“Be quick,” Baba Ayub said, “I am out of patience.” But the divwas already walking toward a giant hallway, and Baba Ayub had no choice but to follow it. He trailed the divthrough a labyrinth of hallways, the ceiling of each nearly scraped the clouds, each supported by enormous columns. They passed many stairwells, and chambers big enough to contain all of Maidan Sabz. They walked this way until at last the divled Baba Ayub into an enormous room, at the far end of which was a curtain.
Come closer, the divmotioned.
Baba Ayub stood next to the div.
The divpulled the curtains open. Behind it was a glass window. Through the window, Baba Ayub looked down on an enormous garden. Lines of cypress trees bordered the garden, the ground at their base filled with flowers of all colors. There were pools made of blue tiles, and marble terraces, and lush green lawns. Baba Ayub saw beautifully sculpted hedges and water fountains gurgling in the shade of pomegranate trees. In three lifetimes he could not have imagined a place so beautiful.
But what truly brought Baba Ayub to his knees was the sight of children running and playing happily in the garden. They chased one another through the walkways and around trees. They played games of hide-and-seek behind the hedges. Baba Ayub’s eyes searched among the children and at last found what he was looking for. There he was! His son Qais, alive, and more than well. He had grown in height, and his hair was longer than Baba Ayub remembered. He wore a beautiful white shirt over handsome trousers. He laughed happily as he ran after a pair of comrades.
“Qais,” Baba Ayub whispered, his breath fogging the glass. And then he screamed his son’s name.
He cannot hear you, the divsaid. Nor see you.
Baba Ayub jumped up and down, waving his arms and pounding on the glass, until the divpulled the curtains shut once more.
“I don’t understand,” Baba Ayub said. “I thought …”
This is your reward, the divsaid.
“Explain yourself,” Baba Ayub exclaimed.
I forced upon you a test.
“A test.”
A test of your love. It was a harsh challenge, I recognize, and its heavy toll upon you does not escape me. But you passed. This is your reward. And his.
“What if I hadn’t chosen,” cried Baba Ayub. “What if I had refused you your test?”
Then all your children would have perished, the divsaid, for they would have been cursed anyway, fathered as they were by a weak man. A coward who would see them all die rather than burden his own conscience. You say you have no courage, but I see it in you. What you did, the burden you agreed to shoulder, took courage. For that, I honor you.
Baba Ayub weakly drew his scythe, but it slipped from his hand and struck the marble floor with a loud clang. His knees buckled, and he had to sit.
Your son does not remember you, the divcontinued. This is his life now, and you saw for yourself his happiness. He is provided here with the finest food and clothes, with friendship and affection. He receives tutoring in the arts and languages and in the sciences, and in the ways of wisdom and charity. He wants for nothing. Someday, when he is a man, he may choose to leave, and he shall be free to do so. I suspect he will touch many lives with his kindness and bring happiness to those trapped in sorrow.
“I want to see him,” Baba Ayub said. “I want to take him home.”
Do you?
Baba Ayub looked up at the div.
The creature moved to a cabinet that sat near the curtains and removed from one of its drawers an hourglass. Do you know what that is, Abdullah, an hourglass? You do. Good. Well, the divtook the hourglass, flipped it over, and placed it at Baba Ayub’s feet.
I will allow you to take him home with you, the divsaid. If you choose to, he can never return here. If you choose not to, youcan never return here. When all the sand has poured, I will ask for your decision.
And with that, the divexited the chamber, leaving Baba Ayub with yet another painful choice to make.
I will take him home, Baba Ayub thought immediately. This was what he desired the most, with every fiber of his being. Hadn’t he pictured this in a thousand dreams? To hold little Qais again, to kiss his cheek and feel the softness of his small hands in his own? And yet … If he took him home, what sort of life awaited Qais in Maidan Sabz? The hard life of a peasant at best, like his own, and little more. That is, if Qais didn’t die from the droughts like so many of the village’s children had. Could you forgive yourself, then, Baba Ayub asked himself, knowing that you plucked him, for your own selfish reasons, from a life of luxury and opportunity? On the other hand, if he left Qais behind, how could he bear it, knowing that his boy was alive, to know his whereabouts and yet be forbidden to see him? How could he bear it? Baba Ayub wept. He grew so despondent that he lifted the hourglass and hurled it at the wall, where it crashed into a thousand pieces and its fine sand spilled all over the floor.
The divreentered the room and found Baba Ayub standing over the broken glass, his shoulders slumped.
“You are a cruel beast,” Baba Ayub said.
When you have lived as long as I have, the divreplied, you find that cruelty and benevolence are but shades of the same color. Have you made your choice?
Baba Ayub dried his tears, picked up his scythe, and tied it around his waist. He slowly walked toward the door, his head hung low.
You are a good father, the divsaid, as Baba Ayub passed him by.
“Would that you roast in the fires of Hell for what you have done to me,” Baba Ayub said wearily.
He exited the room and was heading down the hallway when the divcalled after him.
Take this, the divsaid. The creature handed Baba Ayub a small glass flask containing a dark liquid. Drink this upon your journey home. Farewell.
Baba Ayub took the flask and left without saying another word.
Many days later, his wife was sitting at the edge of the family’s field, looking out for him much as Baba Ayub had sat there hoping to see Qais. With each passing day, her hopes for his return diminished. Already people in the village were speaking of Baba Ayub in the past tense. One day she was sitting on the dirt yet again, a prayer playing upon her lips, when she saw a thin figure approaching Maidan Sabz from the direction of the mountains. At first she took him for a lost dervish, a thin man with threadbare rags for clothing, hollow eyes and sunken temples, and it wasn’t until he came closer yet that she recognized her husband. Her heart leapt with joy and she cried out with relief.
After he had washed, and after he had been given water to drink and food to eat, Baba Ayub lay in his house as villagers circled around him and asked him question after question.
Where did you go, Baba Ayub?
What did you see?
What happened to you?
Baba Ayub couldn’t answer them, because he didn’t recall what had happened to him. He remembered nothing of his voyage, of climbing the div’s mountain, of speaking to the div, of the great palace, or the big room with the curtains. It was as though he had woken from an already forgotten dream. He didn’t remember the secret garden, the children, and, most of all, he didn’t remember seeing his son Qais playing among the trees with his friends. In fact, when someone mentioned Qais’s name, Baba Ayub blinked with puzzlement. Who? he said. He didn’t recall that he had ever had a son named Qais.
Do you understand, Abdullah, how this was an act of mercy? The potion that erased these memories? It was Baba Ayub’s reward for passing the div’s second test.
That spring, the skies at last broke open over Maidan Sabz. What came down was not the soft drizzle of years past but a great, great rainfall. Fat rain fell from the sky, and the village rose thirstily to meet it. All day, water drummed upon the roofs of Maidan Sabz and drowned all other sound from the world. Heavy, swollen raindrops rolled from the tips of leaves. The wells filled and the river rose. The hills to the east turned green. Wildflowers bloomed, and for the first time in many years children played on grass and cows grazed. Everyone rejoiced.