Dehkhoda in Dezak Castle  

        By: Majid Naficy


It still snows in Dezak.*
The nomads have returned to the warm plains
And the snow has covered their footprints.
I go to bring a candle
Before darkness falls like a dagger.

One can fight against the invaders in Tangestan.
One can go to forests with Kuchek Khan in Gilan.
One can bring out a newspaper in Tehran again.

Yet, all I want is a book,
Or rather a dictionary.
I will open it like the vast bed of the earth
And like a gazelle
Run from one word to another
On its fragrant leaves.
The words will pull me behind
And I will find my way from neighboring words
To the far and further ones.

This is all I need
The world is all mine
And Jahangir is with me.
When I become tired
I will close the book
And go to sleep on its big shoulder.

        January 13, 2007

*- Ali-Akbar Dehkhoda, satirist, lexicographer and journalist, published Sur Esrafil Newspaper during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution with the collaberation of Jahangir-Khan Shirazi . With the advent of First World War he went to Bakhtiari nomads’ land and spent a winter in the castle of Dezak, near Shahrkord, where the idea of writing an encyclopedic Persian dictionary captured his soul. During the Revolution, his friend Jahangir was choked to death by the executioners of Mohammad-Ali Shah in Baghshah, Tehran, and Dehkhoda wrote a poem in his memory with this famous line: “Remember, remember the dead candle”. I visited Dezak Castle in 1968. 

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