A powerful man like Rustem cannot always remain in idleness, however, and when news came to him that the Persian king was in need of his greatest warrior, Rustem took his lasso, his bow and arrows and his club, mounted Raksh and rode away. Before going, however, he took from his arm an onyx bracelet that had been his father’s, and calling Tehmina to him handed it to her, saying:
“Take this bracelet, my dear one, and keep it. If we have a child and it be a girl, weave the bracelet in her hair and she will grow tall, beautiful and good; if our child be a boy, fasten the bracelet on his arm, and he will become strong and courageous, a mighty warrior and a wise counsellor.”
SOHRAB
When Rustem had gone Tehmina wept bitterly, but consoled herself with the thought that her husband would soon return. After her child was born, she devoted herself to the wonderful boy and waited patiently for the father that never returned. She remembered the parting words of Rustem, and fastened upon the arm of her infant son the magic bracelet of his race.
He was a marvelous boy, this son of Rustem and Tehmina. Beautiful in face as the moon when it rides the heavens in its fullness, he was large, well-formed, with limbs as straight as the arrows of his father. He grew at an astonishing rate. When he was but a month old he was as tall as any year-old baby; at three years of age he could use the bow, the lasso and the club with the skill of a man; at five he was as brave as a lion, and at ten not a man in the kingdom was his match in strength and agility.
Tehmina, rejoicing in the intelligent, shining face of her boy, had named him Sohrab, but as she feared that Rustem might send for his son if he knew that he had so promising a one, she sent word to her husband that her child was a girl. Disappointed in this, Rustem paid no attention to his offspring, who grew up unknown to his parent, and himself ignorant of the name of his father.
When Sohrab was about ten years old he began to notice that, unlike the other young men, he seemed to have no father. Accordingly he went to his mother and questioned her.
“What shall I say,” he inquired, “when the young men ask me who is my father? Must I always tell them that I do not know? Whose son am I?”
“My son, you ask and you have a right to know. You need feel no shame because of your father. He is the mighty Rustem, the greatest of Persian warriors, the noblest man that ever lived. But I beg you to tell no one lest word should come to Rustem, for I know he would take you from me and I should never see you again.”
Sohrab was overjoyed to hear of his noble parentage and felt his heart swell with pride, for he had heard all his life of the heroic deeds of his father.