Wrath & Righteousnes Episodes 01 to 05

by Chris Stewart

  Brighton felt Balaam’s influence so near that Brighton actually repeated the words: “No future . . . no future . . . .”

  “The world is too dark now. And it will only get worse. Your sons have nothing! You have nothing! There is no more good or hope in any of your futures. This is my world. I have claimed it. And you would cry and quiver if you could see all of the misery I have in store!”

  FIVE

  Allah is greater than any description

  I testify that there is no god but Allah

  I testify that Muhammad is Allah’s Messenger

  Hasten to prayers

  Hasten to deliverance

  Hasten to the best act

  Allah is greater than any description

  There is no god but Allah.

  From the Adhan

  (Muslim Call to Prayer)

  Agha Jari Deh Valley

  Twenty kilometers southwest of Behbehan, Iran

  Later that night, the same moon looked down upon another man who was about to become a father, too.

  This one thought of himself as a fallen king, but that wasn’t really true. He was not fallen, but denied, for fate had kept him from ever climbing upon the throne.

  The young Persian was tall and slender, with brown eyes, a clean face, and short, wavy hair. He was handsome, almost regal, with a fine Roman nose, high cheekbones and widely spaced eyes of a prince. Indeed, in another time, under different circumstances, he would have been one of the kings, for the royal blood that ran through him was a thousand years old, and the fact that he wasn’t was but a twist of timing and fate. Had he been born a few generations before he would have sat on a throne, along with his cousins and uncles, all of them tracing their roots to the trunk of that great royal family tree.

  But it wasn’t so. Instead, Rassa Ali Pahlavi was a Iranian sheepherder and sod farmer, a man who scratched out an existence, living from one season to the next, praying for rain, then praying for sun, praying for a harvest that could carry him through.

  Here, in his country, the royal family name meant nothing at all, nothing but memories of disappointments and the failures of the generations long past.

  So despite the fact that Persian royal blood ran through him, it bought him no advantage and he preferred to keep his lineage a secret, unwilling to be reminded of how his ancestors had failed. His own grandfather, the Great Shah Pahlavi, last in a line of Persian monarchs dating back to Cyrus in 559 B.C., had, through arrogance and corruption, lost the claim to his kingdom and been expelled with his family, leaving behind but a few, all of whom where stripped of any prestige, money or power. Thinking of the royal family’s exile, it was as if Rassa could picture the ancient royals of Persia packing up their caravans and slipping into the desert. His family, too, had packed up their wealth and slipped into the night, transferred enormous sums of money into overseas accounts, loaded their jewels and their paintings, the riches of their kingdom, and sulked away with their caravans of wealth, disappearing into the dark. With the fall of the shah, his family’s power and wealth—and worse, their ambition—had slipped into the desert and completely disappeared. Most of Rassa’s family lived in far-away lands; fat and discontent, but too scared to come home.

  Yet Rassa was not like them. He was neither fat nor discontent. And he was certainly unafraid.

  Still, it appeared there was no turning back the clock. The age of Greater Persia had passed. The Rule of Pahlavi was gone. The timing of his birth had ensured he would live his life in the mountains, herding sheep and plowing fields, and never sit on a throne.

  It seemed ironic to Rassa that so much was left up to fate. Fate and the Master. Timing and place. They could all be so cruel, the young man had learned.

  But still, life was good. Rassa said those words to himself daily. It wasn’t perfect, there was sadness, and no, he was not a prince. But that was all right. It mattered not. Life was always worth living, and worth passing on.

  And on this night, at this time, that was his only concern. His young wife and their child. That was all that mattered to him now.

  Rassa Ali Pahlavi, twenty-six and broad-shouldered, walked along the narrow trail that led through the trees, away from his village. Twilight fell quickly, and the shadows under the canopy grew dark as he walked. The jungle of trees along his path formed a perfect canopy and the air was musky and wet, almost salty from the wind blowing in from his back. Behind him, the briny salt flats ran parallel to the shore of the Arabian Sea, some twenty-one kilometers to the west, and the evening air carried the smell of salt water and decaying brine shrimp. The terrain between his village and the sea was steep and rugged, with narrow valleys and foothills rising from sea level to meet the peaks of the great Zagros Mountains, the mountains that acted as a barrier to the mighty storms that rolled in from the Persian Gulf, a wall over which the clouds couldn’t climb without dumping their load, leaving the valleys on the west side of the mountains rich, green, fertile and wet.

  As Rassa moved off the trail and from under the trees, the evening light broke through. He climbed a grassy embankment that looked over his village, a neat square of squat, clay houses, wood fences and tidy courtyards surrounded by brick walls. The barnyards were filled with white and brown goats, dark-skinned children, gnarled plum and fig trees and tangled grapevines, a hundred years old. To his back, the mountain rose above his village; rich green grass and gray rock, with tiny pockets of snow in the highest crevasses left behind from the winter snows. The terrain sloped up to the mountain from his village in a near perfect half-bowl, rising ever more steeply until it merged with the rocks. An enormous wedge of granite, like a huge piece of rock pie, jutted at the peak of the mountain, almost 12,000 feet up. Lower, on the southern tip of the bowl, a thick forest lay, with large oaks and tall pines swaying in the dim light.

  Standing atop the rolling crown of the hill that looked over his village, the young Persian looked back to the east where the rising moon was now low, a huge blood-red orb on the distant horizon. He could see the haze and humidity rising off the warm waters of the Persian Gulf. The moon soaked through the wet warm air.

  Blood red and warm. Yes. That was right. Blood red and warm. Like the birth of his child.

  Rassa thought quickly of his wife, Sashajan, a woman he loved more than he wished to live. She was young, she was beautiful, she was everything to him and as he stood there in silence thinking of her young face and anguished cries, as he pictured the consternation in the midwife’s dark eyes and the feel of her arms pushing him toward the door, he felt a shudder run through him and the anxiety rose again.

  His child was coming. On this night, it would be born.

  Then he fell, his knees buckling, his arms heavy and weak. He put his hands together and bowed until his forehead touched the dirt.

  He hunched there, unmoving as the evening grew still.

  * * *

  It seemed to him as if time stood still. He wasn’t asleep, but he saw it as if it were a dream. The vision was bright, but still misty, as if he were watching through a great gulf of distance and time. There was a sheen to it all, as if wet from heavy rain. He saw shimmering trees, wide and gentle, and an enormous stone gate.

  She stood alone at the gate. He almost gasped out loud. She was so beautiful! Young. Strong. Dark hair. Black eyes that seemed to dance with light. Anticipation and excitement in every motion of her hands.

  He watched her intently.

  Did she see him, too?

  She took a careful step toward the gate, a gaping hole leading to some unknown world. She paused and trembled, and then Rassa understood. She was excited, but scared, maybe even terrified. Yet she continued moving forward, unwavering, strong and confident!

  And he knew, somewhere inside him, that this was his child!

  She stopped and glanced toward him. Staring through the distance, she looked directly into his eyes. Then she smiled and nodded. “Yes, it is true!”

  He gasped. It was a moment of joy so intens
e, so powerful and pure that he almost couldn’t breath.

  She nodded to him again then stepped through the stone gate.

  * * *

  The vision faded quickly and soon it was gone. Rassa felt his chest tighten and a rush of blood flow to his head. A shadow fell over him and the enormous space between them seemed to grow suddenly more vast and powerful.

  He found himself kneeling in the darkness, his head touching the ground. The night had settled around him and the hilltop was now dark. The evening wind blew, chill and dry from the mountain, and he felt a cold shiver run up his spine. Looking up, he stared at the dark night. Then he saw the shooting star. It flamed from the north, stretching across the entire evening sky, trailing a stream of sparkles that seemed to reach toward the ground.

  An angel falling from the heavens . . . falling to the mortal world . . . .

  He didn’t move, his eyes closed, his head touching the soft grass. Finally, he took a deep breath, bringing himself back to this world.

  Then he heard a voice speaking to his very soul.

  “This thing that is about to happen, know that it is my will.”

  A deep sense of brooding seemed to seep into his soul.

  “This thing that will happen, know that it is my will.”

  He held his breath and listened to hear the cry of his child. Hearing nothing, he pushed himself to his feet, turned and ran through the night down the hill.

  SIX

  Rassa Pahlavi ran through the streets of his village toward his home. The half-moon had climbed, a burnt orb in the eastern sky just barely above the rocky peaks of the mountains. The air was calm. The sky was crystal clear and the stars were shining brightly, for the dark had settled in. Dogs barked as he passed, and he could hear the sheep bells tolling from the pastures to the east, but the baked brick and stone streets were deserted and dark.

  He paused on the cement step outside his front door, then let himself in. He found three neighbors there, all old men, village leaders who had come to bless his home, bringing gifts for Rassa and Sashajan. He hugged them all, pressing his face against their cheeks, their beards pressing against the fine hair on his neck. He walked through the simple kitchen, past a set of wooded chairs and old table, a worn vinyl couch and small television, then stopped at the door to his bedroom and listened. He could hear movement and the sound of water being poured into the steel basin, then laughter, and hushed voices, then the cry of a child. He bowed his head and took a breath, then pushed back the door.

  Sashajan was sitting up on their bed holding their child in her arms and he moved quickly to her. Her face, though drawn and weary, could not hold back her joy as she leaned to the side, her cheeks touching the top of her daughter’s soft hair. The midwife worked around them. Rassa glanced to her as she pulled a clean cotton cloth across a small mattress and placed it inside the wicker crib that Rassa had constructed from dry reeds he had pulled from the banks of the stream that ran through the center of the village. He caught her eye and mouthed a quick “Thank you,” then turned back to his wife and child.

  Sashajan smiled, her dark eyes beaming brightly. She drew a contented breath, then held out her hand and Rassa touched her fingers lightly as he sat on the edge of the bed. The smell of talcum powder and olive oil rose from his new baby’s body. The child was sleeping, her lips puckered into a tiny circle, her hands clenched into tight fists at her chest, as if she were bracing from some unseen blow. She was wrapped in a cotton blanket, her legs tucked tightly against her body. Her head was covered in dark hair, thin as silk, and the midwife had already pinned a tiny white ribbon on the crown of her head.

  The young parents stared at the baby. Neither one of them spoke. Rassa felt a shiver run through him as the peaceful feeling settled again.

  Sashajan looked at him, thirteen hundred years of tradition pressing heavily on her mind. “You have a daughter,” she said, her voice quiet and apologetic. It was, after all, a wife’s duty to produce a fine son.

  Rassa stared at the child, thinking of the vision he had seen. “Yes, I know,” was all he said.

  Sashajan began to question, then glanced nervously to the midwife, who had stopped her work and placed her hands on her hips, ready to defend the young mother if Rassa were so foolish as to say the wrong thing. Sashajan turned from the midwife and dropped her dark eyes. “You wanted a son!” she said simply.

  “No!” Rassa answered. “I want this child.”

  Sashajan looked up quickly, her eyes filled with relief. She squeezed the tip of his fingers. “Thank you,” she whispered. There was far more meaning in her expression than most could understand, for it was a seal of their commitment, a commitment which surpassed the boundaries of their culture, the boundaries of their people’s traditions or time.

  Rassa stared at the infant that slept at Sashajan’s breast. Reaching down, he lifted her carefully and pulled her into his arms. The baby remained still, and he bent and whispered quietly into her ear. “I witness that there is no god but Allah, and I witness that Mohammad is the messenger of Allah.” Words from Mohammad himself. It was the desire of all Muslims that these would be the first words a child would hear from their father’s mouth as well as the last words that they would utter or hear before death. Rassa repeated, “I witness that there is no god but Allah,” then pulled his head back to look into his child’s face.

  She slept peacefully, taking shallow breaths, light as a bird sleeping in the palm of his hand. He placed his little finger inside her palm and the baby girl instinctively grasped it, her tiny fingers unable to extend around his finger. Then she opened her eyes and stared at him blankly. Her eyes were dark and deep, her face calm and unmoving, as if she were intent on keeping her thoughts to herself. Rassa stared at her and wondered how much was going on inside her head? Did she understand things . . . did she remember things? Is that why God made His infants unable to communicate? Did a child only watch and learn, or did they already know? Was she learning or forgetting during these first few days on earth?

  Sashajan watched Rassa, then moved closer to her child. The infant turned toward her and it seemed that she smiled. Her lips turned upward, her eyes brightened, and her face seemed to beam. “Did you see that, Rassa!” Sashajan cried in delight, “she smiled at me, Rassa. I know that she did.”

  Rassa didn’t answer and Sashajan glanced toward him. “Do you think she knows I’m her mother?” she asked.

  Rassa answered slowly. “I don’t know, Sashajan.”

  Sashajan lifted her finger to touch her new baby’s cheek. Rassa watched her a moment, then lifted the child to his face. He dropped his mouth to her neck, feeling the softness and warmth of her flesh on his lips. “I saw you,” he whispered so that Sashajan couldn’t hear. “But where did you come from? I do not understand.”

  Sashajan glanced up, a questioning look in her eyes. “Rassa?” she asked him, “what are you saying?”

  Rassa looked at his wife. She looked so young and so small, as if she had shrunken from the experience of delivering their child. She was pale and shaking, and Rassa knew that she was weak. He turned back to his child. “We will call her Azadeh Ishbel,” he announced, lifting her to present her to the heavens. “Freedom is my oath to God.”

  Sashajan leaned forward and placed her head next to his. “‘Freedom is my oath to God.’ Yes, Rassa, that is a good name. There is something about her—it seems to fit her perfectly.”

  Rassa smiled. “She is beautiful. She is Azadeh. Thanks be to God.” He lowered his arms and kissed the infant’s brow and she unconsciously tightened her lips into another tight circle. “Azadeh, I love you,” he whispered as he placed the child in her mother’s arms. “And though I don’t understand where you came from, still I welcome you here.”

  * * *

  Before she left, the midwife pulled Rassa into the next room and spoke to him in a low voice.

  “It was a difficult birth,” she said wearily. “She is young, but not strong. It was very hard fo
r her.”

  Rassa looked worried. “What do I do?” he asked anxiously.

  “Let her rest. Keep her warm. Don’t let her out of bed. I will come by first thing in the morning and see how she is.”

  Rassa felt his knees weaken. “She will be fine, though?” he asked anxiously.

  “Insha’allah.” “If God wills it.”

  The midwife studied the deep worry lines on Rassa’s face, then patted his arm, her hands heavy and strong. “I have seen many women worse,” she offered as she gathered her things. “Birth and death. Death and birth. The cycle of life carries on. Who are we to intervene in the will of God? But she is young and there is no reason to assume she will not mend in the next day or two. But she needs time to rest and recover from all the life she has lost. I can’t do that for her, Rassa, and neither can you. But if you let her rest and keep her warm, she will be fine, I am sure.”

  Rassa swallowed hard. The midwife swept through the room one final time, then her work was complete, she let herself out the door.

  Rassa returned to the bedroom. Sashajan opened her eyes as he walked in. “We are a family,” he muttered as he sat beside her on the bed. “God has blessed us. We have reason to rejoice.”

  Sashajan nodded wearily. “I love you, Rassa,” she whispered as he gently stroked her hair. She fell asleep almost instantly. Rassa sat on the bed and held her hand as the child, wrapped in her soft cotton blanket, slept at her side. Sashajan eventually rolled away from him and he tucked the covers around her back, then placed the baby beside her so that she could nurse. For a long moment he watched them by the moonlight, the night so quiet that he could hear Azadeh breathe.

  He was a man. He had a daughter and a beautiful wife. And one day he was certain that he would also have a son.

  Life wasn’t perfect, but on this night at least, it was very good.

  After some time, Rassa moved away from the bed, stripped off his clothes and pulled on a nightshirt. Moving carefully, he lay down close to the child, eager to keep her warm against the cool mountain air. As he lay on his back and wearily closed his eyes, he suddenly remembered the silent words again.