The nuances of Persian idioms and phrases are such that they lose a lot of their intricacies when translated into another language. I often try to familiarise my non-Persian husband, so that he now is familiar with most of my “as we says”. One of these phrases is towfiq ijbari, which is not at all like most other poetic sayings, very flowery and fine, but I have to say is very much to the point, precise and short. Towfiq is literally triumph, success and ijbari is involunantay and forced. Together this phrase means an involuntary triumph, success or being involuntarily in the receiving end of something nice. Just to give you an example, of one instance of my usage of this word, which had the undesirable repercussions of hearing about it for the next 8 years was when my first husband, whose sleeping schedules differed from me, once decided to prepare a very grand breakfast table at six in the morning, as a nice surprise before I left for work. Considering that I had to stay up until 2:30 in the morning and hadn’t got enough sleep all throughout the week, I really preferred my pillow a thousand times to the splendid spread in the kitchen and could not bear the idea of having to get up from my bed. This was not a battle I could win, and reluctantly I walked into the kitchen and as much as I tried to put on an appreciated face, the smell of eggs fried in butter and the idea that I would be forced to try everything on the table, led me to grunt “towfiqe- ijbari” as I sunk into our kitchen bench. I was really forced to be on the receiving end of a kindness I did not wish for at all. And that was it! No need to mention, he was furious, and I was the undeserving wife, who was always ungrateful to all his kindness. So you get the idea!
All this introduction, was just to tell you, towfiq-e ijbari is the feeling I'd get whenever I used to visit my local Tesco store (which was at least once a day). When I first heard there was going to be a local Tesco just a minute away from our place I was over the moon. It meant that we could buy the forgotten milk just 10 minutes before midnight, get the necessary urgent things whenever we needed, not to mention that we eventually stopped visiting the big Tescos and Sainsbury’s. It was so much easier, popping into the local one getting fresh chicken, beef, yogurt and basically, I was Ok just shopping from there, even though it was slightly more expensive, we thought it was worth it. A while ago, however, the local Tesco become too posh for my humble taste and income. They stocked Organic chicken, vegetables, lemon juice, you name it...with no other options and we had to involuntarily be on the receiving end of Tesco's great kindness for our well being! This, however, forced us to the more sensible option of buying from the bigger stores, even if it took longer! I think Tesco has realised that it can't force healthy (more its own profit than my mere well being) down our throats and now stocks less of its Organic items!
