THE KING AND THE BLACKSMITH
A TRAGEDY OF JAMSHID, ḎAHHĀK, AND THE LONG NIGHT OF THE SERPENT KING
After the Avestan Yima tradition, the Rigvedic dialogue-hymns, and the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi
DRAMATURGICAL NOTE
This tragedy joins several ancient inheritances as branches growing from one dramatic root: the Avestan memory of Yima and the Khvarenah; the Rigvedic world of Sarāmā, the Paṇis, and the breaker of obstacles; the Persian epic tradition of Jamshid, Ḏahhāk, Kaveh, and Fereydūn; and the figure of Mitra as guardian of the given word.
The play does not pretend that these traditions are historically identical. It deliberately places them in conversation.
Its central question is older than any kingdom:
What happens when a man entrusted with power begins to believe that the trust itself belongs to him?
The tragedy therefore does not oppose a simple good against a simple evil.
Jamshid is not born a tyrant.
Ḏahhāk is not born a monster.
Fereydūn is not born a savior.
Each inherits something from the man before him.
The first king seeks to conquer chaos and discovers that order may become a prison.
The serpent king seeks greatness and discovers that appetite, once enthroned, can never be satisfied.
The liberator seeks justice and must discover whether justice can survive the intoxication of victory.
At the center of them all stands Fire:
never owned,
never conquered,
never imprisoned—
only carried.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
JAMSHID (YIMA) — First king of the ordered world; civilizer, builder, keeper of Fire and bearer of the Khvarenah.
ANAHITA (URVA) — Goddess of waters, fertility, wide earth, renewal and memory.
MITRA — Guardian of covenant, truth, hospitality and the given word.
VERETHRAGNA, CALLED BAHRAM — Victory; warrior of divine order.
SARĀMĀ — Far-running seeker; finder of what has been hidden.
THE PANIS — Hoarders of cattle, grain and light.
INDAR — Daeva of violence, intoxication and false sovereignty.
ḎAHHĀK — Young prince who becomes the Serpent King.
MERDAS — His father; a just and unambitious ruler.
SPITYURA — Brother of Jamshid; his intimate double and moral counter-self.
KAVEH — Blacksmith; father, craftsman and reluctant rebel.
ABTIN — Nobleman of Jamshid's line.
FEREYDŪN (THRAETAONA) — Son of Abtin; liberator and binder of the tyrant.
CHORUS OF FIRE-BEARERS — Priests, smiths, shepherds, women of the waters and the people who remember.
MESSENGER
THE DAEVAS
PROLOGUE
BEFORE THE FIRST CITY
Not the darkness of night, but the darkness before night possessed a name.
There is no palace. No altar. No wall.
Only the sound of wind moving across an immeasurable plain.
Then water.
Then silence.
A single flame appears.
The flame grows.CHORUS
Before the wall there was no border.
Before the throne there was no subject.
Before the law there was no crime whose name a man could utter against his neighbour.
The earth lay open beneath the heavens.
The rivers travelled without permission.
The cattle wandered where grass invited them.
The mountains stood without knowing that men would one day give them names and call those names possessions.
And the sun—
the ancient witness—
rose each morning without asking:
Who is king today?
JAMSHID enters carrying two pieces of wood.Yet even in that first innocence there was danger.
For man is a creature who looks upon disorder and calls it suffering.
He sees the wilderness and imagines a wall.
He sees the river and imagines a channel.
He sees the darkness and seeks a lamp.
These are not sins.
Indeed, without them there is no city, no harvest, no music, no memory.
But every gift carries within it a shadow.
The wall that keeps out the wolf may one day keep in the king.
The law that restrains the strong may one day be spoken by the strong against the weak.
The fire that warms the house may one day burn the house.
And glory—
glory is most dangerous of all.
For glory is given to a man as a trust,
and the first lie of power is the belief that what has been entrusted
has therefore been earned.
He is young.
He looks upon the empty world not with hunger, but with wonder.
He waits.JAMSHID
What is a king?
He looks across the emptiness.Is he the man who stands above other men?
No.
A mountain stands above the valley and is not its king.
Is he the man whom others obey?
No.
The frightened obey the wolf.
The enslaved obey the chain.
Neither wolf nor chain is worthy of a crown.
Then what is a king?
Perhaps he is the man to whom the world entrusts what cannot belong to him.
The river—
not mine.
The pasture—
not mine.
The child sleeping beneath another man's roof—
not mine.
Even the flame—
not mine.
And yet someone must guard the flame.
Someone must carry it through the darkness without confusing the hand that carries it with the light itself.He strikes the wood.
A spark.
Again.Another spark.
Again.Fire.
He watches the flame.CHORUS
And Jamshid turned the wood against itself,
and from friction came light.
Not from command.
Not from conquest.
From the meeting of two things that had not known
they possessed the power to awaken one another.
JAMSHID
One fire for heaven.
One for earth.
One for the space between.
MITRA appears at the edge of the light.Strange.
A thing may be divided
and yet remain one.
Perhaps that is the first lesson of kingship.
Perhaps a kingdom is not made whole by possessing everything,
but by allowing different things to remain themselves
and still belong to one world.
JAMSHID looks at the flame.MITRA
Remember that sentence.
JAMSHID
Who speaks?
MITRA
One who remembers sentences after their speakers have forgotten them.
JAMSHID
Are you a god?
MITRA
That depends upon what you mean by god.
If you mean one who creates—
no.
If you mean one who commands—
no.
If you mean one who watches the promise made between two beings
and refuses to let either pretend that the promise never existed—
then perhaps.
I am Mitra.
JAMSHID
And why have you come?
MITRA
To witness.
JAMSHID
Witness what?
MITRA
The beginning.
JAMSHID
Of my kingdom?
MITRA
No.
Of your temptation.
JAMSHID
I have not yet ruled.
MITRA
That is why the temptation is easiest to see.
A man who possesses nothing can still imagine himself humble.
The true trial begins when the world places something in his hands
and others begin to thank him for holding it.
JAMSHID
Then what must I remember?
MITRA
That the crown is a guest.
JAMSHID
And if the guest wishes to remain?
MITRA
Invite it.
JAMSHID
And if it refuses to leave?
MITRA
Then ask yourself whether you are still its host.
MITRA disappears.
JAMSHID
A strange blessing.
CHORUS
Upon his brow the Khvarenah descended—
the royal glory,
the light that chooses,
the light that may depart.
He had not earned it.
He had not purchased it.
He had not conquered it.
It came as rain comes upon the earth:
without negotiation.
And because it came without negotiation,
Jamshid did not yet understand
that one day it could leave him
without explanation.
Blackout.
ACT I
THE WOMAN OF THE WIDE EARTH
SCENE I
Morning.THE RIVER
A green valley.
Water moves slowly across the stage.
JAMSHID enters with a group of surveyors and builders. They carry cords, stakes and measuring rods.
The builders depart.JAMSHID
There.
The wall must follow the ridge.
Leave the river free.
Do not cut the valley merely because the straight line pleases the eye.
FIRST BUILDER
And the western field, my king?
JAMSHID
Measure it according to the river's generosity, not according to our hunger.
SECOND BUILDER
You would make the boundary follow the water?
JAMSHID
I would make the boundary remember that the water was here first.
ANAHITA emerges from the mist.
JAMSHID smiles despite himself.ANAHITA
Then there is hope for you.
JAMSHID
Who are you?
ANAHITA
One who was here before your surveyors.
JAMSHID
Then you are older than my kingdom.
ANAHITA
Older than kingdoms.
Older than boundaries.
Older than the word mine.
JAMSHID
You speak as though boundaries were evil.
ANAHITA
No.
I speak as one who has watched men build them.
A boundary may protect.
A boundary may also teach the man inside it
to forget that the sky continues beyond the wall.
JAMSHID
Without boundaries there is no peace.
ANAHITA
Without movement there is no life.
JAMSHID
You speak for the river.
ANAHITA
I speak for everything the king cannot command.
JAMSHID
And what is your name?
ANAHITA
Anahita.
The Unstained.
But names are little vessels.
Call me the water beneath the stone.
Call me the pasture after rain.
Call me the mist that rises before dawn.
Call me the green thing that returns after fire has passed.
JAMSHID
You speak like a goddess.
ANAHITA
And you speak like a king.
Neither is necessarily a virtue.
Silence.JAMSHID
Then tell me, goddess—
what is the virtue of a king?
ANAHITA
To know that he is temporary.
JAMSHID
Temporary?
ANAHITA
Everything that rules the earth is temporary.
The oak believes itself permanent until the axe enters its trunk.
The mountain believes itself permanent until the river discovers a weakness.
The dynasty believes itself permanent until a child is born who does not fear its name.
Why should the king imagine himself exempt?
JAMSHID
Because a kingdom requires continuity.
ANAHITA
Continuity is not permanence.
The river continues because it changes.
The seed continues because it ceases to be a seed.
The season continues because it dies into another season.
You would make the world orderly.
That is good.
But if you make order so rigid that nothing may change,
you will have created not a kingdom—
but a tomb.
JAMSHID
And what would you have me do?
Leave men to hunger?
Leave thieves to prey upon the weak?
Let every ambitious man call his appetite freedom?
ANAHITA
No.
Build.
Judge.
Protect.
But remember what you are protecting.
You do not protect the kingdom so that the kingdom may praise you.
You protect the people so that one day they may live
without needing to remember your name.
JAMSHID
That is a difficult kind of glory.
ANAHITA
The only kind worth having.
She turns away.JAMSHID
Stay.
ANAHITA
For how long?
JAMSHID
Until winter ends.
ANAHITA
Winter always ends.
JAMSHID
Then until spring.
ANAHITA
Spring does not remain because a king loves it.
JAMSHID
Then I shall ask it rather than command it.
ANAHITA
That is the beginning of wisdom.
She stops.JAMSHID
Anahita.
She disappears into the mist.If everything changes, what may a man trust?
ANAHITA
The promise he keeps while everything changes.
JAMSHID remains.
He looks at the river.JAMSHID
The promise.
Pause.Then perhaps Mitra was right.
But if the world must change,
what is the king to build?
CHORUS
Thus the first question entered the kingdom:
whether order exists to serve life,
or life exists to serve order.
Jamshid had not yet chosen.
He would choose.
And the choice would cost him everything.
SCENE II
Years have passed.THE CITY OF LIGHT
The stage has become a magnificent city.
Builders, smiths, farmers, physicians and musicians move through it.
The CHORUS speaks not as a single voice but as a civilization.
JAMSHID enters.CHORUS
He divided the year into seasons
and taught men to read the patience of the earth.
He gave the smith iron
and the physician herbs.
He raised walls against winter
and roads against distance.
He taught the shepherd to count his flock,
the sailor to read the stars,
the builder to place stone upon stone
until the wilderness itself seemed to have learned architecture.
And men said:
Jamshid has conquered chaos.
But there was a danger in the praise.
For a man who hears long enough that he has conquered chaos
may begin to believe that chaos itself has become his enemy.
He is older, magnificent, surrounded by courtiers.
Silence.FIRST VOICE
Hail Jamshid!
SECOND VOICE
Builder of the ordered world!
THIRD VOICE
Father of civilization!
FOURTH VOICE
The king without equal!
JAMSHID
Enough.
The Chorus hesitates.Again.
CHORUS
The king without equal.
JAMSHID
No.
You speak too cautiously.
What is a king without equal?
FIRST VOICE
The greatest of men.
JAMSHID
Greater.
SECOND VOICE
The father of the people.
JAMSHID
Greater.
THIRD VOICE
The image of the gods.
MITRA enters.JAMSHID
Why do you stop?
THIRD VOICE
Because the words are dangerous.
JAMSHID
Truth is not dangerous.
MITRA
No.
But the desire to hear oneself called truth is.
He gestures toward the city.JAMSHID
You again.
MITRA
I never left.
JAMSHID
You have been absent from my court.
MITRA
A witness need not sit at the table to hear the oath.
JAMSHID
Then witness this.
Look around you.
Silence.When I came, men feared winter.
Now they store grain.
They feared disease.
Now physicians know its signs.
They feared the wilderness.
Now roads cross the mountains.
They feared one another.
Now law speaks where the sword once spoke.
Tell me, Mitra—
what greater covenant could a king make with his people
than to give them a world in which their children need fear fewer things?
MITRA
You have done much.
JAMSHID
Much?
MITRA
More than most men.
JAMSHID
And still you warn me.
MITRA
Because the danger begins precisely there.
JAMSHID
Where?
MITRA
At the moment a man who has done much
begins to believe that everything he has done
therefore belongs to him.
JAMSHID
This city bears my design.
MITRA
Yes.
JAMSHID
These roads were ordered by my command.
MITRA
Yes.
JAMSHID
These laws were written under my authority.
MITRA
Yes.
JAMSHID
Then why should I not say that this kingdom is mine?
MITRA
Because you did not create the people who built it.
You did not invent the river that fed it.
You did not command the sun to rise.
You did not teach the seed to break the earth.
You did not give the child its first breath.
You have arranged gifts.
That is kingship.
It is not creation.
JAMSHID
And if the arrangement is mine?
MITRA
Then you have already begun to confuse stewardship with possession.
JAMSHID
I am the covenant.
MITRA exits.The words seem to alter the air.
MITRA
Do not say that.
JAMSHID
Why?
MITRA
Because the covenant exists precisely so that neither party may say:
I am the covenant.
The covenant stands above the parties.
It binds the king as surely as it binds the subject.
It binds the strong because they are strong.
It binds the weak because they are human.
It binds the stranger who arrives at your gate
and the priest whose god is not yours.
It binds the king most of all,
because everyone else can be forgiven for forgetting.
The king cannot.
JAMSHID
Leave me.
MITRA
Gladly.
But remember this:
the day you cease to distinguish your word from the truth,
the Khvarenah will begin looking for another brow.
JAMSHID remains.
He laughs bitterly.JAMSHID
Another brow.
He turns toward the people.There is always another brow.
Perhaps that is the privilege of gods:
to judge the men who build what gods themselves never build.
He looks at the throne.Look at them.
They want certainty.
They want walls.
They want a name to whom they may entrust their fear.
If I give them uncertainty,
they will call me weak.
If I give them freedom,
they will ask who protects them.
If I give them order,
they will kneel.
Perhaps a king is not destroyed by pride.
Perhaps he is destroyed by the people's need
for him to be more than a man.
The Khvarenah flickers above him.
Blackout.
ACT II
THE CATTLE OF LIGHT
SCENE I
Night.SARĀMĀ
Distant bells.
SARĀMĀ enters, exhausted from a long journey.
JAMSHID enters.SARĀMĀ
The western mountains have learned to keep secrets.
The salt plain has learned to swallow footprints.
The night has learned the names of men who travel alone.
But cattle—
cattle cry when they are hidden.
I heard them.
Not with the ear.
With the part of the soul that knows
when something living has been removed from the world
and replaced by silence.
She exits.JAMSHID
You have found them?
SARĀMĀ
I have found where they are not.
JAMSHID
The Panis?
SARĀMĀ
They hide behind stone and call it wisdom.
They hoard grain and call it prudence.
They hoard cattle and call it property.
They hoard light and call it bargaining power.
JAMSHID
Then what do they fear?
SARĀMĀ
A world in which abundance is not possessed by the clever.
JAMSHID
Take Bahram.
SARĀMĀ
A sword can open a cave.
It cannot answer the question inside it.
JAMSHID
What question?
SARĀMĀ
Who owns what the earth gives?
SCENE II
The cave is lit by lamps.THE CAVE OF THE PANIS
The PANIS guard cattle.
The Panis recoil.FIRST PANI
Why have you come?
SARĀMĀ
For what is missing.
SECOND PANI
Nothing is missing.
SARĀMĀ
Then why do the cattle cry?
FIRST PANI
Because cattle belong to whoever possesses them.
SARĀMĀ
Does the sun belong to whoever sees it?
SECOND PANI
If he can prevent another man from seeing it.
SARĀMĀ
Then you have mistaken darkness for property.
FIRST PANI
And you have mistaken wandering for freedom.
SARĀMĀ
Freedom does not mean that no one possesses anything.
It means that possession does not become the measure of truth.
SECOND PANI
Fine words.
But the man who owns the grain eats.
The man who does not own it waits.
SARĀMĀ
And the man who hides all the grain
discovers too late that hunger is not obedient.
FIRST PANI
You speak like a priest.
SARĀMĀ
No.
I speak like one who has walked far enough
to know that every locked door eventually becomes a prison
for the man who carries the key.
SECOND PANI
What would you have us do?
SARĀMĀ
Open the gate.
FIRST PANI
To whom?
SARĀMĀ
To the world.
FIRST PANI
The world has no king.
SARĀMĀ
That is why you fear it.
You would rather serve a tyrant
than trust a commons that answers to no single hand.
She turns toward the cattle.SARĀMĀ
Give them back.
FIRST PANI
And if we refuse?
SARĀMĀ
Then someone will come with a weapon.
SECOND PANI
And then?
SARĀMĀ
Then you will discover the oldest tragedy of hoarding:
the man who refuses to share abundance
eventually teaches the hungry to become violent.
The cattle are led away.Come.
The world has remembered you.
CHORUS
The ancient quarrel was never merely about cattle.
It was the first political question:
whether abundance exists to be hidden,
or shared;
whether property is a wall around life,
or an instrument by which life may flourish.
Jamshid had built order.
The Panis had discovered its shadow.
And in another garden,
a young prince was about to hear a third answer.
ACT III
THE WARRIOR AND THE TEMPTATION
SCENE I
Thunder.BAHRAM
BAHRAM enters carrying a spear.
MITRA appears.BAHRAM
Where are the thieves?
JAMSHID
Beyond the western mountains.
BAHRAM
Then why are you still speaking?
JAMSHID
Because a king must know whether victory restores order
or merely changes the hand that holds the sword.
BAHRAM
You speak as though violence were a philosophical problem.
JAMSHID
Is it not?
BAHRAM
Violence is an instrument.
The hand determines what the instrument becomes.
JAMSHID
And who watches the hand?
BAHRAM
You.
JAMSHID
And who watches me?
BAHRAM exits.MITRA
I do.
BAHRAM
Then perhaps the gods have arranged the matter wisely.
JAMSHID
And if victory corrupts you?
BAHRAM
Then I have already lost.
JAMSHID
And if victory makes you believe
that because you saved the kingdom,
the kingdom now belongs to you?
BAHRAM
Then remember this promise, Jamshid:
I shall never mistake victory for ownership.
MITRA
I shall remember it for you.
BAHRAM
Then we are bound.
MITRA
That is what a covenant means.
JAMSHID
He understands.
MITRA
For now.
JAMSHID
You distrust everyone.
MITRA
No.
I distrust permanence.
Blackout.
ACT IV
INDAR AND THE MAKING OF A TYRANT
SCENE I
A garden.THE GARDEN OF MERDAS
ḎAHHĀK, young, intelligent, restless, walks alone.
INDAR enters.ḎAHHĀK
My father says:
Wait.
Wait for your season.
Wait for wisdom.
Wait until the people know your name.
Wait until the crown comes naturally.
But what is natural about a crown?
Does it grow like fruit?
Does the earth one morning open
and say:
"Here, prince. Here is the authority you deserve"?
No.
A crown is metal.
Cold.
Made by hands.
Placed upon a head.
Why then should waiting make a man worthy of it?
Silence.INDAR
Because waiting is the virtue by which fathers keep sons beneath them.
ḎAHHĀK
Who are you?
INDAR
A stranger.
ḎAHHĀK
Then you know nothing of my house.
INDAR
I know enough.
A father who tells his son to wait
is usually a man who has already decided
that the son's hour should never arrive.
ḎAHHĀK
My father is just.
INDAR
Then he is worse than a tyrant.
ḎAHHĀK
Worse?
INDAR
A tyrant announces his hunger.
A virtuous man hides his hunger beneath duty.
Your father says:
"One day you shall rule."
But one day is the most convenient kingdom ever invented.
It has no borders.
No soldiers.
No date.
No witness.
ḎAHHĀK
You tempt me.
INDAR
No.
I merely remove the veil from a desire already standing inside you.
ḎAHHĀK
And what do you want?
INDAR
Nothing.
At first.
ḎAHHĀK
There is always a price.
INDAR
Yes.
But not always one paid in gold.
Sometimes a man pays with the person he was yesterday.
ḎAHHĀK
And what would I become?
INDAR
Whatever you dare to become.
ḎAHHĀK
A king?
INDAR
More dangerous.
A man who no longer needs permission to call himself one.
ḎAHHĀK
And my father?
INDAR
An obstacle.
ḎAHHĀK
I will not kill him.
INDAR
I did not ask you to.
Dig a pit.
Cover it.
Let fate appear to have done what desire secretly arranged.
ḎAHHĀK
You make murder sound like philosophy.
INDAR
All murder is philosophy after the blood has dried.
Beforehand, it is only fear.
ḎAHHĀK
And what would you give me?
INDAR
A world in which you never need to ask another man what you are worth.
ḎAHHĀK
And what do you ask in return?
INDAR
Only to cook for you.
ḎAHHĀK looks toward his father's chamber.INDAR
I will feed you.
You will never again know the humiliation of hunger.
You will never dig a well.
Never bend beneath the sun.
Never wait for another man's permission.
Let me serve you.
And when you have eaten,
you will discover that appetite has a deeper meaning.
ḎAHHĀK
You speak as though hunger were destiny.
INDAR
No.
I speak as though hunger were truth.
Darkness.ḎAHHĀK
Cook, then.
A distant cry.
Silence.
When light returns, ḎAHHĀK wears the crown.
It is too large.
INDAR stands behind him.
INDAR touches his shoulders.ḎAHHĀK
I hear him.
INDAR
Who?
ḎAHHĀK
My father.
INDAR
Memory is a poor adviser to kings.
ḎAHHĀK
What have I done?
INDAR
What all kings do.
You chose.
ḎAHHĀK
No.
I obeyed.
INDAR
There is no more convenient lie.
Dark shapes writhe beneath the cloth.
ḎAHHĀK
What is happening?
INDAR
Your crown has acquired a conscience.
ḎAHHĀK
These things—
INDAR
Serpents.
Two mouths for the hunger you thought the crown would satisfy.
ḎAHHĀK
Remove them.
INDAR
Impossible.
ḎAHHĀK
Then kill me.
INDAR
You still think death is an escape.
That is the privilege of the innocent.
You are king now.
ḎAHHĀK
What do they want?
INDAR
To eat.
ḎAHHĀK
What?
INDAR
The only food that can satisfy a hunger born from the murder of the father:
the young.
Two each night.
ḎAHHĀK
No.
INDAR
Then they will feed upon you.
ḎAHHĀK
You made them.
INDAR
No.
You did.
I merely gave your choice a body.
Blackout.
ACT V
THE BROTHER AND THE FALL OF JAMSHID
SCENE I
Jamshid's palace.SPITYURA
It is colder now.
SPITYURA enters.
Silence.SPITYURA
Brother.
JAMSHID
You have been absent.
SPITYURA
I have been watching.
JAMSHID
And what have you seen?
SPITYURA
A man who built a world
and then slowly began to believe
that the world was proof of his own greatness.
JAMSHID
You envy me.
SPITYURA
Yes.
JAMSHID
At last, honesty.
SPITYURA
But envy is not the worst thing I feel.
JAMSHID
What is?
SPITYURA
Pity.
JAMSHID
For me?
SPITYURA
For the man you were.
JAMSHID
You speak as though I had died.
SPITYURA
Not yet.
That is why I am here.
JAMSHID
Say what you came to say.
SPITYURA
You have built everything.
The roads.
The law.
The temples.
The granaries.
The walls.
You have ordered the seasons and given men reasons to believe tomorrow will resemble today.
And somewhere in the middle of all this achievement,
you ceased asking whether tomorrow should resemble today.
JAMSHID
Continuity is civilization.
SPITYURA
No.
Continuity is memory.
Civilization is the courage to change without losing memory.
JAMSHID
You speak like Anahita.
SPITYURA
Perhaps because you stopped listening to her.
JAMSHID
She wants the world without walls.
SPITYURA
And you want a world without endings.
JAMSHID
Is that a crime?
SPITYURA
It is a wound.
You have begun to believe that because you built against winter,
winter has no right to come.
Because you built against hunger,
death has no right to take a man.
Because you made law,
the law no longer applies to the hand that made it.
JAMSHID
I am king.
SPITYURA
That is the answer of a king.
I asked you a question as a brother.
JAMSHID
What question?
SPITYURA
Who are you when no one kneels?
The glory departs.JAMSHID
I am still Jamshid.
SPITYURA
Then prove it.
Leave the throne.
JAMSHID
Never.
SPITYURA
Why?
JAMSHID
Because if I leave it, all that I built may collapse.
SPITYURA
No.
You remain because you are afraid
that without the throne
you will discover that all you built
was not enough to make you immortal.
The Khvarenah trembles.
JAMSHID
What is happening?
SPITYURA
Brother—
look at the light.
The Khvarenah rises from Jamshid's brow.
JAMSHID
No.
SPITYURA
Do not command it.
JAMSHID
It is mine.
SPITYURA
There.
That is why it leaves.
MITRA receives it at the edge of the stage.
Jamshid sinks onto the throne.MITRA
I did not summon it.
I merely held out my hands.
The glory does not belong to the one who possesses it.
It belongs to the covenant that makes possession legitimate.
Until another man is found,
I shall keep it.
JAMSHID
Then I have already fallen.
SPITYURA
No.
You have been given the last gift a proud man can receive.
JAMSHID
What gift?
SPITYURA
The knowledge that you can fall.
MESSENGER enters.
MESSENGER
My king—
Ḏahhāk marches from the West.
The discontented gather around him.
Indar rides beside him.
JAMSHID
Let them come.
SPITYURA
Why?
JAMSHID
Because I built this world.
SPITYURA
And there is the tragedy.
You still believe the world belongs to the man who built it.
Torchlight.ACT VI
THE LONG NIGHT
The palace of ḎAHHĀK.
The throne is Jamshid's.
ḎAHHĀK sits upon it.
He is older.
The serpents move beneath his garments.
Two young men are led away.ḎAHHĀK
Bring the two.
ḎAHHĀK does not look at them.
ANAHITA enters.INDAR
You rule magnificently.
ḎAHHĀK
Do I?
INDAR
They fear you.
ḎAHHĀK
Fear is not love.
INDAR
No.
It is better.
Love can leave.
Fear closes the door behind itself.
ḎAHHĀK
I no longer know whether I rule them
or whether they rule me.
INDAR
You have become philosophical.
ḎAHHĀK
Philosophy arrives late.
Usually after the crime.
INDAR
The serpents make you melancholy.
ḎAHHĀK
They do not sleep.
INDAR
Nor do kings.
ḎAHHĀK
I remember my father's garden.
INDAR
Memory is another form of disobedience.
ḎAHHĀK
Do you remember him?
INDAR
I remember your ambition.
ḎAHHĀK
That is not the same thing.
INDAR
It is what remains useful.
SARĀMĀ enters, dressed as a servant.The valley behind her is dry.
ANAHITA
The rivers are narrowing.
ḎAHHĀK
Leave me.
ANAHITA
I have watched rivers die before.
They die quietly.
That is why men do not notice.
First the bank cracks.
Then the reeds disappear.
Then the fish move elsewhere.
Then the children stop knowing
where their mothers once gathered water.
By the time the king notices,
the river has already become memory.
ḎAHHĀK
You accuse me.
ANAHITA
No.
I show you.
ḎAHHĀK
And if I cannot change?
ANAHITA
Then at least do not call your inability destiny.
ḎAHHĀK
You think I chose all this.
ANAHITA
You did.
ḎAHHĀK
Even the serpents?
ANAHITA
Especially the serpents.
ḎAHHĀK
Then perhaps there is no forgiveness.
ANAHITA
Forgiveness is not my concern.
Stopping is.
SARĀMĀ exits.SARĀMĀ
My lady.
I have crossed the black ridge.
Again.
ANAHITA
And?
SARĀMĀ
There is no cave the Panis ever built
as dark as this palace.
ANAHITA
Then the world has exchanged one error for another.
Jamshid believed he owned the world.
Ḏahhāk believes the world exists to feed him.
Which error is worse?
SARĀMĀ
The first leaves a door open.
The second nails the door shut.
ANAHITA
And have you found the door?
SARĀMĀ
Not yet.
ANAHITA
Then keep searching.
CHORUS
A thousand years passed.
Or perhaps only one.
History is strange in this respect:
to the tyrant, a year is long.
To the people who suffer him, it is an age.
To the dead, all calendars are equally silent.
And in the lower city,
beneath the palace,
a blacksmith lifted his hammer.
ACT VII
KAVEH'S BANNER
SCENE I
KAVEH stands before the forge.THE FORGE
His apron lies beside him.
He takes the apron.KAVEH
Seventeen.
Seventeen sons.
I have forgotten the sound of some of their voices.
Not their faces.
Never their faces.
A father is a strange archive.
He forgets dates.
He forgets garments.
He forgets the exact shape of a room.
But a face—
a face remains where the dead have placed it.
He looks toward the palace.I have worn this through every season.
Iron does not care whether the hand that strikes it belongs to a king or a beggar.
The hammer falls.
The metal answers.
There is justice in that.
If the blow is true,
the iron changes.
If the blow is false,
the iron breaks.
Would that men were so honest.
He raises the apron.I have forged weapons for the throne.
I told myself:
I am only the smith.
I do not decide where the sword goes.
I do not decide whose blood it meets.
I merely shape the iron.
But there comes a day when a man must ask
whether innocence can survive
by refusing to look at the consequence of his hands.
I have made the chains.
I have made the nails.
I have made the blades.
Today they asked for my eighteenth son.
And something inside me answered:
No more.
Not because I have suddenly become brave.
A father does not become brave.
He becomes empty.
And when there is nothing left inside him
for fear to occupy,
he discovers that courage was waiting there all along.
He places it upon a spear.This covered my chest when I worked for the king.
Let it cover the body of the people now.
KAVEH
Who marches with me?
Silence.
Then one shepherd steps forward.
Then a woman carrying a water jar.
Then a farmer.
Then a smith.
Then another.
CHORUS
We march.
KAVEH
Not because we know what comes after.
CHORUS
We march because we know what cannot continue.
KAVEH
Then we go.
Not to replace one master with another.
Not to put a different face upon the same throne.
We go to find the boy in the mountains.
The son of Abtin.
The child whom the tyrant could not find.
The man who has not yet learned
that power is a form of hunger.
They depart.
ACT VIII
FEREYDŪN
SCENE I
FEREYDŪN tends cattle.THE MOUNTAIN PASTURE
ANAHITA watches.
BAHRAM enters.FEREYDŪN
They tell me my father was a nobleman.
I do not remember him.
They tell me he was murdered by the king.
I remember the silence that followed.
They tell me I was hidden among cattle.
Perhaps that is why I trust them more than men.
Cattle do not ask what blood runs in your veins.
They ask only whether you are gentle.
ANAHITA
And are you?
FEREYDŪN
Who are you?
ANAHITA
The wide earth.
FEREYDŪN
Then you know that I am not what they say.
ANAHITA
I know that no man is what they say.
A king is more than his crown.
A tyrant is more than his crime.
A liberator is more than the enemy he defeats.
FEREYDŪN
Then what am I?
ANAHITA
A choice waiting to be made.
FEREYDŪN
Between what?
ANAHITA
Justice and vengeance.
They often wear the same face.
That is why men confuse them.
The Khvarenah appears.BAHRAM
Fereydūn.
FEREYDŪN
Who calls my name?
BAHRAM
A warrior who has carried a spear longer than he has carried peace.
FEREYDŪN
Why have you come?
BAHRAM
Because I once asked Jamshid
whether victory restores order
or merely changes the hand that holds the sword.
He never answered.
I have waited a long time for the answer.
Perhaps you will give it to me.
FEREYDŪN
I do not want a crown.
BAHRAM
Good.
FEREYDŪN
I want my father's murderer to answer.
BAHRAM
For what?
FEREYDŪN
For what he took from me.
And for what he takes every night from those who have no son hidden in a mountain.
BAHRAM
That is justice.
FEREYDŪN
No.
It may only be anger wearing the clothes of justice.
BAHRAM
Then learn the difference before you win.
MITRA enters.
KAVEH enters with the banner.MITRA
Fereydūn.
FEREYDŪN
You are Mitra.
MITRA
I am.
FEREYDŪN
The keeper of the word.
MITRA
And the keeper of broken words.
FEREYDŪN
Why does the glory come to me?
MITRA
Because you did not ask for it.
FEREYDŪN
That cannot be enough.
MITRA
It is not.
The glory does not choose blood.
It chooses the man who understands
that power is borrowed.
FEREYDŪN
And if I become like Jamshid?
MITRA
Then I shall take it from you.
FEREYDŪN
And if I become like Ḏahhāk?
MITRA
Then another man will come for you.
FEREYDŪN
You make kingship sound like a curse.
MITRA
It is a trust.
Men call every trust a curse
when they discover that someone may hold them accountable.
FEREYDŪN looks at the banner.KAVEH
We heard there was a king in these mountains
who had not yet become a king.
FEREYDŪN
I am no king.
KAVEH
Then perhaps we have found the right man.
FEREYDŪN
Why?
KAVEH
Because every man who wants the crown
already belongs to it.
FEREYDŪN
Then let us go.
BAHRAM
Where?
FEREYDŪN
To ask the serpent
what he believes a king is for.
Blackout.
ACT IX
THE LAST ARGUMENT
SCENE I
The gates of ḎAHHĀK's palace.BEFORE THE THRONE
The people stand behind Kaveh.
ḎAHHĀK appears.
ḎAHHĀK is silent.ḎAHHĀK
A cattle-boy.
A blacksmith's apron.
A warrior carrying a spear.
A goddess who has come to watch me die.
And Mitra—
always Mitra.
Have the gods finally decided
that one man's life is worth the trouble of their attention?
FEREYDŪN
No.
They have decided that your reign has become too heavy
for men to carry alone.
ḎAHHĀK
You speak bravely.
FEREYDŪN
I speak carefully.
ḎAHHĀK
Then answer me.
Why should you rule?
FEREYDŪN
I do not know that I should.
ḎAHHĀK
Then you are a fool.
FEREYDŪN
Perhaps.
But I would rather be a fool who doubts his right to rule
than a king who never doubts it.
ḎAHHĀK
You think me evil.
FEREYDŪN
I think you are responsible.
ḎAHHĀK
That is worse.
FEREYDŪN
Yes.
Because evil can be imagined as something alien.
Responsibility begins when we admit:
I chose.
ḎAHHĀK
And what would you have chosen?
To remain a nobody?
To watch my father grow old
while the world beyond our garden belonged to men with greater hunger?
I looked at Jamshid.
I saw a man who had become almost a god.
And I thought:
Why not me?
Tell me, Fereydūn—
is that desire itself a crime?
FEREYDŪN
No.
But what a man does to satisfy it may become one.
ḎAHHĀK
Then we are not so different.
FEREYDŪN
No.
That is precisely why I fear becoming you.
Silence.ḎAHHĀK
You fear me?
FEREYDŪN
I fear the part of me that could understand you.
ḎAHHĀK
Then perhaps you have understood the truth.
There is no king without hunger.
There is no kingdom without violence.
There is no order without someone deciding
whose disorder matters.
You will discover this when you sit where I sit.
FEREYDŪN
Perhaps.
But there is one difference.
ḎAHHĀK
What?
FEREYDŪN
I know I may become you.
FEREYDŪN raises his weapon.ḎAHHĀK
Then strike.
FEREYDŪN
No.
ḎAHHĀK
Why?
FEREYDŪN
Because death would make you simple.
You would become a story with one meaning.
I want the world to remember the whole of you.
The prince who wanted greatness.
The son who betrayed his father.
The king who fed his fear.
The tyrant who mistook appetite for destiny.
The man who knew, somewhere beneath all of it,
that he had become what he once feared.
ḎAHHĀK
And what sentence will you give me?
MITRA
A sentence that remains after men have forgotten the names of both of you.
FEREYDŪN
The mountain.
ḎAHHĀK
Damavand.
ANAHITA
Stone remembers what men prefer to forget.
ANAHITA raises her hands.ḎAHHĀK
Do it.
FEREYDŪN
No.
I will not give you the dignity of dying as a martyr.
You shall live long enough to hear the world continue without you.
ḎAHHĀK is bound.Water rises.
It becomes silver.
Then iron.
Chains form.
ḎAHHĀK
What are these?
ANAHITA
The river.
ḎAHHĀK
Water cannot bind a king.
ANAHITA
Water has eroded mountains.
It has carried kingdoms into the sea.
It has buried cities beneath silt.
Why should it not bind a man?
BAHRAM and INDAR confront one another.ḎAHHĀK
And the serpents?
MITRA
They shall hunger.
ḎAHHĀK
For what?
MITRA
For you.
ḎAHHĀK
And when I die?
MITRA
They will discover what every appetite eventually discovers:
that the thing it consumed
was never enough.
They fight.INDAR
At last.
BAHRAM
At last.
INDAR
Which of us is victory?
BAHRAM
The one who knows when to stop.
INDAR is driven backward into darkness.
ḎAHHĀK is led toward the mountain.BAHRAM
Go.
I will not kill you.
The world has use for a name
that reminds every victor
what victory becomes when it forgets itself.
CHORUS
Thus the serpent entered the mountain.
Not destroyed.
Not forgiven.
Remembered.
For some crimes must not be erased.
They must be made visible
until the generations that come afterward
understand the price of repeating them.
Blackout.
Dawn.EXODUS
THE SUN
The place where Jamshid once stood.
FEREYDŪN enters.
He carries no sword.
He wears no crown.
His hands are empty.
MITRA enters.FEREYDŪN
What is left to a king
when everything he possesses
must one day be returned?
He looks at the crown.MITRA
The word he gave when he took it up.
FEREYDŪN
And if he breaks the word?
MITRA
Then the word survives him.
ANAHITA
And the river remembers.
KAVEH
And the smith remembers.
SARĀMĀ
And those who search
will find the door again.
FEREYDŪN
Then tell me, Mitra—
what inheritance is greater than a crown?
MITRA
A door left open.
FEREYDŪN
Explain.
MITRA
A crown tells a man:
You are above others.
An open door tells him:
Others may enter.
The first creates majesty.
The second creates a people.
FEREYDŪN
And what of the gods beyond our own borders?
MITRA
Welcome them.
FEREYDŪN
Even when their worship is strange to us?
MITRA
Especially then.
A man who welcomes only those who resemble him
has not learned hospitality.
He has learned preference.
The stranger's god need not become your god
for the stranger to remain your guest.
Let the argument occur beneath the same roof.
Let men disagree without first making enemies of one another.
A throne can imprison a man.
A closed door can imprison a civilization.
FEREYDŪN
Then perhaps that is what Jamshid forgot.
MITRA
And what Ḏahhāk never understood.
FEREYDŪN
And what I must remember.
He takes the crown.FEREYDŪN
No.
Not remember.
Be reminded.
For memory belongs to the dead.
The living require witnesses.
FEREYDŪN approaches the flame.The CHORUS waits.
For a moment it appears he will place it upon his head.
Instead he places it in the open hands of the CHORUS.
CHORUS
The sun rises.
Not because the king commanded it.
Not because the warrior conquered darkness.
Not because the priest pronounced its sacred name.
It rises because the world is larger
than those who govern it.
And the old names remain.
Jamshid—
who built a world
and then mistook its beauty for ownership.
Anahita—
the water no wall can imprison,
the earth that receives every king
without becoming the property of any.
Mitra—
the word that binds the powerful
before it binds the weak.
Bahram—
victory purified of possession.
Sarāmā—
the seeker who learned
that what is hidden is not always treasure,
and what is lost is not always cattle.
Indar—
the argument every crown must defeat
again and again
within itself.
Ḏahhāk—
appetite dressed as destiny.
Kaveh—
the father who discovered
that obedience has a boundary beyond which
it becomes complicity.
Fereydūn—
the man who inherited victory
and understood that victory itself
must be restrained.
And Fire—
which no king has ever owned.
The flame rises.He does not take it.
He kneels beside it.
FEREYDŪN
You were here before us.
You will remain after us.
Teach me, then,
the hardest lesson a king can learn:
how to carry light
without believing
that I am its source.
CHORUS
Asha is not the absence of darkness.
It is the order by which light returns.
It is the covenant by which power remains answerable.
It is the memory that every crown is borrowed.
It is the wisdom to build
without believing that what is built
belongs forever to the builder.
It is the courage to rule
and the greater courage
to remember that no man rules forever.
The sun fills the stage.
FEREYDŪN remains without the crown.
The flame burns.
Blackout.
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