Pearls on the Ocean Floor

Pearls on the Ocean Floor

I went to see a documentary that was screened at OU last night.  The documentary, Pearls on the Ocean Floor had a profound impact on me.  It was about Iranian women artists, both in Iran and living estranged from their home countries in different places around the world.  There were many different mediums the women used in their art work and many different styles and modes of expression.

When I lived in Iran I had several students who were also artists. One of them was a pharmacist and was taking watercolor classes from a male watercolor artist there.  She was a cheerful woman over 50 who had accomplished much in her life.  She was independent, an entrepreneur who owned one of the few 24-hour pharmacies in our city.  She was strong, outspoken and loved to gossip. Actually, she never knew it but gossip almost ruined our friendship.  I decided in the end that it was worth it to keep her friendship because she was such a fascinating person and ultimately I learned incredible things from her.  I simply steered our conversations away from things I didn’t want discussed in the neighborhood, and instead thoroughly enjoyed our conversations about spirituality, art, and the meaning of life.  We held our classes at the back of the pharmacy, and many times she would have paint brush in hand and we would chat merrily in English about the intrigues and goings-on in her art class.  It seems she had quite an eccentric in her artist teacher and he was surrounded by a bevy of scarf-clad lovelies who vied for his approval. She was an infinitely spiritual person, who had also suffered the death of a teenage son, and domestic abuse.  Once she told me about her prayer room, a small room in her house that she had painted green with a green carpet and green curtains.  Green is the color of spring, of spiritual matters, of saints, and of prayers in Iran.  It has a meaning and a life all its own in Persian culture.  Without having lived in Iran, or closely with Iranians, it is hard to explain the bittersweet, lovely, reverent emotion that green provokes in Iran.  One of the artist ladies in Pearls on the Ocean Floor did an installation that said in lovely Persian calligraphy, “My green isn’t your green.”  She lives in Germany and she was comparing the cultural significance of the color in that country to the meaningful, emotional significance that the word carries in Farsi.  Sabz. Green.  No, not the same in English.

Another thing that is so culturally different is the phrase, “Oh my God!”  and “Khodayah Man!” I’ve been watching a lot of stand-up comedy done by Persians lately with my oldest son.  It is so funny to us because we completely understand the context.  A lot of them will do a heavily Iranian accented English, and invariably it’s peppered with lots of “Oh my God!”s emphatically exclaimed.  It’s funny because probably two of every three Iranians I know will use this phrase passionately when speaking English.  Before I lived in Iran, my fundamentalist Christian upbringing had me cringing every time my Iranian friends used OMG so carelessly (taking the name of the Lord in vain), but when I got to Iran and learned Farsi, somehow it didn’t seem like a careless exclamation, but more a passionate invocation.   More like, God are you hearing this?  Depending on the emotion of the exclaimant, it could be awe or exuberance: “Khodayah Man! How Beautiful!” as in “My God, what a beautiful baby!”  Then OMG was a word of exquisite praise to the Creator.  Or it could be “Khodayah Man! Really?” as in “OMG.  This kid won’t eat!  I’ve worked hard all day cooking and now he won’t eat.”  It’s like saying God, I love you, but you see what I have to go through here?  Sometimes it’s used as a lament:  “Khodayah Man, na”  as in “Oh, no, my God, no”  I suppose that one is universal, we all really want God to help take things back and make things right at horrific times in our lives.  It’s crazy how OMG in Farsi rings in my ears as part of a passionate, everyday conversation with God, but that fundamentalist upbringing still makes me hesitate slightly when I hear OMG in regular conversation in English.   Have I lost something in translation or gained a richer vocabulary?  Depending on the day, time, and my level of nostalgia it could be a lot or little of both.  There are no longer fundamentalist black and white colors in my world, instead infinite shades of gray.