And What About Our Scholars?

Translated from the Persian original.

Last year one of our country's great scholars was my guest, for a reason other than any merit of my own. He is not only a great philosopher and thinker, he is admired by all for his mysticism too, and around the world he is well known and renowned as a scholar of literature.

He told me a memory that moved me deeply, and these days I have found myself retelling it to my friends again and again; I will share it with you too:

Once, when he and his wife were waiting at an airport and people around them were expressing their admiration, a zealous woman, who seemed to be suffering from something, suddenly came up and voiced her objection like this:

“I didn't expect to see a musical instrument on your shoulder (he plays the tar, and that day he was carrying his tar on his shoulder), and I didn't expect to see your wife with such incomplete hijab either (his wife does not wear a chador).”

The master, a little upset in front of the people, replied: “About my wife, ask her yourself, for she has her own independent rights, and as it happens she is very learned and teaches at a university. As for me, madam: I am this country's scholar, not you, and it is you who must change yourself by comparison with me; it is you who must learn how to be from scholars, not attack me in front of a crowd like this with your incomplete thoughts.”

“I am this country's scholar, not you.”

We have always been either in the right place at the wrong time, or in the wrong place at the right time.

And that is how we have always lost one another!