توی هفت آسمان

What it says

توی هفت آسمان (tu-ye haft âsemân) is what Iranians say when joy lifts them off the ground. The phrase combines توی (tu-ye, in), هفت (haft, seven), and آسمان (âsemân, sky, heaven). “In the seven heavens.” The colloquial Tehrani version uses tu-ye, while the literary version uses در. Either way, the speaker is somewhere far above the ordinary day.

How to use it

• وقتی خبر رو شنید، توی هفت آسمون بود (vaghti khabar-o shenid, tu-ye haft âsemun bud) “When she heard the news, she was in the seventh heaven”
• از خوشحالی تو هفت آسمون سیر می‌کرد (az khoshhâli tu haft âsemun seyr mikard) “He was floating through the seven heavens with happiness”
• دل من امروز تو هفت آسمونه (del-e man emruz tu haft âsemune) “My heart is in the seven heavens today”

The literal meaning

Pre-modern Iranian cosmology, like the Greek and Mesopotamian models it shares roots with, pictured the sky as seven nested layered heavens, each ruled by a planet or angel. The seventh was the highest. To say you are in the seven heavens is to claim the top floor of the universe.

The figurative meaning

The phrase names joy that is too big for the body. Iranians use it for the moment a child sees the sea for the first time, the morning a long-awaited visa comes through, the second a parent picks up a phone after months of silence. It is the same image English carries in “seventh heaven,” because both languages inherited the layered sky from older Near Eastern cosmology. The Quran also references seven heavens, which sealed the image into Islamic Persian. The phrase is so well-worn that Iranians sometimes use it ironically, dragging out the syllables to mock excessive happiness in someone who just got a small win, but the irony only works because the literal sense is still felt underneath.

Related expressions

Compare دل خوش for the quieter, more durable contentment, and روی ابرها بودن (ru-ye abrhâ budan, “to be on the clouds”) for the closer European-flavored cousin. خوشحالی (khoshhâli) is the everyday noun for happiness, while سرخوش (sar-khosh, head-happy) is a lighter buzz, often used for someone slightly tipsy or pleasantly distracted. The verb پر زدن (par zadan, “to take flight”) sometimes pairs with this idiom in poetry: from joy, the heart takes flight through the seven heavens. For the cosmology angle, see our piece on the seven heavens in Iranian poetry, which traces the image through Hafez and Rumi, the two poets who put the layered sky inside almost every Persian speaker’s mental architecture.

References

• Dehkhoda
• Vajehyab