English
Rostam and Sohrab: The Final Combat
Once more they tied their horses fast for battle, while a hostile fate wheeled overhead.
They set themselves to wrestling, each man gripping the other's belt.
Whenever cruel fate turns angry, it can soften solid granite like wax.
Proud Sohrab, with the strength of his hands, could have bound the high heavens themselves; you would think so.
Rostam was in anguish. He reached out and seized that warrior chest and neck, fierce as a leopard's.
The brave youth's back bent low; his time had come, and no strength was left in him.
Rostam threw him to the ground like a lion, knowing the boy would not stay pinned for long.
Swiftly he drew his sharp blade from his waist and tore open the breast of that wakeful, lionhearted youth.
Sohrab twisted in pain, then let out a sigh, cutting short all thought of good and bad.
He said: This came upon me by my own doing. I handed fate the key with my own hand.
You are innocent in this; it was this hunchbacked sky that raised me up only to kill me so soon.
Boys my own age will say in play: his mighty frame was laid low in the dust like this.
My mother told me the signs of my father; out of love for him, my soul has reached its end.
Every time you thirsted for blood and stained that gleaming dagger,
fate will one day thirst for your blood, and the hairs on your body will turn to blades against you.
Now, even if you become a fish in the water, or vanish into darkness like the night,
or turn into a star up in the sky and lift all trace of yourself from the face of the earth,
my father will still demand vengeance for me from you, when he sees the dust is my pillow.
One of these proud, renowned champions will carry word to Rostam,
telling him that Sohrab has been killed and thrown down in disgrace, the very one who was searching for you.
When Rostam heard this, his head reeled; the world went dark before his eyes.
When he came back to his senses, he asked the boy, with a wail and a cry:
What sign do you carry now of Rostam? May his name be erased from among the champions.
The boy said: If you truly are Rostam, then you have killed me senselessly, out of your own bad nature.
I tried in every way to guide you toward the truth, yet not a single spark of love stirred in you.
When the sound of the war drums rose from our gate, my mother came to me, both cheeks streaming with tears.
Her soul was crushed by my leaving; she tied a small clasp onto my arm.
She told me: Keep this token from your father, and watch for the day it comes to use.
Now it has proved its use, when all use is gone: the son lies humbled before his father's eyes.
My mother, with her bright soul, also sent a champion along with me,
so that he could point out my father to me and speak the truth in every gathering.
But when that famous champion was killed, my own day turned against me as well.
Now unfasten the clasps of my armor; look upon my bare, bright body.
When Rostam opened the coat of mail and saw that clasp, he tore all his clothes upon himself.
He kept crying: You who were slain by my own hand, brave and praised in every assembly,
He shed tears of blood and tore his hair, his head full of dust and his face full of water.
Sohrab said to him: This makes it worse; there is no use in weeping with both eyes.
What good is it now to destroy yourself? It went this way; this was a thing that had to be.
When the shining sun turned across the dome of the sky, mighty Rostam had not returned from the plain to the army.
Twenty watchful men came out from the army to see what was happening on the battlefield.
Two horses stood there on the plain, and Rostam, covered in dust, was somewhere else.
When the warriors did not see the elephant bodied hero upon his saddle on that field of vengeance,
they guessed that he had been killed, that the chief of all the champions was gone.
They rushed the news to King Kavus: that the throne of greatness was now empty of Rostam.
A cry rose up from the whole army; all at once the world came to a boil.
Kavus ordered the horns and drums to sound, and the commander Tus arrived.
Then King Kavus said to him: Send a swift camel rider from here to the battlefield,
let him race off to learn what has become of Sohrab, for we may have to weep for the whole land of Iran.
If Rostam the warrior has been killed, who from Iran would dare go up against Sohrab?
We must strike him with a great mass of men; there is no staying idle on this battlefield.
When the uproar rose from the gathering, Sohrab said this to the mighty hero:
Now that my day has passed, everything for the Turks will turn out differently.
Show all your kindness so that the king does not march his army against the Turks,
for it was for my sake, seeking battle, that they turned their faces toward the borders of Iran.
For many days I had given them promises; in every way I had raised their hopes.
They should not meet any harm on the road; look upon them with nothing but kindness.
Rostam mounted Rakhsh, swift as dust, his face full of blood and his lips full of cold sighs.
He came before the army with a cry, his heart aching and burning at what he had done.
When the Iranians saw his face, they all bowed their faces to the ground.
They began to praise the Creator that he had come back alive from the battle.
But when they saw his head in the dust, his clothes torn and his chest wounded,
they asked: What is this? For whom is your heart in such a state?
He told them the astonishing thing he had done: that he had struck down the one dearest to him.
They all raised their cries along with him; the earth was full of wailing and the air full of turmoil.
He said to the proud chiefs: Today it is as if I have neither a heart nor a body left.
Let none of you seek war against the Turks; the evil I have done this day is enough.
When the hero turned from that place, he came to his wounded son, still breathing.
The great ones went along with him, men like Tus and Gudarz and Gostaham.
The whole army, for that noble youth, loosed their tongues all at once from silence.
They said: May God bring a cure for this, may He make this ordeal easier for you.
Rostam took a dagger in his hand to cut off his own base head from his body.
The great ones clung to him, pouring blood from their eyelashes.
Gudarz said to him: What good is it now to raise smoke over the whole world in grief?
If you inflict a hundred wounds on yourself, how does that bring any ease to that noble boy?
If time still remains for him in this world, then stay alive so you may remain with him, free of sorrow.
And if this youth is meant to leave this world, look at the world: who lives forever?
We are all, every one, prey before death, some heads beneath a crown, some beneath a helmet.