Rud still did not know what adverse effects that event would bring upon the lives of the people of Sialk and the inhabitants of other Iranian towns, including the people of Giyan. The first harmful consequence of the lake’s desiccation was that the people of Sialk were plagued by insects—especially mosquitoes. Those insects not only robbed people of peace during the day but would not let them sleep at night. In Sialk everyone suffered from mosquitoes; anyone wishing to avoid their stings went to the fire-house, for people imagined that mosquitoes were afraid of fire. Around the fire-house no mosquitoes were found—even though there was no fire burning there.
By innate intelligence, the Iran-ban realized that what kept mosquitoes away from the fire-house was smoke, not fire. She therefore ordered people to kindle fires in their homes so that the smoke would drive the mosquitoes away, and the people, following the Iran-ban’s instructions, lit fires in their houses; the smoke prevented the mosquitoes from approaching.
The second effect of the lake’s disappearance was the delay of the rainy season, and the ducks—especially those that came in autumn and lived along the lakeside—no longer came. At night the inhabitants of Sialk could hear the ducks passing across the sky, but those birds no longer alighted in Sialk; instead, they made for the ponds that remained from the lake’s water, and because those ponds also held little water, after a few days they moved on, and some perished from the sheer effort of finding a place to rest. With the drying of the lake, fish—one of the staple foods of Sialk—disappeared, and people could no longer obtain fish. When the people left Sialk because of the storm, their horses, sheep, and fowl were lost; upon returning, they were forced to head north to bring back horses, mares, rams, and ewes and reestablish their stock.
Tir could not go to the northeast because the lake had dried up, but she knew that chickens and roosters could be found there, and she told Rud to send a group overland to the northeast to fetch fowl.
Formerly, the people of Sialk ate venison mostly to vary their palate and did not need to depend on it, for they had such abundance of fish and duck that they had no need of deer meat. But after the lake dried up, the fish vanished, and the ducks disappeared, they turned to deer; yet the deer, which had once been plentiful, became scarce, and for the first time the people of Sialk faced shortages of provisions.
That year the rainy season was short; soon the clouds left the sky, the sun beat down, and what little water had gathered in the lakebed vanished. When spring began, the trees budded and the birds of the forest sang; but that spring, like the rainy season, passed quickly. Then the forest trees gradually withered, for the ground’s moisture—once sustained by the lake—was gone; and suddenly the people of Sialk saw that every tree around the city had dried up, and only the trees on the mountain slopes remained.
With the drying of the trees, the birdsong ceased; the forest floor dried, and no greenery sprang from that ground. All the herbivores that had once lived in the forest disappeared, and the people of Sialk saw no more deer.
Rud (the Iran-ban) became the country’s ruler in the most dreadful period of Iran’s history; for with the lake dried up, the forest and its animals gone, the grasses withered, and provisions scarce, a new problem arose each day for the inhabitants of Sialk—and that woman, as ruler, had to solve it.
Just as the forest animals disappeared, sheep, cattle, and horses diminished in the northern regions; like the forest creatures, these animals moved away from the dry lakeside to places where grass still grew. Thus obtaining sheep and horses—and even cattle, which had formerly been Sialk’s domestic animals though they grazed on the mountain slopes—became difficult.
At that time, through hunger, the people of Sialk understood that the lake’s desiccation had turned their paradise into a hell. At last there came a day when Rud ordered the people to eat wheat to fill their bellies, and the earlier Iran-ban’s prophecy (Rud’s mother-in-law) came true: “The day the people of Sialk eat wheat is the day the sun has turned unkind toward them.”
All the wheat along the lakeside was lost because the land had dried, but wheat still grew on the mountain slopes. The people of Sialk went and gathered wheat from the slopes, brought it to the city, and, having learned that it could not be eaten raw, poured it into earthen pots, set them on the fire to boil, and ate it once cooked. We know that the people of Sialk already knew the custom of cooking food.
At this point, if someone had arrived from elsewhere, they would not have recognized Sialk—the city that had once stood in a paradisal region. Of water and greenery there was no trace, save for a stream that ran by Sialk, and its water was far less than before. Hundreds of thousands of dry, leafless trees inspired terror. Sometimes, by day or night, a strong wind would blow and topple the dry trees, rotten at the roots; their falls echoed like thunder.
For the first time, the people of Sialk saw a frightening creature—what is today called the scorpion—which even now is plentiful there and in Kashan—and they realized that its sting is dangerous.
The unceasing sun beat down upon the dry earth, the heat made the people restless, and they did not know how to escape it. At times they thought of abandoning the city and leaving, but they could not bring themselves to part with their birthplace.
