Week 4 Reading Diary: Persian Tales

For this reading diary I decided to focus on Persian Tales. I read a collections of fairy tales translated from the Kermani and Bakhtiari dialects of the Persian language by David Lorimer and his wife Emily Lorimer when they were living in Iran during the 20th century.

The Shepherd Who Found a Treasure: This was an interesting fairy tale. It was a little complicated to follow and was slow getting started, but once you understood what was going on it was very compelling. My only complaint is that he didn’t share the treasure with the other shepherd who had the dream. I think it was selfish and dishonest of him to keep is all for himself.

The Story of the Baker and the Grateful Fish: This was my favorite story. It had many different layers to it because there was trickery, kindness, and revenge. It did a good job of encompassing all of that. I like that the fish saved the baker because he was kind to them by feeding them bread every single day. They repaid him in a very decent way by saving his life in the river. I think this teaches the lesson of “treat someone the way that you want to be treated.” I also like how he got payback on his old master in the exact some way that he was once betrayed. However, the master was not able to be saved because he was never kind to anyone or anything so no one was kind to him back.

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