The Zahhak of Our Time Is More Bloodthirsty: When Myth Becomes Reality and News S. Rouzbeh ۱۴۰۴/۱۱/۲۶ S. Rouzbeh reflects on Ferdowsi’s Zahhak as a system that conceals truth, reduces speech to whispers and makes death an administrative routine. In a society where goodness is driven underground, killing becomes a daily ritual in the service of power. S. Rouzbeh – The Shahnameh is not merely a book of legends. It is a mirror that shines anew whenever a society falls under the pressure of “becoming accustomed to death”. Ferdowsi creates Zahhak not simply as a king, but as a “machine”: a system that conceals the truth, reduces language to whispers and turns death into an administrative routine. That is why so many of his couplets today read as something beyond literature, almost like daily news reports. A society in which goodness is whispered Ferdowsi sees the first sign of becoming like Zahhak in the collapse of public morality and the overturning of values. In this atmosphere, truth is driven from the public square into hidden places: The deeds of the wise were concealed The desires of fools ran rampant Art was scorned; sorcery was held in high esteem Truth was hidden; harm was done openly The hands of demons reached far in doing evil No words of goodness were spoken except in secret This “secret” is not merely a simple political silence. It is the point at which helping an injured person, telling the truth or even mourning loved ones comes with a security risk. In such circumstances, goodness retreats from the streets into cellars, and society takes refuge in whispers instead of conversation. Death as routine: crime dressed up as necessity In the Shahnameh, Zahhak’s identity is not defined by a number, but by “repetition”. In his system, murder is no exception; it is a daily ritual for the survival of power: Each night, two young men— Whether humble-born or of a hero’s line— The cook would take to the king’s palace And prepare the king’s cure He would kill them and take out their brains To make food for that dragon The phrase “every night” points to a system that has normalised crime. “Treating Zahhak” is also the justification the apparatus offers for the supposed necessity of this slaughter. In today’s account, if we take as our basis Iran International TV’s estimate that at least 36,500 people were killed during the protests of Dey 1404, we are confronted with an apparatus that, within a few days, made thousands of people “food” for the survival of the Zahhak of our time, embodied by the Islamic Republic government. Although, with communications cut off, precise verification is difficult, this very darkness and the conflicting figures are themselves signs of that Zahhak-like atmosphere. Armayel and Garmayel: When Rescue, Too, Must Be Secret Ferdowsi even exposes the manipulation of figures and the concealment of the dead. Armayel and Garmayel devise a bitter expedient to save the lives of half the victims, so that the apparatus will think the plan is proceeding exactly as intended: He brought out the brains of sheep And mixed them with those precious brains He gave one man his life, granting him safe passage, and said, “See that you take him away and keep him hidden.” According to the text of the Shahnameh, these survivors had to remain “unknown” and be driven out to the plains and mountains so that their number would not be revealed. Today, too, much of the truth remains in the shadows: families who dare not tell their stories, injured people who do not go to clinics for fear of arrest, those killed who never appear in official figures, and people exiled far from their homeland. Modern-day Armayels and Garmayels are those who seek survival in silence. The Employees of Violence and Killing: The Apparatus’s Operational Face The intermediaries who carry out orders to kill also appear in the Shahnameh. They are people who have accepted violence as part of their job: From among the guards who slaughtered the people They dragged away two young men This is the image of the “agents of violence”. In every Zahhak-like apparatus, there are those who abduct and kill, and call it a “mission and duty”. The tools may be the only difference between eras, but the nature of “slaughtering the people” remains unchanged. Zahhak’s Numbers: A Calendar of Death To show the depth of Zahhak’s horror, Ferdowsi settled for “two victims every night”—a figure that, in the imagination of a thousand years ago, represented the height of cruelty. But when we look at the 47-year record of the Zahhak of our time and confront the bodies of 80,000 people killed, according to the figures compiled, we realise that we are facing a phenomenon two and a half times more voracious than the Zahhak of the Shahnameh. If Zahhak demanded two victims for his serpents, the figures say that the serpents of our time have grown hungry five times a day. This is when we understand why Ferdowsi said: “The deeds of the wise were hidden.” For when the volume of blood overflows the vessel of myth, ordinary words are no longer enough to describe the catastrophe. This calculation shows that the “machine of death” in the modern world, using administrative tools, vast prisons and gallows, has managed to break a record that even the demon in Ferdowsi’s imagination never reached. When execution becomes everyday news, society once again enters the logic of “every night”. Death acquires a calendar, and before it can serve as an instrument of justice, that calendar becomes an instrument for producing fear. The sword crosses the boundary of ethics: targeting children The final boundary in the moral collapse of a system is crossed when violence reaches women and children. Ferdowsi lays this image bare in the story of Siavash: They beheaded young and old alike They took women and little children captive This couplet is a measure. When a child enters the account of repression, the question is no longer one of control, but of how the authorities define the value of human life. Reports by Kayhan London and IranWire that 150 to 200 schoolchildren and teenagers have been killed show that this merciless blade recognises no boundaries. Hospitals and the return of fear to the treatment room International reports, including Reuters’ account citing UN experts, indicate that detaining the wounded from hospitals has deterred people from seeking treatment. When the treatment room becomes a place of fear, Ferdowsi’s line comes to pass: “No word of kindness was spoken except in secret.” In this atmosphere, even treatment becomes an underground, clandestine activity. From tomorrow’s bread to the families’ quest for justice Ferdowsi places the final answer in the figure of Kaveh the Blacksmith. He speaks of the suffering of the working class, but links that suffering to the blood of his children: I am a poor, wretched blacksmith, The king’s fire rains down upon my head. If all seven lands are yours to rule, Why should all the hardship and suffering be ours? Is it not for your reckoning to reveal Why, when my turn in this world came, My child’s brains, to feed your serpents, Must be supplied from every gathering? Here, the family is no longer merely grieving; it has become a “seeker of justice”. Tomorrow’s bread is bound up with today’s blood, and Kaveh’s question becomes a collective demand. On the other side, Ferdowsi refers to the “court record”—the scroll of compulsory endorsement—which people sign out of fear in order to portray Zahhak as just. And this is exactly what the regime did, using threats, money and force to drive its agents and even ordinary people into the streets on 22 Bahman. The moment the scroll is torn: the passage to moral anger Kaveh’s response is a people’s unequivocal answer to the normalisation of death. He leaves fear behind and arrives at the anger of conscience: I will not be a witness to this court record, Nor will I ever fear the king. He cried out and leapt up, trembling, Tore it apart and trampled the record underfoot. This moment marks the end of fabricated legitimacy. By tearing up that paper, Kaveh breaks the silence and moves from “secrecy” to “justice”. The outcome: Zahhak has been recognised When Kaveh leaves the palace, the pain of one household becomes the roar of a marketplace and a city: When Kaveh emerged from the king’s court, The marketplace became their meeting place. He roared and cried aloud, Calling the whole world to seek justice. Zahhak is not merely someone who kills; he is a system that conceals the truth and demands that people sign their surrender. But when the numbers, names and accounts are recorded, it means memory is alive. The Zahhak of our time has begun to crack through this very recognition. This recognition is the first step towards overcoming fear and reaching solidarity. In the next part, we will analyse the symbolic character of “Fereydun” and how the seeds of popular resistance to this apparatus take shape. “The Song of Liberation and Justice” When the Zahhak of the age washed his hands in blood, Farrokh Fereydun rose up from his homeland. From awakened hearts, an army emerged, that saw no path but the path of Iran. A banner rose, bearing the sun and lion, whose sight makes the old hyena’s soul tremble. Men and women formed ranks, shoulder to shoulder, in the name of Fereydun, alongside the Kavehs. All united in their words, following the path of justice, so that Iran may rejoice, free of beasts and demons. S. Rouzbeh Source: https://srouzbeh.com/en/posts/archive-2dab8fad-c8bc-107e-d489-3c37b6e5742c Please credit the author and link to this edition.