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Words

Gerdu
An Iranian love affair

 

December 24, 2005
iranian.com

The other day I went past the baking section of the supermarket in quest of dried walnut (Persian: gerdu) for the winter salad that I planned to build for our cherished Iranian guests. Unlike them, we hardly entertain, largely because I have such an exaggerated sense of hospitality that usually the thought of entertaining renders me paralytic for an entire day in advance. What adds to my anxiety is also that I will not accept a new invitation from the same people without first reciprocating for their last invite. It is a dance.

We see A&J once every season, literally. Usually, I kick off the routine by having them over for the start of my barbeque season in late June. Then we get to go to their place for a sumptuous dinner in the autumn. Then comes winter and we get together around our dining room table for my winter salad, which is never the same as the year before, and aash-e-anar (pomegranate soup). It is not really “soup,” it is aash, somewhere between stew and soup, a delicate balance that only 2,500 years of Iranian ingenuity could refine as matter of culinary engineering and linguistic invention. In the spring, we will congregate once again at their place. 

When everything is ready for the guests, I distract myself with writing. I am therefore writing these lines I anticipation of their arrival. They are usually punctual and I know they will arrive before I finish this essay.

My winter salad consists of slices of one peeled pickling cucumber, cut up pieces of two average sized plum tomatoes, a handful of crushed dried walnuts, one half of a peeled and skinned grapefruit and slices of a sixth of a medium sized red onion. I let all that marinate in a combination of one part vinegar, one part olive oil, salt and ground pepper. Right before serving, I add one half of a good sized Romaine lettuce cut into bite size pieces, a handful of blue cheese, a handful of dried cranberries, and slices of a red delicious apple. Toss and serve. I do not use scientific measurements when I work in the kitchen, I guess just like the way I deal in linguistics!

I never liked the supermarket dried crushed walnuts that come in packages. There is a taste to them that cries stale, or preservatives. I prefer buying the dried walnuts whole and de-shell them myself. Every time I do this, I cannot help but think of the love that an Iranian has for the walnut. When we were kids, Uncle Daryoush used to crack two dried walnuts in his palm and we thought he had “broken the elephant’s penis” (a Persian allusion to accomplishing great feat of strength).

Nothing though took away from the pleasure of finding our own fresh walnuts and breaking them open with a half-brick or stone. I still do this in the United States but not to any old walnut: I reserve the treatment for the walnuts that look big enough to yield more meat then the crabby stuff that fall off the run-of-the-mill walnut tree in my backyard. Then I spend hours trying to get the brownish dye out of my fingers, never mind explaining the tint to the uninitiated.

In my childhood, the gerdu-ee, or walnut peddler, was a common sight in the streets of Golhak. In the early to mid summer months, he would set up his gig on the house-side of the open gutter (joub) selling his freshly peeled walnuts by the fal (unit of sale equal to six walnuts, if memory serves) from the murky water of a huge glass jar. The salt was a little extra. Sometimes he would set the fal up into pyramid structure, which he would scoop with his fingers, like taking a logmeh or swipe of rice, and place the nuts in newspaper wrap. The salt was extra.

The de-shelled dry gerdu is also found in the Iranian hospitality room co-mingling with other dried nuts and seeds. In that sense the nut is a fruit for all seasons. It is also a decent addition to some kitchen recipes. In the dish called fesenjan (per Maideh Mazda “Chicken with Pomegranate Sauce”), for example, dried walnut is ground and mixed with pomegranate paste (rob-e anar). By the way -- It just occurred to me that before tomato paste became all the craze in Iran (naturally, because it came from farang, Europe), Iranians probably used pomegranate paste to induce tartness and color to the dish.  

Tomato sauce is west, pomegranate sauce is east, and the twain shall never meet. By the same token not all that glitters is gold. In Farsi, the saying involves the walnut! Not all that is round is a walnut (har-che gerd ast gerdu nist). This brings me to a brief discussion of the yet another Persian in English, prompted by an inquiry from a reader. The word gerd (originally, gard) in Persian means round, both in a metaphysical sense (gardouneh=wheel) and geometrical sense (gerd=circle). It also has a “fullness” connotation, like in gerd-o-golombeh.

The question posed by the reader was: if the Persian gerd is related to the English “girdle.” The English “girdle,” means a sash worn around the waist, derived form the word “gird,” which means to encircle with a belt or band, also to surround. This one derived from “girth,” which meant circumference. In Original Teutonic, which comes the closest to Iranian, the word was gerda. In Persian gerdu the suffix “u” is simply a reference to gerd, yielding the literal meaning “the round one.” The term gordo in Spanish meaning “big” or “fat” is a derivation of the same notion of “round” an “plumb.” 

The fact the earth is round today should not give the impression that Persian gerd also inspired the English word “ground.” Not until recently everyone thought that the earth was flat, it would be better to thing of the Persian influence on the word “ground” as sangag is to song! 

Another possible word connection brought up by the same reader was between the English “ponder” and Persian pendar. The issue has arisen because when I ponder, I am usually doing so in a thoughtful mode. The word “pendar,” the same as in Sanskrit, means “thought.” In Old English the term pinder was used to describe the person who weighed cattle, a pounder. The Oxford English Dictionary indicates that “ponder” derived from the Latin pondus, meaning “weight.”

If there is a connection between ponder or pounder and pendar it shows up best in the term pontificate, which truly means thinking the heavy stuff! But not, pontificate derives from Latin and from the function of the pontifex, a ceremonial official. The closest that pendar comes to a contemporary European language word ids the French penser, and better yet the Spanish pensar, both meaning “to think, to think over” to ponder!

The French penser is claimed to derive from the Latin root pensare, which came from peser. In French then peser means to weigh, the same as ponder, before it assumed a thoughtful meaning! The substitution of “d” from the Persian pendar to “z” or “s” in the Latin pensare is not fatal, in my estimation, to the proposition that, yes, pendar is probably the predecessor of ponder.     

While I was in the letter “P” I looked up the English word “placid,” which I had found very much to convey in some bizarre way an aspect of the Persian word palacideh (withered, faded, drooping). The word “placid” in English means pleasing, calm, gentle, mild, calm. It derives from the Latin placidus. But I am heartened in my quest by learning that the English word “flaccid” that sounds so much like “placid” comes from the French flaccide, which comes from the Latin flaccidus. And guess what this Latin word means? Yep! It means flabby, just like a droopy withered flower; the same as the Persian  palacideh?

Lastly. I have been asked to say if the word “state” is related to stan, the suffix in Persian that denotes “country or place of.” The answer is no. The Persian stan is the contraction of ostan or ustun, which began as a Tabari word for “mountain.” I have written about this in my four-part piece about the mountain majesties of Iran. The term state derives from the Latin status through the French etat and English estate. The German word staat for country or state also one that has its roots in the Romance languages.  

My guests have just arrived.

Postscript. To the impertinent, jealous and nitpicky anonymous coward who claims descend from the line of rishu-shipishu ayatollahs, Google this!

About
Guive Mirfendereski is a professorial lecturer in international relations and law and is the principal artisan at trapworks.com. Born in Tehran in 1952, he is a graduate of Georgetown University's College of Arts and Sciences (BA), Tufts University's Fletcher School (PhD, MALD, MA) and Boston College Law School (JD). He is the author of A Diplomatic History of the Caspian Sea >>> Features in iranian.com

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