fought in more than two score battles, since he was twenty; wounds as ancient as thirty years stood forth, lurid upon his shoulders and calves, on his neck and across his steel-colored beard. “Then this man returns, alive, out of the slaughter. He hears his name called and comes forward to take his ticket. He reclaims that part of himself which he had earlier set aside. “This is a holy moment. A sacramental moment. A moment in which a man feels the gods as close as his own breath. “What unknowable mercy has spared us this day? What clemency of the divine has turned the enemy’s spear one handbreadth from our throat and driven it fatally into the breast of the beloved comrade at our side? Why are we still here above the earth, we who are no better, no braver, who reverenced heaven no more than these our brothers whom the gods have dispatched to hell? “When a man joins the two pieces of his ticket and sees them weld in union together, he feels that part of him, the part that knows love and mercy and compassion, come flooding back over him. This is what unstrings his knees. “What else can a man feel at that moment than the most grave and profound thanksgiving to the gods who, for reasons unknowable, have spared his life this day? Tomorrow their whim may alter. Next week, next year. But this day the sun still shines upon him, he feels its warmth upon his shoulders, he beholds about him the faces of his comrades whom he loves and he rejoices in their deliverance and his own.” Leonidas paused now, in the center of the space left open for him by the troops. “I have ordered pursuit of the foe ceased. I have commanded an end to the slaughter of these whom today we called our enemies. Let them return to their homes. Let them embrace their wives and children. Let them, like us, weep tears of salvation and burn thank-offerings to the gods. “Let no one of us forget or misapprehend the reason we fought other Greeks here today. Not to conquer or enslave them, our brothers, but to make them allies against a greater enemy. By persuasion, we hoped. By coercion, in the event. But no matter, they are our allies now and we will treat them as such from this moment. “The Persian!

Before coming to the Black Wood, I had read as widely in tree lore as possible. As well as the many accounts I encountered of damage to trees and woodland -- of what in German is called Waldsterben, or 'forest-death' -- I also met with and noted down stories of astonishment at woods and trees. Stories of how Chinese woodsmen in the T'ang and S'ung dynasties -- in obedience to the Taoist philosophy of a continuity of nature between humans and other species -- would bow to the trees which they felled, and offer a promise that the tree would be used well, in buildings that would dignify the wood once it had become timber. The story of Xerxes, the Persian king who so loved sycamores that, when marching to war with the Greeks, he halted his army of many thousands of men in order that they might contemplate and admire one outstanding specimen. Thoreau's story of how he felt so attached to the trees in the woods around his home-town of Concord, Massachusetts, that he would call regularly on them, gladly tramping 'eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or yellow-birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines. When Willa Cather moved to the prairies of Nebraska, she missed the wooded hills of her native Virginia. Pining for trees, she would sometimes travel south 'to our German neighbors, to admire their catalpa grove, or to see the big elm tree that grew out of a crack in the earth. Trees were so rare in that country that we used to feel anxious about them, and visit them as if they were persons'....

To the Nightingale On what secret night in England Or by the incalculable constant Rhine, Lost among all the nights of my nights, Carried to my unknowing ear Your voice, burdened with mythology, Nightingale of Virgil, of the Persians? Perhaps I never heard you, yet my life I bound to your life, inseparably. A wandering spirit is your symbol In a book of enigmas. El Marino Named you the siren of the woods And you sing through Juliet’s night And in the intricate Latin pages And from the pine-trees of that other, Nightingale of Germany and Judea, Heine, mocking, burning, mourning. Keats heard you for all, everywhere. There’s not one of the bright names The people of the earth have given you That does not yearn to match your music, Nightingale of shadows. The Muslim Dreamed you drunk with ecstasy His breast trans-pierced by the thorn Of the sung rose that you redden With your last blood. Assiduously I plot these lines in twilight emptiness, Nightingale of the shores and seas, Who in exaltation, memory and fable Burn with love and die melodiously.

Oh! thou clear spirit of clear fire, whom on these seas I as Persian once did worship, till in the sacramental act so burned by thee, that to this hour I bear the scar; I now know thee, thou clear spirit, and I now know that thy right worship is defiance. To neither love nor reverence wilt thou be kind; and e’en for hate thou canst but kill; and all are killed. No fearless fool now fronts thee. I own thy speechless, placeless power; but to the last gasp of my earthquake life will dispute its unconditional, unintegral mastery in me. In the midst of the personified impersonal, a personality stands here. Though but a point at best; whencesoe’er I came; wheresoe’er I go; yet while I earthly live, the queenly personality lives in me, and feels her royal rights. But war is pain, and hate is woe. Come in thy lowest form of love, and I will kneel and kiss thee; but at thy highest, come as mere supernal power; and though thou launchest navies of full-freighted worlds, there’s that in here that still remains indifferent. Oh, thou clear spirit, of thy fire thou madest me, and like a true child of fire, I breathe it back to thee.

He couldn’t have known it, but among the original run of The History of Love, at least one copy was destined to change a life. This particular book was one of the last of the two thousand to be printed, and sat for longer than the rest in a warehouse in the outskirts of Santiago, absorbing the humidity. From there it was finally sent to a bookstore in Buenos Aires. The careless owner hardly noticed it, and for some years it languished on the shelves, acquiring a pattern of mildew across the cover. It was a slim volume, and its position on the shelf wasn’t exactly prime: crowded on the left by an overweight biography of a minor actress, and on the right by the once-bestselling novel of an author that everyone had since forgotten, it hardly left its spine visible to even the most rigorous browser. When the store changed owners it fell victim to a massive clearance, and was trucked off to another warehouse, foul, dingy, crawling with daddy longlegs, where it remained in the dark and damp before finally being sent to a small secondhand bookstore not far from the home of the writer Jorge Luis Borges. The owner took her time unpacking the books she’d bought cheaply and in bulk from the warehouse. One morning, going through the boxes, she discovered the mildewed copy of The History of Love. She’d never heard of it, but the title caught her eye. She put it aside, and during a slow hour in the shop she read the opening chapter, called 'The Age of Silence.' The owner of the secondhand bookstore lowered the volume of the radio. She flipped to the back flap of the book to find out more about the author, but all it said was that Zvi Litvinoff had been born in Poland and moved to Chile in 1941, where he still lived today. There was no photograph. That day, in between helping customers, she finished the book. Before locking up the shop that evening, she placed it in the window, a little wistful about having to part with it. The next morning, the first rays of the rising sun fell across the cover of The History of Love. The first of many flies alighted on its jacket. Its mildewed pages began to dry out in the heat as the blue-gray Persian cat who lorded over the shop brushed past it to lay claim to a pool of sunlight. A few hours later, the first of many passersby gave it a cursory glance as they went by the window. The shop owner did not try to push the book on any of her customers. She knew that in the wrong hands such a book could easily be dismissed or, worse, go unread. Instead she let it sit where it was in the hope that the right reader might discover it. And that’s what happened. One afternoon a tall young man saw the book in the window. He came into the shop, picked it up, read a few pages, and brought it to the register. When he spoke to the owner, she couldn’t place his accent. She asked where he was from, curious about the person who was taking the book away. Israel, he told her, explaining that he’d recently finished his time in the army and was traveling around South America for a few months. The owner was about to put the book in a bag, but the young man said he didn’t need one, and slipped it into his backpack. The door chimes were still tinkling as she watched him disappear, his sandals slapping against the hot, bright street. That night, shirtless in his rented room, under a fan lazily pushing around the hot air, the young man opened the book and, in a flourish he had been fine-tuning for years, signed his name: David Singer. Filled with restlessness and longing, he began to read.

Perhaps the forces of winged retribution. The prophet Elijah being fed to the ravens. Like Baida, I have killed my three pigeons.’ ‘Two,’ Adam said. ‘Two died instead of Vishnevetsky. One died instead of my brother. Long ago. Attar, the Persian poet, saw the destiny of souls as a flight of birds across the seven valleys of Seeking, Love, Knowledge, Independence, Unity, Stupefaction and Annihilation, before at last being lost in the divine Ocean and thenceforth happy. A charming, if sterile, conceit. Next time, the bird may escape,’ Lymond said. ‘Happy pigeon. Next time, the archer may die.

Once there was and once there was not a devout, God-fearing man who lived his entire life according to stoic principles. He died on his fortieth birthday and woke up floating in nothing. Now, mind you, floating in nothing was comforting, light-less, airless, like a mother’s womb. This man was grateful. But then he decided he would love to have sturdy ground beneath his feet, so he would feel more solid himself. Lo and behold, he was standing on earth. He knew it to be earth, for he knew the feel of it. Yet he wanted to see. I desire light, he thought, and light appeared. I want sunlight, not any light, and at night it shall be moonlight. His desires were granted. Let there be grass. I love the feel of grass beneath my feet. And so it was. I no longer wish to be naked. Only robes of the finest silk must touch my skin. And shelter, I need a grand palace whose entrance has double-sided stairs, and the floors must be marble and the carpets Persian. And food, the finest of food. His breakfast was English; his midmorning snack French. His lunch was Chinese. His afternoon tea was Indian. His supper was Italian, and his late-night snack was Lebanese. Libation? He had the best of wines, of course, and champagne. And company, the finest of company. He demanded poets and writers, thinkers and philosophers, hakawatis and musicians, fools and clowns. And then he desired sex. He asked for light-skinned women and dark-skinned, blondes and brunettes, Chinese, South Asian, African, Scandinavian. He asked for them singly and two at a time, and in the evenings he had orgies. He asked for younger girls, after which he asked for older women, just to try. The he tried men, muscular men, skinny men. Then boys. Then boys and girls together. Then he got bored. He tried sex with food. Boys with Chinese, girls with Indian. Redheads with ice cream. Then he tried sex with company. He fucked the poet. Everybody fucked the poet. But again he got bored. The days were endless. Coming up with new ideas became tiring and tiresome. Every desire he could ever think of was satisfied. He had had enough. He walked out of his house, looked up at the glorious sky, and said, “Dear God. I thank You for Your abundance, but I cannot stand it here anymore. I would rather be anywhere else. I would rather be in hell.” And the booming voice from above replied, “And where do you think you are?

I have not come here... to talk about Count Philippe... but to tell you that... I am going... to die..." "Where are Raoul de Chagny and Christine Daaé?" "Of love... daroga... I am dying... of love... That is how it is... I loved her so!... And I love her still... daroga... and I am dying of love for her, I... I tell you!... If you knew how beautiful she was... when she let me kiss her... alive... It was the first... time, daroga, the first... time I ever kissed a woman... Yes, alive... I kissed her alive... and she looked as beautiful as if she had been dead!..." The Persian shook Erik by the arm: "Will you tell me if she is alive or dead?" "Why do you shake me like that?" asked Erik, making an effort to speak more connectedly. "I tell you that I am going to die... Yes, I kissed her alive..." "And now she is dead?" "I tell you I kissed her just like that, on her forehead... and she did not draw back her forehead from my lips!... Oh, she is a good girl!... As to her being dead, I don't think so; but it has nothing to do with me... No, no, she is not dead! And no one shall touch a hair of her head! She is a good, honest girl, and she saved your life, daroga, at a moment when I would not have given twopence for your Persian skin.

Gacela of Unexpected Love" No one understood the perfume of the shadow magnolia of your belly. No one knew you crushed completely a humming-bird of love between your teeth. There slept a thousand little persian horses in the moonlight plaza of your forehead, while, for four nights, I embraced there your waist, the enemy of snowfall. Between the plaster and the jasmines, your gaze was a pale branch, seeding. I tried to give you, in my breastbone, the ivory letters that say ever. Ever, ever: garden of my torture, your body, flies from me forever, the blood of your veins is in my mouth now, already light-free for my death.

Like A Hanged Pitcher Like a hanged pitcher, No drink is pouring off me It's natural to get numbed gradually. Pig-headed seashells! This boasting sky, Is an anchor which has fallen on my lap This dizzy sky! The moon's been cleared A shadow's coming after me Barefooted on my dreams You used to run! Enjoyed?! Numb! All my veins are connected to this land... Like a hanged pitcher Joyful of this sky One day a huge whale swallowed it as a whole. And it was over! The Gulf was over! You waved hands. Like a hanged pitcher, It's simple! I lost the game And gambled away... (TRANSLATED FROM ORIGINAL PERSIAN TO ENGLISH BY ROSA JAMALI)

A woman isn't something to be used for as long as she has flavor, then tossed aside when your taste for her is gone. There's got to be some promise, some agreement that you'll be around." Marjan's embarrassment had reached combustible levels. "Isn't Father Mahoney waiting for you?" She threw her sister an icy glance. "Don't want to be late for your lesson." Julian did not seem at all perturbed by Bahar's interrogation. In fact, he seemed to be rather enjoying it. "I couldn't agree with you more. 'The Beloved is all, the Lover just a veil.'" Bahar shook her head. "It'll take a lot more than poetry to impress. Every schoolkid knows his Rumi." "Ah, but 'whatever is in the heart will come up to the tongue.' Isn't that what the old Persians used to say?

The sound of the universe is also spectacular around here. In the evenings there is a cricket orchestra with frogs providing the bass line. In the dead of the night dogs howl about how misunderstood they are. Before dawn the roosters for miles around announce how freaking cool it is to be roosters. Every morning around sunrise there is a tropical bird song competition, and it is always a ten way tie for the championship. When the sun comes out the butterflies get to work. The whole house is covered with vines; I feel like any day it will disappear into the foliage complete and I will disappear with it and become a jungle flower myself. The rent is less than what I use to pay in New York City for taxi fare every month. The word paradise, by the way, which comes to us from the Persian, means literally "a walled garden.

Between the religion of a people and its actual mode of life there is always a compensatory relation, otherwise religion would have no practical significance at all. Beginning with the highly moral religion of the Persians and the notorious dubiousness, even in antiquity, of Persian habits of life, right down to our own “Christian” era, when the religion of love assisted at the greatest blood-bath in the world’s history—wherever we turn this rule holds true. We may therefore infer from the symbol of the Delphic reconciliation an especially violent split in the Greek character. This would also explain the longing for deliverance which gave the mysteries their immense significance for the social life of Greece, and which was completely overlooked by the early admirers of the Greek world. They were content with naïvely attributing to the Greeks everything they themselves lacked.

After The Persian" 1 I have wept with the spring storm; Burned with the brutal summer. Now, hearing the wind and the twanging bow-strings I know what winter brings. The hunt sweeps out upon the plain And the garden darkens. They will bring the trophies home To bleed and perish Beside the trellis and the lattices, Beside the fountain, still flinging diamond water, Beside the pool (Which is eight-sided, like my heart). 2 All has been translated into treasure: Weightless as amber, Translucent as the currant on the branch, Dark as the rose's thorn. Where is the shimmer of evil? This is the shell's iridescence And the wild bird's wing. 3 Ignorant, I took up my burden in the wilderness. Wise with great wisdom, I shall lay it down upon flowers. 4 Goodbye, goodbye! There was so much to love, I could not love it all; I could not love it enough. Some things I overlooked, and some I could not find. Let the crystal clasp them When you drink your wine, in autumn.

That is the work of my life. To teach people to look into the words of God until they see the heart of everything. Imagine it: the Romans and the Greeks and the Syrians and the Babylonians and the Persians, imagine if we all learned, together, to love one another.” Iehuda allowed his mind to follow, across the map of the wide world, across the empires and kingdoms that fought and tried to rule and subdue each other. And he imagined what might happen if these words traveled from mouth to mouth, from mind to mind, from one city to the next to the next, if this simple message—love your enemy—were the accepted creed of all the world. He did not see how it could happen. “If one man went against it,” he said at last, “the whole thing would be broken. In a world like that, a world of peace, a world of soft people with no knives, one man could destroy everything.” “Then we cannot rest until every man has heard it. Think,” said Yehoshuah softly, “what shall we use up our lives for? More war, like our fathers and their fathers, more of that? Or shall we use ourselves for a better purpose? Is this not worth your life?” And Iehuda saw it, just for a moment. In this instant, the whole world was new to him.

Eventually, the men’s talk of politics turned to poetry. The recitations could begin with a quatrain from Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat: I need a jug of wine and a book of poetry, Half a loaf for a bite to eat, Then you and I, seated in a deserted spot, Will have more wealth than a Sultan’s realm. To which a voice might answer with a poem by Rumi: My arrow of love has arrived at the target I am in the house of mercy and my heart is a place of prayer. These gatherings went on for hours, with one guest after another reciting poems of the Persian masters—Rumi, Khayyam, Sa’adi, snd Hafez. That my father, the Colonel, who could make us cower with a single sidelong glance, produced the most skillful recitations both bewildered and fascinated me. His voice had a deep timbre perfectly suited to reciting verse, and the frequent cries of “Lovely!” and “Exquisite!” roused him to ever more passionate declamation. I listened from behind the window, enraptured by the music of a language that can sometimes sound like susurrations of a lover and sometimes like the reed’s plaintive song. The words hooked into me and wouldn’t let me go. Rivers, oceans, and deserts, the nightingale and the rose—the perennial symbols of Persian poetry first grew familiar to me through these late-night scenes in the garden, and even though I was still a young girl, only just a child, the verses called me away to different lands.

Sargon, the obscure adventurer who had emerged as though from nowhere to nurture this proud ambition, to extinguish the independence of neighboring city-states and to rule supreme over the “totality of the lands under heaven,” had always remained the model of a Mesopotamian strongman. Almost two thousand years after his foundation of Akkad, he remained the cynosure of great kings. Indeed, in the decades before the Persian conquest, the obsession with him had become a veritable craze. At Susa, the capital of Elam, a victory memorial originally inscribed by Sargon’s grandson had been lovingly dusted down and put on prominent display; in Akkad itself, when a statue of the great man was excavated, Nabonidus had come rushing in high excitement to inspect it, and to supervise its restoration. Museums had sprung up everywhere: at Ur, for instance, the antiquities collection maintained by Nabonidus’ daughter, Princess En-nigaldi-Nanna, had been carefully labeled and put on display for the edification of the public. Meanwhile, in Babylon itself, scholars pored over great libraries of archives, tracing ancient documents, recycling archaic phrases, looking to the distant past to legitimize the needs and whims of their masters. The people of Mesopotamia, living as they did amid the lumber of millennia, had always been profoundly respectful of antiquity. Rather than feeling oppressed by it, they recycled it, cannibalized it, and turned it to their advantage.

Then I came back to Christine. She was waiting for me..." Erik here rose solemnly. Then he continued, but, as he spoke, he was overcome by all his former emotion and began to tremble like a leaf: "Yes, she was waiting for me... waiting for me erect and alive, a real, living bride... as she hoped to be saved... And, when I... came forward, more timid than... a little child, she did not run away... no, no... she stayed... she waited for me... I even believe... daroga... that she put out her forehead... a little... oh, not too much... just a little... like a living bride... And... and... I... kissed her!... I!... I!... I!... And she did not die!... Oh, how good it is, daroga, to kiss somebody on the forehead!... You can't tell!... But I! I!... My mother, daroga, my poor, unhappy mother would never... let me kiss her... She used to run away... and throw me my mask!... Nor any other woman... ever, ever!... Ah, you can understand, my happiness was so great, I cried. And I fell at her feet, crying... and I kissed her feet... her little feet... crying. You're crying, too, daroga... and she cried also... the angel cried!..." Erik sobbed aloud and the Persian himself could not retain his tears in the presence of that masked man, who, with his shoulders shaking and his hands clutched at his chest, was moaning with pain and love by turns. "Yes, daroga... I felt her tears flow on my forehead... on mine, mine!... They were soft... they were sweet!... They trickled under my mask... they mingled with my tears in my eyes... they flowed between my lips... Listen, daroga, listen to what I did... I tore off my mask so as not to lose one of her tears... and she did not run away!... And she did not die!... She remained alive, weeping over me, with me. We cried together! I have tasted all the happiness the world can offer!" And Erik fell into a chair, choking for breath: "Ah, I am not going to die yet... presently I shall... but let me cry!... Listen, daroga... listen to this... While I was at her feet... I heard her say, 'Poor, unhappy Erik!'... And she took my hand!... I had become, no more, you know, than a poor dog ready to die for her... I mean it, daroga!... I held in my hand a ring, a plain gold ring which I had given her... which she had lost... and which I had found again... a wedding-ring, you know... I slipped it into her little hand and said, 'There!... Take it!... Take it for you... and him!... It shall be my wedding-present from your poor, unhappy Erik... I know you love the boy... don't cry any more!'.... She asked me, in a very soft voice, what I meant... Then I made her understand that, where she was concerned, I was only a poor dog, ready to die for her... but that she could marry the young man when she pleased, because she had cried with me and mingled her tears with mine!..." Erik's emotion was so great that he had to tell the Persian not to look at him, for he was choking and must take off his mask.

In Praise of Darkness" Old age (the name that others give it) can be the time of our greatest bliss. The animal has died or almost died. The man and his spirit remain. I live among vague, luminous shapes that are not darkness yet. Buenos Aires, whose edges disintegrated into the endless plain, has gone back to being the Recoleta, the Retiro, the nondescript streets of the Once, and the rickety old houses we still call the South. In my life there were always too many things. Democritus of Abdera plucked out his eyes in order to think: Time has been my Democritus. This penumbra is slow and does not pain me; it flows down a gentle slope, resembling eternity. My friends have no faces, women are what they were so many years ago, these corners could be other corners, there are no letters on the pages of books. All this should frighten me, but it is a sweetness, a return. Of the generations of texts on earth I will have read only a few– the ones that I keep reading in my memory, reading and transforming. From South, East, West, and North the paths converge that have led me to my secret center. Those paths were echoes and footsteps, women, men, death-throes, resurrections, days and nights, dreams and half-wakeful dreams, every inmost moment of yesterday and all the yesterdays of the world, the Dane's staunch sword and the Persian's moon, the acts of the dead, shared love, and words, Emerson and snow, so many things. Now I can forget them. I reach my center, my algebra and my key, my mirror. Soon I will know who I am.

Lost Things" There are many ways to understand the word lost, my love. When you were born, the last Pyrenean ibex, a tawny female named Celia, had not yet lived to see the view from Torla overlooking Monte Perdido, but her great- grandsire stood on the cliffs of Ordesa, positioned on hoof-tips dainty as dimes, and he shook his impregnable skull, a coffer of brass and nobility crowned with bayonets, as though in defiance of all who dwelt in the highlands from Catalonia to Aquataine. Their kind is vanished now. Forever lost. Perdido. And when you dressed in a Girl Guide’s uniform of Persian blue on Tuesday nights, my love, in the long-lost basement of Grace United Church, to play indoor baseball and make believe that faerie magic could make you rich or important or happy, pods of baiji dolphins still swam in a river you’d never heard of and would not think about until years later, when together we would learn from the evening news that the baiji were lost, at last, from the Yangtze, and in their place there came a universal emptiness. There are many ways to understand the word lost, but it does not help to imagine a secret place where lost things go. When last I held you in my arms, my love, the West African black rhinoceros was still magnificent and still alive, but now the gentleness of your breath on my bare neck is as lost as the dusty, confident snort of that once breath-taking beast. Great strength is no protection, and neither is love. We are born, and our births are lost. We can’t go back to them. Each embrace ends with an ending. When we become, what we once thought we’d be is lost. We keep becoming.

Beauty Void lay the world, in nothingness concealed, Without a trace of light or life revealed, Save one existence which second knew- Unknown the pleasant words of We and You. Then Beauty shone, from stranger glances free, Seen of herself, with naught beside to see, With garments pure of stain, the fairest flower Of virgin loveliness in bridal bower. No combing hand had smoothed a flowing tress, No mirror shown her eyes their loveliness No surma dust those cloudless orbs had known, To the bright rose her cheek no bulbul flown. No heightening hand had decked the rose with green, No patch or spot upon that cheek was seen. No zephyr from her brow had fliched a hair, No eye in thought had seen the splendour there. Her witching snares in solitude she laid, And love's sweet game without a partner played. But when bright Beauty reigns and knows her power She springs indignant from her curtained bower. She scorns seclusion and eludes the guard, And from the window looks if doors be barred. See how the tulip on the mountain grown Soon as the breath of genial Spring has blown, Bursts from the rock, impatient to display Her nascent beauty to the eye of day. When sudden to thy soul reflection brings The precious meaning of mysterious things, Thou canst not drive the thought from out thy brain; Speak, hear thou must, for silence is such pain. So beauty ne'er will quit the urgent claim Whose motive first from heavenly beauty came When from her blessed bower she fondly strayed, And to the world and man her charms displayed. In every mirror then her face was shown, Her praise in every place was heard and known. Touched by her light, the hearts of angels burned, And, like the circling spheres, their heads were turned, While saintly bands, whom purest at the sight of her, And those who bathe them in the ocean sky Cries out enraptured, "Laud to God on high!" Rays of her splendour lit the rose's breast And stirred the bulbul's heart with sweet unrest. From her bright glow its cheek the flambeau fired, And myriad moths around the flame expired. Her glory lent the very sun the ray Which wakes the lotus on the flood to-day. Her loveliness made Laila's face look fair To Majnún, fettered by her every hair. She opened Shírín's sugared lips, and stole From Parvíz' breast and brave Farhád's the soul. Through her his head the Moon of Canaan raised, And fond Zulaikha perished as she gazed. Yes, though she shrinks from earthly lovers' call, Eternal Beauty is the queen of all; In every curtained bower the screen she holds, About each captured heart her bonds enfolds. Through her sweet love the heart its life retains, The soul through love of her its object gains. The heart which maidens' gentle witcheries stir Is, though unconscious, fired with love of her. Refrain from idle speech; mistake no more: She brings her chains and we, her slaves, adore. Fair and approved of Love, thou still must own That gift of beauty comes from her alone. Thou art concealed: she meets all lifted eyes; Thou art the mirror which she beautifies. She is that mirror, if we closely view The truth- the treasure and the treasury too. But thou and I- our serious work is naught; We waste our days unmoved by earnest thought. Cease, or my task will never end, for her Sweet beauties lack a meet interpreter. Then let us still the slaves of love remain For without love we live in vain, in vain. Jámí, "Yúsuf and Zulaikha". trans. Ralph T. H. Griffith. Ballantyne Press 1882. London. p.19-22

That night, Marjan dreamt of Mehregan. The original day of thanksgiving, the holiday is celebrated during the autumn equinox in Iran. A fabulous excuse for a dinner party, something that Persians the world over have a penchant for, Mehregan is also a challenge to the forces of darkness, which if left unheeded will encroach even on the brightest of flames. Bonfires and sparklers glitter in the evening skies on this night, and in homes across the country, everyone is reminded of their blessings by the smell of roasting 'ajil', a mixture of dried fruit, salty pumpkin seeds, and roasted nuts. Handfuls are showered on the poor and needy on Mehregan, with a prayer that the coming year will find them fed and showered with the love of friends and family. In Iran, it was Marjan's favorite holiday. She even preferred it to the bigger and brasher New Year's celebrations in March, anticipating the festivities months in advance. The preparations would begin as early as July, when she and the family gardener, Baba Pirooz, gathered fruit from the plum, apricot, and pear trees behind their house. Along with the green pomegranate bush, the fruit trees ran the length of the half-acre garden. Four trees deep and rustling with green and burgundy canopies, the fattened orchard always reminded Marjan of the bejeweled bushes in the story of Aladdin, the boy with the magic lamp. It was sometimes hard to believe that their home was in the middle of a teeming city and not closer to the Alborz mountains, which looked down on Tehran from loftier heights. After the fruit had been plucked and washed, it would be laid out to dry in the sun. Over the years, Marjan had paid close attention to her mother's drying technique, noting how the fruit was sliced in perfect halves and dipped in a light sugar water to help speed up the wrinkling. Once dried, it would be stored in terra-cotta canisters so vast that they could easily have hidden both both young Marjan and Bahar. And indeed, when empty the canisters had served this purpose during their hide-and-seek games.

It was clear just how much Tommy loved the city. New York City. The CKY Grocery on Amsterdam had giant, bright red Spartan apples every day of the year, even if it wasn’t the right season. He loved that grocery, and the old, shaky Persian man who owned it. Tommy emphatically, yet erroneously believed that the CKY Grocery was the genuine heart of the great city. All five boroughs embodied distinct feelings for him, but there was only one that he’d ever truly romanticized. To him, Manhattan was the entire world. He loved everything between the East River and the Hudson; from the Financial District up to Harlem; from Avenue A to Zabar’s. He loved the four seasons, although autumn was easily the most anticipated. To Tommy, Central Park’s bright, almost copper hues in the fall were the epitome of orange. He loved the unique perfume of deli meats and subway steam. He loved the rain with such verve that every time it so much as drizzled, he would turn to the sky so he could feel the drops sprinkle onto his teeth. Because every raindrop that hit him had already experienced that much envied journey from the tips of the skyscrapers all the way down to the cracked and foot-stamped sidewalks. He believed every inch of the city had its own predetermined genre of music that suited it to a tee. The modal jazz of Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter was absolutely meant for the Upper East Side, north of 61st Street. Precisely between Gershwin and gospel. He loved the view from his apartment, even if it was just the leaves of the tree outside in July or the thin shadows of its bare branches crawling along the plain brick wall in January. Tommy loved his career. He loved his friends. And he loved that first big bite of apple I watched him take each and every morning. Everything was perfect in the city, and as long as things remained the way he wanted them to, Tommy would continue to love the city forever. Which is exactly why his jaw dropped when he opened the letter he found in his mailbox that morning. The first bite of still un-chewed apple fell out of his mouth and firmly planted itself within the crack of that 113th Street sidewalk.

There would seem to be only one question for philosophy to resolve: what must I do? Despite being combined with an enormous amount of unnecessary confusion, answers to the question have at any rate been given within the philosophical tradition of the Christian nations. For example, in Kant's Critique of Practical Reason, or in Spinoza, Schopenhauer and especially Rousseau. But in more recent times, since Hegel's assertion that all that exists is reasonable, the question of what one must do has been pushed to the background and philosophy has directed its whole attention to the investigation of things as they are, and to fitting them into a prearranged theory. This was the first step backwards. The second step, degrading human thought yet further, was the acceptance of the struggle for existence as a basic law, simply because that struggle can be observed among animals and plants. According to this theory the destruction of the weakest is a law which should not be opposed. And finally, the third step was taken when the childish originality of Nietzche's half-crazed thought, presenting nothing complete or coherent, but only various drafts of immoral and completely unsubstantiated ideas, was accepted by the leading figures as the final word in philosophical science. In reply to the question: what must we do? the answer is now put straightforwardly as: live as you like, without paying attention to the lives of others. Turgenev made the witty remark that there are inverse platitudes, which are frequently employed by people lacking in talent who wish to attract attention to themselves. Everyone knows, for instance, that water is wet, and someone suddenly says, very seriously, that water is dry, not that ice is, but that water is dry, and the conviction with which this is stated attracts attention. Similarly, the whole world knows that virtue consists in the subjugation of one's passions, or in self-renunciation. It is not just the Christian world, against whom Nietzsche howls, that knows this, but it is an eternal supreme law towards which all humanity has developed, including Brahmanism, Buddhism, Confucianism and the ancient Persian religion. And suddenly a man appears who declares that he is convinced that self-renunciation, meekness, submissiveness and love are all vices that destroy humanity (he has in mind Christianity, ignoring all the other religions). One can understand why such a declaration baffled people at first. But after giving it a little thought and failing to find any proof of the strange propositions, any rational person ought to throw the books aside and wonder if there is any kind of rubbish that would not find a publisher today. But this has not happened with Nietzsche's books. The majority of pseudo-enlightened people seriously look into the theory of the superman, and acknowledge its author to be a great philosopher, a descendant of Descartes, Leibniz and Kant. And all this has come about because the majority of the pseudo-enlightened men of today object to any reminder of virtue, or to its chief premise: self-renunciation and love - virtues that restrain and condemn the animal side of their life. They gladly welcome a doctrine, however incoherently and disjointedly expressed, of egotism and cruelty, sanctioning the ideas of personal happiness and superiority over the lives of others, by which they live.

Who will have their strength renewed? “Those who wait upon the Lord”. Waiting could signify passivity: being still. Waiting could also indicate action: serving. Waiting — either kind — can be nearly impossible while we are being run by our emotions. In learning to balance your emotions with wisdom, learning to wait upon the Lord in both senses of the word, you will find that your strength is renewed every day in every situation. On the other hand, operating out of emotions can be exhausting. In your Christian walk, the ability to discern seasons is vital. There are times in your life where immediate action is not only unnecessary, it can be damaging. There are situations in which your best course of action is to “be still and know that He is God” (Psalm 46:10). Allowing Him to speak to you in the midst of your storm, finding your peace in Christ when your life seems upside down may be exactly what is needed. There are times when patience is the order of the day, and waiting on the Lord to move or instruct you in the way you are to move is exactly what is needed. Sometimes the most difficult course to take is to wait and allow the Lord to direct your heart “into the love of God and the patience of Christ” (2 Thessalonians3:5). However difficult it may be, practicing waiting will serve you well. “Waiting” can also signify an action. A waitress will wait on you in your favorite restaurant. You may wait on, or serve, your family. In being able to discern the seasons of waiting passively, we must also be able to discern the seasons of waiting actively. Even in times when you might feel unsure of the next step, there are continually ways for you to serve the Lord: prayer, study, service to others being a few examples. In times when everything is going along smoothly, waiting actively on the Lord is always in order. Paul encourages young Timothy to “be diligent to show yourself approved” (2 Timothy 2:15). In learning to wait actively on the Lord, it is good advice for us as well. Applying ourselves to faithful service to the Lord (active waiting) will sustain us through times when the waiting requires patience and stillness. In our Christian walk, both kinds of “waiting” are needed: an active waiting on or serving the Lord, and likewise a passive waiting for the Lord to move on your behalf. As everything in our relationship with the Lord is a partnership or covenant, this waiting is a “two way street”. As we serve the Lord, He is moved to action on our behalf. Psalm 37:3-7 speaks to both kinds of waiting (parentheses mine): “Trust in the LORD (passive), and do good (active); Dwell in the land (passive), and feed on His faithfulness (active). Delight yourself also in the LORD, And He shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD (active), Trust also in Him (passive), And He shall bring it to pass (the Lord’s action). He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light, And your justice as the noonday (the Lord’s action). Rest in the LORD (passive), and wait patiently for Him (passive)”. Tremendous and amazing results can come from this kind of waiting. Of course, the Lord in His generous and kind manner will send you opportunities to practice if you want to learn to wait! In His providence, those opportunities are already provided — it is for you to take advantage of them. Will you? Unfortunately, patience is not one of Ahasuerus’ virtues. He is motivated by his emotions, and seems to rush right into whatever comes into his mind without much forethought. Let’s return to Persia, and find out what Ahasuerus is rushing into today. After these things, when the wrath of King Ahasuerus subsided, he remembered... Esther 2:1 “After these things”…. By the beginning of chapter two, four years have passed since King Ahasuerus dethroned Queen Vashti. God was working through this Persian chronicler as he wrote this history

The word paradise, by the way, which comes to us from the Persian, means literally “a walled garden.