Zeb’s name, perfectly innocuous in his native Urdu, is Persian in origin.

زیب pronounced Zeeb, in Farsi and Zeib in Dari means the attribution of Beauty, like Aurang Zeeb the Moghul Ruler, but written as  زب it has quite another meaning in Arabic, if pronounced as Zob.

But Zeb says the entire thing is a nonsense. “It must be someone playing a practical joke because I’ve never been appointed to Saudi Arabia and they’ve never asked for my agreement. It’s a prank that someone’s playing on the Internet.”

The news initially appeared on several blogs and then variations of the story started appearing in online posts in news sources such as the Jerusalem Post, National Review, The Atlantic Online and Foreign Policy.

When I read this I thought, rather uncharitably, it serves him right.

Had he spelt his name as Zeeb (like in Farsi) no one would have read Zeb for Zob!

We Iranians are always puzzled by the Anglo-Indian system of transliteration, the one used by Zeb, which transliterates شیر Sheer (lion, or tiger in Afghanistan) as Sher, but  گِل Gel (mud) becomes Gil and Del becomes Dil. In other words they use the ‘kasr’ as the letter ‘i’ and the letter Ya becomes ‘e’.

It is as if the Glaswegian accent were to be set as the standard for international English; causing incomprehension and mayhem everywhere.

But the whole thing reminded me of a foot-note, recounted by an acquaintance Jason Elliot, in his book ‘Mirrors of the Unseen’ about the presentation of the Greek Ambassador to Tehran, Kyriakos, to the court of Reza Shah.

‘Kir’ in Persian is the male organ and ‘Kos’ the female. Ya means ’or’.

‘Well?‘ demanded the outraged Shah from a stammering chamberlain. ’Which is he? – kir ya kos? If he has not made up his mind throw him out!’

Diplomatic relations between Greece and Iran were severed the same day.  (Mirrors of the Unseen, Journeys in Iran, by Jason Elliot, P. 400).

Unlike the Zeb story, this story, I believe is not apocryphal.  A better illustration of the illiterate Shah’s  ignorance and cruelty,  I cannot imagine.

I put it up in the edit suite.

Nima came in and in that authoritarian tone that we have come to know and love, said it was wrong. It should be Een neez bogzarad. I said it was the Afghan version, he looked unconvinced.

Then Adel noticed it two days later.

He said tentatively: Is it not wrong and should it not be Een neez bogzarad?

I said it was the Afghan version, he looked confused.

I heard that Amir Payvar had come to do a voice over. He had said why is this funny, should it not be a bit different, etc. etc.

I thought to myself, This Too Will Pass.

The calligraphy was made on the Maryam software by a Scottish friend. He was referring to a story by Attar in Idries Shah’s book, The Way of the Sufi. It describes a King who was a bit bi-polar and went from sadness and depression to madness and elation with catastrophic results, as he was entrusted with running a kingdom. So he asked his courtiers for something that would stabilise his mood. The courtiers went off racking their brains but could not think of anything  but then they noticed that someone had scrawled in the dust with their finger a legend. They wrote this on a ring and gave it to the king to wear. Whenever he had a mood swing he would look at the ring and see that it had inscribed on it:

”This Too Will Pass”.

The Farsi speaking friend, who made the calligraphy above, actually found a ring with this motto on it in Kabul, in the 1970’s,and he testifies to its effectiveness. Needless to say that the wording on that ring was closer to the Attar original, Een HamMeegozarad, and not the modern Iranian version, Een neez bogzarad!

Some men are not good looking.Besides they do not have self-confidence to start and develop a relationship with a woman.Some men were in a relationship but it did not work out between the two of them and they experienced a terrible relationship.Some men just don’t get what they expect from their partners so they prefer to be with a robber partner rather than a human one.

I think all men and women should once again sit and ask this question:Is my partner going to be the next person with the doll?Think about a world in which half of its people are dolls.It is so boring.It will be very depressing.Let us save our world by being good partners .It is also a good idea to be matchmakers.Look around yourselves.There are a lot of lonely people.Be their partner or help them find a partner.Dolls are good for dolls.Human needs human.

Here is the denotative meaning of accent according to Longman Dictionary: Accent is a way someone pronounces the words of a language, showing which country or which part of the country they come from(dialect).but there is more than this definition for accent.Accent has three parts:1-Pronunciation2-Intonation 3-Liaisons( definition of these terms will follow in their specific section)

As I want to talk  about American accent so I will explain the rules you need for learning only this accent.

Pronunciation: the way that a word is pronounced.This was obvious.It did not need any definition.But you have seen a lot of symbols between the two slashes in front of a word in dictionaries.You probably have no idea what they say.These are pronunciation signals.They help you read the words.From this part on,I teach you these signals one by one followed by examples and exercises to boost your learning.

There are two key words here:1-Vowels 2- Consonants

Vowels ne of the human speech sounds that you make by letting your breath flow out without closing any part of your mouth or throat.Letters a-e-i-o-u make vowel sounds in English.Do not make a mistake:These are letters.they make vowels.for example :Beat/bit/   letters e and a in Beat make the vowel sound /i/.So from now on letters are written outside of the slashes and sound inside the slashes.(/ /)

Consonants :a speech sound made by partly or completely stopping the flow of air through your mouth.So Sounds like:/b/ as in Beat/bit/ and /t/ as in tell/tel/ are consonants.

Giving definitions of these terms is useful but I want to make it more practical for you guys.So in the next lessons I will teach you Vowels.In each lesson I will try to teach one or two vowels following examples and drills.