Words • Vocabulary • Basic Communication • t'Arof • Creativity • Poetry •
by Rezwan on 12/17 at 04:09 PM
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My favorite Persian t’Arof, right up there with “step on my eyeballs” and “I am your sacrifice” is this one.  “extiAr dArid.”  (Others write it as ekhtiaar, ekhtyar, ekhtyaar.  Sound it out: ecch, like yeccch, ti like tea, Ar, like are.  eccch-tea-are, d-are-eed.  extiAr dArid.  See our transliteration section).  What does it mean, and why is it the coolest t’Arof ever?

“extiAr dArid” gets used a lot in Persian polite-ness.  It’s multi-purpose useful.  Any time you don’t know what to say, you say it. 

If someone says “come visit us more often” you say “extiAr dArid”. 
If they say “what a wonderful hostess you are” you say “extiAr dArid”.
If they say “you are so adorable my soul is aflame!”  You say, “extiAr dArid”. 
If they say “I am the sacrifice for your liver” you say “extiAr dArid”. 

dArid, of course, means “you have”.  So, clearly, this phrase means “you have extiAr.”  I was never sure what this extiAr was that I was telling people they had.  Just used it since it seemed to fulfill its polite function.

But talk about using a chainsaw to cut butter.  Look up extiAr.  It means:  authority, power, option, free will, choice, control, discretion, mandate and so forth. 

Who knew you could get one word to mean so many cool, empowering things!?

So, in the context of t’Arof above, every time someone offers you something, and your answer is “you have the power/choice/etc.” what you are doing is reminding them that their offer of whatever it is is an exercise of their free will. 

What a thrilling thing to tell someone.  “You’ve got the power”.  To remind them regularly that all their actions are an exercise in free will, in choice.

extiAr and criticism - اختيار و انتقاد

Now, let’s apply this to mistakes or the attempt to criticize someone.  Say someone is giving you a ride home.  They are driving.  They come to an intersection.  They are about to turn left.  But you, in fact, live to the right.  Do you say:

“You fool!  You’re going the wrong way!  I live to the right!”

No.  You say:

“extiAr dArid, but I live to the right.”

Do you see the profound difference, so subtly expressed? The shift in attitude, the opening up of possibilities?  What you are really telling the driver here is:

You have the power!  You have the free will to drive however you want, in whatever direction you want.  You have the authority to turn left, drive around the city a few times, get to my house via IsfahAn, run over that lady and her baby.  Or don’t drive me home at all!  Let’s drive from here into the Grand Canyon!  The choice is yours.  Although, for the record, I live that way - two blocks.  If this information is of any use to you, I humbly offer it.

Then the driver, who does, in fact, have the power to do a number of surprising things in that particular moment, can take that very moment to exercise his free will, to consider if he does, in fact, want to drive around the city, or if he wouldn’t rather just turn right, given this information you have so thoughtfully and humbly supplied.

That’s what I’m talking about.  This simple phrase is a powerful reminder that in fact, human beings are WILD!  We are untamed things who come together by consensus and agreement to live a civil life.  In fact, we all have a lot of power we don’t even recognize on a daily basis.  While certain traffic rules exist and there may be some optimal ways to achieve certain goals, (some would crudely phrase this as “the RIGHT way to do something”), in fact, a person technically has the power to do quite a lot of things in any given moment.  Do you feel the power of this moment?  YOU HAVE THE POWER!  RIGHT NOW!  TO DO A LOT OF THINGS.

There may, of course, be tragic consequences to doing many of the things that you have the power to do, but that doesn’t negate the fact that you do, in fact, have the power. 

So…extiAr dArid, however, on this website, we encourage you, in your comments to each other, when you’re about to make a criticism, remember, a person has free will.  They have the power to express themselves in whatever ridiculous way they want.  Now, if you have a few suggestions that they might want to consider that will improve their use of language, please!  Express yourself.  extiAr dArid.  Just preface every critique with extiAr dArid, and it should all be an empowering experience.

You know, there are Californians who pay large sums of money to attend New Age seminars to learn the simple truth that life is all about Choice and how to be present to the possibilities.  And here, Iranans have been saying this to each other routinely, for millennia, to the point that we’ve forgotten what it means.

Truly progressive t’Arof.