Chapter XLVIII — Hajji Baba reaches Ispahan, and his paternal roof, just time enough to close the eyes of his dying father
I did not require to be twice ordered to depart; and, without once looking behind me, I left Kom and its priests, and bent my steps towards Ispahan and my family. I had a few reals in my pocket, with which I could buy food on the road; and, as for resting-places, the country was well supplied with caravanserais, in which I could always find a corner to lay my head. Young as I was, I began to be disgusted with the world; and perhaps had I remained long enough at Kom, and in the mood in which I had reached it, I might have devoted the rest of my life to following the lectures of Mirza Abdul Cossim, and acquired worldly consideration by my taciturnity, by my austerity, and strict adherence to Mahomedan discipline. But fate had woven another destiny for me. The maidan (the race-course) of life was still open to me, and the courser of my existence had not yet exhausted half of the bounds and curvets with which he was wont to keep me in constant exercise. I felt that I deserved the misfortunes with which I had been afflicted, owing to my total neglect of my parents.
'I have been a wicked son,' said I. 'When I was a man in authority, and was puffed up with pride at my own importance, I then forgot the poor barber at Ispahan; and it is only now, when adversity spreads my path, that I recollect the authors of my being.' A saying of my school-master, which he frequently quoted with great emphasis in Arabic, came to my mind. 'An old friend,' used he to say, 'is not to be bought, even if you had the treasures of Hatem to offer for one. Remember then, O youth, that thy first, and therefore thy oldest friends are thy father and thy mother.'
'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.