Believe it or not, it has been a whole month since I left American soil! Returning to this place has been quite the adventure with it’s ups and downs. It’s a good thing I like life to have a bit of advenutre and the unexpected, because that’s what I get every day.
But, in the process of getting settled in here and back into life, I have started up with language lessons again a few days a week. I’m very conversant in my language but I’m finding that I tend to use the same words and grammar structures over and over to make my point. People understand me, but I was getting in a rut. Thankfully, we are connected with a woman who is an amazing teacher, and I’ve been working with her. She doesn’t let one object marker or one mis-conjugated verb slip by. Frustrating sometimes, but so helpful!
So, yesterday we met again and rather than just go into sentences and the picture story we have been working through, she spent some time telling me about the customs here surrounding New Years. Many of them I was familiar with but there were some things, like the things that they do at home that I hadn’t heard much about. So, there I was listening (and feeling pretty proud of myself that I was picking up probably 80-90% of what she was saying) and asking questions.
Then she tells me about what happens at home the night before New Years day here. The young children will put henna on their hands and wrap cloth around it overnight so that it sets in really nice and dark. They then wake up early, pull of the cloth and run around showing everyone how beautiful their hands are (My opinion is still to be decided on that….I love henna if it’s the decorative and intricate designs, but here also, they just cover their entire palm in it…so their skin is a brownish/orange. They think it’s beautiful…often I just think it’s, well, orange.)
Then my teacher tells me that they spread out the dasterkhan which is a giant tablecloth put on the floor for eating. Then she tells me that they fill it with things that have seen in them (not the english word seen but a word here pronounced the same way). Now I was wracking my brain to try to remember the word seen. I didn’t know this word. So, I kept listening to her story to figure out if I could pick up the meaning. She gave me some examples and then continued on telling me the whole family sits around these things, and they are really good things and they pray for the New Year together that God would bless it, that they would have health, etc. Now, my training from Wheaton was kicking in and I was thinking, well, this sounds a bit like folk religions, and I bet seen maybe means something like a magic power, or something that has strong characteristics to it. I wrote these notes in my language notebook and made a mental note to check with a local teammate of mine.
My language lesson ended and I went to talk to my teammate about it, thinking I’d hit on some deep meaningful thing in the culture. As I told him the story he said, “oh yeah. Seen…as in the letter S. They are all things that start with the letter S.” Sure enough I looked over my list of things she mentioned: sabzi, safed, somoloq, etc. Not the deep spiritual meaning I was thinking for sure! But my next question is, “why? Is there a meaning behind it, or just a tradition?” I’ll have to find out and get back to you. (although, I’ve figured out “why?” is a frustrating question to ask here because you usually don’t get an answer, or not an answer that seems conclusive!)
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