Informant: My friend is Persian, and her mother told her old tales like these in order to get her to behave as a child.
Original Piece: Women’s dreams are the opposite – usually the most relevant when something big is happening in your life and it’s constantly on your mind and you dream about it, the opposite is what’s actually going to happen. For example, when my high school Mock Trial team made it to finals, I could barely sleep the night before. It was constantly on my mind and I had a dream we won and it was announced on the school intercom and it was a whole ordeal. Woke up to the news that we lost. But it relates to other things too – for example, if you dream someone is sick or dying that means they’ll live a long healthy life. Essentially it’s the flip side of every story.
Context of Performance: I invited her over for dinner and we were remembering stories we shared as roommates, and I remembered her talking about all the things she used to believe growing up. I asked her if she would share any particular pieces of folktale from her childhood.
Thoughts about the Piece: This piece is particularly funny to me. I remember we used to argue over whether this is true, because even in college she would interpret her dreams (and mine) according to this belief.
Monthly Archives: May 2017
Persian Food Beliefs
Informant: My friend is Persian, and her mother told her old tales like these in order to get her to behave as a child.
Original Piece: Food related rules: don’t eat chocolate or anything with sugar before bed or else you’ll have bad dreams…later I realized that’s so I don’t have energy when I sleep. Then, let’s see… oh, don’t eat when you’re crying or it’ll turn into poison in your stomach. Again, I later realized that’s so I don’t find comfort in eating when I’m sad. When you get a new car, you have to run over an egg, because the egg symbolizes any accidents or danger that can happen to you in the car, and by doing it to an egg, right when you get the new car, it takes the place of the impending danger in a light, easier way.
Context of Performance: I invited her over for dinner and we were remembering stories we shared as roommates, and I remembered her talking about all the things she used to believe growing up. I asked her if she would share any particular pieces of folktale from her childhood.
Thoughts about the Piece: I love hearing these stories, which always seemed like quirks of hers, until she told me the reasons behind them. I remember even in college, although she knew these things aren’t necessarily true, she still abided by them… just in case.
Chesh
Informant: My friend is Persian, and her family practices traditions like these.
Original Piece: Huge part of Persian culture: chesh-ing someone! Chesh (ch-eh-sh) literally means “eye” in Farsi and here it means the evil eye or in English it’s when someone jinxes you. It’s basically when someone sees you and envies you or is jealous of you and sends evil spirits… or vibes, for lack of a better word, your way. Usually it happens out of jealousy, like when you show up to a party and you’re the only one wearing a dress and everyone is in jeans and you look really good… but sometimes it can happen innocently too, like you see your family members after a long time and they say “wow you’re so beautiful and so grown up and so mature”. Or you’re successful in school/work and someone says “wow she has it all together she’s amazing”. But basically to save yourself from the “bad omens” being sent your way, someone will have to light up this herb… which, it’s a mixture of a lot of things, but I’m unsure exactly what… until it’s smoking and you say a phrase, which loosely translates to mean “keep the bad eyes away”, while circling it over the person’s head. When someone opens a new business or goes to a new job or is promoted you can put small amounts of this herb in the four corners of the room to make sure there’s only good spirits and good luck in the beginning of the business. Like when my dad moved offices, his office had a couple small circular dishes of this on his desk for a couple weeks.
Context of Performance: I invited her over for dinner and we were remembering stories we shared as roommates, including traditions and practiced her family introduced to me. I asked her if she would share some of these pieces of folktale.
Thoughts about the Piece: I remember first learning about the “evil eye” after my informant’s aunts complimented me, and her mother insisted on lighting herbs to keep the bad omens away. This is one of my favorite practices, as I find it interesting how the evil eye recurs in so many of their traditions.
Jinn in the Bathhouse
Informant: My friend’s mother tells stories about the Jinn, as her mother’s nanny originally told her, which were then passed down to Shiva. She says she does not know if Jinn exist, but there are certainly people in Iran who swear they are real. She has fun telling these stories because of their potential for belief.
Original Script: There is a story that this guy went to, before going to work they would go to public baths, it was normal, and this guy went to a public bath at five o’clock, five in the morning one day, Jinn’s hour. And the housekeeper, the bath-keeper, wasn’t there initially. So he just goes in, and he dips in the jacuzzi or whatever, the bathtub that they have, and usually someone comes and pours some water on you, and there’s this other person who comes and rubs you. And he says that as he approached him and poured water on him, he notices the feet, and the feet aren’t feet! Not human feet! And he looks up and he sees the other people that are there, none of them have human feet. And he gets scared and he runs out. Oh, they start singing and dancing for some reason, saying, “don’t be scared, we’re good!” And then he runs outside and sees the bath-keeper, the lady that’s there, and she says, “where are you going, where are you going?!” and he looks down, and she’s one of them too! So he just runs outside, butt naked. (SJ)
Context of the Performance: Over dinner, family members exchanged old folk stories they remember from Iran.
Thoughts about the Piece: I enjoyed this piece, as everyone around the table was invested and entertained by the story. It also provided insight to ways of the past while the story itself retains humor.
Ava in the Civil War
Informant: My grandmother told this story of the town she was born and raised in, and still lives today. She laughed through this whole story. She does not know how true it is, but she says it makes sense because the town straddled both sides during the Civil War.
Original Script: “Well I guess the most celebrated general from the Civil War is General Logan, you know the school’s named after him and the parks and… well. The story is, he tried to form a company from scratch to fight for the south, but he couldn’t get enough people to join. So he formed a company to fight for the north instead!”
Context of Performance: She told me and my sisters over breakfast one morning.
Thoughts about the Piece: This is a funny antidote describing the role a tiny town like Ava played during the war. I like hearing about the role such a rural, midwest area would have in the war between the states.