the shakes. When I do smoke it, though, I think up fantastic poems. Go and get your book and write something in it.”
“I can’t write. I can’t even read,” Akbar signed.
“You don’t have to read, but you do have to write. Just scribble something in your notebook. One page every day. Or maybe just a couple of sentences. Anyway, try it. Go upstairs, write something in your book, then come and show it to me.”
When Kazem Khan had finished his pipe, he went upstairs.
“Where are you, Akbar? Haven’t you written anything yet? It doesn’t matter. I’ll teach you. You see that bed? From now on, it’s your bed. Open the window and look out at the mountains. That beautiful view is all yours. Open the cupboard. That’s yours, too. You can keep your things in it. Here, this is the key to your room.”
It was impossible to concentrate on reading or writing when you were sitting by the window in that room, Kazem Khan complained, because you would be mesmerised by the view, by nature. You had no choice but to lay down your book, put away your pen, go and get your pipe, chop up some opium, put a piece of it in your pipe, pick up a glowing coal with a pair of pincers, light the pipe, then puff, puff, puff on it, blow the smoke out of the window and stare at the view.
The first thing you saw were the walnut trees, then the pomegranate trees and, beyond that, a strip of yellow wildflowers and a field dotted with opium-coloured bushes. The yellow flowers and the brownish-yellow bushes merged at the foot of Saffron Mountain, which rose majestically into the sky.
If you could climb to the top of Saffron Mountain, stand on its craggy peak and peer through a pair of binoculars, and if there happened to be no fog that day, you would be able to make out the contours of a customs shed and a handful of soldiers, because that’s where the border is. Back when Aga Akbar and Kazem Khan were standing by the window, however, no villager could have reached that mountain peak.
Saffron Mountain is famous in Iran, not so much because of its nearly inaccessible peak, but because of its historically important cave. Saffron Mountain is a familiar name in the world of archaeology. The cave, located halfway up the mountain, is extremely difficult to reach. Back in those days, wolves slept in it during the winter and gave birth to their cubs in it during the spring.
If you scaled the wall with ropes and spikes, like a mountain climber, you’d find bits of fur everywhere, along with the bones of mountain goats devoured by the wolves.
If you came in the spring, you might see the cubs at the mouth of the cave, calling to their mothers.
Deep inside the cave, on a dark southerly wall, is an ancient stone relief. More than 3,000 years ago, the first king of Persia ordered that a cuneiform inscription be chiselled into the rock, beyond the reach of sun, wind, rain and time. It has never been deciphered.
Sometimes when you looked out of Kazem Khan’s window, you saw a cuneiform expert—an Englishman or a Frenchman or an American—riding into the cave on a mule, which meant that another attempt was being made to decipher the cuneiform.
“Come! Get the mules ready,” Kazem Khan gestured to Akbar.
“Where are we going?”
“To the cave.”
“Why?”
“To learn how to read. I’m going to teach you to read,” signed Kazem Khan.
They put on warm clothes, mounted two strong mules and headed up Saffron Mountain. There was no path going up to the cave. The mules simply sniffed the ground, followed the tracks of the mountain goats and slowly climbed higher and higher. After three or four hours, they reached the entrance to the cave.
“Wait!” Kazem Khan signed. “First we have to scare off the wolves.”
He took out his rifle and fired three shots into the air. The wolves fled.
They got down from their mules and entered the cave. Once inside, Kazem Khan lit an oil lamp. They walked deeper and deeper into the cave, with the mules trotting along behind.
“Come on, Akbar, follow me.”
“Why are you going into the darkness?” Akbar signed.
“Be patient a bit longer. Come with me. Look! Up there!” Kazem Khan said, and he held up the lamp. “Can you see it?”
“See what?” Akbar signed. “I don’t see anything.”
“Wait, I’ll go and look for a stick.”
He hunted around in the cave for a stick, but didn’t find one.
“Here, hold the reins.”
Kazem Khan sat on top of the mule and held up the lamp again.
“Can you see it now? That thing on the wall, in the wall. Go and stand over there, so you can see it better. Wait, let me get down from the mule. Look carefully, Akbar. Do you know what that is? It’s a letter. A letter written by a king. A great king.
“Back in the old days, people couldn’t read or write. Paper hadn’t been invented yet. So the king ordered that his words be chiselled into the wall of the cave. All those foreigners who come up here on mules actually want to read the king’s letter, the king’s story. Now get out your pen and notebook. I’m going to hold the mule against the wall and I want you to stand on its back. Yes, on the mule’s back. Good. Are you comfortable? Look, there’s a place for you to hang up the lamp, so you can see better. Now I want you to write down the text. Look carefully at all the symbols, at all those cuneiform words, and write them down on the paper, one by one. Go ahead! Don’t be afraid. I’ll hold the mule. Just write!”
Aga Akbar may or may not have understood what his uncle had in mind, but in any case he started copying the text. He stared at the cuneiform script and did his best to draw each character, one by one, in his notebook. Three whole pages.
“It’s finished,” he signed.
“Good. Now put it in your pocket and get down. Be careful.”
That evening, when Kazem Khan was at home again, smoking his opium, he signed to Akbar, “Go and get your book and come sit here by the brazier. Now give me your pen and listen carefully. You copied the letter written by the king. Do you know what it says?”
“No.”
“That letter is something that used to be inside the king’s head. Nobody knows what it says, but it must say something. Now you, yes you, can also write a letter. Here, on the next page of your notebook. Some other time, you can write another letter on another page. You can write down what’s inside your head, just like the king did. Go ahead and try it!”
Years later, when Ishmael, the son of Aga Akbar, was sixteen and living in the city, he went to visit his uncle in the mountains. “But Uncle Kazem Khan,” he asked him one evening at dinner, “why didn’t you teach my father the normal alphabet, so he could read and write like everyone else?”
“What do you mean ‘like everyone else’? Nowadays you have to learn to read, but you didn’t have to back then. Especially not here in the mountains. Even the village imam could barely write his name. Who could have taught the alphabet to
