«خوب باشیم» — Let Us Be Good — by Homayoun Mahmoudi

Day by day, new inventions and discoveries drive mankind materially toward progress and perfection, and place better and more comfortable means of living at his disposal. If we study how people live in various countries today, we will see that a great deal has changed in thirty years, and that new contrivances have entered human life at astonishing speed. But in return — in the world of the spirit, in the world of morals — what transformations have taken place?

With the deepest regret, one must confess the truth. Human thought has travelled no road but the road of ruin and corruption. Lying, deceit and hypocrisy spread further across the wide plain of the world with every passing day. Instead of humming a tune of affection, the hearts of men burn with the taste of enmity, and set others burning. Where the light of love ought to shine out of the eyes of the children of mankind, flames of anger leap up instead.

In an environment so full of discord and corruption, it is genuinely difficult to stand upright and walk straight. But what is to be done?

Human society today is in need of goodness and purity. Humanity is in need of affection and love.

You, dear reader — you who have fixed your eyes on these lines, and who have kept us company for a while — you are one unit of a society and one personality within your own community, and your presence in that gathering has an effect. Remember that the scattered family of mankind stands in need of your sacrifice.

Our world is the hearth of one large family, and the people of nations are the members of that household.

Amity must rule among them. That result cannot be had unless the individuals of a society are good — and being good asks for a little forbearance and a little sacrifice. It comes from knowing one’s duty.

Being good in society — thinking well, acting well — is not so very difficult. Try it from today. When you rise in the morning and the first golden ray of the sun stretches up out of the east, make a pact with yourself to carry the day through in goodness and purity, in friendship and kindness. Smile even at the person you take for your enemy. Be kind.

Dear reader: make the pact, and stay standing on it. Be good. Let your thoughts be good. Let your conduct and your deeds be good. That covenant will be a firm one, and unbreakable.

You promise, don’t you?

Also on the page — the folklore column

Boxed into the lower middle of the page is a small standing column, From the Nooks and Corners of Life, running a section called Folklore. Readers sent in rhymes and sayings from wherever they were from, and the magazine printed them with numbered footnotes explaining the dialect words to everybody else. This one came in from a reader in Tehran signing only with two initials, and the editor’s footnotes gloss three words at the bottom of the box.

It is a tiny thing, easy to scroll past. It is also a national magazine deciding that the way a word is said in one part of the country is worth printing, and worth explaining to the rest.