An Ancient Persian Love story ( shirin and Farhad)
There is a place I know, high up in the
mountains of Kurdistan. Where the crow roams freely and the snow finally meets
the sun. Where you can fall wild like a mountain and run with a stone in your
hand. This is where our story sleeps.
There was a brave man called Farhad, who loved a Princess named Shirin, but the
Princess did not love him. Farhad tried in vain to gain access to the love-cell
of Shirin's heart, but no one would dare betray the fact that a stonecutter
loved a lady of royal blood. Farhad, in despair, would go to the mountains and
spend his days without food, playing his flute sweet music in praise of Shirin.
At last peopl 20320c218u e thought to devise a plan to acquaint the Princess of the
stone-cutter's love. She saw him once, and love which lived in his bosom also
began to breathe in hers. But she dared not a mean laborer aspire to win the
hand of a princess? It was not long, however, before the Shah himself heard the
rumors of this extraordinary exchange of sentiment. He was naturally indignant
at the discovery, but as he had no child other than Shirin, and Shirin was also
pining away with love, he proposed to his daughter that her lover, being of
common birth, must accomplish a task such as no man may be able to do, and
then, and only then, might he be recommended to his favor.
The task which he skillfully suggested was that Shirin should ask her lover to
dig a canal in the rocky land among the hills. The canal must be six lances in
width and three lances deep and forty miles long!
The Princess had to convey her father's decision to Farhad, who forthwith
shouldered his spade and started off to the hills to commence the gigantic
task. He worked hard and broke the stones for years. He would start his work
early in the morning when it was yet dark and never ceased from his labor till,
owing to darkness, no man could see one yard on each side. Shirin secretly
visited him and watched the hard working Farhad sleeping with his taysha (spade)
under his head, his body stretched on the bed of stones. She noticed, with
all the pride of a lover, that he cut her figure in the rocks at each six yards
and she would sigh and return without him knowing.
Farhad worked for years and cut his canal; all was in readiness but his task
was not yet finished, for he had to dig a well in the rocky beds of the
mountains. He was half- way through, and would probably have completed it, when
the Shah consulted his courtiers and sought their advice. His artifice had
failed. Farhad had not perished in the attempt, and if all the conditions were
fulfilled as they promised to be soon, his daughter must go to him in marriage.
The Viziers suggested that an old woman should be sent to Farhad to tell him
that Shirin was dead; then, perhaps, Farhad would become heart broken and leave
off the work.
It was an ignoble trick, but it promised success and the Shah agreed to try it.
So an old woman went to Farhad and wept and cried till words choked her; the
stone-cutter asked her the cause of her bereavement.
"I weep for a deceased," she said, "and for you."
"For a deceased and for me?" asked the surprised Farhad. "And
how do you explain it?"
"Well, my brave man," said the pretender sobbingly, "you
have worked so well, and for such a long time, too, but you have labored in
vain, for the object of you devotion is dead!"
"What!" cried the bewildered man, "Shirin is dead?"
Such was his grief that he cut his head with the sharp taysha (spade) and
died under the carved streamed into his canal was his own blood. When Shirin
heard this she fled in great sorrow to the mountains where lay her wronged
lover; it is said that she inflicted a wound in her own head at the precise
spot where Farhad had struck himself, and with the same sharp edge of the spade
which was stained with her lover's gore. No water ever flowed into the canal,
but the two lovers were entombed in one and the same grave.
"There's a place where now the two lovers sleep. Side by side. Shirin
and her Farhad. That place is very high up in the mountains of Kurdistan. And
can only be reached when the snow comes washing down in spring. And stains
blood red the cheeks of maidens. If you want to meet the two of them, you will
have to ask the crow to take you there."
This writing is dedicated to all those whose hearts have been struck by love
and to the one and only star in the sky of my heart....'All else disappears
when the thought of the beloved occupies the mind of the lover.'
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