New to ajaban zabAn?

Sohrab Lives
زنده باد سهراب

Mythology •
by Rezwan on 12/14 at 11:59 PM
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The Persepolis picture I use on the Standard Persian-English magnet kit has inspired me.

It’s a picture of my nephew taken just a couple years ago at Persepolis. At first I thought it’s nice because it shows the glorious past, the two guards at Persepolis, and then Sepehr - a boy mimicking the guards, taking on their pose in front of them. This shows a historical continuity, shows that we are carrying on tradition.

But that’s not it. That’s not what specifically resonates with me about the picture. Carrying on tradition is fun up to a point, but what really makes my heart beat, what’s more thrilling to me is....

Wake up Iran, there are new kids in town.

Every Generation: New Kids In Town!

The kid is alive. The stone is fixed in time and space and history. The kid is free to mimic or to move around and jump up and down and do whatever he wants. The kid is free! The kid is young and unspoiled, unchained by history. He can refer to it, he can learn from it, and he can laugh at it. All of this, really. The point is, he has the choice, the extiAr - اختيار. bot shekan - بت شكن - or bot preservationist. Or both. shekaning parts and preserving other parts.

And this brings me back to a brainstorm about a mythic Persian comic book series that I was having trouble with. Well, I’ve got it now. We are enslaved by the old myths, and they don’t fully resonate. It’s hard to celebrate Rostam when he killed SohrAb. Youth who encounter this story are depressed by it, because they see the underlying attempt to squash their youthful aspirations and ambitions, and to stay fixed in the past - hierarchy and patriarchy ascendant.

So here’s the story:

Sohrab Lives.

(Hey, there’s a video that explores this theme - a bit of revisionism, although at the end they revert back to the original story. Coming soon from Dreamor.com: The Rebirth of Rostam. Also, don’t panic. I see you panicking. You don’t like having stories changed. Historical revision, holocaust denial, myth manipulation, all of it offends. Don’t panic.).

I know what you’re saying. Sohrab died, and that’s that. You can’t mess with this. Well OK, then…

Sohrab is Dead. Long Live Sohrab!

Here’s the premise/setup for the “Sohrab Lives” series. Ferdowsi wrote the shAhnAme and got ripped off in writing it. And he died a bitter man. It is said that his daughter helped him finish it at the end there. What if his daughter also wrote some stuff on her own of which only one copy remains, which was discovered after, say, the Bam earthquake. It was buried somewhere in those ancient buildings that collapsed. They collapsed and released this story.

First, this comic series can be filled with the lost tales of SohrAb as a youth, with his impressive youthful adventures as he grows to be a man.

Then there is his fatal encounter with Rostam. Now, as we have all heard, he gets killed in this encounter, and Rostam is bummed, and that’s the end of SohrAb. Rostam waits forever for the antidote/healing potion to arrive, but it arrives too late.

But that antidote was coming from the evil, or at least petty, Key KAvus. Like his potion would have been good anyway. Who wants potion from a petty king. Screw kings! That’s the whole point of Shahname. Petty kings.

Now, we’ve all seen “the Princess Bride” I hope. As you know, in Princess Bride, our hero Westley has been killed by the machine of doom. His friends then take him to Miracle Max, hoping for, of course, a miracle. And Max informs them that their friend is only mostly dead. And gets him a chocolate coated pill. Which works very well.

So, if Miracle Max can do that, why can’t HAj Div? On day that Sohrab “died”, Rostam was so torn up about it that he went and visited the HAj Div, and asked for a miracle. And HAj div complied, but he said that in exchange for this miracle, you have to promise to keep it a secret, because this is the evil that I want to inflict on the earth: that people live in fear, that children fear their parents, societies fear innovation and change, and the world does not advance but remains in darkness and slavery and rigid hierarchy, exchanging one corrupt ruler for the next and so on in perpetuity.

And Rostam says: “anything.”

And hey presto (well OK, extended special effects sequence), sohrAb is alive.

But of course, he’s exiled, and can never reveal his identity, so he goes off as a knight errant and has many adventures and does time travel and all kinds of cool things, meeting up with other shAhnAmeh characters in mythical and totally new scenarios (which answers the question what ever happened to..) as well as historic moments, and common moments and so on and so forth. And of course, Rostam makes regular appearances, giving him advice from his own stories, so there is a conversation going on between the actual shAhnAmeh and the new “legends” as well as a dialog about when it’s good to pay attention to tradition and listen to your elders, and when it’s good for the elders to listen to the youth and step aside to let them try something different.

And Ferdowsi’s daughter had to hide her copy of the story because hAj div’s great great grand div is after her, which is why she and her dad had to write the version we’ve all read, to keep up the story that Rostam killed Sohrab. If they didn’t do this, the divs would get her and her dad. So...parts of the shAhnAmeh are actually “Aye-hAye div.” And/or it’s written in code. Like the “da vinci code.”

And....

SohrAb Lives!

Wake up Iran, there’s a new kid in town.

It just gives me a thrill!

OK, so now we need to brainstorm specific stories. And get some graphic artists...Maybe I’ll set up a wiki for this!

I love the premise!

Are some of you appalled? I don’t even know the shAhnAmeh and I’m mangling it. Ha hah hahaha! You just want to kill me now like Rostam killed SohrAb. You’ll regret it, I tell you.

Thoughts. Feedback. Contributors. We’ll co-write it. Split the profits and everything. It all goes to the foundation.

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