Sohrab: The Son His Father Killed

Sohrab is seventeen years old and already the best warrior in Turan.

He was born from a single night: Rostam, riding through the territory of Turan on a solo expedition, became a guest in the house of Tahmineh, the daughter of the local king. She came to him at night and asked him for a child. He gave her a bracelet and told her: if the child is a son, tie this bracelet on his arm so I will know him. Then he rode back to Iran and there were wars to fight and years went by.

The child is a son. His name is Sohrab. Tahmineh ties the bracelet on his arm and raises him and tells him, when he is old enough, who his father is. She does not tell him that his father is the greatest warrior alive and that Kāvus Shah and the lords of Turan, hearing that Sohrab is looking for Rostam, will scheme to prevent the reunion — because a father and son who each fight at Rostam’s level, unified, would be a political force too strong for any individual kingdom to resist.

Sohrab rides toward Iran carrying his father’s bracelet on his arm under his armor.

He has killed every champion Turan sent against him. He moves through the Iranian camps at the border like a visitation — not a conquest, exactly, but a declaration. He does not want to kill Iranians. He wants to find his father, who is somewhere in that army, and when he finds him, he wants to embrace him and propose that together they depose Kāvus and make Rostam king and end the wars between the two peoples permanently.

This plan is never absurd. That is what the tragedy requires: the plan would have worked.

He meets the Iranian champion Hujir, who knows who Rostam is, and asks him: Is Rostam in that camp? Point him out to me. Hujir refuses, correctly calculating that a Rostam-Sohrab alliance would end his own importance. He misdirects the young man.

The armies arrange a single combat.

Rostam rides out. He is wearing plain armor — he has not announced himself as Rostam, because the Iranians fear what will happen if the young giant on the other side knows his true opponent. Sohrab looks at the man across from him and feels something in his chest that he cannot name. He asks: Are you Rostam? Rostam denies it. It is a lie and Rostam knows it is a lie and his reasons for it are strategic and they are reasons that will end his line.

They fight twice.

The first day, Sohrab throws Rostam to the ground — the only man in Iranian history to do so. He holds Rostam down with his knee on the older man’s chest. He hesitates. He has been told the rule of combat: a warrior is not slain in the first fall, only in the second. He lets Rostam up.

The second day, Rostam uses a different tactic and drives his sword into Sohrab’s side.

Sohrab looks up from the ground at the man standing over him and says: My father will avenge me. His name is Rostam, and when Rostam hears what has been done to his son, there will be consequences.

The world stops.

Rostam asks for the bracelet. Sohrab opens his armor. The bracelet is on his arm.

He sends to Kāvus for the antidote — the royal medicine chest contains a cure that can close this wound. The messenger rides. Kāvus refuses to send it. The calculation is political and correct from a certain angle: a Rostam in grief is a Rostam controllable; a Rostam with a living giant son is a Rostam who will remember that he loved Kāvus Shah mainly as a habit.

Sohrab dies at sunset.

Rostam builds the funeral pyre himself, which is the last thing a man does for his son and the first thing a man does who has no more uses for the world beyond staying alive until the gods have a use for him.

He stays alive for a long time afterward.

He goes on fighting. He rescues Kāvus again. He performs the Seven Labors again for different kings. He is still the greatest warrior in Iran. None of this changes what happened on the plain between the armies in the year his son came looking for him wearing his bracelet under his armor.

The bracelet is buried with Sohrab.