On a cold night, on the 59th day of his journey, ShAhin awoke five hours before the rising of the sun. The moon was merely a last crescent of light before it would begin its cycle anew, and he sat patiently, awaiting the sun to light his way.
However, a chill came over him and he pulled his blanket
closer about his body. Sleep whispered his name again. Hours passed, in quiet.
Suddenly ShAhin opened his eyes, the sun now up and
beginning to warm his face. He cried out—not words, but more an exhalation of
pain. He lifted his hand and squinted into the sun. What he saw, or what he
thought he saw, could not be so. He pulled himself up between the two rocks
that sheltered him that night.
He looked again. Dozens, no hundreds of beech trees were
snapped off perhaps no more than six feet above the ground. More than hundreds.
The forest was destroyed. ShAhin wept. All that he had known as a young man and
as an adult became dead to him. He steadied himself between the two rocks. And
in his weeping, he fell to his knees.
He cried out, “I have nothing. I have nothing in this
world.” And so he continued throughout the day until one hour before sundown. At
last, exhausted in his sorrow, he leaned back against one great stone.
Within a few moments, no longer, ShAhin fell back asleep.
Deep into the night, in the final dreams of this sleep, he saw himself standing
before Souri and her mother in their house, and a shyness came over him as if
he stood naked before the women. Souri took note of his discomfort and came to
him, speaking soothing words.
“You may be at peace, ShAhin, all is well.” But he could
not seem to find the words to answer her. She caressed his cheek with her
fingertips. “All is well.” His cheeks
flushed, and she giggled and leaned up on her toes so that she could ever so
sweetly kiss him on the lips. “All will be well.” The scent of Ghamsar
rosewater stayed with him even as he opened his eyes to begin the new day.
When ShAhin completed his morning obligations, he looked
back down the road he had been traveling. He could see a man, who appeared to
be quite old, beckoning to him. Without any apprehension, ShAhin trotted down
the gentle slope and soon was standing before the stranger.
“ShAhin, quick now, listen. I am the King’s bookmaker on
the way back to the palace, but a lady has told me that you, not the King,
should be the keeper of this book.”
ShAhin stepped back and studied the old man. “I cannot
remember that we have met, Ancient One.”
“Be quick, now, again I tell you. Take this book. I must
be away.” The old hands thrust the slender volume toward ShAhin.
ShAhin fumbled the book in his hands even as the
bookmaker turned and was striding briskly off to the north. In his hands, the
book seemed weighty, but its size was not great like a book of maps. When ShAhin
opened to the first page, he saw a hand-painted rose so artfully rendered that he
was sure the breath he took in also took in the scent of that flower.
He closed the book and then carefully opened it again
nearly half-way into the volume. There before his eyes was a most beautiful
image, a vision of Lake Urmia, the waters of his childhood, the shores where he
and his grandfather walked together. Gently, ShAhin turned the page. The
language was not the language of his fathers.
Perplexed, ShAhin closed the book and again opened it a
little further into the pages. And again the lake picture, but this time with
hundreds of flamingoes like the ones he had chased as a boy, making them rise
up in great clouds of pink and spiral off into the blue sky.
Lake Urmia, those waters that were once his whole world,
lay to the south. He closed the book and added it to the sack of his few
possessions. So on the 60th day, ShAhin began his walk back into the
time and place where he came from, the birthplace of his spirit.
At the end of the day, he found a small cave, and there
ShAhin could take shelter for the night.
During the night a great wind came up and so he spent the 61st day of
his travels in that place where by the light of a small fire he could examine
the royal book.
He opened the book a dozen pages or so in and to his
surprise, once again, the panorama of the lake with its flamingoes. He turned
the page and again he could not read the words. ShAhin closed the book and opened
to a page nearly at the end of the book. The lake spread out before his eyes,
the flamingoes rising in their great flock.
Quickly he closed the book. Again his finger found a
place to open. Again the flamingoes taking flight over the water. Closed.
Opened. Closed. Opened. Always the same. At every place he opened to, the birds
in flight, even more beautiful than the time before. Ladson
2014
ShAhin slept that night with the book on his chest in his
hands. The next morning—Day 62—he awoke and took the book with him and out into
the light of the new dawn. He looked skyward and then gently turned open the
pages.
There on the shore of the lake stood Souri and her mother.
Both women smiled, and the mother raised one hand in greeting. Souri had her
arms out toward him. He leaned in closer to the page and cocked his head.
ShAhin heard a distant sound of waves lapping at the
shore, and then her soft voice, “All will be well.” Ladson 2014
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