Blog

من روح می فروشم (سیمین بهبهانی)		(I Sell Souls (Simin Behbahani
تو را که خانه‌ی نیین است بازی نه این است – سعدی		You whose house is of straw and hay Do not take fire for play Sa’adi –
من روح می فروشم، وز هرچه نارواتر، در شهر خودپرستی، سودا و سود خلقی پرواری جسم و جان را، گر زانکه چاره باید، طبعی عزیز کُشتم وانگه به سوگواری، آیات کفر دیدم، وانگه به خیره گفتم در حلقه‌ی خموشان، تا خود، خموش بودن از «دور و کور گشتم»، شد بوف آن غزالی باغ دو چشم خود را کاین خوشه‌های اشکم شامم چه نام دارد؟ بر بام من چه بارد؟ سرد است سرد جانم، گویی که خانمانم   گویم به خود که باری… صد شعله بر فروزد سعدی خموش خواهد «تا خانه‌ات نیین است،	کالای من همین است این نارواترین است در چارسوق پستی دیری‌ست کاین چنین است پروانه‌ی امان را این است و آخرین است در آستان خواری اشکم در آستین است طعن جنون شنیدم کاین حکم عقل و دین است سر حلقه چون نگینم فرمان هر نگین است دل موج خیز خون شد کز آهوان چین است آباد می‌پسندم انگور دستچین است ژرفی که وهنماک است برفی که سهمگین است یخ بسته استوخانم قطبی ترین زمین است.   گوگردِ سرخ داری شعری که آتشین است. این شعله را و گوید: بازی تو را نه این است.»	I sell souls, the merchandise of my trade1 Of all things vile, this is most depraved In the city of vanity, on the intersection of depravity Worldy trade and profit, has for some time been this way To indulge the body, and security ensure This is the first and the last resort A cherished spirit I killed in an abject state Tears on the sleeve, my anguish relate I saw blasphemous verses, I heard a deranged tirade This is the order of reason and faith, gazing I bade In the ring of the silent ringmaster, the gem I am For silence is the commandment of every gem The blind search, with blood the heart deluged The owl to a gazelle transformed2 The garden of my eyes, blossoming I desire For the clusters of my tears are but handpicked grapes What can my night be called? It is a frightening abyss What falls on my roof? It is burdensome snow My body is cold, cold, my bones are bound in a frozen fold It is as though I dwell, on the Earth’s farthest pole   To myself I have told… when red sulfur you hold3 .A fiery poem set ablaze, a hundred flames will it raise :Sa’adi quenches this flame and says ,Until your house is of straw and hay“ ”.Do not take fire for play

Notes:
[1] The poem actually uses a singular form of ‘soul’ (rooh) as opposed to ‘souls’ (rooha). My choice was between the more accurate “I sell the soul”/”I sell a soul”, which striked me as strange because Persian doesn’t have definite/indefinite articles and the less accurate “I sell souls” which I thought sounded nicer and conveyed the spirit of the poem better.
[2] This line, the previous and the few after were difficult for me to decipher. I would appreciate any input. Considering the previous line, I am speculating that the “owl” in this line is probably referring to the nihilist masterpiece by Sadegh Hedayat “The blind owl“. In the book the narrator confesses his thoughts to his shadow on a wall which looks “exactly like an owl”, these thoughts include the memory of girl with black eyes who the narrator is fixated by: “In her eyes, in her black eyes, I found the eternal night, the dense darkness I had been searching for”. The ‘Chinese deer’ (changed to ‘gazelle’ in the translation) refers to a deer which produced a substance in a gland under its belly used as a perfume, musk. The line may have been inspired by Mohtasham Kaashaani or Bedil Dehlavi. The former (line 4) refers to sharp black eyes that can cut the throats of Chinese deers (recalling the black eyes that the ‘owl’ is obsessed with). The latter refers to musk from hair having had origin in the blood in the belly/heart of Chinese deers.
[3] Sulfur has long been associated with fires (in the phrase ‘fire and brimstone’, brimstone refers to sulfure), while red sulfur was a therapeutic pancea/elixir/cure-all used by Middle Eastern alchemists.

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

- William Shakespeare (The Tempest, 1610)

via Jason DeCaires Taylor and Messy Nessy.

Maybe this is the sign of an impending quarter-life crisis…. but I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what inspires me and what I want to achieve in life. I was fortunate enough as kid to always have access to libraries, and found solace, constancy and direction in books that I had nowhere else. More so than school, than parents, than teachers it was the books the words of often long-dead friends, that influenced and shaped the paths I chose and the decisions. But there is a long way from Verne’s journey to the center of the Earth to Dosteovsky’s contemplative meanderings through the alleys of St. Petersburg– and none of it seems particularly relevant to how I ended up sitting in a cafeteria in Montreal.

I became involved in research in civil/environmental engineering in high school, and right up to the point I was about to enter college I was convinced I was going to be an engineer. But as it is in life, sometimes the two roads diverge, and when I received the acceptance letters for the Faculty of Engineering and the Faculty of Science I had to make a choice. I drew the lists you’re supposed to, looked at pros and cons, and tried my best to take a circumspect approach. But when it came down to the decision, it was rather arbitrary– I just knew. So at the end there I was, in the Faculty of Science, with hundreds of specialties and thousands of courses I could take. I have to admit at that point I was quite envious of the people who knew exactly what they wanted, because the more lists I made the less certain I found myself.

After jumping from program to program, taking dozens of courses that I would probably never need again (looking at you physical chemistry), by (fortunate) happenstance I finally found my place in Anatomy. For some time, though, it seemed to me that there was absolutely no rhyme and reason in the paths and places life had taken me. As an adult, I’d escaped the certainty of books, and ended up in the chaos of the real world.

Recently, I was looking at a pile of old writings and drawings I’d brought from my last trip to my grandmother’s place… and by old, I mean from when I was 5. That year, I’d found the translated version a book called “The Incredible Journey Through the Human Body” by Nicholas Harris. I remember the hours I spent utterly obsessed with this book and its characters (and of course that shy moment where I learnt where babies come from). Looking at the pages of my old notebook, I find it striking that years later I should have ended up in taking a course working with cadavers and exploring the human body in person. I probably shouldn’t lend this meaning, given that I didn’t remember at all during the duration of my degree. But, frankly, I have this strange suspicion that this entire time a little 5-year-old with with a book in hand was nudging me as she looked out curiously though my eyes.