Rumi's beshnō een nay

Hello and welcome to Lesson 93 of Learn Persian with Chai and Conversation! I’m your host, Leyla Shams, and this is part 3 of our discussion of Rumi’s poem Beshno een nay. If you haven’t heard Lesson 91 or 92 yet, go back and listen to them, as these lessons are cumulative. And as you probably know by now, this audio lesson is just one part of the complete learning system- to get the pdf guide to this lesson, and to see the lines of the poem, as well as individual words and phrases in the poem, in a way you can individually click on them and listen to them, check out our website at chaiandconversation.com, with chai spelled CHAI. But for now, let’s get on with the lesson!

So, first, let’s listen to the part of the poem we learned in the last lesson, read by my khaleh Farnaz, who has a beautiful poetry reading voice. Hopefully by now, you’ll understand the whole thing:

Behsno een nay chon shekayet meekonad

Az jodayeeha hekayat meekonad

Kaz neyestan mara beboreede-and

Dar nafeeram mard o zan naleedeand

All right! And now, let’s listen to the next part, that we’ll be going over in this lesson:

Seene khaham sharhe sharhe az faragh

Ta begooyam sharheh dardeh eshteeyagh

Har kesee k’oo door mand az asleh kheesh

Baz jooyeed roozegareh vasleh kheesh

Ok, so here we have the meat of the poem, and a part that’s often quoted by people, especially those Iranians who have emigrated away from Iran. So let’s go over this line by line. First line:

Seeneh khaham sharheh sharheh az faragh

Ok, so first word is seené- and this is the word for chest. Seené

Seené

And this can refer to a man or woman, so in men it’s chest, in women it’s breasts. So seené

Seené

And khaham is I want. Khaham

Khaham

So I want- khaham

Khaham

And just as we learned in the last lesson, when a word  ends with am you know it’s referring to the self. So we learned the word nafeeram- nafeer means the inside of an instrument, and following it with -am, nafeeram, means my insides. So this word to khaham, ending in -am makes it I want, and it’s in the present tense. Khaham

Khaham

And in Muhammad Ali’s translation he translates it as I seek, and this gets a bit closer to what it means in this poem. I want, I’m looking for, I seek- khaham

Khaham

In conversational Persian, when you say you want something, you usually say meekhaham

Meekhaham

And this means I currently want. āb meekhaham- I want water. And meekhaham also gets shortened to meekham in conversational Perisan- no one would say khaham or meekhaham out loud in conversation- they’re too formal. So I want water- ab meekham

Ab meekham

In this case, khaham is a more poetic way of saying this, and more than meaning a simple I want like meekham, it means, I seek, or I deeply desire, or I yearn for. So khaham

Khaham

And put together it’s seené khaham- I yearn for a chest. Seené khaham

Seené khaham

And in the context of this poem, what’s contained within a seené or a chest? It’s the heart. So really, he’s saying he’s yearning for a heart. Seené khāham

The word for heart in Persian is del

Del

But in this case, seené, chest, is a broader word. Seené khāham

Seené khaham

The next part is sharheh sharheh- so this is actually an Arabic word and it means sharheh means getting cut. Sharheh sharheh

Sharheh sharheh

The Persian version of this is boreedeh shodeh

Booreedeh shode

Which is another one of those compound verbs literally meaning it became cut- booreedeh shodeh

Boreedeh shodeh

But again, this is an example of imagery with words. Sharheh sharheh has this kind of harsh sound of something getting cut. Sharheh sharheh. 

And finally az faragh. We know az means from. Az

Az

And faragh means separation or parting, departure.

Ok, so now let’s say this whole line in pieces- seené khāham

Seené khaham

Sharheh sharheh 

Sharheh sharheh

Az faragh

Az faragh

And now all together- seené khaham sharheh sharheh az faragh

seené khaham sharheh sharheh az faragh

Ok let’s listen to the next sentence:

Ta begooyam sharheh dardeh eshteeyagh

I love this sentence. So the ta-  in this context it means so that. Ta

Ta

Next begooyam- so you should recognize am- again, this is in first person, so the reed is referring to itself. Begooyam means I say begooyam

Begooyam

When you’re speaking in conversational persian, begooyam gets reduced to begam

Begam

Conversational Persian has a lot of words like this- they’re a certain way in written Persian and in poetry, and they get reduced and simplified in spoken Persian. So a lot of times, if people are studying Persian, they’re taught only formal Persian, which sounds quite silly if you’re having a conversation. If you go back through all of our speaking lessons, we are the only resource that teaches purely conversational Persian. So this is an example of that- begooyam in written Persian and in poetry, begam, in spoken. So begam

Begam

And begooyam

Begooyam

So in this poem, It’s ta begooyam- until I say, or until I tell, ta begooyam

Ta begooyam

Next is sharheh again, and this is another Arabic word, and although it sounds like the first sharheh sharheh, it’s different. It means a description of something, or to describe something- sharheh

Sharheh

sharheh

Sharheh

And what’s the thing he’s going to give a description of? It’s dardeh eshteeyāgh

Dardeh eshteeyagh

So this is a very dramatic concept. Dard means pain. Dard

Dard

Estheeyagh means love or yearning or passion. But here, it’s closest to ‘yearning’. So Eshteeyagh

Eshteeyagh

And dardeh eshteeyagh means the pain of yearning. Dardeh eshteeyagh

Dardeh eshteeyagh.

So in Persian, when you want to combine two words, for example if you’re trying to describe something, you use this -é sound which is called the ezafe. We have a lot more on this on Lesson 17 of Chai and Conversation, but these two words, dard and eshteeyagh, get combined with the é in the middle- darde eshteeyagh. So what are we describing the pain of? The pain of yearning- dardé eshteeyagh. So the e is acting as the of here- pain of yearning, dardé eshteeyagh

Darde eshteeyagh

So let’s say this full sentence together- first piece by piece-

Ta begooyam sharheh

Ta begooyam sharheh

 dardeh eshteeyagh

dardeh eshteeyagh

Ok now the full thing: Ta begooyam sharheh dardeh eshteeyagh

Ta begooyam sharheh dardeh eshteeyagh

Now let’s listen to these two lines together:

Seene khaham sharhe sharhe az faragh

Ta begooyam sharheh dardeh eshteeyagh

So again, translated this is:

I seek a heart, from longing torn apart

so the pain of yearning, I can impart

Meaning I am seeking empathy from someone who has been through the same thing. I am seeking empathy.

Ok great! Now we get to what I think is the heart of the poem, and the part that gets quoted really most often. Let’s listen to my aunt read the next two sentences:

Har kesee k’oo door mand az asleh kheesh

Baz jooyeed roozegareh vasleh kheesh

So first har kasee. The word har means any. Har

Har

And kasee means person, or really any being. Kasee

Kasee

Har kasee- any person, any being. Har kasee

Har kasee

And in the poem, the reed is talking from the perspective of a reed- so it’s not talking about a person, it’s talking about a reed. Muhammad Ali translates it as ‘whoever’ but it could be ‘anyone’. Har kasee

Har kasee

Any one. Next we have k’oo. Just like last time we had ‘k’az’ and this was a combination of ‘keh and az, k’oo is a combination of ‘keh’ and ‘oo’. Keh means that, and oo means they. Remember, we don’t have a he or she pronoun in Persian, so it’s like in English when you don’t want to gender someone you call them a they, oo means ‘they’.

Oo

K’oo

K’oo

Means that they, non gender specific

Next the word door means far. Door

Door

And mand means remained. Mand

Mand

And that’s the third person conjugation for remained. So all together k’oo door mand, means, that they remained far. K’oo door mand

K’oo door mand

And az means from. We’ve covered this a few times before. Az

Az

Next the word asl. Now this is one of those Persian words that’s a little more difficult to pronounce, because the ‘s’ and ‘l’ are right next to each other. But again, it’s asl

Asl

And asl is the word for original. Asl

Asl

So, in this context door mand as asl, asl means their origin. Asl

Asl

And the last word kheesh means self, kheesh

Kheesh

So asle kheesh means the origin of their self. Asle kheesh

Asle kheesh

And you can hear we have that e sound there, the ezafe, linking the two asl and kheesh. So the origin of what? The origin of the self. Asleh kheesh

Asleh kheesh

Another way to say kheesh in Persian is khod. So self can be khod

Khod

Or kheesh

Kheesh

Ok, so again, the full sentence is 

Har kasee k’oo door mand az asleh kheesh

So let’s repeat it bit by bit- har kasee

Har kasee 

Any one, k’oo door man

K’oo door man

That he or she stay far, az asleh kheesh

Az asleh kheesh

From the origin of him or herself

So now the full thing all together- Har kasee k’oo door mand az asleh kheesh

Ok great, and now the last line we’re going to go over in this lesson-

Baz jooyeed roozegareh vasleh kheesh

So first the word baz. There are two different meanings for this word depending on the context. One means open- baz

Baz

The other is ‘again’. And that’s what it means in this context. Again. Baz

Baz

And jooyeed means searches for. Jooyeed

Jooyeed

The word roozegar is a really beautiful one. It means ‘the days of’ othe ‘time’ or the ‘period’- but it’s often used in a very nostalgic setting. The word rooz by itself means day. Rooz

Rooz

And roozegar, the days of- the time of. Roozegar

Roozegar

And vasl means join. Vasl

Vasl

And again we have the word kheesh, which we know means self. Kheesh

Kheesh

So these three words are joined together with the ezafe, the e sound. Roozegare vasle kheesh. So this e takes the place of the word of. Roozegare- the days of, vasle, the joining of, kheesh, the self. So roozegareh vasle kheesh means the days of the joining of the self. Roozegareh vasleh kheesh

Roozegareh vasleh kheesh

So what does the full sentence mean? Baz jooyeed roozegareh vasleh kheesh. It means- seeks a reunion with the self one day. Baz jooyeed could be more like continuously seeks. So let’s say this sentence together bit by bit- baz jooyeed

Baz jooyeed

Roozegareh vasleh kheesh

Roozegareh vasleh kheesh

And that really is the heart of this poem- So Muhammad Ali translated it as from their roots, whoever remains away, seeks a reunion with the self one day. So, at the heart of it- the reed has been separated from the self, from the reed bed. And anyone who’s been separated from their origin is ultimately seeking reuinion with that origin continuously. So again, let’s listen to both these lines:

Har kesee k’oo door mand az asleh kheesh

Baz jooyeed roozegareh vasleh kheesh

Ok, and that brings us to the end of the section we’re going to learn today. Now, let’s hear my khaleh Farnaz read the full section of the poem we learned today:

Seene khaham sharhe sharhe az faragh

Ta begooyam sharheh dardeh eshteeyagh

Har kesee k’oo door mand az asleh kheesh

Baz jooyeed roozegareh vasleh kheesh

And hopefully is time you were able to understand most of the words in this section!

And that brings us to the end of the lesson. Now the assignment is to memorize this section of the poem- and hopefully you already have the first section memorized as well. Again, if you’re not a member of Chai and Conversation already, you can log on to our website at chaiandconversation.com to sign up for a free 30 day trial and get access to all the Persian learning materials we’ve ever created. We have more poetry lessons, conversational Persian lessons, and reading and writing lessons as well, so we have you covered no matter what level Persian learner you are!

And that’s it for now- until next time, I’m you’re host Leyla Shams, this lesson was edited by Chadwick Wood, and the theme music is by Babak Rajabi. Until next time- khodahafez!