Once upon a time a poor man lived in a little oasis in a faraway desert. He lived by a palm tree which was his source of livelihood. He ate its dates and when the passing merchants came near for the sweet water, traded them for camel milk and other things. He made shoes and baskets from its leaves and made his house from the same.

That day, the man had worked hard, hung from the palm tree, collecting fruit and leaves. And when the day was done he went to sleep. As he was sleep little by little a rain storm came by and started raining in the middle of night. As the rain storms are a rarity in a desert and most precious, he woke up to sound of the rain, surprised and joyous in heart. As he watched how the rain watered the dry soil, from above a lightning struck the tree so beloved. He could not see for a moment, for the light was too intense but he heard the thunder as it came after.

The tree went up in flames, parted in two, burning like a bonfire, as the man watched broken and helpless. It burnt for 7 days and 7 nights as the man stood by and didn’t move, frozen like a statue with sorrow. On the end of seventh night, the fire died and in the middle of the ashes that were all left of the tree, there it was a diamond the size of a palm of a hand, born in the fire of the lightening. The man who now had came to himself, took the diamond and throw it at the sky with all his strength, breaking in tears shouting “ah my tree, which fed me and cloth me, which i held dear.” Then again picked up the diamond and put it in his pocket and started drifting in the desert as he wept. All desert was now covered with flowers, for rain gives a new life to a desert and all after a rain grows and blossoms. Not that he noticed, for with sorrow he crossed the desert weeping.

And he went and went until came out of the desert and into a village in a valley on the edge of the desert. As he came near the people of the village gathered around him wondering who the stranger was. They took him in, fed him and bath him and gave him new cloth. Then asked him to tell his story so he said his tale, and in the end took out the diamond out of his pocket as it shined in front of the all villagers.

Some believed him not, some accused him of theft, believing him mad or desiring the diamond for themselves. As they were about to put their hand on him, in his wit, he cried “I would trade it for some seeds”. The villagers laughed and believed him truly mad and to save themselves the trouble traded the diamond with some bags of seeds they had. The old man lifted up the bags as soon as he could and took the way back to his oasis across the desert, happy to be out of harm’s way. The villagers did not see him never again, and as the spring of that year the crops did not yield as much they supposed to and the winter was harsher than they ever remembered, the next year they had none to plant and to crop, for they had no seeds, so the village was abandoned and left in ruins as it stands today. As for the old man, still the caravans who come through the desert, say there is a little orchard in an oasis somewhere in the desert, where the water is sweet and there is shade under palm trees for all to rest.

The End

Saeed S. Zaribaf