Hafez's barafshān

Fared: salām leylā jān, good to be back! 

Leyla: salām fared jān, great to be back! So we're here talking about Hafez's poem “barafshān,” and we are on a Hafez kick. And if you haven't heard our previous episodes, we waited, you know, we've been working on this Chai and Conversation/Fared Shafinury Radif Retreat poetry project for a long time for years now, and we waited until this year to do Hafez and now we're just going Hafez, Hafez, Hafez!

Fared: Yeah, he's a favorite of all of ours, and I think Hafez is the type that keeps you on your toes. You're always, you're not sure which way he's going with his poetry, so it's fun to explore more Hafez with you, leylā jān. 

Leyla: For sure, and there's so much to explore with Hafez! We've said this before that when you start looking into Hafez poetry, there are certain words that he uses, certain phrases that he uses. The more you read, the more you can kind of unlock these phrases and words and understand the meaning even more. This poem is really, really special. We're going to get into that in just a second, but first, for those people who are new to you and new to Radif Retreat, can you tell a little bit about yourself, who you are, and what Radif Retreat is?

Fared: Yes, for sure! My name is Fared Shafinury. It's always wonderful to be here with all of you lovely Persian aficionados, and Radif Retreat is a school of online music, online school of music for Persian classical music. So if anyone here is interested in studying about the radif, “radif” being the immaculate collection of rhythms and melodies that has been transferred over generation to generation, it's truly the custodian to classical Persian poetry. So it's lovely to teach Persian poetry alongside Persian classical music.

Leyla:  Right, and so Fared comes from that perspective of being a musician first and foremost, and he has been studying Persian poetry for so long, which is why I love doing this project together of reading poetry, and we have a long history. If you listen to previous episodes, you'll hear us talking about how we have a decades-long history at this point of getting together and talking about poetry, so it's wonderful to be able to do that with all of you now as well. Now this specific poem, speaking of decades long history, one nice thing that we talked about with poetry is that just like music, which you you can memorize music like Yo-Yo Ma talks about this all the time, how he's been learning Bach since he was four years old, and now, he's in his seventies and he has changed over time, the music hasn't changed, but because he's changed, the way he plays that music has changed. And so poetry is the same. It's something that you can memorize. It's the same words over and over again. But as you age, and as you gain more experience, and as you change, that poetry can really change for you as well. And that's one of the beauties of memorizing poetry, that those words become part of your bones and you carry them with you. So this poem in particular is one that you have years of experience with. So can you talk about that a little bit?

Fared: It was 2007 when I was in Iran, actually. I think you and I were in Tehran at the same time at that era of our lives in our mid-twenties. And I had a dear friend who was going back to the States and she did a fālé hāfez. As we know, “fālé hāfez” is a concept in which you grab the deevāné hāfez, the book, and you pick a poem, and you allow that to be a forecasting or a type of fortune telling for you or some sort of message Hafez may have for you through the centuries. And this specific poem was her fāl, and it really moved me. It was a love. There was a lot of love drenching from each word, and I was inspired. Within 5 to 10 minutes, it transferred over into a melody, into a rhythm. And before I knew it, three weeks later, I recorded my song Barafshān based off of this poem in Tehran in that summer of 2007, and it's lovely to revisit it now and to jump into all the meaning, the multitude of meanings that kind of falls in each of these words that he uses Hafez. And yeah, so, 2007 till today, it's a long time. It's great to revisit it with you, absolutely. 

Leyla: Wow. And a few things so so this song has also been a part of my you know, listening for a long time. It was on your album and we’ll link to that song in particular. It'll be wonderful for students to listen to it as they are learning, but also you're revisiting this song and creating it into something new, which we won't talk too much about but we’ll surprise our students with it. As soon as it comes out, we will let you all know. So this song is also being reworked. But also another really wonderful thing about this poem is it was actually the first time that I heard the word geesoo because, you know, growing up in the diaspora, this is not a word that we use very often in conversation. So, geesoo, can you say what geesoo means?

Fared: Geesoo is another very poetic way of talking about the wonderful, lavish locks of hair of the beloved. And when they say geesoo, which is also now a name for for women, for girls are named Geesoo, it's a term that when they say geesoo, it's a really beautiful way in which it even feels when you say the word. Geesoo. It almost has a French kind of quality to it and it really refers to locks of hair.

Leyla: And how amazing that since 2007, until now, you know, hair has always been, you know, this important part of Iranian culture. This poem is basically an ode to geesoo, an ode to hair, and how amazing that since then till now, you know, through the Woman Life Freedom movement, geesoo has become an emblem of Iranian women, of Iranian strength. So so that's something that I'm really excited to look at this poem now with that lens of experience that we have, that's really cool. 

Fared: Absolutely. Absolutely. It's always been a symbol of freedom to a certain degree. In fact, a couple hundreds of years ago, there was a poet, a Baháʼí poet, a follower of the Baháʼí faith by the name of Qurrat al-'Ayn and she actually was one of the first of her time in that era. She was a poet, a wonderful poet, and she removed her hijab or her borghé, and we'll learn these words as we move through the poem, and she lost her life in that process. And this is a poet, a female poetess who used her hair as a sign of a freedom and rebellion from the system. So here Hafez very beautifully weaves the story using the hair of the beloved, explaining how emancipation really starts with your self-expression and with yourself. 

Leyla: Great. And so as in every other episode, what we're going to do is that we are going to read this entire poem to start, Fared is going to read the Persian and I'm actually going to read a translation that he provided for us. So Fared’s translations are never literal. It's always kind of explaining the meaning of the of an interpretation of the line. And as always, this first episode Fared and I are going to go over the entire poem, the meaning, the background, and maybe we'll make some discoveries along the way as we're talking. And in subsequent episodes I'm going to go through the poem word by word, line by line, and go through these phrases that we're going to learn and see how we're going to use them in current conversation. By the end of this series of lessons, you will have completely learned this poem to where it is in your bones and you will have memorized it. And we will ask you to send us a video of yourself. Where Fared? 

Fared: Somewhere beautiful on this planet earth. 

Leyla: That's right. Somewhere in a beautiful location. Very important have you reciting this poem and by memory. And at this point, you know, if you're new to our program, that this might sound like a daunting and impossible task, especially if you're new to the Persian language. But believe me, our program makes it really easy for you to learn and and join us in memorizing that poem. And and I will just say before we read it, before we get into the lesson that we have information about Radif Retreat on this show notes for this lesson as well, because music is such an important part of Persian poetry and it's wonderful to integrate all of these things. So not only will you integrate the language, you learn about how to integrate music and and everything, and I'm very excited to go on this journey with you. So without any further, Fared jān, can you go ahead and read the Persian? 

Fared: modāmam mast meedārad naseemé ja’adé geesooyat 

Leyla: Wind flowing within your hair forever intoxicates. 

Fared: kharābam meekonad har dam, fareebé chashmé jādooyat 

Leyla: Magical deception within your eyes forever destroys. 

Fared: pas az chandeen shakeebāyee shabee yārab tavān deedan 

Leyla: Night after night patience I try to see the beloved 

Fared: ké sham’é deedé afroozeem dar mehrābé abrooyat 

Leyla: To light a candle in the altar of your eyebrows. 

Fared: tō gar khāhee ké jāveedān jahān yeksar beeyār āyee 

Leyla: If you desire to beautify this world for all of eternity. 

Fared: sabā rā goo ké bar dārad zamānee borghé az rooyat 

Leyla: Simply ask the morning wind to take off your veil 

Fared: va gar rasmé fanā khāhee ké az ālam bar andāzee 

Leyla: If you desire to remove mortality from this world. 

Fared: barafshān tā foroo reezad hezārān jān zé har mooyat 

Leyla: Simply rise and break free shake and scatter your head around birthing a thousand lives per strand of hair. 

Fared: Yes, it's pretty dramatic. 

Leyla: Alright Yeah. Wonderful. And as always, I'm so excited to get into the the language of this poem because it's so much more powerful when you read it in the Persian, although your translation is very beautiful as well. But it takes a lot to translate all these meanings of these words. 

Fared: Yes. And the story about translation and the literal translation versus one that captures more of the essence of the message is one that I think many people, many literaries throughout time have really battled to somehow that balancing act. There's a there's a nice little tightrope walk in which you're trying to convey really what's being said without putting too much of the self into it. So these translations are somewhat of a transpiration and and ways to think about it, but I'm excited to really jump into this with you for sure. 

Leyla: All right. So let's take it line by line and let's go through. We've already talked about the word geesoo, which we start the poem with, which means locks of hair. So let's read that first line. 

Fared: modāmam mast modāmam meaning forever, consistent. modām. modāmam mast. mast being drunk modāmam mast meedārad. I'm held forever drunk. meedārad. naseemé. naseem being the wind naseemé ja’adé geesooyat. So the wind that travels through your hair forever holds some drunk. And here, whenever we speak of intoxication, of smells. Smell is a big sensory expression in Persian classical poetry and oftentimes points to musk or the Persian word being moshk. And here when when the wind travels through the hair in the olden days, musk was used. And as you know, musk came from the bellybutton of a deer. It was a- 

Leyla: I did not know that. 

Fared: Yeah. It's a it's a bit of a little side note, 

Leyla: as you know, 

Fared: as you know, musk. And and even to today, I remember when I was traveling in India actually years ago and in the bazaars they had the guy said there is musk for sale and I was I know that was like a ball of like brown stuff that kind of felt gooey and he said yes we we got this from the deers that live up in the high altitudes. So it's like the higher the altitude, the more prized is the musk. So every time we speak of intoxication, of smells that run through the hair or brushes against the cheek, oftentimes it evokes the idea of moshk or musk. 

Leyla: Well, I want to talk really quickly about these keys that we said in Hafez's poetry. So we just did a poem for Nowruz. And do you remember the first line of that naseemé bādé noroozee 

Fared: zé kooyé yār mee āyad naseemé bādé noroozee Yes. So naseem here is often used. 

Leyla: So that line was saying from the alley of the lover comes the wind of change of Nowruz. So naseem, again, we have that word naseem, which is this wind that is coming through. And then mast. We didn't have that in that other poem. But mast is a big I mean, it comes up in basically every Iranian poem. And like Fared said, it it does have layers of meaning. At the most literal meaning, it means drunk. So I become drunk off of this wind flowing through your hair, 

Fared: right. Right, right. 

Leyla: And so you can become, like, intoxicated by this like smell, which, you know, that gives such a visceral feeling when you hear that.

Fared: And you know that Hafez poems don't necessarily have names. So we named it barafshān for our lesson here, because the name of the song that I, I wrote, I picked that specific word out of the poem to, to call it that. But most Hafez poems are strictly known by the first line, the entire first line becomes the name of the poem because he never named his poems. So here. And what's interesting about that is the fact that the first line becomes what's known per poem. You have to ask yourself what caused Hafez to write this? So it's very clearly very literal in my opinion, that he's he smelled a beautiful lock of hair in some capacity and and this poem poured out of him. For me, that's how I think of these poems is that's the first line is the first spark of inspiration that brought him to writing.

Leyla: And can you say again what does that word modām mean? modāmam mast meedārad.

Fared: Yeah. So modām means constant. modām. modāmam, I am constantly mast. I am constantly drunk. meedārad. az dāshtan meeyād which means that the naseem, the wind, has me forever drunk.

Leyla: Gotcha. modāmam mast meedārad

Fared: I'm forever intoxicated. naseemé ja’adé geesooyat

Leyla: Okay, wonderful. Now let's move on to the next line. 

Fared: kharābam meekonad har dam So the word kharāb here, it's a very powerful word, and it can be used in a multitude of meanings in colloquial language. When I say bābā, kharābam kardi, kharābetam, It's a very dramatic way of saying that I'm destroyed, I'm I'm falling apart. kharāb literally means broken. 

Leyla: I'm ruined. 

Fared: Ruined. But kharābam And the way that this word is expressed is with such awe and but agony but a type of agony that you enjoy. So he says kharābam meekonad. Meekonad means that I have become just completely broken here. 

Leyla: And in this case, you know, kharābam meekonad goes hand in hand with that idea of masti, so being intoxicated. So it is just like ruined me, you know. 

Fared: Absolutely. kharābam meekonad har dam. And here the term har dam. dam means moment, right. But dam also means breath when you say damet garm. May there be warmth to your breath. Bā migé with every breath at every moment har dam. kharābam meekonad har dam fareebé chashmé jādooyat. The word fareeb means to deceive or deception. fareebé becomes possessive. fareebé chasm means the deception of your eyes. jādoo, jādooyat. jādoo means magic. jādooyat means your magical eye, the deception within your, yeah. 

Leyla: And jādoogar means like a witch. So it's that kind of magic like your witchery. That's how I see that line. The deception of your eye, your witchery eyes. 

Fared: Exactly. Your eyes are deceiving in a magical way. Because when you look into the well of the beloved's eyes, you also see yourself. And you're seeing all of hasti, all of eternity there. So there is, there is a level of deception when you're staring into the abyss. The abyss is staring right back at you.

Leyla: Wow, what a seductive first two lines. It's very strong imagery and you can just see this like the smell and the sight and the feeling, all of it together. It's very sensual. 

Fared: Well, it's very sensual. And the terms mast and kharāb. migé bābā man mast-o kharābatam. I am completely just intoxicated and broken by you. But it's the type of broken that everyone wishes they were. 

Leyla: That's right. All right. The next 

Fared: pas az chandeen shakeebāyee pas az chandeen So for for many nights, after so many nights pas az chandeen shakeebāyee. And I say nights here because pas az chandeen usually when they say pas az means after so many moons. Here it doesn't say the word night shab or mā. It says pas az chandeen shakeebāyee. And the term shakeebā which is also a name given to girls. shakeebā means to be patient, to be unpatient, to not have patience is to be nāshakeebā But here migé pas az chandeen shakeebāyee After so many nights of me being so patient. I've been so patient so many nights, shabee yārab tavān deedan One night came in which I saw my yārab. My yār, my beloved. So yārab here is a term that evokes the beloved. tavān deedan which means I was able. tavān means ability deedan is to see. I was able to see the beloved one night after so many nights of being patient. 

Leyla: Okay, I think that that one’s pretty clear. 

Fared: That's one pretty clear. And then we move on to the next line. ké sham’é deedé afroozeem dar mehrābé abrooyat ké sham. sham meaning candle. sham’é deedé. deedé here means basically the eyes sham’é deedé afroozeem. So the more literal term here I wrote the translation to be to light a candle but sham’é deedé really means the inner light of the eye, the light of the eye. ké sham’é deedé afroozeem to afrookhtan afrooz is to light, right? dar mehrābé abrooyat And the term mehrāb is an altar, a space of worship, space of prayer and mehrāb here I’ve used the term altar for it. abroo abrooyat is the eyebrows. So ké sham’é deedé afroozeem dar mehrābé abrooyat So I've waited so many nights. I've been so, so patient to finally see you. Why? Because I pray to your eyes. Your eyes have become my Mecca. They have become my Kabir. They’ve become what I pray to. 

Leyla: Wow. So I want to just point out that in the first line we had the ja’adé geesooyat So we had the hair and the smell. We have that up there. Then we have chashmé jādooyat. Then we talked about the the eyes of deception or the eyes of magic, you know, witchery. Then here we get to the mehrābé abrooyat. So now we're talking about the eyebrows. So we're just going through and like painting a bigger and bigger picture of this person, right? I think that's really nice. 

Fared: And here in the next few lines there is a bit of a communication where Hafez is speaking directly to the beloved. And it starts with the word tō which means you. 

Leyla: In the informal sense so it's familiar. 

Fared: Absolutely. So Hafez says tō gar khāhee, if you want, if you desire, tō gar khāhee ké jāveedān. And the term jāveedān means basically to be given life, to be given some sense of eternity. jāveedān means to be always alive. So it's it's immortal as opposed to mortal. tō gar khāhee ké jāveedān jahān yeksar beeyār āyee The term jahān means the world or the universe, the entire cosmos. jahān. tō gar khāhee ké jāveedān jahān yeksar yeksar means one at one time, at one instance with one snap of your finger if you wanted to have the whole world to and beeyār āyee comes from ārāyeedan or ārāsté which means to beautify or we also have the word ārāiyesh. Whenever women put on makeup, they āraiyesh mikonand injā migé if you want to see the world beautiful tō gar khāhee but for all of eternity jāveedān, if you want it forever. But but yeksar means if one snap of your finger essentially. Ye daféyee, one time. Moves on to the next line, now he says okay if that's what you want, if you’re seeking the world to be as beautiful as you are essentially you get sabā rā goo. Now the term sabā is another term for naseem. Naseemé sabā moshk feshān khāhad shod, right? Ālamé pir deegar bāré javān khāhad shod So the term naseemé sabā basically means the morning wind and it's given the term sabā. So here it's saying just goo sabā rā goo. goo means to speak. Speak with the morning wind. Why? So you can ask the morning wind to blow off that veil over your face. sabā rā goo ké bar dārad bar dārad means to take off. zamānee means ask the wind to take off at some time at some instance, zamānee borghé. Now the term here, borghé, is an Arabic term, which means there is a facemask, especially in the southern parts of Iran and towards the Persian Gulf, borghé is a beautiful mask that covers the face and the nose. And you can actually see they're really ornate and really gorgeous, actually. You see you see it all the time. borghé az rooyat But here I use the term veil because these are all metaphors to a certain degree and it is talking about the physical borghé, but it's also talking about what's preventing us from seeing the beauty of the world? If you can't see the beauty in the world, you have to remove the veil that's preventing you from seeing. Right. And it basically it's very empowering to say, just take it off, you'll see it, you'll see how beautiful everything is around you. So in a sense, this beloved Leyla could be a person. It could be the beloved or it could be the beloved, as in all of us. It could be a message. And in a sense, for me, Hafez is speaking more to society, and here it's giving a message. And then if you move further down into the next line, this kind of piggybacks off of that because again, there's another conversation that Hafez is having with the beloved va gar rasmé fanā khāhee. So in the line prior, he’s saying tō gar khāhee ké jāveedān. So if you're seeking eternity in life and here he's saying va gar rasmé fanā khāhee. fanā means, rasmé is like tradition, fanā means annihilation. But the term fanā has a multitude of meanings in the Sufi tradition. And if you speak to Sufi masters and people who are very well versed in the world of Maulana Rumi, they'll speak about fanā and all of its multitude of meanings. And what does it really mean to annihilate. But in a sense, if you in this sense, because he speaks about the term jāveedān, you can piggyback off the idea if one is speaking about life and giving life eternity, then this must be the other side of the coin, which is some sense of death, right? Or of some sense of mortality. If you desire to remove mortality or to remove death from this world, essentially, az ālam bar andāzee ālam is another term for jahān. ālam means the world. bar andāzee means to take away to bar andākhtan is to remove or to revolt even against the government. Man bar andāzam, right. And here it’s saying that if you're trying to get rid of death in this world, my favorite line which is what at this time I used for the name of the song is barafshān barafshān. And the term barafshān, afshān, it comes from the root afshan, which means to scatter, to scatter about. But when it says barafshān, there is a sense of revolt and breaking free and rising. So the term barafshān to really describe. This is one of those words when you, that's why my translation tries to embody its meaning in a multitude of ways. It says simply rise and break free. Shake and scatter your head around barafshān tā foroo reezad foroo reezad means to fall from break and scatter your head abound so that it can hezārān means a thousand or thousands or infinite. It's an it's an arbitrary number. It doesn't actually mean 1000. It just means many, right. Infinite. Migé barafshān tā foroo reezad Break and shatter, take off the hijab, take off the veil, take your hijab off so that first strand of your hair, you can birth thousands of lives. 

Leyla: Multitudes. Multitudes. 

Fared: Absolutely. 

Leyla: Yeah. So, so that brings up. Yeah, it brings up a lot of imagery for me of like you contain multitudes, like take that off and see how much life is within you, you know, and how much like power is within you. And it brings up, it brings up so many images of exactly of that like Woman Life Freedom movement that we saw of like these, like, you know, just like hair and like the power in strength of women's hair. 

Fared: Absolutely. And you can tell that through the eons, the the symbolism of your hair as a symbol of your freedom has gone hand in hand. And this this this actually transcends Islamic traditions in the Middle East. Hair has always been a symbol of oppression when when when apart- when a gender apartheid has taken place in many parts of the world, one of the first steps is to to assign the dress code and specifically to strip them of their of their sexuality and their sexual being. And hair was that symbol because hair is a sign of freedom. And here when it says barafshān, that term, there is a there is a revolt within that. And afshān means to scatter. 

Leyla: I want to go back. So then the the fourth to the last line tō gar khāhee ké jāveedān jahān yeksar beeyār āyee So it's saying again your translation of it. If you desire to beautify this world for all of eternity, right. And then it says sabā rā goo. So it's saying ask the wind. So it's something out of your control. You're saying get the wind to come take this off and ask for them to take off this burqa from your face, right? To take away this mask from your face. 

Fared: It's actually I don't I don't see it as a lack of it being out of your hands. I see it when, because when they speak of sabā, sabā or the morning wind, it's a very personal relationship between one. Because in the early morning hours, you're not surrounded by society and people. You're by yourself. And when it says seek, look to nature, look to the wind. My love is wild as the wind. I would love for everyone if you haven't heard that by Nina Simone, listen to that song Wild is the Wind and this idea of the wind being the symbolism of freedom. What what's what's more personal and empowering than your relationship with the wind? Who can get between you and the wind? No one. 

Leyla: And the wind, the naseem is what brought this the scent of the hair to the lover as well in the very beginning of the poem. So that's a nice connection. But I still I still see a more passive strand in that sentence than at the end where it says barafshān, that's such a it's a command, barafshān. Tā, you know, it's very like go for it. We end this poem with just, just this like empowering command, you know. 

Fared: Absolutely. And to what you're saying in that first line, there’s sabā rā goo ké bar dārad zamānee borghé az rooyat Speaking of jāveedān, which means life. If you want life. If you want to see beauty and more life in this world. Go to the wind, just speak to the wind. It's all around you. And then in the last he’s saying that if you're trying to get rid of this tradition of annihilation or or more tough, you want to see death removed. And death, the symbolism of death is is a multitude here. It’s saying that just take, go crazy, take it off, let your hair be loose. Shake and scatter your head around, birth a thousand lives per strand of your hair. That's how you give life into this world. That's how you remove death. That's how you bring beauty into this world. Be free. 

Leyla: That's awesome. So what did what do you feel like this poem meant to you then? Like, what was it that really drew you to the poem then? And how has it changed for you throughout the you know, you've been with this poem for so long. 

Fared: Absolutely. I mean, today it's taken on, Leyla it's completely taken a whole different meaning. And after the Woman Life Freedom movement that we've all sustained and have been even till this stay where we're living in the Woman Life Freedom era of the Iranian peoples. Back then, it was a very personal love song for me. My, my love and my testament to to to my my dear friend at the time. And it had just like kharābam I was I was completely kharāb at that era. And it was it was it was a it was a personal love song. But today Hafez speaks to me at the ripe age of 40, 41 in a different way. And I and I and I see it, I see it as a message to to that inner beloved within all of us. And and this, this this is one of those times where as literal as I like to read Hafez, I personally prefer the literal interpretations of what he says is exactly what was going on at that time. But here essentially there is a a message that's really asking everyone to somehow, hey, it's again, you are the beauty, you are the life and it's in the locks of those hair. Let it out, let it free. 

Leyla: That's really nice. So as as I feel like it's kind of speaking to women, but as a man, you kind of get that same message and you kind of internalize that as well. 

Fared: Absolutely. Because it there is a genderless quality to to the beloved. But I mean the borghé was for women, it is for women. So here it does take on a feminine presence by evoking the idea of the veil, the borghé. But the message of borghé again there’s symbolism of that, it's a mask. It's some veil of deception that that we allow, we walk our days with. But there is a there is that famous story by Kahlil Gibran, How I Became a Madman, and in that story he talks about, he he wakes up and his seven masks have been stolen by the side of his bed. He runs out into the into the roof of his building, and he starts screaming and he was naked and he said, thieves. The thieves have stolen my masks. And everyone looks up at him laughing, pointing at him, saying, “look at the madman”. And it was at that moment, which for the very first time he felt the sun on his face. And thus that's how I became a madman. So it's the mask is the veil, the borghé is literally something that we all have. We may not put a physical cloth covering our face, but it's something that prevents us from, you know, we hide our own beauty. We're afraid of our own truth. We're afraid to to to join that eternal beauty, to join the life where we are bounding ourselves. And with the Woman Life Freedom movement, the message is very much the same. It's it took one, it took two, it took 20, it took a thousand. It took now a whole generation of of Iranian women to stand up and to basically tell the whole world who we really are as a people.

Leyla: I think it's so cool that that hair in Iran I mean, that that is kind of the the line that they really draw and they just try to hide and they are not succeeding at this point. Like, if you look at videos of Iran, I mean, they're trying and trying, but now the the cat is kind of out of the bag at this point and women are letting their hair show. And it's such an existential threat to the Islamic Republic. And so I think it's so cool that this poem, when we read it and, you know, in the subsequent lessons, when we go over word by word, phrase by phrase, and you really learn these words and you you get your own meanings out of this, I think it's so cool that this poem really talks about the power of that in a literal sense, you know. And like you said, like you took this poem very literally in your twenties when you were in love. It was about one person, you know, it showed the love that you had for this one person. And now it's become something greater than that. But that's why this poem works on such a good level is that, you know, that is also very important. The love of one person is very important. The downfall of an Islamic Republic is also very important, and it works on all of these levels. That's so cool.

Fared: Absolutely. And I and I think it's that spark of inspiration that ultimately leads us down these rabbit holes and what's what better spark of inspiration could Hafez have had than the actual scent of hair through the Bāq-e Eram or the gardens of Eram in Shiraz. I'm sure that's where he probably wrote a lot of his poems.

Leyla: Amazing. Well, Fared jān thank you again for another really wonderful poem by Hafez. And we'll link to Fared where you can find Fared on the show notes for this and we'll link to his project, the Radif Retreat, which is we are doing these lessons in collaboration with Radif Retreat. So thank you so much for being with us again. And Fared will be with us as we learn the additional words and phrases for this poem and as you turn in your videos as well. So thank you again. And until next time, khodāhāfez. 

Fared: khodāhāfez. Bye.