I’ll Spit on You so I Don’t Put the Evil Eye on You.

                  A Room Without Book is Like a Body Without a Soul (Cicero)

On my painting and sculpture blog (https://vaheark.blogspot.com/2017/10/vahes-ark-vessel-of-eclectic-modes-of.html) I titled a painting I did as “Listening with my Eyes” (https://vaheark.blogspot.com/2018/09/listening-with-my-eyes.html) in September 2018. I had no anterior reference to such a description, other than what I described in my entry that I “listen” to the natural materials I use in my art, since I believe their characteristics dictate the subject I use them for, and the message I try to communicate.

In this case, it was a painting I did on hare skin.

A few weeks ago, I got a note from a visitor of my blog who suggested that I check the New Mexico Judiciary, New Mexico Center for Language Access and gave me a website address https://www.nmcenterforlanguageaccess.org/cms/en/courts-agencies/judges-portal/how-to-monitor-interpretation. Of course I did and a whole new learning experience unraveled!

I had no idea about the existence of an entire science defined as listening with your eyes, where a court-appointed interpreter communicates and interprets with a deaf person or a person who does not speak English the questions asked and interprets their responses.  The New Mexico Judiciary site helps the judge understand his/her role in supervising the interpretation by listening to the interpreter with both eyes and ears to assure a quality interpretation.

As I tried to learn more about the challenges deaf consumer face when working with an interpreter, I came across a book that I found most educational. It is titled “Deaf Eyes on Interpreting” published by Gallaudet University in 2018. The central thesis of the book, and hence its recommendations, is that:

Despite the many gains being made in the interpreting services profession, with an emphasis on the accuracy of the interpreted work, the perspectives of Deaf individuals are rarely documented in the literature. Opportunities for enhanced participation and full inclusion need to be considered in order for Deaf people to best represent themselves to the hearing, nonsigning public as competent and intelligent individuals.

This is a new topic for me and I plan to learn more. But as I was reading the synopsis of the above book, suddenly two of the words got a different meaning – “interpreter” and “eye”. Indeed, how could I not think about the line from Charlotte Bronte in Jane Eyre that is often quoted:

“The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter - often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter - in the eye.” 

.. I have always thought of the eyes as “mirrors of the soul” where the eyes do not actively engage in “interpretation”. Rather they are the portals of entry into the inner world of the person (or perhaps all animals) and the person who enters that world does the interpretation and evaluation of what he/she sees.

As I was reflecting on this, I came across a quote from Marcus Tullius Cicero:

“The face is a picture of the mind with the eyes as its interpreter.” 

Ok, now I was getting really excited! So, going back to 60 BC, the concept of eyes as interpreter was documented.  

… When I was growing up, all babies wore an amulet consisting of a glass blue eye known as, “Kharaza zaraa” which is believed to dispel the evil eye, or il Malocchio. Sometimes that amulet was made into exquisite jewelry as a cube of 4 glass eyes encased within an intricate 20 carat cold cage. I had one of these and it was believed that when someone transmitted the negative vibes of envy toward me, one of the eyes would crack. I have to admit that I made it through my childhood without any of those glass eyes cracking!!

But the role the malocchio or evil eyes occupy in the Arabic and Italian cultures derives from ancient Greece and Rome. The root of the negative vibe has always been envy about the beauty, health, wealth or success of the envied person. That is why in these cultures people behave humbly, and do not brag. Who knows, if their beauty and success does not create envy in fellow people, the Gods on Mount Olympus or Vesuvius may one day get jealous and do nasty things themselves!

In fact, many of the cultures around the Mediterranean (Greek, Italian, Lebanese, Moroccan, Tunisian and Algerian) celebrate the eyes for beauty and even for power. For example, the Arabic saying is “I am under the order of your eyes” when a woman has an ask from a man. And while in the West a woman is called “honey” by her lover, in the Arab world she is called “my eyes”.

The Greeks, like the Italians fear the evil eye. In addition to using the amulet of the glass blue eye to dispel the spell of envy, the Greeks have a very “Greek” way to prevent the effect of the evil eye, called Mati in Greek. They spit 3 times and say “Ptou sou na min se matiaso” which roughly translates as “I’ll spit on you so I don’t put the evil eye on you.”

… So, I looked into the eyes of my dogs. Two pairs of large brown eyes with sclera smaller than mine looked at me for a while without envy but with what I interpreted as love. And then, I realized that while there might have been love, they were most interested in interpreting MY soul to see if I had enough compassion to give them a few more snacks!

As I was laughing about my experiment, I could not resist wondering if Emily Bronte had read Cicero’s statement ….

PS/ I have used the above photo in a previous posting, but I think that it fits the topic of this essay perfectly.

March 21, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019