"This song is actually for memorizing the musical notes and about fortunes." -Maryam

Notes

*We had a difficult time translating this line. We decided on "reading my fate". It's like divination... like the English game of pulling petals off a flower and saying, "he loves me, he loves me not" until all the petals are gone and on the last petal you find out if he loves you or not.

Maryam wrote, "I didn't find the perfect word for 'faal' (or 'fal'). Words I found were: soothsaying, divination, fortune-telling. The action of 'faal gereftan' is to determine your mind on the subject you want to have your Faal about (this is your 'Niyyat') then open a random page of a book (mostly Divan/Poetry of Hafiz or the Quran) and read what's written there, and then find the connection between that phrase and your 'Niyyat'. Maybe 'find your fortune in the book' would be a good equivalent in English.

As the story of the song goes, the singer is in love with some girl with a face as beautiful as moon (before Ladan shows up), and he is probably reading the fortune to know if the girl loves him or not, or to know how their love will carry on. They may even have had a fight (peace is so much better), so maybe he wants to know if they will make up or not.

It's actually like this: we open the book of Hafiz's poems, read the poem, meanwhile we have something in mind (that we want to learn know our fate for that matter). After reading that poem, we make some links between what it said and what we had in mind… i.e. if the poem says 'my friends left me alone' we may get to the point that the one we love would not love us back, or that something bad might happen.

What I wanted to say is that it's just some basic fortune telling, not really something hard to go and 'learn' from someone else. that's it. :) "

You can read more about divination and The Oracle of Shiraz Hafiz on Mama Lisa's World Blog.

Below you can find the pronunciation of this song. Maryam wrote, "The first word of the phrase for each note name starts with the same pronunciation as the note name, that's why it stays in mind! "

Transliteration

Do, Re, Mi

Do, do shab nakhäbidam
Re, rooye mähet didam
Mi, mikhäd biyäd bäroon
Fä, fäl migiram aknoon
Sol, solh kheyli behtare
Lä, Lädan del mibare
Si, siram digar az to

a: like a in "apple"
i: ee but shorter
ä: like o in "rock"
e: like e in "red"
kh: A velar sound, like Spanish "j" or Scottish "ch" in "loch"

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Many thanks to Maryam for singing this song for us!

Thanks and Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Maryam for contributing, transliterating and translating this song and for the interesting note.

Image at top is from one of Hafiz's books of poetry.

Khay'ly Mo'teh'shaker'am!