Persians and Poetry

"If you want to be a poet, first you must learn 10,000 bayts."

Monday I held my first Poetry Club at the American Corner in Tajikistan in the Tajikistan National Library. (Here I offer a correction: we were in the National Library when we first learned about the American Corner, not the embassy; sorry to mislead in a previous post!) I was worried at first since I didn't know how many people would come or be interested in the group, and because there were a handful of students in the room and all seemed to be engrossed in something else. However, when the music club ended and I started setting up, a really large group gathered, which was both exciting and even more nerve-wracking. Thankfully, I had some of the other CLI students with me for support! I had everyone introduce themselves, we briefly talked about poetry in general, and then I dove into reading from various American authors. I spent a lot of the time talking myself, though my counterparts definitely chimed in, and even read some of their favorite poems. The kids for the most part seemed really interested and asked lots of questions, which made me feel it was worth starting the club.

At one point, the students asked if we knew any poetry by heart. One of the most important academic and cultural activities in Persian culture is to memorize and recite classic poetry. The history of Persian literature and the Persian language is long and interesting (it's the reason I'm in school) and you can read a bit about it here (it's not perfect but it gets the point across). One of the main reasons Persian poetry is so important to Persian cultures is that it is a cultural connection for people here to their history and their language, and the great poets are to be emulated and celebrated. Ferdowsi is said to have captured Persian at the time he wrote the Shahnameh, and Persian as a language survived the Arab conquest - albeit with many, many Arabic loanwords - through his poetry and that of his successors. Thus, people memorize and can recite hundreds upon hundreds of lines of classical poetry in Persian cultures, and feel very strongly about the importance of knowing these verses, whereas we may be required to memorize a total of ten poems in America, and not feel any great connection to it as an American poem. It's a very different way of looking at literature, and took me a while to understand. So, when the students asked us if we knew any poetry, Nikruz explained to them that we don't have the same cultural connection to our poetry as Persians do, and we don't memorize the poetry of our "great poets" as a standard cultural exercise. It was interesting to see their faces, because it is such an incredibly foreign concept to them, just as memorizing 700-1000 year old English poetry is unheard of for us. (To be fair, Modern English isn't even old enough to have 1000 year old poetry. Middle English barely passes the bar.)

The students then asked us if we knew any Persian poetry by heart. I recited a few lines of Nader Naderpour, which received great applause. I didn't even finish the poem and they were incredibly excited. Nikruz also recited some lines which again received thunderous applause. I was happy that the kids were finally noticeably enthusiastic about poetry, but it also saddened me just a bit. Part of the point of the American Corner is to share things about the US that are culturally significant, and I felt that sharing some of their own culture with the students was missing the boat. Still, we rallied, and finished the hour strongly with a couple final poems. We (the kids and CLI transfers) decided that next week we will do half Persian poetry and half American poetry, but all in English. Jill made a couple good points about that: 1) it will keep them interested and 2) at the very least it will give them a different perspective on the poetry and they'll be hearing and speaking about it in English. What no one seemed to remember to mention is that it will probably be me translating the poems we choose! Oh well; at least I get the practice. Plus, anything we do for the American Corner gets written up and sent to D.C., and we're copied on it, so I can say I held a Poetry Club in English at ACT. CV building FTW.

Tuesday was Nikruz' birthday, so after morning class the teachers surprised him with tea and cake. Then, we grabbed sharma (shwarma) from our favorite street vendor - meat only, or faqat goosht - and we surprised him with a viewing of his favorite movie, Gladiator. A few days ago he bought it for 4 Somoni (about 83 cents; the exchange rate hovers around 4.82C to $1). Turns out, he bought 12 Russell Crowe movies! After the movie, we went and found our host father's shop. It turns out he sells general store items from a storefront tucked in behind a strip bazaar, but he also has a storehouse behind it and supplies items to other stores in the area. It was cool to see him at work; he kept talking us up to people and complimenting everyone we met in his smooth-talking way. I wish you all could meet Sharif; he is way cool. (Throwback, anyone?) Anyway, after last night's dinner party - during which our teacher gave Nikruz a short sword for his birthday (it's not sharp...yet) - we headed out to a Irish pub. Nikruz was worried about the family's concern for us going to a pub, so he told them we went to a discotechque instead. At any rate, the Irish pub was interesting, but it wasn't very Irish. They had American and Scotch whisky, and only two Irish beers. Also, the waiter was Russian. Still, we enjoyed it, and we figured out how to walk home since we didn't want to take another cab.

Speaking of cabs, my group had the worst cabbie of the night! There were ten of us that took cabs to the pub, so we broke into three groups. We flagged down a guy, and asked him how much to the Iranian embassy (that's the closest landmark to the pub). He said 30 Somoni. Instead of haggling, which I should have done, I agreed and we got in. Immediately, we started having problems. First, the car died, so he pulled out a screwdriver to fix it. Then he opened his door and almost hit a passing cop car, so he dealt with them for a minute. THEN the person behind me (I was front passenger) had to get out so he could fix whatever was wrong with the car. At this point, I ask him (in Tajiki of course) if he can lower the price since by this time we probably would have been there. He agreed. We finally take off, and then he pulls over to ask a guy in Russian how to get to the embassy! At this point we're starting to get miffed. I ask him a couple questions in Tajiki, but magically he doesn't know Tajiki anymore and answers in Russian. After asking someone else, he pulls over someplace and says, "This is the Iranian embassy," in Russian. The only reason I know any of this is because Mark was in the car with us, and he speaks Russian. However, we didn't see our people so we asked him to take us to a specific street and cross-street. He pulls around and asks a third group of people where to go, by which point I'm ready to get out and not pay. He pulls to the other side of the first street where we stopped and says, "This is the embassy." I ask him multiple times, "Is this Rudaki and *insert street name here that I can't remember* or not?" He just keeps saying "This is the embassy" and switching back and forth between Russian and Tajiki. We're like, "Let's just go," so I hand him 40 Somoni. He asks if we have a 10 since he doesn't have change. We hand him a 10, but he doesn't give 20 back! I was PISSED. He claimed that because we made him drive around the block we owed him more money. I told him in VERY angry Tajiki that he shouldn't have been stopping to ask people where to go, and he shouldn't need to get out and fix his cab while we're in it! Eventually, we gave up, because he wasn't giving us the money back. However, I learned that I know how to argue in Tajiki, so something good came out of it! In the end, it was 2.50 each USD. We'll live. Plus, we got a story, and we ended up finding the pub anyway.

Next post, I'll tell you about the mosque we visited this morning, and hopefully have a couple more stories to share with you! Until next time, here's to people who don't screw you out of 20 Somoni.