Eskandar seeks the Water of Life

Far in the west Eskandar came to a city of red-faced, yellow-haired people and asked, as he asked everywhere, what wonders the place held. An old man told him of a water beyond the city into which the sun sank each evening. Past it the world was dark, and a man of God had said that in the darkness there was a spring called the ab-e hayvan, the Water of Life. Whoever drank from it would never die. It ran from paradise, and to bathe in it was to wash away sin.

Eskandar asked how animals could travel in the dark. On young horses, he was told. So he had the herds driven in and chose ten thousand four-year-olds. He camped his army in a city so large he could see neither its middle nor its edge, and at dawn went alone to the spring of the story, where he watched until the sun went down into it. That night he picked the hardiest of his men, took food for forty days and found a guide: Khezr, the chief among the nobles of that people.

Eskandar put himself in Khezr's hands. He had two gems that shone like the sun in the night whenever water was near. He gave one to Khezr to carry in front and kept the other to light his own way. "If we find the Water of Life," he said, "we will spend long years in prayer." As the troop rode into the dark, a cry of Allahu akbar, God is great, rose from the plain.

Two roads

For two days and nights they rode without eating. On the third day two roads opened in the darkness, and Eskandar lost Khezr. Here the poem calls Khezr a prophet. He reached the Water of Life, washed his head and body in it, drank, rested and turned back, praising God. Eskandar never found it.

Instead he came out into the light before a shining mountain. On its top stood four columns of aloe-wood reaching to the clouds, each holding a great nest with a huge green bird that spoke in the tongue of Rum. One bird questioned him. Had he seen buildings of reed and baked brick? Had he heard the harp and the songs of drinkers? Did knowledge prevail in the world, or its lack? Did the pious in his country live on mountains? With each answer the bird came lower or flew back up, and at last it told him to climb to the summit alone, to see a sight that would make the merriest weep.

There Eskandar saw the angel Esrafil, trumpet in hand, his cheeks full of breath and his eyes wet, waiting for God's command to blow. He roared like thunder: "Slave of greed, do not strive so hard. One day a single blast will reach your ears. Pack your baggage and make ready to go." Eskandar answered that roaming was the share fortune had given him.

On the way back through the darkness a voice called from a black mountain: whoever picked up stones here would regret it, and whoever did not would regret it too. Some soldiers filled their pockets, some took nothing and some, out of laziness, took a few. When they came out on the plain the stones were rubies and gems. Those who had taken a little wished they had taken more, and those who had taken none were the sorriest of all.