'They shall still find that they have a son,' said I, feeling a great rush of tenderness flow into my heart, as I repeated the words; 'and, please God, if I reach my home, they shall no longer have to reproach me with want of proper respect.' A still soft voice, however, whispered to me that I should be too late; and I remembered the prognostics of my mind, when, filled with grief for the loss of Zeenab, I left Tehran full of virtuous intentions and resolutions.
When I could first distinguish the peak in the mountain of the Colah Cazi, which marks the situation of Ispahan, my heart bounded within me; and at every step I anxiously considered in what state I should find my family. Would my old schoolmaster be alive? Should I find our neighbour the baqal (or chandler), at whose shop I used to spend in sweetmeats all the copper money that I could purloin from my father, when I shaved for him, would he be still in existence? And my old friend the capiji, the door-keeper of the caravanserai, he whom I frightened so much at the attack of the Turcomans, is the door of his life still open, or has it been closed upon him forever?
In this manner did I muse by the wayside, until the tops of the minarets of Ispahan actually came in view; when, enraptured with the sight, and full of gratitude for having been preserved thus far in my pilgrimage, I stopped and said my prayers; and then taking up one stone, which I placed upon another as a memorial, I made the following vow: 'O Ali, if thou wilt grant to thy humblest and most abject of slaves the pleasure of reaching my home in safety, I will, on arrival, kill a sheep, and make a pilau for my friends and family.'
Traversing the outskirts of the city with a beating heart, every spot was restored to my memory, and I threaded my way through the long vaulted bazaars and intricate streets without missing a single turn, until I found myself standing opposite both my father's shop and the well-known gate of the caravanserai.
The door of the former was closed, and nothing was stirring around it that indicated business. I paused a long time before I ventured to proceed, for I looked upon this first aspect of things as portentous of evil; but recollecting myself, I remembered that it was the Sheb-i-Jumah, the Friday eve, and that probably my father, in his old age, had grown to be too scrupulous a Mussulman to work during those hours which true believers ought to keep holy.
However, the caravanserai was open, and presented the same scene to my eyes which it had done ever since I had known it. Bales of goods heaped up in lots, intermixed with mules, camels, and their drivers. Groups of men in various costumes, some seated, some in close conversation, others gazing carelessly about, and others again coming and going in haste, with faces full of care and calculation. I looked about for the friend of my boy-hood the capiji, and almost began to fear that he too had closed his door, when I perceived his well-known figure crawling quietly along with his earthen water-pipe, seeking his bit of charcoal wherewith to light it.
His head had sunk considerably between his shoulders, and reclined more upon his breast since last I had seen him; and the additional bend in his knees showed that the passing years had kept a steady reckoning with him.
'It is old Ali Mohamed,' said I, as I stepped up towards him. 'I should know that crooked nose of his from a thousand, so often have I clipped the whisker that grows under it.'
When I accosted him with the usual salutation of peace, he kept on trimming his pipe, without even looking up, so much accustomed was he to be spoken to by strangers; but when I said, 'Do not you recognize me, Ali Mohamed?' he turned up his old bloodshot eye at me, and pronounced 'Friend! a caravanserai is a picture of the world; men come in and go out of it, and no account is taken of them. How am I then to know you? Ali Mohamed is grown old, and his memory is gone by.'
'But you will surely recollect Hajji Baba—little Hajji, who used to shave your head, and trim your beard and mustachios!'