You couldn’t think about that as you climbed, or you’d never reach the well. How could anyone dare to go to a place from which he might never return?
That was the secret. It wasn’t just a matter of strong legs and quick wits, but also of necessity. You had to be prepared to leave your life behind, to say goodbye, to bid your life farewell. Only then could you reach the well.
Aga Akbar was prepared. After his wife’s death, he’d reached a point where he wanted to go to the well and never come back again. He needed the holy man. He needed to kneel at the well and admit that he was afraid, that he no longer dared to live.
Just when his bride was being placed in her coffin so she could be carried to her grave, he slipped out through the back door. He started up the mountain in order to forget life.
People looked all over for him. The entire village was waiting at the cemetery, wondering where he could have gone.
Kazem Khan decided to go look for him in the mountains. He thought he knew where his nephew was headed, but he was afraid that Akbar wouldn’t be able to reach the well, that he’d fall and no one would be able to rescue him.
He saddled up his mule, grabbed his binoculars and climbed the mountain. He rode until the animal refused, or perhaps didn’t dare, to go any farther. He stood on a rock and peered at the sacred spot through his binoculars. No Akbar in sight.
He looked again to see if … Wait a minute, someone was kneeling down, touching his forehead to the ground, or, rather, looking into the well. No, he was sitting on his knees and writing.
“What a clever boy!” Kazem Khan said and laughed aloud. Akbar had reached the well!
What could he do to help him? Nothing, no one could do a thing.
Kazem Khan laughed again. The mountain echoed his laughter. “He’s reached the well!” he shouted. “My Akbar! Hurrah! Hurrah for him! Hurrah for me! Let him weep! Let him write! Ha, ha, ha. I wish I had my pipe. Oh, God, I wish I’d brought my opium. Then I’d sit on this rock and watch him and quietly smoke my pipe.”
How would Akbar get back down the mountain? Don’t worry. Anyone who could make it up to the well ought to be able to get back down. Clever mountain goats always find their way home again.
What should he do? Wait for Aga Akbar here or go home?
He retraced his steps, for now he had a reason to celebrate, a reason to sit on his pipe-smoker’s carpet. Maybe it wasn’t quite the thing to do, he thought, given that Akbar’s wife had just been buried, but her family should have mentioned their daughter’s illness. We’re not going to mourn, we’re going to celebrate! We have to help Akbar get over her death. We’ll hold a party, first thing in the morning. No, we’ll hold it now, tonight, in the dark. I’m going to say to everyone I see, “Hurry! Hurry! Go up onto your roof! Salute my nephew! He’s reached the well!”
Kazem Khan went straight to the house of his oldest sister. “Where are you? Go and get a green scarf for Akbar! What a man! Our Akbar has reached the sacred spot. At this very moment, he’s standing at the edge of the well! Here, take the binoculars! Hurry! Go up onto the roof! Look! He’s still standing there!”
Then he rode over to the mosque, where people were mourning the bride. He got down from his mule and raced inside. “Men! Allah! Allah! Look, a green scarf! Here, take my binoculars! Go up onto the roof and look before it gets dark! Akbar has reached the well!”
In the middle of the night, when everyone had begun to fear that he’d never be seen again, a dark figure strode into the town square. Akbar.
Kazem Khan wrapped a green scarf around his neck and wept.
Back before the railway had been built, in the days before the train, the area around the well had been shrouded in mystery. It was said that even the birds muffled their wing beats and bowed their heads when they flew over the well.
The train changed all that. The well used to be synonymous with inaccessibility, but that was no longer true. It was hard to know whether the railway had desecrated the site or made it even holier.
For the first two years after the train began running past the cave, the sacred well was still inaccessible.
The mountain-dwellers took no notice of the train. It was as though that newfangled thing snaking its way up to the border had nothing to do with them. After all, it was Reza Shah’s train, not theirs. Gradually, however, they got used to the steel tracks cutting through the rock to the top of Saffron Mountain.
As time went by, more and more pilgrims climbed the mountain by walking up the rails.
“Look! A road! A divine road, ready and waiting!”
Why take the treacherous mountain paths when there was a railway track? It even brought you a bit closer to the sacred well. (Did Aga Akbar use this route? It’s impossible to tell from his notes.)
Now that people had discovered this holy path, they wanted to teach the mules to climb up the railway track. But the mules refused. They were frightened by the rails, which reeked of oil, and didn’t dare place their hooves between the wooden sleepers. The older and more experienced mules, in particular, were terrified. They fled.
So, they tried younger mules. People spent days, even weeks, teaching young mules to step between the railway sleepers.
And so, an entire generation of mules growing up on Saffron Mountain went and stood on the tracks the moment you smeared a bit of oil on their muzzles. Then the pilgrims mounted the mules and the animals gingerly made their way up the mountain, one railway sleeper at a time.
The pilgrims, especially the older ones, were hesitant at first. But before long, you saw even little old ladies in chadors, giggling as their mules climbed up the tracks.
The stream of pilgrims quickly swelled. Men came to Saffron Mountain from all over the country, carrying sick children, crazed wives and ailing mothers and fathers on their backs. They hired mules to take them up the mountain.
The boom didn’t last long. On Friday evenings, when the train tooted its horn, the animals panicked. They shook off their mounts and raced back to the village and their stables. One of the mules invariably broke its leg, or even its neck. Others got their hooves caught between the rails. An old woman was sure to snag her chador on a railway bolt.
Then, one day, a couple of trucks drove up. They were loaded with fencing materials and barbed wire. Dozens of labourers from the city fenced-off the tracks and strung barbed wire over the top. Not even a snake could crawl onto the rails now.
But people discovered another route, another way to reach the sacred well. Not everyone was cut out for it. You had to be young, clever and strong.
In the past only a handful of men had been able to reach the well. In the meantime their numbers had grown. Young men and boys now risked everything to obtain the coveted green scarf. It was a great challenge. A supreme test. Perhaps the most difficult test they would ever face.
They climbed up the mountain to the place where the barbed wire came to an end. Then they waited in the dark for the train and jumped on its roof as it went by.
That part was fairly easy. It could be accomplished by almost anyone who dared to jump on top of a moving train. The decisive moment came after about fifteen minutes, when the train made a sharp turn. You had to run across the roof as fast as you could, then leap onto a rock.
To land on exactly the right rock, you needed perfect timing, agility and courage. If you missed it, your broken or dead body would be loaded on a mule the next day.
Anyone who managed to land the jump and keep his balance, gripping the rock with his toes, like a tiger, was supposed to signal his success to the villagers