April 4 was the Remembrance Day of Parvin E’tesami. Parvin is known as “The most famous” 20th Century Iranian female poet (1907–1941).

She grew up in an intellectual environment, under supervision of her father Yusuf Etesami who had a literary background. Women’s lives were very restricted during that time in Iran, and poetry was the only art in which a woman could express her thoughts and feelings. In such an atmosphere, Etesami and other early modern women writers in Iran provided a strong feminist claim for women’s rights.

In one of her poems, “A Twig of a Wish”, she asserts women’s importance by pointing out that women are in charge of nurturing and educating all children (both male and female), they should have greater respect and an equal chance for education as men.
She was a member of the Kanoun-e-Banovan and supported the Kashf-e hijab reform against compulsory hijab (veiling).

Her father died in 1938, and she died only three years later of Typhoid fever. She was buried near her father in Qom, near the Masumeh shrine.

Parvin Etesami’s house became an Iranian national heritage site on October 19, 2006.

Today I came across this beautiful poem from Sa’adi Shirazi.

بنی آدم اعضای یکدیگرند

که در آفرينش ز یک گوهرند

چو عضوى به درد آورد روزگار

دگر عضوها را نماند قرار

تو کز محنت دیگران بی غمی

نشاید که نامت نهند آدمی

banī ādam a’zā-ye yekdīgar-and
ke dar āfarīn-aš ze yek gowhar-and
čo ‘ozvī be dard āvarad rūzgār
degar ‘ozvhā-rā na-mānad qarār
to k-az mehnat-ē dīgarān bīqam-ī
na-šāyad ke nām-at nahand ādamī

As it happens, April 21, is the great poet’s birthday and is registered in the Iranian calendar as Sa’adi’s commemoration day. It is interesting to note that a Persian rug presented to the United Nations in 2005 and currently on display at the entrance of the Hall of Nations at the UN Headquarters in New York, has an inscription of this poem.

There are many translations but below are two that capture the true meaning of this poem.

This is a verse translation by Ali Salami:

Human beings are limbs of one body indeed;
For, they’re created of the same soul and seed.
When one limb is afflicted with pain,
Other limbs will feel the bane.
He who has no sympathy for human suffering,
Is not worthy of being called a human being.

And by Richard Jeffrey Newman:

All men and women are to each other
the limbs of a single body, each of us drawn
from life’s shimmering essence, God’s perfect pearl;
and when this life we share wounds one of us,
all share the hurt as if it were our own.
You, who will not feel another’s pain,
you forfeit the right to be called human.

For more information about the translation and interpretation services offered by the Farsi
Translation Center, click here.