Rostam and Sohrab (Part 3)

Sohrab girded himself for vengeance. He set the golden crown upon his head, fastened his mail, donned his coat of arms, and placed a Roman helm upon his brow. He took up spear, bow, lasso, and the heavy demon-binding mace. His blood boiled with fury. He mounted his swift horse, roared aloud, and charged into the field like a maddened elephant.

He burst through the Iranian lines, and the commanders scattered before him like wild rams fleeing a lion. Not one of the nobles of Iran dared look him in the eye. His lance-work and his reins, his arm and the coil of his spear — all were beyond anything they had seen. The warriors gathered together and said: "This is a champion like an elephant — no man can stand before him in combat."

Sohrab rode to the edge of the royal encampment and shouted: "O Shah, you who call yourself Kay Kavus — what kind of warrior are you? You have no footing among lions in battle. If I twist this lance in my fist, I will sweep your army lifeless from the field. I swore an oath at the feast on the night when Zindeh was slain: I will not leave a single lance-bearer in Iran, and I will hang Kay Kavus alive. Who among the Iranians has the claws to face me on this field of battle?"

He spoke, and silence was his answer. Not one man from Iran replied. Sohrab braced his back, drove his spear forward, and tore out seventy tent-pegs with a single thrust. A section of the royal pavilion collapsed, and the sound of horns rose from every side.

Kay Kavus was stricken. He cried: "Send word to Rostam that this Turk has emptied the minds of all our warriors. I have no rider who is his equal. No one in Iran dares attempt this deed." Tus carried the message. Rostam said: "Every time a king summons me, it is for war — never ease. I have seen nothing from Kavus but the labour of battle."

But he ordered Rakhsh saddled. From his tent he could see Sohrab wreaking havoc on the plain, and Giv already mounting, and the warriors buckling armour in haste. Rostam donned his leopard-skin coat, bound the Kiani belt around his waist, mounted Rakhsh, and rode out with his banner, leaving Zvareh to guard the camp.

When he beheld Sohrab — his stature and broad shoulders like those of Sam — he said: "Let us withdraw from both armies and go apart." Sohrab assented. They stepped out into the empty ground between the two hosts.

Sohrab rode out to the combat ground, lance in hand, his mind still turning on his mother's words. They narrowed the field between them and charged with short lances. The spears shattered — not a binding or a point remained. They wheeled left and fell upon each other with Indian swords, and fire rained from iron. The blades were hacked to ruin under blows that would have raised the dead.

Then they took up heavy maces, and the arms of both champions grew weary. The maces bent under the force of their strikes. The horses' armour fell away in pieces; chain mail split upon the warriors' bodies. Horses and riders alike were spent. Neither man had strength left to raise his arm. Their bodies ran with sweat and blood, their mouths cracked with thirst.

The poet reflects: What a marvel is the working of the world — one moment it shatters, and in another it mends. Of these two, not a flicker of love stirred in either heart. Reason stood far off, and affection would not show its face. A mare knows her foal; a fish knows her young in the sea; the wild ass recognizes its colt upon the plain. Yet a man, blinded by toil and desire, cannot tell his enemy from his own child.

Rostam thought to himself: never in all his days had he faced such a foe. His battle with the White Demon had been as nothing compared to this. They rested a while, then took up bows, but their arrows could not pierce the mail and leopard-skin. Rostam tried to seize Sohrab's belt and hurl him from the saddle, but the youth could not be shaken — he was like a mountain fixed upon its seat. Sohrab struck Rostam with his mace and the blow buckled his shoulder. Rostam grimaced and swallowed the pain.

Sohrab laughed: "So, old warrior — you are steady under a champion's blows. But your horse seems like a donkey in battle, and your hands are the best part of you. Though you stand tall as a cypress, youth will master an old man in his foolishness."

They fought to exhaustion, then turned apart. Rostam fell upon the Turanian lines, and Sohrab raged through the Iranian camp. When Rostam saw the destruction Sohrab had wrought among his men, his anger blazed. He rode back and challenged the youth to meet him again at dawn, for the day was spent.

When the blazing sun raised its head and the black crow of night furled its wings, Rostam donned his leopard-skin coat and mounted his fire-breathing dragon-steed. He rode to the combat ground with his iron helmet set upon his head.

On the other side, Sohrab sat drinking wine with musicians. He spoke to Hooman: "This lion of a man who fights against me — his stature is no less than mine, and his heart does not waver in battle. His chest, his shoulders, his neck are the image of my own. When I look at his legs and his stirrups, love stirs in me and shame rises to my face. I see in him the signs my mother described, and my heart turns over within me. I think he may be Rostam, for there is no champion in the world so few beside him. I must not blindly seek war with my own father."

But Hooman, faithless to the end, replied: "I have seen Rostam's face many times in battle, and I have witnessed his deeds. This man does not resemble him, nor is his way of wielding the mace the same." He spoke this lie because Afrasiab had commanded him to lead Sohrab to destruction. Sohrab held his peace, but he was not wholly satisfied.

At dawn, Sohrab strode forth to the combat ground bearing a heavy mace, wearing battle-armour, his mouth full of smiles. He asked Rostam how he had slept, then said: "Cast away this mace and sword of vengeance. Let us put off our armour and sit together in friendship. Let wine soften our fury. My heart leans toward you in love, and tears of shame spring to my eyes. Tell me your name — hide it no longer. I see you are of noble birth. Are you not Rostam, chosen one, lord of Zabulestan, son of Zal, son of Sam the hero?"

Rostam answered: "We are not come to parley but to fight. My ears are sealed against your words of lure. I am old and you are young, but we are girded for battle, and the Master of the world shall decide between us."

Sohrab's face darkened: "I wished that your soul would leave you upon your bed, not here. But you have chosen to perish in combat. What is ordained must be done."

They dismounted, tied their horses to stones, and fell upon each other. They wrestled from dawn until the sun spread its shadow — and Sohrab seized Rostam by the belt like a maddened elephant, roared with fury loud enough to split the earth, lifted that mountain of a man from the ground, and hurled him down upon his back. He sat upon Rostam's chest, pinning him, and drew his dagger to sever his head.

Rostam, knowing that only cunning could save him, spoke: "O young man — you do not know our custom. Among us, he who throws his opponent the first time does not kill him, but lets him rise to fight again. Only the second time may he take his life."

Sohrab listened to the old warrior's deceitful words and stayed his hand — partly from the gallantry of youth, partly from the workings of fate, partly from sheer nobility of spirit. He released Rostam, turned aside, and went hunting deer upon the plain, as if he had forgotten the man he had just defeated.

Hooman came to him and asked about the fight. When Sohrab told him, Hooman cried: "What have you done, young fool? The lion you had in your trap — you let him go, and the work is spoiled! Do you think he will be as easy to overcome a second time?"

Sohrab said: "Be not grieved. Tomorrow we meet again, and he will not stand a third time against my strength."

They parted and the sky grew dark. Sohrab returned to his camp, his waist raw from fighting, his armour grinding against his body. He said to Hooman: "Today the sun rose and the world was filled with the fury of battle. That brave horseman who has the neck of a champion and the claws of a lion — what did he do to your host? He fell upon the Turanian lines and killed many men, then rode back to his own camp. And what came of my army? Not one man rode against him."

Hooman said the king's orders had been to hold the host back from battle — that the single combat was the only engagement permitted.

Sohrab said: "I killed many Iranians and stained the ground red with their blood. Yet from your side there was nothing but watching. No matter — tomorrow is the great day. The wolf will be revealed from among the sheep. In the name of God, the one Creator, I will not leave a single enemy standing. But now bring wine and let us feast."

Meanwhile Rostam went before Kay Kavus and told him of Sohrab's strength. "I have never seen a child so terrible," he said. "His stature touches the stars. His arms and thighs are like those of a camel. We have tested each other with sword, arrow, mace, and lasso, and I could not prevail. I seized his belt and tried to lift him from the saddle as I have done to others, but he could not be moved. Tomorrow we will wrestle, and I will see whether fate favours me or him."

Kavus said: "May God destroy your enemy. Tonight I will press my face to the ground before the Creator, that He may grant you the victory."

Rostam returned to his tent and spoke privately with his brother Zvareh: "At dawn I will go to the combat ground. Bring my army and my standard and my golden-soled throne, and wait before my pavilion. If I am victorious, I will not linger. But if the matter goes otherwise — do not grieve. Do not come to the combat ground. Take the army to Zabulestan. Go to Dastan and comfort my mother. Tell her: do not bind your heart to me. This is what God has decreed upon my head. Tell her I have battled lion and demon and dragon, and none brought me low. He who must die — when his hour comes, he mounts the horse and goes. If a thousand years pass, the road and the work are still the same."

Half the night he spoke of Sohrab. The other half he spent in rest.

Once more they tied their warhorses fast. Fate had turned its malevolent face upon them — when ill fortune brings its wrath, granite turns soft as wax.

They set themselves to wrestle, each gripping the other's belt. But the strength that had surged through Sohrab's hands the day before — you would say the high heavens had bound it. Rostam, grim and desperate, stretched out his claws and seized the head and neck of the young dragon. He bent the brave youth's back — fate had come, and Sohrab had no power left. He hurled him to the earth like a lion upon a wild ass, and knowing the boy would not stay down a second time, he drew his sharp blade from its sheath and drove it into the chest of that lion-hearted warrior.

Sohrab twisted in agony, drew a great sigh, and spoke: "This was my own doing. Fate gave the key into your hand, not mine. You are blameless — it is this hunchbacked sky that has slain me in haste. While boys my age play at games, my neck is laid in the dust. My mother showed me the signs of my father. I searched for him — I yearned only to see his face. And now I die without ever seeing him.

"But hear me: if you should become a fish swimming in the depths of the sea, or a star hidden in the farthest heaven — my father will draw you from your hiding-place and avenge my death when he learns that the earth has become my bed. For my father is Rostam, and it shall be told to him how Sohrab his son perished in the quest for his face."

When Rostam heard these words, the sword fell from his hand. He was shaken with a horror beyond any he had known. The earth went black before his eyes and he collapsed lifeless beside his son. When consciousness returned, he cried out in the agony of his spirit:

"Do you bear upon you a token of Rostam, that I may know the truth of what you say? For I am Rostam — the wretched, the accursed — and may my name be struck from the rolls of men!"

Sohrab's misery was boundless. He cried: "If you are indeed my father, then you have stained your sword in the life-blood of your own son. I sought to turn you toward love. I begged you for your name. I thought to see in you the tokens my mother described. But I appealed to your heart in vain. Open my armour, I beg you, and look upon the jewel on my arm — the onyx my father gave me, by which he would know me."

Rostam opened the mail and saw the onyx — his own onyx, the one he had given to Tahmineh. He tore his garments, covered his head with ashes, and the tears of desolation ran from his eyes. He roared aloud in his sorrow.

Sohrab said: "It is in vain. There is no remedy. Weep not — doubtless it was written that this should be."

Sohrab, seeing the Iranians approach in the distance, turned to his father and said: "I entreat you — do not let the Shah fall upon the Turanians. They came not in enmity to him but to serve my will, and upon my head alone rests this expedition. I do not wish them to perish when I can no longer defend them. As for me, I came like the thunder and I vanish like the wind — but perhaps it is given to us to meet again above."

Rostam promised. He went before the Iranians, and when they saw him alive they raised a great shout. But they saw his torn garments and the marks of grief upon him and asked what had happened. He told them he had caused a noble son to perish. They joined in his wailing.

He sent a message to Hooman: "The sword of vengeance must sleep in the scabbard. You are now leader of the host. Return whence you came and cross the river. I will fight no more. But I will not speak to you again, for you hid from my son the tokens of his father. By your treachery you led him into this pit."

Then Rostam remembered that Kay Kavus possessed a healing balm of miraculous power. He begged Gudarz to go before the Shah and carry a message: "If ever I have done anything worthy in your sight, if ever my hand has been of use to you — recall my service in this hour of need. Send me the balm that is among your treasures, that my son may be healed by your grace."

Gudarz flew to the Shah. But the heart of Kay Kavus was hard as flint. He remembered only Rostam's proud words and feared that if Sohrab lived, father and son together would prove mightier than the king. He refused. "If his son survives," Kavus reasoned, "Rostam's strength joined to Sohrab's will make the earth my prison. Did you not hear him say that Kavus is nothing? Let him threaten the gallows upon the Turk, not upon me."

Gudarz bore back the answer: "The heart of Kavus is flint, and his evil nature is a bitter gourd that never stops bearing fruit. Go before him yourself — perhaps you can soften this rock."

Rostam turned to go, but before he had reached the king, a messenger overtook him with the word that Sohrab had departed from the world.

Rostam set up a wail such as the earth had never heard. He heaped reproaches upon himself and could not stop lamenting the son who had fallen by his own hand.

"I who am old have killed my son," he cried. "I who am strong have uprooted this mighty boy. I have torn the heart of my child. I have laid low the head of a champion. What father has ever done such a thing? I am worthy now of nothing but cold words. Who in this world has slain his own child — a boy both brave and young and wise? What will his mother say? How shall I send anyone to face her? What reason can I give — why did I kill him, who was guiltless? Why did I turn his bright day black?"

He commanded that Sohrab be wrapped in royal brocades of gold-threaded cloth. Then he made a great fire, and into it he flung his many-coloured tent, his trappings, his saddle, his leopard-skin, his well-tested armour, and all the furnishings of his throne. He stood and watched his pride laid to ash.

"My heart is sick unto death," he said.

All the champions of Iran sat with him in the dust. Their tongues were full of counsel; Rostam's heart was pierced beyond repair.

The poet reflects: Such is the working of the high heavens — in one hand a crown, in the other a lasso. When a man sits gladly wearing his crown, the lasso-coil drags him from his place. Why then should we love this world at all? We must walk on with our companions. When the long thought of days stretches out, we must turn back toward the dust. If the heavens know what they are doing, surely their mind is empty. Know this: the wheel is ignorant of its own turning, and neither how nor why can find a path to it. Over this departure we must not weep, for we do not know what end awaits.

A wail rose from the land of Turan: Sohrab had been slain by the sword of vengeance. The news reached the king of Samangan, and he tore every garment upon his body.

When word came to his mother that Sohrab the brave had been wounded by his father's blade and was dead, Tahmineh clawed at her shirt and ripped it open. Her beautiful body shone like a ruby beneath the torn cloth. She raised a shriek and a howl. Again and again she lost consciousness. She wound her lasso-coiled tresses around her fingers and tore them from the root. Blood ran down her cheeks. She fell to the ground again and again.

She flung dust upon her head and bit her arms to the bone. She set fire upon her hair and burned her face.

"O my son," she cried, "where are you now — mingled with the earth? When my eyes were upon the road, I said: perhaps word will come of my child and of Rostam. I thought you had circled the world and were hurrying home. I never knew, O my son, that the message would be: Rostam has torn your liver with his dagger.

"He had no pity for your face, for your towering stature, for your hair. He had no pity for your chest, which he split with his blade. I nursed your body in tenderness, at my breast by day and through long nights. Now that body is drowned in blood, and your shroud has become a rag upon your frame.

"Whom shall I hold in my arms now? Who will comfort me? Whom shall I call to take your place? To whom shall I tell my grief?

"O lion, shelter of armies — you went seeking your father, and instead of your father a grave met you on the road. You departed hopeless and wretched, and you sleep in the dust. Before he drew the dagger and split your silver body, why did you not show him the token your mother gave you? Why did you not remind him? The signs your mother gave you from your father — why did they not come to your mind?

"Why did I not come with you on that journey? Rostam would have known me from afar. He would have embraced you, O my son. He would not have cast his lance at your side. He would not have torn open your liver."

She spoke and tore her hair and struck her face with her hands. Her keening was so fierce that it wrung tears from every eye. She fell upon the ground and lay like the dead — you would say her blood had frozen. When she came to herself, she took up Sohrab's crown and wept over it. She called for his horse and pressed the animal's head to her breast, kissing its hooves. She brought out Sohrab's garments and held them as though they still contained her boy.

With his own sword she cut off the horse's tail. She set fire to Sohrab's house and gave his gold and jewels to the poor. And when a year had rolled over her bitterness, the breath departed from her body, and her spirit went forth after Sohrab her son.

The Shah marched his army back toward Iran, and Rostam remained behind to wait for Zvareh's return from escorting the Turanian host. Zvareh came at dawn, and Rostam set his army in motion at once, turning toward Zabulestan.

When word reached Zal, all of Sistan came out to meet the returning host — in anguish and grief and sorrow. The soldiers marched before the bier. The nobles scattered dust upon their heads. The proud stallion's tail had been shorn. The war-drums were shattered and the bronze cymbals broken.

When Zal saw the coffin, he dismounted from his gold-bridled horse. Rostam walked before it on foot, his garments torn, his heart in ruins. The warriors unfastened their belts and pressed their foreheads to the dust before the bier.

They lifted the coffin down. Rostam came before his father in anguish and opened the gold-embroidered lid. "Look," he said. "Sam the horseman lies sleeping wretchedly in this narrow coffin." Zal wept blood from both eyes and cried out to God.

Rudabeh too came out to see the child. She joined her lamentations to theirs: "O lion-born champion — you will not raise your head from this casket even for a moment? You will not tell your mother what happened? Why did your father tear open your body?" Her keening reached from the courtyard to the heavens. All who heard it wept.

Rostam opened the coffin again before the nobles and showed them the boy's body. You would say smoke had risen from the turning sky. Every man and woman, young and old, stood stricken — faces blue with grief, garments torn, hearts full of pain, heads covered in dust. The bier filled the entire palace. The young lion slept within his casket. You would have said it was Sam himself, with that frame and those shoulders — wearied by battle, laid down to rest.

Rostam sealed the coffin again with yellow brocade. He said: "Though I build him a tomb of gold and line it with black musk — when I am gone it will not endure. There is no counsel for me but this." He built a tomb in the shape of a horse's hoof, and there he laid Sohrab in a chamber of gold scented with ambergris, and covered him in brocades of gold.

The house of Rostam became a grave. Its courts were filled with the voice of sorrow. No joy would enter the heart of the champion, and it was long before he held his head high.

The news spread to Turan, and there too all men grieved for the child of prowess fallen in his bloom. Hooman returned and told Afrasiab everything he had witnessed. The king of Turan was astonished, and from that affair he drew many calculations.

Thus ends the tale of Rostam and Sohrab — a story full of tears. The tender heart burns with anger at Rostam when it is told.