Iran, Persia and me

‘Epic Fury’ could learn from real epic 

How do I and my fellow Parsis react to the present insanity involving our original motherland, nucleus of  two far-flung Zoroastrian empires, Cyrus the Great’s Achaemenid and the later Sassanian? Obviously we didn’t support the repressive regressive Ayatollah Khomeini who in 1979 ousted Pahlavi Reza Shah. The tall, fair, pretty and qualified Farah would have been coveted by every Parsi mum for her own son! who was every  for encouraging Parsis to return to the madar-e-watan they had fled 1000 years ago to save their ancient faith from the nascent sword of Islam. (Yes, yes, he too had used his own secret police SAVAK almost as summarily to silence his opponents.) Even more ekdum we didn’t condone the take-no-hostages brutality of Khomeini’s successor. But none of this justified last fortnight’s MAGAlomanic assassination of  Ayatollah Khamenei. Its global political, social and human shrapnel of is even less acceptable to all those who consider themselves civilized, decent and humane. We Parsis consider ourselves more so than most. 

So, only hypothetically of course, we could point the unleasher of Epic Fury to our 1010 CE Persian epic. Firdausi’s Shahnameh’s most poignant story shows the war’s unexpected and inestimable price. The legendary Rostam went off to serial wars leaving behind a pregnant wife and a jewel from his armband saying ‘If the stars send a son, bind it upon him in token of his father’. Decades later, i pedar and pasar confront each other unknowingly on the battlefield and Rostam mortally wounds Sohrab. Amazed by the lad’s fearlessness and intrigued by his warning that his father would pursue him in vengeance ‘even if  you become a star in the sky or hide in the belly of the earth’, Rustom demands ‘Who is your mother and what’s your identification?’ They ‘weep with chest-beating anguish’ when the dying son names Tahmina and pushes up his sleeve. 

There’s less clear moral in another Shahnameh story. Who today is Shah Faredoon, titled ‘Athyawan’ (the Righteous) for overthrowing barbaric usurper Zohak; daily fed the brains of two youths to the snakes emerging from his shoulders. Zohak sucks all night on the chains Faredoon trussed him with, making them thinner and thinner, but are miraculously restored to full thickness as soon as the rooster crows each daybreak. Which is why devout Parsis still eat only hens to ensure that the monster never breaks free.   

As for the critical shipping lane, ‘Hormuz’ or ‘Ohrmazd’ is the Pahlavi word for ‘Ahura Mazda’, Zoroastrianism’s Supreme Being. In Avestan Persian it means Lord of Wisdom, a commodity dangerously lacking in today’s extending  imbroglio.

Btw, I checked out all this, not with Chatg(eneral)pt, but by a chat with Genuine Parsi Teachers.  

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Alec Smart said: “ War is school for thought. But there’s little thought for school. ”

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