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A Flat-Bread Story
Appears in
Published 2020
My mother’s picking basil.
Bread and basil and cheese, a cloudless sky, wet petunias.
Salvation is near, amidst the flowers in the courtyard.
What caresses the light pours into a copper goblet!
Sohrab Sepehri
Bread, or nan, is the staple food of Iran. Nan is a Persian word first used in Achaemenid Iran (550–330 bce), from which other languages borrowed it.
The main Iranian breads are flat breads, but they are well leavened and light and usually eaten fresh daily. Leftover bread is often used as croutons in soups, or with milk as in a bowl of cereal, or ground with cheese, nuts, and herbs and eaten as a snack.