Tag Archives: persian proverb

A Liar is Forgetful

Context:

This is a proverb that is commonly used among the family and friends of my informant. My informant is a coworker from my job. She immigrated to the United States from Tehran, the capital of Iran, when she was 16 years old and has a lot of family here that she enjoys continuing her traditions with.

  • “doruygu kam hafeze ast,” or “دروغگو کم حافظه است”
    • Transliterated Proverb
      • “A liar is forgetful”
    • Full translation: A liar tends comes up with a lot of fake stories, and so they need to have a good memory to keep up with all of them. So a translation of the true meaning of the phrase would be along the lines of, “a liar should have a good memory.”
    • Explanation by my coworker: “Let’s say you lie to someone about something and then you go and forget about it, and then at a later time you come back and accidentally tell them the actual truth, then that person figures out that these stories don’t match or don’t go together. So that’s why they say that if you lie to much, then you don’t have a good memory becuase you don’t remember what you lied about before.”

Thoughts: I found this proverb/maxim to be quite interesting and it kind of added a new perspective to how I think about someone who has told lies in the past and tries to cover them up. At first, I didn’t really understand the maxim, but with some thoughful explanation from my coworker, it started to make a lot more sense. I may be wrong in my interpretation of its use but it seems as though it is used by someone who has been lied to, which may open to door to the negative perspective that people of Perisan culture have towards lying.

Did you see the camel? No you did not!

Context:

This is a proverb that is commonly used among the family and friends of my informant. My informant is a coworker from my job. She immigrated to the United States from Tehran, the capital of Iran, when she was 16 years old and has a lot of family here that she enjoys continuing her traditions with.

  • “šotor didi? nadidi,” or “شتر دیدی؟ ندیدی”
    • Transliterated proverb:
      • “Did you see the camel? No you did not!”
    • Full translation: This maxim is essentially indicating that if you see something that is obvious that you were not meant or supposed to see, then you should act as if you didn’t see it. Put in other words, its true meaning is along the lines of, “you see nothing, you hear nothing.”
    • Explanation by my coworker: “So lets say you’re trying to hide someone from knowing something that they see or hear. We use a camel in this maxim because it’s a large animal and easy to spot, obvious basically, just like something that you may have just seen or heard. So basically, you obviously saw or heard something that is as obvious as a camel, but you’re making the concious decision to hide that information.”

Thoughts: I thought it was really interesting that a camel was used as an obvious sight. It shines light on the regional uniqueness of the maxim and perhaps illustrates that the saying goes far back in history. In modernity, there a lot more large, obvious things that could be used to replace the role of the camel in the maxim, yet it persists because of its place in the history of the region.