Believing him, the Muslims rode off and Sheriar was happy he had not lied. It was a fact that no dog had wandered past that day and the girl had not run from there. Sheriar went back to the bakery and safely escorted the young woman to her home, where he was received with deep gratitude by her family.1
Sheriar's spiritual inclination flourished early, and he must have met the Mohammedan wali with his father. From childhood he had a detached outlook on life and was devoid of any material ambition; he did not think of himself as prospering in this world. When a human corpse would arrive at the Tower of Silence he would think: "Death is inevitable. The happy as well as the miserable die. What is the meaning of life? What is its goal? Everyone departs from this world leaving his or her joys and sorrows behind. So why not give them up while alive? But how?"
Sheriar's heart was restless to find answers that would satisfy him. One day in 1865, Sheriar told his father of his longing, bid farewell to his family and left home. He was only twelve years old. The boy had never once stepped out of his hometown of Khorramshah and did not know where to go when he began wandering throughout what is now Iran. He carried just a few items of clothing, rested anywhere at night and sustained himself on begged food. This young dervish had firm and total reliance on God; he relied solely on His help.2 What other help did he need? He had dedicated himself to finding God and with the repetition of His name, "Yezdan, Yezdan, Yezdan!" at every step, he searched for Him.
Sheriar was destined to undergo severe hardships during his wanderings, but he did not lose courage. On the contrary, he gained inner strength through his sufferings since he was coming nearer to God. Dervishes were not always well received in Persia; at times the boy received insults instead of food, and at times, he was beaten instead of given shelter. But he who discards the world becomes God's, and this was Sheriar's destiny.
One day the boy's roamings brought him to the town of Bafte Badnyan. Exhausted and hungry, Sheriar approached a bakery, begging a loaf of bread for his evening meal.
Footnotes
- 1.The more cruel and ruthless Muslims of the area would even break into the Zoroastrian households, kidnap the girls of the family, and either get them married to Muslims in other areas, or sell them as concubines. The girls would often be sent to Arabia. In this way the Muslim fanatics reduced the Zoroastrian population. This had happened to the girl who approached Sheriar: Muslims had broken into her house, but she was in a back room and had escaped. She had run toward the outlying forest where the Tower of Silence was located and where Sheriar was helping his father.
- 2.In Sufism, a dervish is a person who renounces the world out of love for God and becomes an ascetic.