he put the locks on the door, they wondered if he had come upon an important discovery. When he carted the metal home and threw away nothing, they gathered outside his laboratory and asked him about his experiments. Mullah Mirza fortified the door with more bars, and remained secretive. At some point, he realized with complete lucidity, he would have to kill Noah to safeguard the secret of the formula. Once or twice he even had the vision of forcing the boy into the pot of elixir, turning him—this radiant child of God's mercy— into a statue of gold that would preserve his beauty forever. But before he could do so, Mullah Mirza needed to take charge of the formula himself. One late afternoon he gathered all his courage and took Noah's place before the transforming liquid.
"In the name of God . . ." he began.
He was trembling—so moved by the greatness of the moment he could not stop the rush of tears, so pleased to have his dream realized that he dared not proceed until Noah urged him to.
He immersed a steel dagger into the pot, held it for a moment, and pulled it out with a cry of glory that changed instantly into a wail of desperation.
Something was wrong.
Mullah Mirza attacked Noah with inhuman strength:
“You changed the formula.”
Noah the Gold swore innocence.
"Try again," he pleaded with his master, but again the metal remained unchanged. He gave the dagger to Noah. This time it turned to gold.
A thousand times that day, Mullah Mirza repeated the experiment. At dawn the next morning he was exhausted and insane, sobbing with disappointment and rage, begging Noah for the answer.
"But there is no gold," Noah pleaded with him a last time. "There never was any gold."
It was then, standing before the boy who had refused him his miracle, faced with the certainty of his life's failure and the mountain of junk metal he had believed was gold, the Mullah Mirza understood:
"By God," he whispered. "I dreamt it all."
And he laughed—so hard that his body bent forward until his beard touched his feet, so long that his face became streaked with tears, and he remained there, a small, crumpled figure devoid of all bitterness, no longer frightening, a tiny old man doubled over in the middle of the floor, laughing away at the absurdity of his life, at the years of seeking and the nights of prayer all in pursuit of the impossible, laughing with such innocence and such abandon that he even made Noah smile until his limbs were stiff and his breath shut down and he fell forward on his head, rolled over, and died.
In the year 1801, Russia had claimed hegemony over the Persian province of Georgia. Four years later the Czar had annexed the provinces of Baku and Derbent. Contemplating resistance, Fath Ali Shah asked about the state of his army and discovered he had none: he had not paid his troops for years. Those who had not formally abandoned their posts were mostly opium addicts, or peasants who had never received military training. They had no uniforms, no weapons, no generals. In the arsenal at Tabriz—a strategically vital region because of its proximity to Russia—the Shah's emissaries found a few cannonballs, but even those did not fit the guns. They tried to buy lead locally, and discovered that the Shah had spent all the money in the national treasury. They asked His Majesty for money to acquire new weapons, but were refused. Fath Ali Shah would not waste his money fighting Russians over a few provinces, he said. If he had to retrieve the territories, he could easily scare the Czar into giving them back.
He announced a formal audience, and summoned a thousand nobles to the Garden of the Marble Throne at the newly completed Palace of Roses.
They came in resplendent garb, each gentleman surrounded by his own troupe of soldiers and guards and pages, their horses—tails painted red—clad in embroidered silks and golden bridles. Next to each nobleman walked his Guardian of the Bridles, who carried, folded neatly on
"In the name of God . . ." he began.
He was trembling—so moved by the greatness of the moment he could not stop the rush of tears, so pleased to have his dream realized that he dared not proceed until Noah urged him to.
He immersed a steel dagger into the pot, held it for a moment, and pulled it out with a cry of glory that changed instantly into a wail of desperation.
Something was wrong.
Mullah Mirza attacked Noah with inhuman strength:
“You changed the formula.”
Noah the Gold swore innocence.
"Try again," he pleaded with his master, but again the metal remained unchanged. He gave the dagger to Noah. This time it turned to gold.
A thousand times that day, Mullah Mirza repeated the experiment. At dawn the next morning he was exhausted and insane, sobbing with disappointment and rage, begging Noah for the answer.
"But there is no gold," Noah pleaded with him a last time. "There never was any gold."
It was then, standing before the boy who had refused him his miracle, faced with the certainty of his life's failure and the mountain of junk metal he had believed was gold, the Mullah Mirza understood:
"By God," he whispered. "I dreamt it all."
And he laughed—so hard that his body bent forward until his beard touched his feet, so long that his face became streaked with tears, and he remained there, a small, crumpled figure devoid of all bitterness, no longer frightening, a tiny old man doubled over in the middle of the floor, laughing away at the absurdity of his life, at the years of seeking and the nights of prayer all in pursuit of the impossible, laughing with such innocence and such abandon that he even made Noah smile until his limbs were stiff and his breath shut down and he fell forward on his head, rolled over, and died.
In the year 1801, Russia had claimed hegemony over the Persian province of Georgia. Four years later the Czar had annexed the provinces of Baku and Derbent. Contemplating resistance, Fath Ali Shah asked about the state of his army and discovered he had none: he had not paid his troops for years. Those who had not formally abandoned their posts were mostly opium addicts, or peasants who had never received military training. They had no uniforms, no weapons, no generals. In the arsenal at Tabriz—a strategically vital region because of its proximity to Russia—the Shah's emissaries found a few cannonballs, but even those did not fit the guns. They tried to buy lead locally, and discovered that the Shah had spent all the money in the national treasury. They asked His Majesty for money to acquire new weapons, but were refused. Fath Ali Shah would not waste his money fighting Russians over a few provinces, he said. If he had to retrieve the territories, he could easily scare the Czar into giving them back.
He announced a formal audience, and summoned a thousand nobles to the Garden of the Marble Throne at the newly completed Palace of Roses.
They came in resplendent garb, each gentleman surrounded by his own troupe of soldiers and guards and pages, their horses—tails painted red—clad in embroidered silks and golden bridles. Next to each nobleman walked his Guardian of the Bridles, who carried, folded neatly on
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