Farsi of the day

It's pronounced "jaru kardan."
Once upon a time, there was a janitor named Jaru Kardan who saw that the floor of his hovel was very dirty. He was a clean soul, deep down, and this distressed him. He went to the store to buy a broom, but they had none.

Having no wife to consult, he went to the elderly lady next door. "Khanom," he said, "I have beheld the gleam of your floor, and it is as the light of the moon on the lake by the king’s palace. Tell me, how do you get it so clean, when there is no broom to be bought in our village?"

The khanom replied, "Jaru, what you must do is go to the jungle and make a broom."

"Make one?" he asked.

"Yes, make one," she replied rather testily. "You will need a stick for a handle and a bundle of twigs for the straws, and a string to bind them together. Here’s a string. Take the path east until you pass a large rock. There will be a long, smooth stick leaning against it. Pick it up. A lion will leap out at you, but greet her and she will let you take it and gather your sticks. Now go away."

Jaru Kardan bowed to the khanom and immediately set off for the jungle. He had never before been on the path east. As soon as the village disappeared from sight, the path forked. The branch heading north looked better-traveled and smoother, but Jaru, having heard many tales, knew better than to ignore the khanom’s advice. So he proceeded east until he came to a great gray stone, inscribed up and down with figures of dead lords and strange characters. There he grasped the stick.

A lion leaped out at him. He jumped and shouted, "Salam, Sheer!" She landed but a paw’s-length from him and stopped. She nodded her head three times and sat down by the path, watching him.

A trifle shaken and very glad the greeting had worked, Jaru began looking for sticks. There seemed to be plenty of dead branches around. He bundled them together at the end of the stick, tied it on with the string, and glanced back at the lion.

To his great surprise, as he watched she turned into a girl—far more beautiful than any other in the village. He bowed to her. "Salam!"

She grinned widely. "Salam, Jaru. I’m so glad my mother sent you."

"Your mother?"

"Of course. I was getting tired of being a lion. Some evil magician took a disliking to my mother’s dirty floor and turned me into a lion for it until such time as her floor would be clean and a young man should turn his staff into a broom before his inscribed rock. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but that’s an evil magician for you."

"I see," said Jaru. And he did. Picking up the broom, he asked, "May I walk you back to the village?"

She gave him her arm and smiled.