I am a few days late with this post because we had some renovation issues to deal with in my house last week and they left me no time at all to write. The extra time, however, did help me understand better what I want to say about this week’s Sa’di Says, which contains Sa’di’s most famous lines. Here is my translation:
All men and women are to each other
the limbs of a single body, each of us drawn
from life’s shimmering essence, God’s perfect pearl;
and when this life we share wounds one of us,
all share the hurt as if it were our own.
You, who will not feel another’s pain,
you forfeit the right to be called human.
These lines are woven into a Persian carpet created by Mohammed Seirafian, which the government of Iran gave to the United Nations as a gift. There’s a picture of it at the top if this post. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a larger image that I could use to show you where on the carpet the verses are. The carpet originally hung in the main hall in the UN building, but, according to the UN Visitor’s Center Facebook page, renovations have made it necessary to hang the carpet in the entrance of the temporary building on the North Lawn. In 2009, President Obama quoted an older translation of these lines in the first off his Noruz messages to the people of Iran:
You can read some other, more contemporary translations of these lines here–mine is among them–and listen to a lovely musical setting of the original Persian here.
While it would be an exaggeration to say that Sa’di’s reputation rests on the strength of these lines alone, it would not be inaccurate to say that the sentiment they contain, which is found throughout his work, is why people all over the world have been celebrating his work for centuries. Indeed, who would disagree that we are all–or at least that we ought to see each other as all–part of the same body, possessing the same innate humanity, and therefore worthy of the same compassion. Given the ways in which the US and Iran have been dehumanizing each other since the Islamic Revolution of 1979-80, you can understand why President Obama chose to use these lines in the first conciliatory message a sitting United States president had sent to the people and government of Iran in thirty years. Had President Obama placed these lines in their original context, however, while his message might still have been appropriate, it would have appeared far less conciliatory. In his Golestan, Sa’di places these in the context of the following narrative:
An Arab king notorious for his cruelty came on pilgrimage to the cathedral mosque of Damascus, where I was immersed in prayer at John the Baptist’s tomb. The king prayed nearby, clearly seeking God’s assistance in a matter of some urgency:
The dervish, poor, owning nothing, the man
whose money buys him anything he wants,
here, on this floor, enslaved, we are equals.
Nonetheless, the man who has the most
comes before You bearing the greater need.When his prayer was finished, the monarch turned to me, “I know that God favors you dervishes because you are passionate in your worship and honest in the way you live your lives. I fear a powerful enemy, but if you add your prayers to mine, I am sure that God will protect me for your sake.”
“Have mercy on the weak among your own people,” I replied, “and no one will be able to defeat you.”
Sa’di, in other words, did not write the lines President Obama quoted as a gentle admonition to all people to remember the humanity that connects us all. Rather, he put them in the mouth of a fictionalized version of himself speaking truth to a tyrant trying to use religion to escape the consequences of his own tyranny. The next two stanzas make that truth more explicit:
To break each finger on a poor man’s hands
just because you have the strength offends God.
Show compassion to those who fall before you
and others will extend their hands when you fall down.
The man who plants bad seed hallucinates
if he expects sweet fruit at harvest time.
Take the cotton from your ears! Give
your people justice, or justice will find you.
It’s almost too easy to make a list of people in power here in the US and around the world to whom these lines could apply. What is not so easy is to be responsible and accountable for what those lines mean, not just because it can be dangerous to speak truth to power, but–and this is why the real power of Sa’di’s most famous lines only becomes evident when they are read in context–because it means a commitment to human equality based not on some abstract, intellectual argument, but on the fact that we each have a body that is more or less the same body and that any politics not rooted in this shared physical reality represents, by definition, both a failure of imagination and a failed humanity:
All men and women are to each other
the limbs of a single body, each of us drawn
from life’s shimmering essence, God’s perfect pearl;
and when this life we share wounds one of us,
all share the hurt as if it were our own.
You, who will not feel another’s pain,
you forfeit the right to be called human.
Okay, this is fucking badass.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Really? How dare you mention accountability the U.S. and tyranny inside that construct! If an Iranian carpet hanging on the wall of the United Nations means something to you here… Remember Srebrenica, April 1993? Bosnian Muslim fighters and their families were distributed rations, but the refugees had nothing and were left to rot in the streets. Many parallels to the Iranian hand today in Syria/UN inaction towards a humanitarian crisis. YOur glorification of Iranian State propaganda here is simply wicked.
Kent,
Thanks for the comment. As I’m sure you realize, Sa’di was not writing Iranian State propaganda, nor was my post a glorification of Iranian state propaganda. This statement:
might have been more subtle than you would wish—and it is more subtle than I would wish—but I have my reasons.
And regarding the examples from current events to which I chose to allude explicitly—the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson and the Israeli invasion of Gaza—I chose the two examples that were most prominent in the US at the time. There are, of course, any number of other examples, both current and historical to which one could point. Thank you for adding one.
Indeed, who would disagree that we are all–or at least that we ought to see each other as all–part of the same body, possessing the same innate humanity, and therefore worthy of the same compassion.
As I’m sure you realize, and the killing of Michael Brown and The Israeli intervention in Gaza well demonstrate, this is a war torn world where in practice the fault lines of a conflict define the perception of humanity. This has been the tragic state of affairs stretching back to antiquity.
An example for you, When the militant elements of the Palestinian community are dialing in the next rocket they plan to fire into a civilian area, they will choose coordinates based on the fluid, constantly changing but very real differences between themselves and the Israelis.
Thus, attaching warm fuzzies/feel goods to the Iranian adversary is one thing, but quoting from the velvet glove on the Iron fist, or in this case, the Persian rug on the nuclear reactor of the Islamic republic of Iran, is quite another.
The Cassette revolution relied on skilled deployment of these clever words, and you seem to be perpetuating a viewpoint a little to warm towards the ayatollahs, and a little too cold towards the U.S. Beautiful writing, however. Likewise on the sentiment of Sa’di. But these things are sometimes wielded in ways some might find treacherous. Cheers.
Kent,
Thanks for the kind words. One of the things I have learned in a decade of translating Sa’di and other classical Iranian poets is that, when it comes to writing about Iran, it doesn’t matter what you say. One person will decide you are being too soft on the ayatollahs; another will decide you are perpetuating British imperialism; another will accuse you of orientalism; another will tell you—if, like me, you are not Iranian—that you’re an outsider anyway and you shouldn’t even be doing the work you’re doing.
I don’t mean by this to dismiss your characterization of the tone of my post. I do understand how it can be read as you have read it—though, as I said, I have my reasons for being more subtle about my own position(s) than I would like. I mean simply to acknowledge that the politics of a place like Iran and of the Iranian diaspora are complex and will not be worked through here in a blog post and comment thread.
the politics of a place like Iran and of the Iranian diaspora are complex and will not be worked through here in a blog post and comment thread.
Indeed. However the competitive promotion of Iranian political and religious values indeed might indeed be worked through in blog posts and comment threads. As a translator of poetry! your contributions to literature, art, and society are certainly appreciated by myself and many others. Best. Yet as you poignantly illustrated with contemporary examples,—the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson and the Israeli ‘invasion’ of Gaza— the world is alight with the suffering of families mourning tragically dead sons and daughters. These fires have nothing to to do with British imperialism, Orientalism, or Iranian Nationalist Identity. Nice try in occluding your political alignment(s) for the purpose of more effectively influencing a politically liberal/chomskyite/alt American audience?
Kent:
I confess—and I am not being coy when I say this—that you have totally lost me. I wonder what you think my “political alignment(s)” and agenda in writing these posts about Sa’di actually are.
Oh, how I wish Chomsky (or Alinsky!) actually had the influence that the fevered paranoics of the right think he has.