What is Esfand?

Esfand is the seed of wild rue, sold in paper bags at every Persian grocery, and burning it is the oldest reflex in the culture. A small handful goes onto hot charcoal or into a dry pan, the seeds pop like tiny fireworks, and a thick, sharp, slightly sweet smoke fills the room. Someone then carries the smoking dish in a circle around the person being protected — usually over and around the head, sometimes under the chin, three or seven times — while saying a short rhymed formula. The most common one runs esfand, dooneh esfand, bala band, cheshm-e hasood kour beshe: esfand, seed of esfand, ward off harm, may the envious eye go blind. The popping is read as the eye cracking. If the seeds pop loudly, someone was definitely jealous of you.

It gets burned at the exact moments a family feels exposed to other people's envy: a new baby brought home, a wedding, a new house, a graduation, a promotion, someone leaving on a long trip, or a party where too many guests said how beautiful, how lucky, how perfect. It also gets burned prophylactically when nothing is wrong and someone just has a feeling. The practice long predates Islam in Iran — rue smoke was a Zoroastrian purifier, and Esfand is still the name of the last month of the Persian calendar, the one that ends at the equinox — which is why it sits comfortably in households of every level of religiosity, including completely secular ones. Grandmothers are the acknowledged authorities. In the diaspora the ritual survives mostly intact but gets negotiated with smoke detectors: the pan comes out on a balcony, a back step, or over a stove with the fan on high and a window cracked, and the whole family pretends the alarm going off is part of it.