Persian Sad Quotes

I died a lot to live a little with you

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

We are so blind that we know neither when to mourn, nor when to rejoice; our mirth and our sadness are nearly always false.

All Persians are liars and lying is a sin. That's what the kids in Mrs. Miller's class think, but I'm the only Persian they've ever met, so I don't know where they got that idea. My mom says it's true, but only because everyone has sinned and needs God to save them. My dad says it isn't. Persians aren't liars. They're poets, which is worse. Poets don't even know when they're lying. They're just trying to remember their dreams. They're trying to remember six thousand years of history and all the versions of all the stories ever told. In one version, maybe I'm not the refugee kid in the back of Mrs. Miller's class. I'm a prince in disguise. If you catch me, I will say what they say in the 1,001 Nights. "Let me go, and I will tell you a tale passing strange." That's how they all begin. With a promise. If you listen, I'll tell you a story. We can know and be known to each other, and then we're not enemies anymore.

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

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.

Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy?

If you’re asking the schools to be the answer, you’re also asking a lot. If you take a kid from a bad background and expect the overburdened teachers to turn him around in seven hours a day, it might or might not happen. What about the other seventeen hours in a day? People often ask us if, through our research and experience, we can now predict which children are likely to become dangerous in later life. Roy Hazelwood’s answer is, “Sure. But so can any good elementary school teacher.” And if we can get them treatment early enough and intensively enough, it might make a difference. A significant role-model adult during the formative years can make a world of difference. Bill Tafoya, the special agent who served as our “futurist” at Quantico, advocated a minimum of a ten-year commitment of money and resources on the magnitude of what we sent into the Persian Gulf. He calls for a wide-scale reinstatement of Project Head Start, one of the most effective long-term, anticrime programs in history. He doesn’t think more police are the answer, but he would bring in “an army of social workers” to provide assistance for battered women, homeless families with children, to find good foster homes. And he would back it all up with tax incentive programs. I’m not sure this is the total answer, but it would certainly be an important start. Because the sad fact is, the shrinks can battle all they want, and my people and I can use psychology and behavioral science to help catch the criminals, but by the time we get to use our stuff, the severe damage has already been done.

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.

He begins to recite some verses. A Persian poem. I don’t stop desiring when my desire Is fulfilled, when my mouth wins The red lips of my beloved, When my soul expires in the sweetness of her breath. Arslan smiles, he has recognized the inimitable Hafez of Shiraz, which is confirmed by the last couplet: And you will always invoke the name of Hafez In the company of the sad and the brokenhearted.

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.

Dâra Shiko the eldest son of the Emperor Shah Jahan heard of the Upani@sads during his stay in Kashmir in 1640. He invited several Pandits from Benares to Delhi, who undertook the work of translating them into Persian.

Don’t be satisfied with stories of how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth. —Rumi, thirteenth-century Persian poet • What are the personal narratives that frame your past, and possibly predict the future and achievement of your dreams? • What are the sorrows in your life? Can you build dreams that help make sense of your sadness? • How can telling stories help us discover or rediscover our dreams? What cues can we find about our dreams in the stories we most often tell (and those we don’t) about our lives? • How do the stories we tell ourselves when we’re alone differ from those we tell our family and friends, our children, or those whom we mentor? For example, stories that I tell my children and mentees tend to be well crafted and confident. Stories I share with my peers are less-polished recountings of personal experiences, both happy and sad. The stories I tell myself are rarely as upbeat. • Consider the words of writer and theologian Frederick Buechner: “God calls you to the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” If you were to craft a narrative using that quote as a starting point, what story would you tell, whether written, painted, danced, photographed, or sung?

The lovely thing about gonorrhea is microscope, 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.

Enkidu did die, he said, yet it was Gilgamesh who wasted his time. He brought himself one step closer to death with his efforts looking sad, pathetic, and beaten. A man’s life was short, the immortal man said, cut down in an instant like a reed

Have you ever felt too accustomed to something because you’ve thought about it too much? Like being alone at home with no one around, deep in thought, suddenly aware that the causes of your stress, hurt, and sadness clouding your mind as a headache have all vanished. Maybe you haven’t yet solved this problem, you just accepted it, dealt with it, because you got used to it. The problem may only affect a few people like at work, something personal with your partner, or maybe they’re bigger than society itself. You know you can’t do it alone.

I tried to cut through all our hurried centuries, lost in a forest within. Men broke by war emerged in frightful shape— more than human but also less, they were quite aware, the sovereign dead, that time is like a window opening up the sad patterns of never. As one they advanced— Lloyd George Georges Clemenceau Adolph Hitler —through history. But the past does not follow so straightforward a path said I (predictably in Italian), and, burning under their masters, they proclaimed the world a pendulum. It is possible, but this gives rise to the often-heard complaint that repetition is unavoidable. Still time issues into today, little fathers. The years, I believe, can be shaped with one’s hands. The world —its obscure moving fields, Persian tragedies, and countries in peace— I had to inform that council of the lost, remains an instrument, a valve instrument, which, when waning, is perfectly clear in the pit —and, being given to such classical concepts as freedom and necessity, laboriously continued in the traditional way— I believe I believe.