Namaki history
The story of the salt seller (in Persian this seller is known as Namaki) is one of those memories that adhere to a lifestyle in Iran. I am sure that many of us who were born and raised in Iran will remember this character because of his repetitive, loud, musical and sometimes loud voice.
Do we remember the voice of the salt seller in those first days of summer when we were still lying in our cool beds or laughing with our brothers?
Do we remember how our mothers would jump up and bring all the inedible bread to these men?
Many of us remember the voice of the salt seller that could be heard anywhere in the house. The salt seller was a multifunctional man whom our mothers and women welcomed on every street. He asked for nothing but our old, inedible, moldy bread. Some generous women offered him a sample of the food they had prepared or a piece of cookies they had kept in the kitchen, or simply offered him a glass of ice water.
The number of interactions with these salt vendors or other vendors was most dynamic during the Iranian New Year. These men were given a small amount of cash or some gifts to take back to their families. People shared food, candy, money and, most of all, hope with the vendors who came to the door.
Namaki came week after week and he would never forget to shout her name out loud: Namakie-Namakie. I guess he loved calling his own name and letting people know about his presence. Our Namaki had an extraordinarily strong voice. He could scream throughout the term to announce his arrival.
Her voice had a song, a tone, a pattern, a specific rhythm that was well known to women. I can still hear this voice in my mind and I’m not crazy.
His voice would somehow encourage women to leave their homes to hand over all the old bread that was actually kept for him. That bread was from the day before or from the days before.
It came at different times of the day and especially in summer. Namaki used to be an older, hardworking man, visiting our lodge with a donkey carrying all his belongings.
This poor donkey was carrying two sacks, one full of salt on one side and the other with the old bread that was being gathered that day. I don’t know how long I walked every day, if I had some kind of agreement with other salt sellers and if I had to visit one or several streets every day.
Perhaps these men knew each other and would sell the old bread in the same places.
The typical Namaki seemed to me at least to be a man with a lower level of education or nothing at all. This man or men like him had probably moved to a big city like Tehran leaving behind the life of a farmer. Namaki could also be a man who had no other chance at a higher paying job. However, Namaki was a profession unto itself and our people could bear that name once they took the “position.”
When we were children we used to wonder what this man would do with all this bread. Would you eat them all? Would you make a large dough and bake more bread? I think these men would go and sell all that bread to the local farmers who had cows, lambs, chickens, roosters and other animals.
If it happened that we had missed Namaki, my mother would be angry wondering what to do with all the bread that we had not eaten during the week. Our mothers would also wonder what he is doing to visit our street.
Another characteristic of Namaki was that he could be used as a monster figure to scare children and make them behave properly. This method tends to scare younger children rather than older ones.
I guess they told us that if we were misbehaving, these salt vendors would take us away. This was a threat that we had around us as children, at least in my family. This was an ugly deception and we children would soon notice it, because in our minds, no mother would give her children a Namaki.
Anyway, this was Namaki’s story. Poran Poregbal, Vancouver, BC