I Was a Skeptic About Fortune Tellers, Until I Found Out My Wife Went to One
One Reality Show, 13 years, and 2 kids later — suddenly, I had skin in the game.
I’m a skeptic. It feels like an intrinsic part of who I am. At magic shows, I’m usually looking off-stage for the trap door while everyone else is oohing and ahhing. When I see a shooting star, I’m the person that pulls out her StarWalk app and lets everyone know that it was actually the ISS. It may seem like an unromantic way to go through life — but I’ve always felt it was the opposite.
I find magic in human ingenuity and discovery, I’m awestruck by people with incredible, hard-earned skills, and I am a sucker for incredible advances in technology. I don’t need any extra layers of magic or mysticism to make me misty-eyed — just another viewing of Apollo 13.
So, when I brought up the topic of fortune-telling with my wife, she was surprised I even mentioned it. Of course, I had a completely logical reason for how it’d all happened. I had been researching a Persian poet named Hafez for an episode of Passport — a podcast I help produce — about Iran. In the course of making the episode, I was repeatedly struck by how much every Iranian I talked to loved (and I mean loved) AND could quote at great length from Persian poetry.
In America, it often feels like poetry is a dying art. Of course, that’s not quite true because musicians are arguably the new poets of our day. But still, there is something different and special about poetry. Reading poetry can be like meditation. It requires incredible imagination, a grasp of the abstract, and deep critical thinking to decode a great poem. And even then, in a thousand readings, a poem will have a thousand meanings.
And in Iran, poetry is an art that is still very much alive. There, it seems, your taxi driver can quote the mystic verses of Rumi as easily as most people in the West can misquote Star Wars (it’s “No. I am your father.” There’s no “Luke”, people.). In Iran, everyone from professors to street sweepers are in a life-long love affair with poetry. And I was completely enchanted by that idea.
For most Westerners, the Persian poet we are most familiar with is Rumi — and it’s easy to see why. His verses about ecstasy and grief and the human condition are mind-blowingly beautiful. He was a master and it’s why he remains one of the best-selling poets of all time. But in Iran, Hafez enjoys a rockstar-like status on par with Rumi. His poetry collection, the Divan, is referred to as Lesan al-Ghayb, which means “The Tongue of the Unseen Realms”.
So, yeah. He’s pretty good.
And in fact, Hafez has captured Iranian’s hearts so fully that an entire fortune-telling practice has risen up around his poetry. Known as fal-e Hafez (which roughly translates to ‘divination via Hafez’) it’s a bit like a mixture of tarot and a Magic 8 Ball. It’s been practiced for hundreds of years at this point. In Iran, the saying goes,
“Only God and Hafez of Shiraz know the answer”.
Fal-e Hafez works like this. Someone with questions about the future or who is looking for guidance in their love troubles consults a practitioner of fal-e Hafez. This next part is important — the questioner must never reveal their question. The fortune teller then takes their Divan — a book or deck of poetry cards that contain the verses of Hafez — and pulls a random card or page, and that is your answer. You can find these fortune tellers everywhere in Iran. Sometimes they’re men with trained birds that pull the cards for you.
Other times, they’re children at bustling intersections that might run up to your car while you sit in Tehran’s infamous gridlock traffic and offer to pull a card for you.
So, despite all my skeptical, Capricorn-ish energy — I wanted to know more about fal-e-Hafez. Even if the supposed magical divination around it wasn’t quite landing for me, I’m a sucker for learning about something new and I was taken with the poetry and the culture that had arisen around the practice of it.
So, there I was, telling my wife about fal-e-Hafez and then she said it —
“I went to a fortune-teller right before we met and she told me I’d travel the world, move to the other coast, and meet the love of my life. And within a year, it had all happened.”
When you’ve been together for 13 years (and you’re lesbians — so lottts of talking on top of it) you quickly get to a point where you feel like you pretty much know everything there is to know about the other person. But then, sometimes, like a shooting star/ISS streaking across the sky — a surprise appears out of nowhere.
“I’m sorry, what?”
My wife went on to explain. Fourteen years ago, she’d gone to a palm-reading class with a few aunts and great aunts in Rhode Island, where she lived. As many good old-fashioned Italian-Catholics often do, they loved to dabble in a little of the occult from time to time. Who doesn’t? So my wife had gone to learn how to palm read.
The class was fun and interesting and then, at the end, a tarot deck had appeared and my wife stepped forward to have her cards pulled. Three cards were turned over and the message was detailed and incredibly clear: You are going to travel the world, move to the other coast, and meet the love of your life.
What the tarot reader couldn’t have known — what no one could have known in that moment — was that 3,000 miles away, her name was about to be pulled out of the most giant cosmic hat of all time to be invited to participate in the Reality TV competition show, The Amazing Race. Out of tens of thousands of applicants, my wife and her father would be selected to participate just two months after that tarot reading.
She and her father would indeed travel the world. They would scale the Great Wall of China, shoot flaming arrows into targets in Mongolia, build bird cages in Vietnam, and repair their fraught relationship along the way. After the show, she would get an opportunity to relocate to California — the opposite coast — which she would accept. And once she had relocated to California, she would reconnect with a coordinator she had met on the show and liked. And that would be me. And within a year, we would fall in love.
I took in this new bit of information.
For a moment, my mind wondered if our entire relationship had actually been fated or, conversely, if it had been Inception’ed into my wife’s head. And if that was true, then was our entire relationship resting on the power of suggestion? What did it all mean?
But then, I let the logic wheels stop spinning. I let them go quiet and I smiled.
That’s a skill my amazing wife — who’s the feeler to my thinker — has taught me in these 13 years together. That, and so much more. Sometimes, we’ll never really know. And that’s ok. There is beauty in knowing. And there is beauty in not. Understanding how we found each other isn’t nearly as important as appreciating that we did. A billion pieces had to fit together and fall into place for our paths to cross. And I’m grateful everyday that they did.
And I’m grateful Hafez inadvertently ended up showing me another side of my wife — a piece of her story I didn’t know yet — and a pretty fun one, at that.
So I continued my research on Hafez, but with a newfound appreciation for all the ways his words — and the messages they hold — have inspired and guided generations of Iranians for 700 years. His verses are transporting and beautiful.
And in the end, I even partook of a little fal-e-Hafez with my wife — and here’s your chance to try a mini-version of it, too. If you’ve got a love-related question or dilemma you’re looking for guidance on, pick a number between 1 and 5 and scroll to that verse for your answer.
Here are my favorite five quotes from the ghazals (love poems) of Hafez:
#1 excerpt from “Song of Spring”
Enjoy its petals when it is here.
As soon as it comes, it is gone.
The rose’s beauty is very dear.
Enjoy its petals when it is here.
As soon as it comes, it is gone.
Minstrel, for this feast of Love, sing your Melody!
No more chatter of the past
Nor of the future, now.
#2 excerpt from “Morning Light”
You are dawn; I am a candle
Glowing in solitude to you.
Smile, and lo my vital spirit’s yours.
#3 excerpt from “Boat People”
The cosmic unity may be explained
By these affinities:
to friends give warmth
To enemies, fair courtesy.
If You do not approve
Of what our lives’ve become,
Change Our Fate.
For the bridge of reputation
We were give no admission.
#4 excerpt from “Morning Light”
The rising sun spreads its rays across the sky
Revealing my love’s splendor
That none observe as I.
And finally — a poem that feels like it’s speaking directly to so much of what’s swirling around in the world and in our hearts right now…
#5 excerpt from “Thorns and Roses”
Turbulent, grieving heart, be sanguine.
Your temperament shall balance.
Confused head, you shall see
A new emergent unity.
Despair not.
Sweet bird, as long as there is spring,
Once more upon the meadow’s throne you shall sing!
Winter shall pass and you shall find your tune.
The roses shall nod and cense you with their bloom.
Despair not.
If this spinning world in a day or two
Does not bring fortune’s gifts to you
Remember, life has many turns,
No two of which bring the same return.
Despair not.
Credit for many of these incredible English translations of Hafez’s poetry goes to the poet and philosopher Michael Boylan.
And to try the virtual fal-e-Hafez experience, head to this website and give it a spin. Dominique Ferrari also writes The Ticket — the companion article series for the Passport podcast.
