The Word for Body-Soul
I was asked, once, for a word that is not in the English Language but I wish it were. I suggested a word that means both soul and body, a word that reunites the pervasive dualism in my language, and therefore in my thinking. In an interview in P EN America #13 Lovers , Atiq Rahimi, who won the 2008 Prix Goncourt for his novel The Patience Stone , gave such a word from classical Persian poetry: "jaan." He says to his interviewer Lila Azam Zanganeh: It's a word used in Iran and Afghanistan and Tajikistan. It is a word of daily life. It's something that we add to the name: for example, you would be Lilajaan. It would be translated as "my dear Lila." It is a word that describes at the same time the body and the soul. There is no separation in "jaan." This separation is something that we find in Christian culture, in Judaism, and in Islam, but before that we had this idea. The separation came about with Islam and with the Judeo-Christian tradition;...