Straitened by Hormuz

Dr Johnson, the Great Panjandrum of literature, said that ‘quotation is the parole of the literary man’. His point generalises beyond having a line or two to quote which is apt for a given situation, saying a world of things in elegant, apposite brevity. It goes beyond to the idea that a mind stocked by reading – provided that it is also stocked with experience, because looking at a map is never a substitute for making the journey – will always chime in sometimes creative ways with what it encounters.

Thus it is that when the Strait of Hormuz became a Thing because of Trump’s illegal, chaos-making and failed war with Iran, I was reminded of a passage early in The Orchard of Sa’di^[i], where (leaving out the bits about how peaceful, kind and merciful is the deity of a people some of whom are anything but; par for the course with the same some of all faiths) the sage-poet writes of Nushiravan’s counsel to his son Hormuz: ‘Cherish the poor, and seek not thine own comfort. The shepherd should not sleep while the wolf is among the sheep. Protect the needy, for a king wears his crown for the sake of his subjects…He should not oppress the people who have fear of injury to his kingdom. Seek not plenteousness in that land where the people are afflicted by the king…The king who deals harshly with merchants who come from afar closes the door of well-being upon the whole of his subjects. When do the wise return to the land of which they hear rumours of bad custom? If thou desire a good name, hold merchants and travellers in high esteem, for they carry thy reputation through the world.’

Indeed. The advice to young Hormuz has quite a few lessons for Trump. Trump sleeps (at every opportunity) while the wolf howls at the door of Americans without health insurance, working two or three jobs to pay bills raised by Trump’s tariffs and wars. He not only does not protect the needy but gives massive tax breaks to an obscenely rich minority. He afflicts his people both in these ways and by unleashing paramilitaries onto their streets who gun them down. As to closing the ‘door of well-being’ by dealing harshly with merchants from afar, well: those tariffs again, and his visa policy, the resulting drop in immigrants, asylum-seekers and tourists to the US (‘when do the wise return to the land of which they hear rumours of bad custom?’), add to the undermining of an economy which now has far more job vacancies than applicants, not only in sectors requiring personnel skilled in tech but in services, health care, most of the arenas where a society needs human-to-human relationship to run. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2026/07/12/why-recruiters-cant-find-workers-new-grads-cant-find-jobs/

Trump and his epigones have made the US smell so bad that not even the deodorant of money masks it. That doesn’t stop many who, in quest of money, are prepared to hold their noses - of course not; the allure of money, which has the same effect on morality and common-sense that cyclosporiasis has on human intestines, puts up with anything, all the way to mass murder. But in other respects the malodour has turned people off the US as if it were not a country but a faeces-garnished lettuce in a supermarket.

That the US is full of good people with good intentions and good things makes it a real shame that Trump stands as a sort of missile-and-drone ravaged Strait of Hormuz through which anyone has to pass to see the good there. The longer he does so the worse things get – it is as if the Strait becomes ever-narrower, just like the one between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.

Talking of Oman: the Omani Foreign Minister Sayyid Al Busaidi has reasserted his country’s neutrality in the regional conflict, but his call for a new ‘security architecture’ for the region and his explicitly blaming its destabilisation on Netanyahu’s Israel marks a shift in tone. He did not level the same charge at the Trump administration, which deserves even greater blame because without the incarnate folly festering at its head, matters would not be as they now are. International pussy-footing around Trump, as at the recent NATO summit where other heads of state chose their words carefully to match Trump’s limited vocabulary, absence of thought-processes and childish emotions, is painful to see. Omitting Trump in laying blame, Oman’s Al Busaidi was doing the same.

Divagating by association with the point about Trump’s vocabulary: there has long been a claim that tabloid newspapers restrict to about 800 words the lexicon that they permit themselves to use. That is probably a myth, as is the claim that most of today’s teenagers in the UK are limited to the same number. What words anyone uses and what words they know are different things. If one hunts around the web, one sees claims to the effect that English native-speakers use about 6000 different words a day if male, 9000 if female. (If true, it becomes a matter of vital interest to know what the 3000 words in that difference are. Stereotypes and clichés aplenty spring to mind). Other estimates have it that the average native English speaker has a vocabulary of about 20,000 words, a university-educated person about 40,000 words. These widely-varying estimates could be explained by the difference between a speaker’s active and passive vocabularies - words habitually used versus words understood but not habitually used - the latter considerably greater in number than the former. Whatever the case, since English dictionaries record upwards of three quarters of a million words, there is clearly always a lot to learn. Given that clarity of thought and precision of expression are related, this is an enticing fact.

In any case, Trump’s vocabulary is evidently at the 800 word level, if one excludes expletives and includes, in his written efforts (cf. ‘Truth’ Social, to which these are restricted), orthographical variants and exclamation marks – ‘bangs’ and ‘shrieks’ in the demotic, though ‘shriek’ is a technical mot juste in mathematics – as indicators of semantic intent.

To return to Sa’di: he tells the story of Abdul Aziz, who ‘had a pearl of great beauty and value set in a ring. Shortly after, a severe drought occurred, causing distress among the people. Moved by compassion, the king ordered the pearl to be sold and the money that it fetched to be given to the poor. Someone chided him for doing this, saying, “Never again will such a stone come into thy hands.” Weeping, the king replied, “Ugly is an ornament upon the person of a king when the hearts of his people are distressed by want. Better for me is a stoneless ring than a sorrowing people.” Happy is he who sets the ease of others above his own. The virtuous desire not their own pleasure at the expense of others. When the king sleeps neglectfully upon his couch, I trow not that the beggar finds enviable repose.’

Indeed again.

A vocabulary matter that applies to Trump is the difference between contusion and ecchymosis. Both are bruises, such as those on Trump’s hands, but whereas contusions are bruises caused by bumping against or being struck by an external object with sufficient force to rupture capillaries in the skin, causing a haematoma – the pooling of blood in the surrounding tissue – ecchymosis occurs when blood vessels extravasate, that is, leak out into surrounding tissue, without being caused to do so by external trauma. This is symptomatic of a number of possible medical conditions. Medics often use ‘ecchymosis’ to mean ‘bruise’, which is not incorrect; the distinction applies to the aetiology of the haematoma.

As this shows, one reason for problems with vocabulary is etymology: ‘contuse’ and ‘extravasate’ have Latin origins, ‘ecchymosis’ and ‘haematoma’ Greek ones, as does ‘aetiology’ (cause). Who wouldn’t be confused, even contused? But as Socrates pointed out in the Meno – though not in quite these words – confusion is the beginning of wisdom, and as to contusion: well, it has often been remarked that nothing is so educative as a good kicking. To good kickings, however, which he gets as regularly from the courts, the press and public opinion as from Iran, Trump seems immune. His bruises aren’t caused by them. You’d think that with so thick a skin (‘pachydermous’ is the word here) he would never have to slather his extremities in concealer.

What if someone gave Trump a copy of Sa’di’s Orchard? Or read to him the passage about the advice to Hormuz? Would it prompt him to change, to wake up, to be better? No doubt not. Take the saying, ‘A full heart always has room for more, an empty heart never has room for anything’, and substitute ‘mind’ for ‘heart’, and you see why.

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^[i] Sa’di, Saadi or Saadi Shirazi, Abu Mohammad Moshrefoldin Mosleh ebn Abdollah ebn Mosharra, 1209-1291 CE. The Orchard (Bustan) was ranked by the Guardian among the hundred greatest books of all time. Like almost all wisdom literature in religious traditions one has to bear with emetic laudations addressed to the supposed author of the world’s beauties and sufferings, but passing boldly through them like a rebel tanker running the Strait of Hormuz, one finds much to appreciate.