Maraż-i khud-khāṣ-pandārī Persian 9/15/2025

In those moments, I remembered that fish that had washed up on the shore. Its scales and gills opened and closed. It knew there was no water—but still it kept moving. The fish’s gaze was fixed on the sea, and its only hope was that the sea, its kind mother, would send a wave to the shore to carry it back into the water. Its prayer was answered, and a large wave engulfed the entire shore and the fish itself, letting a little water trickle beneath its weary scales.

But that wave, its last hope, instead of returning it to the sea, pushed it further away from the shore. Subsequent waves only shifted it along the beach. With each wave, the fish gained a new hope of returning to the sea, and when despair came, the next wave sparked another hope. A continuous, painful torment.

Until one wave hurled it to the end of the shore, a place where no hope of returning to the sea remained. The fish was still alive, but its scales were motionless, it no longer looked at the sea, and its hope of returning was dead; yet its body lived on. Occasionally, its body opened and closed its gills in a struggle against death, but it was a futile effort, for there was no glimmer of hope for return.

All that remained was the dying and enduring of that weary body.

Hope from despair is a more skillful tormentor.