March 2014

There were 2 posts published in March 2014 (this is page 1 of 1).

Words for Garden

The_Secret_Garden_book_cover_-_Project_Gutenberg_eText_17396The word “bustan”, meaning usually an orchard or garden, is used by various Jewish-Palestinian organizations because it is known both in Arabic and Hebrew, and because it has pleasant associations in both cultures.

Interestingly, the word apparently comes from Persian. Bu- means fragrance. -stan means “place”. My source for this is the website www.iranica.com, which also mentions that Armenian has a word, burastan, which derives from it. The same source says that Bustan is a word only in New Persian, which goes back only as far as 800 BC. Since it somehow got into Hebrew and Arabic, I would have expected it to have arrived earlier.

The word –stan, i-stan, meaning “place” is familiar to everyone, since it appears in the names of numerous central Asian countries. It’s from an ancient Indo-European root, cognate to the Sanskrit sthaa, sthaana, etc., and the English word stand (source: Monier Williams Sanskrit-English dictionary).

The same iranica.com article also mentions various other words for garden. The word baag, an older Persian word, also means garden, but is more strictly a “lot” or “piece” of land. It derives from an Avestan word for “share”, just as in Hebrew, the word helka or lot, comes from the root helek or share. Baagh became a common word for garden in Urdu, Hindi and other languages.

Gardens seem to have been very central to Persian culture, for yet another of their garden words conquered the world: paridaiza (in Old Persian, originally from Avestan), from which the English word paradise, the Arabic word ferdaws, the Greek word parádeisos, and the Hebrew word pardes, are all derived. The word means literally an enclosed place (i.e. with walls around it). A longer explanation is to be found at balashon.com, which explores Hebrew etymology.

The English word garden expresses a very similar concept to paridaiza, in that it too means an enclosed space. It is cognate not only with another English word yard, French jardin, German garten, Latin hortus (cf. horticulture), but also with words meaning fortifications, like the Slavic grad, the old German gard (source: Wikipedia).

The usual Hebrew words for garden, gan, gina, come from the same root as lehagen: to defend or protect. So again, that’s the same concept as paridaiza and garden.

Across conflicts

I’m sorry nowadays that I didn’t see more of Pakistan, when I was there in the 1970s. I took the train up from Zahedan in southern Iran, through Baluchistan to Quetta, where I broke the journey for a night, before continuing to Lahore and the Wagah border. It would have been interesting to see Waziristan and Chitral, back in those safer times.

Now, when I read a book about Pakistan it is with the knowledge that I’ll probably never set foot there again. Partly because I have too many connections with Israel, partly because visa applications to India come with pointed questions about visits to Pakistan and a few other countries.

But Pakistan interests me none the less, and when I heard about a new novel by Fatima Bhutto, I pre-ordered it. Though only finished it now. It’s a fairly slim volume, but extremely well-conceived and written. It tells the story of three brothers and two women residents of the town of Mir Ali, in northern Waziristan. The storyline takes place in the space of a morning before Eid, though with many flashbacks to earlier times. It appears at the start to be a fairly routine morning for the brothers, with the one exception that they have decided to pray in different mosques, for reasons of safety. But gradually we are brought into a story of love and betrayal, desperate acts and crude compromises. Painful questions that hang over this fiercely independent border town are expressed and work themselves out through the lives of the characters.

There’s much in Mir Ali that resembles Palestine, or many another area of the world that deals with occupation, and the difficult decisions it spreads before the occupied. Whereas the menfolk, realizing the impossibility of their goals, falter, only the two women in the story preserve their bravery and self-respect, even if grief, horror and broken promises have made them crazy. It’s a sad tale, a hopeless reflection. Mir Ali may have been exploited and abused by outsiders, but ultimately what unravels its proud independent spirit is the desire for riches from outside: for cellphones, consumer goods, business deals and foreign study. The alternative to being co-opted is to match the enemy in ruthlessness and inhumanity. Either way, the battle is lost. Only the green pine-fragrant forests surrounding the town, themselves rustling with cells of violent jihadists, offer any intimation of integrity.