صابون

The idiom صابون این کار به تنم خورده (sâbun-e in kâr be tan-am khorde), literally "the soap of this work has touched my body," is a common piece of Persian self-defense in conversation. It means: I have already been through this. I know the process, I know the people, I know the catch. Use it when somebody is about to explain to you something you have already lived through. The soap image is precise: when you have been scrubbed by a particular kind of difficulty, the smell stays on you. صابون is also a humble little linguistic traveler, with cognates in Arabic, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, and English, all going back to a shared Mediterranean root for soap-making.