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I called my wife at work on Wednesday, before Thanksgiving, to thank her for sending me the sweetest electronic sympathy card, ever! The card was a heartfelt message of sympathy for the passing away of one of my uncles. He had died the night before in a hospital after a long illness.

The sweetness and sincerity of the card was not only its simplicity: an email, but the fact that Suzanne had sent it in Farsi. She does not know the language, which is my mother tongue of course. Beyond a few spoken words (i.e. Salam, Xoda-Hafez, Fatva, Noruze, and Ta'aruf) she has not demonstrated any writings of Farsi before. She, however, had done her best and had written a most sincere sympathy sentence into an online translator. She had then copied the translation and sent it to me, verbatim and here is where it gets to the sweetness. I knew what she had meant to say but the robotic translator had made a mockery of both languages (She put in: Dear, I am very sorry for your loss. and it came out as:

عزيز من متاسفم از شما براي از دست رفتن است

(Roughly: My dear I am disappointed for loss is-or other variations)

I did tell her that the message was the sweetest card I ever got. We had a good laugh in memory of my uncle (Gholamreza) who was a retired English teacher in Esfahan, Iran. She knew him as an occasional voice on the phone.

Being the type not to give up she then had submitted the phrase to another web translation platform and sent me this:

عزیز , من بسیار متاسفم برای از دست دادن خود را از عمو رضا.

Roughly: (My dear, I am very sorry for losing yourself uncle, Reza.)

OK, more laughter and may he rest in peace. And, yes Aghasi did sing in his wedding.