Saadi's bani ādam

Fared: Hello Leyla jān, salām. Dorood. 

Leyla: Salām Fared jān. Thank you so much for joining me on another poetry episode, perhaps the most important one that we've done so far.  

Fared: I totally agree, this is one of the most quintessential Persian poems that we have out there. 

Leyla: That's right. So Saadi’s bani ādam and I have to say that Fared has recorded the song. Was this the first poem that you ever recorded? Is that right? 

Fared: Yeah. It was actually commissioned to me at the University of Texas at Austin by a friend at the time in the Persian department, and she said it would be wonderful if you recorded a melody to this, so I could teach my students to it. This was back in 2005, and what started out as a commission ended up being one of my most played and replayed songs, bani ādam, and the melody carried through, and I later recorded it in Tehran in 2007, and to this day, the meaning holds true as it has in a timeless sense. And I can't think of any other time in history where it’s ever so important to repeat these words and to understand them at at its core. 

Leyla: That's right. So it's a it's the I would say it's the quintessential Iranian poem. There's so many poems that everybody has memorized, but this one in particular is one that everybody has memorized. It is written everywhere in Iran. You see it. And as soon as someone says bani ādam, you know, you know exactly what they're trying to say, what they're saying. But it's really seeped its way into Western culture as well. There's a rug with this poem hanging in the United Nations. Coldplay has a song where bani ādam is in there. I mean, how many Persian poems, ancient Persian poems are there in current very popular pop music, for example? 

Fared: Right. No, it's a poem that transcends boundaries, as the words of Saadi is meant to be. And and as you know, and, and many of our lovely listeners, they, they understand that Saadi as opposed to Hafez, was one of the poets that took much time traveling and traversing the world. And I believe with travel, one learns to bridge the gaps and understand how much we are more alike than we are different. And I think it's beautiful to hear these words reverberate through the times. And, when I heard Coldplay record the song, I immediately searched, to see what they did with the poem. And it's interesting. And as we get into the poem, we're going to talk about some, some slight discrepancies. And as far as which word has been used and in which variation, which, you know, which take you take on it. But definitely this is a poem I recommend to all listeners that are in love with the Persian culture to to carry this as an heirloom of their own and, and have it shared far and wide. 

Leyla: Yeah. And for me, we're going to talk about a little bit about Saadi, his history, what context he wrote this poem under. But I just want to say that, for me, it's so important to talk about this poem right now, especially as you said. I mean, we're always living in these kind of fraught times. It seems like, you know, war after war after war, and a lot of times things become very complicated and people are like, oh, it's too complicated. You don't understand, you don't understand. But, you know, the lovers of peace throughout time have always been called naive, have always been called unrealistic. And I think that if you take this, the essence of this poem, any time anyone tries to justify harming other people, I always go back to this poem and I'm like, you didn't understand anything of this poem, then if you are thinking about, you know, harming people or, you know, if you don't love all children, like there's that James Baldwin quote that says, “the children are all all of ours”. I butchered the quote, but something like that. But more than that, it's like the humans are all all of us. We are all human beings. It goes back to the Eugene Debs quote of if one person is imprisoned, then we are all imprisoned. If one person is hurting, then we are all hurting. And I think that this poem, more than anything else, just distills this into a really beautiful, simple message. 

Fared: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, the very first words of this bani ādam is actually it transcends language because it's the same. It's understood, practically the same with the slight variation in pronunciation, both in Hebrew as well as in Arabic. So and it has biblical terms because ādam here we're talking about basically Adam. So bani, bani ādam, or in Hebrew, as they would say, Ben Adam, the Children of Adam. So it's it really does start off from the very core and, understanding that, hey, we are one big family and we're in this together, which could be the the success of the human race if we could truly latch on to that idea and to understand that what what hurts you will indelibly hurt me as well. And we need to understand this and come together. So, definitely. 

Leyla: Yeah. So I urge everybody to really memorize this poem, really let it seep into your bones, into your spirit. And never let anyone call you naive  for loving other human beings  and not making simple issues as how we're all united into something complex. That is my PSA before we go into this. And with that, let's talk a little bit about Saadi. What century was he in and what's the context of his life? 

Fared: So Saadi was born in the 1200s in Shiraz. And Saadi, unlike his main peer at the time or in that era of classical Persian poetry, Saadi took to the roads and to the Silk Road, and he traveled quite a bit. And you can see how, the life experiences of a poet truly infiltrates and penetrates the writing of their, of their time. So Saadi, being a man of travel, he was also considered the grand wordsmith, ostād-e sokhan, which is what they named him. And Saadi really brought back many, many, many tales of love. And I think it's so easy to fall in love when you're travel, because when you travel, you see, you see beautiful sights, beautiful things, beautiful people. And I think with him, he was he was a man of love that would go places and fall in love and leave. And the only way those loves were mortal, immortalized was through his poetry. And specifically, when it comes to bani ādam, I think it was a type of love that transcended, the unrequited love of the beloved. In the sense, a lot of the loves that we see celebrated in Hafez and Saadi poetry, here Saadi transcends and has more of a humanitarian tone, which I find it to be very, very rare at that era of writing in classical Persian poetry, much of the writing has a more of a personal, one on one relationship between, the, the beloved and the self, right? And that transcends the physical world. And it could go into this more spiritual world that oftentimes has to take that that can be interpreted of it. But here, Saadi clearly is speaking to the children of Adam. It's one of those moments where there is a prophetic sense behind his writing. And I can only imagine, in the 1200s, you're traveling, going through all the different countries that surround Iran at the time, and to come back to Shiraz and to realize we're all really the same. And the same problems that fall upon his society at that time in Shiraz, he probably saw the same wherever he went. And I think it's important to understand that this poem does stand apart from most of the poems you read in the Golestān, which is the collection of his poems, one of the most important books of poetry of all time. 

Leyla: Yeah. And it was a time of great turmoil, and it was a time of war. And like, refugees were everywhere. And I would say that, there was a lot of tribalism, you know, to have these wars, like, there's not a lot of information everywhere. So you have to kind of otherize other people. So this was a very radical idea for him to come back and be like, hey, actually, you know, there's been wars, there's been all this like, you know, things going on around us. But really, in essence, we're all human beings. This was quite a radical idea at the time. 

Fared: I sense that too. I feel, it just feels different. It has a different energy behind it and where most of the poems you read in Golestān makes you think of the first time you fell in love. Here, it's making me realize, oh, maybe that same love that we can have with the beloved can really transcend. And when I, when I lost my mother this last year, just to bring a personal anecdote into this story, it was very, very hard, obviously, to lose a mother. And my mother of all mothers was a beautiful lady, but I had to learn to transcend that love and to begin to feel the mother through all forms and all shapes and all colors of the rainbow. And my mother began to take on the same sort of energy of this poem, where I began to sense her in everything, even the ocean became motherly for me. So I think that transcending the ability of something that you may not be able to feel, you can feel that with everything and all things with Gaia, with the mother. So I wanted to just put that in there. 

Leyla: I was hoping that you would bring up your mother. Fared did have a truly remarkable mother who we lost, just over a year ago. They just celebrated the one year of her passing a few years ago. So, I think we can all feel her in this poem as well. And feel all of that in this poem as well. So thank you for bringing that up. Yes. So, yeah. So with that context, I guess, should we just get right into the poem? Let's jump in. Let's do it. Yeah. Anything else that we want to say about the surrounding circumstances? I think that's a good introduction. 

Fared: I think so. 

Leyla: Okay, so Fared, as always, is going to read the Persian version of the poem and I am going to read the translation.

Fared: bani ādam a'zāyé yek peykar-and  ké dar āfareenesh zé yek gohar-and 

Leyla: human beings are members of a whole in creation of one essence and soul. 

Fared: chō ozvee bé dard āvarad rooz'gār degar ozv-hā rā namānad gharār 

Leyla: If one member is inflicted with pain, other members uneasy will remain. 

Fared: tō k'az mehnaté deegarān bee gham-ee nashāyad ké nāmat nahand ādamee 

Leyla: If you have no sympathy for human pain, the name of human you shall not retain. 

Fared: Short and simple.

Leyla: I know. Short and simple. And again, I just want to reiterate. If there's one poem that you memorize, and just, like, put it in every cell of your body, it would be this poem. I at this point, I have this Instagram account, and every time some tragedy happens, I post, this is the first thing that I think about and I post it and then something else happens, and then I post it and I post, I post it, and I feel like a lot of times I'm like, we're still not getting it. I just have to post it all the time. So really, more than this, I think that there's just nothing else to say. Like you said. Like you can, relate it to, personal, you know, situation. You can relate it to all of humanity. But let's, I’ll stop soliloquizing about the poem and just say, I think it's very important, and let's go through it, bit by bit and talk about it. So if you want to go ahead and say the first line again. 

Fared: Sure. 

bani ādam a'zāyé yek peykar-and  ké dar āfareenesh zé yek gohar-and 

Leyla: Okay. So let's go through it. 

Fared: Yeah. So the beginning line, which is in some ways the title of this poem, which is also the title of my track in my album, bani ādam, as is the title and the track for Coldplay, Bani Adam. Bani ādam. ādam here literally means Adam, which is Adam and Eve. And bani would be considered the children are all the family of Adam, right. So the children of Adam. 

a'zāyé yek peykar-and 

So a'zā would be the limbs and the ligaments, the different parts of the same human body. peykar. So my body would be considered my peykar. This is a classical old Persian term for body. badan would be peykar. Yek peykar-and However, there are discrepancies with this word. And you hear it actually in the Coldplay song, I actually wrote the Coldplay guys about this when I saw it. I was like, guys, just so you know, the verdict is out. We're not so sure if this is deegarand or peykar-and. but it makes a lot more sense for it to be peykar-and because here we're talking about of one essence, of one body and in some ways we can think about this would be that we are the children of Adam that comprise all the parts to the whole of a single human frame. And, and then here peykar makes a lot more sense. So I've sat with many masters of Persian poetry and Persian classical music, and every time the discussion that this poem comes up, peykar seems to be of the opinion to be used. 

Leyla: Okay, but yeah, you can hear it both ways, but the general idea. And ādam is the word that we use for human being, bani ādam. So it's not gendered. The way it sound, it sounds when you translate it to English like Children of Adam sounds a little bit like it's gendered. But ādam is just human being. 

Fared: Correct. 

ké dar āfareenesh zé yek gohar-and 

ké dar, so that within, āfareenesh āfareenesh means creation. man meeāfarīnam. I create, āfareenesh. 

ké dar āfareenesh zé yek gohar-and 

Gohar here means of essence. Or also could have the dual meaning of jewel. So we are of the same essence, of the same source of that bright source, that the same light, the same jewel. We all come from that same essence within the creation. 

chō ozvee bé dard āvarad rooz'gār 

Because in time a part of the body shall hurt as we age. degar ozv-hā rā namānad gharār The other parts cannot remain silent if one part shall hurt. So here, it's speaking to empathy and sympathy and on a, on a, on a larger scale that that actually we are as if like we're one big organism, like one big fungi organism that grows in the rainforest, you know, it's all interconnected, like the trees with the roots underground. And I think here it's really evoking this sort of avatar, Mother Earth sort of energy behind, humanity that, hey, if there is pain, if there's pollution in India or in Thailand or in Japan or in China, it's one day going to catch up to Australia as it's going to catch up. So and for me to like, want to understand this, I really think of it in those terms that, oh, we're really all just one big connected body of people and all the problems that we see around the world today, the children that exist in Gaza the children that exist in Iran, the children that exist in Israel, the children that exist in America, in Mexico, they're really all part of the same family and we need to be thinking about all of them as the same. 

Leyla: And yeah, just as you're saying, like we've all had a pain in one part of our body and, you know, if our, you know, kneecap is broken, if someone asks, like, how are you doing? You're going to say, well, my kneecap is broken. You don't say, oh, well, my elbows fine. So that's, so I'm going to move on with my day. Like you have an essential problem in your body. 

Fared: Yeah. The, you know, this morning, my drummer, Rambod, he texted me saying, I'm sorry I couldn't pick up the phone last night because my back was out and he had to go to urgent care. Oh, wow. So this morning, I call him, and with, you know, really, like, almost like, hey, are you okay? And I felt. And I actually felt a little bit of pain in my own back, and I was like, oh, my God, I'm too much of an empath here. I'm completely picking up on his pain. But yeah, but we have to we have to take care of one another. We have to think about one another. 

Leyla: Absolutely. And now, here's the part where he really drives this home. So he set it up now. We have the idea that, okay, we're all connected. We can't have pain in one part without feeling it in the entire essence, in the entire body. So then what is this last driving? 

Fared: This last driving message is a little bit judgy.

Leyla: It is. It really is. 

Fared: It's a, he's bringing down the hammer. He's letting you know that, hey, if you don't have the capacity to have the sympathy, then let's listen to see what he says. He says 

tō k'az mehnaté deegarān bee gham-ee 

You that have no empathy for the pain of others. You don't have the- you don't feel sorrow for what's happening to others. 

nashāyad ké nāmat nahand ādamee 

You're not human.

Leyla: I love it. 

Fared: You shall not be called a human if you don't have the human capacity to care for another humans and suffering and pain, then therefore you yourself can't be considered a human. So yeah, he gets he gets a little judgy here. And it's definitely a plight away from apathy and, and I and I feel that, this message is strictly unique to this one poem in many ways. I, like I said, much of the classical Persian poetry of that era is of the seeking forever seeking, of the unrequited love of the beloved within, with within the other within, God. And it's always this very mystical. This really speaks to another type of mysticism, and it transcends the idea of, of just like this unilateral connection. It's just, no, it's this multi-lateral collect, connection. And it speaks of responsibility. 

Leyla: That’s right. 

Fared: There is a sense of responsibility here. Yeah. You are responsible. 

Leyla: And I love that nobody escapes this. You know, he all of a sudden. Because I feel like, yes, we're in the land of, positivity. And it's like, oh, yes, we are all part of one. Yes, yes, yes. And then all of a sudden he, like, looks at you and he says, hey, wake up, you're reading this, wake up, tō k'az mehnaté deegarān bee gham-ee And I love that he uses that informal tō. He's not, we're not playing games here. We're not. The gloves are off. Gloves are off, and nobody escapes this. Like, I'm reading this right now, He's looking at me, you know, and he causes you to just really look inward. tō k'az mehnaté deegarān bee gham-ee. Like you, me, all of us reading this poem and I really feel like that's that's a big part of it's like wake up, wake up and okay, pay attention. Chee shod. What happened? I was just reading a poem. And he really forces you to look at yourself. 

Fared: If I recall correctly, Leyla, I think it was Barack Obama who recited this. 

Leyla: Oh yeah, he did. 

Fared: One of his Nowruz greetings to the great Iranian people. 

Leyla: He did. Oh, wow. 

Fared:  And he used it and he, you know, with his Barack Obama voice, I can hear it right now that he, he recited this poem. 

Leyla: I'm going to read the part that he said that because that's very funny. So the first time he mentioned it, he mentioned it in two different years. The first time he mentions it, he said, I know that this he was trying to talk about peace and everything. And he said, I know this, that this won't be reached easily. There are those who insist that we be defined by our differences, but let us remember the words that were written by the poet Saadi so many years ago. The children of Adam are limbs to each other, having been created of one essence. And I think that he said it in Persian. But the next year, then he said, last year I quoted the words of the poet Saadi, who said, the children of Adam are limbs to each other, having been created of one essence, I still believe that. I believe it with every fiber of my being. And even as we have differences, blah blah blah. So I feel like poor Obama has discovered what we all discover, which is that we say, like I said two months ago, like I said yesterday, I do feel like a broken record saying this poem over and over again. But imagine how Saadi is just rolling in his grave all the time, thinking this many centuries later, we still didn't heed that last very, forceful message of his. We're still not learning. I guess that's the plight of the human. 

Fared: Well, it's, you know, this is a this discussion could take on many different forms at this point in it, because we could talk about the nature of human nature and what is human nature, what is the nature of humans and and how have we survived as, as, as much as we have? And are we going to survive or are we going to make it? And I think, I always think about primates. I think about the bonobos and I think about the chimpanzees and I think about how these two different types of primates, they, they're very different. The chimpanzees are very, very, very violent. And they can really turn on one another. And, and, they hunt other primates, whereas the bonobos are monkeys that are very much, loving and they're more matriarchal, if I'm correct about it. And, and I think that humans I think I think one of the things that we are hoping for is to go back towards the mother. And I started our discussion with my mom, and I think I'm going to end it with my mother and saying that, maybe one of the solutions is to understand that we all came from, from a mother and, and this earth is the mother. And we have to love our mother, respect our mother. And if we can actually go back to, to those roots of what makes humans humans, which is that relationship between the mother and the child and, and this, this toxic world of, you know, stones and guns and, you know, we we are definitely at a crossroads. And I think we're feeling it. We're sensing it everywhere in the world and, some places more than others. But, this is an opportunity as a as a slight reminder, again, from, centuries ago, where Saadi is letting us know that, hey, we have a responsibility to one another. And let's hope that we can, survive and make it.

Leyla: I love that message. Thank you, Fared jān. And Fared, as we said in the beginning, has a song based on this. So, we're going to post that as a link on this lesson. And of course, one of the best ways to learn is to just listen to that over and over again. You have a cheat for, this poem, as always, we're going to ask you to memorize the poem and recite it to us in a beautiful location. And that, I want everyone to take that part of the assignment very seriously for this poem, especially. Beautiful locations can mean very many different things to many different people. And so I urge you to think about what that means to you and to recite this poem. But you have this cheat of being able to listen to this wonderful song written now 20 years ago. Can you believe that? 

Fared: Wow, I it is, 20 years ago since this melody. Actually, Leyla, I would love to ask the lovely listeners of Chai and Conversation to sing the song. It's very singable, actually. I would, as you recite it, how about at the end of y’alls recital, you sing the melody to bani ādam as you hear it, in the link that will be shared. And I would love to hear everyone singing the song. 

Leyla: That's an added challenge. So as always, so we have this first lesson where we've talked about the essence of the poem, and we're going to have, a couple subsequent lessons where I go through the poem, word by word, phrase by phrase. You'll learn how to use these words in, common language and add it to your vocabulary so you can speak Persian even better. But knowing this poem gets you that much closer to really speaking Persian very beautifully, because it's a wonderful language that you can use at any time. So, Fared jān, thank you so much for another wonderful session talking about one of our favorite poems. 

Fared: Yeah, absolutely. Always wonderful to be here with you. 

Leyla: And until next time. 

Fared: Bye bye.