The year 2010 marked the Millennial Anniversary of the release of Abolqasem Ferdowsi’s epic poem, the Shahnameh. In 1969, Loren Eiseley published an essay entitled The Star Thrower, a short work that is recognized as the original source for the Parable of the Starfish. The brief narrative below respectfully attempts to infuse the majestic characters of classical Persian antiquity with the emotive narrative from the 1960s.

The following tale is my apocryphal version of the Parable of the Starfish featuring Rostam, the definitive hero of the Persian-speaking peoples. In this version of the parable, the heroic young pahlawan is seen as a child who has silently stolen away from a family gathering on a plateau high above the Persian Gulf to attend to an urgent issue on the shore.

Anthony Agnello
President, Friends of Afghanistan

Since early morning, the powerful shamal rising from deep within the Rub al Khali had been driving sand and surf eastward across the gulf and up against the Persian shore. At pisheen, the winds suddenly stopped. Dusk settled quietly along the coast, the tide pulled back, and the early evening sky softened into a comforting blend of crimson and gold. Young Rostam, far from his mother Roudabeh’s home in Kabulistan, walked carefully among the debris left behind by the great wind, where countless creatures lay stranded above the high-tide mark.

The hard-packed sand felt firm under Rostam’s feet. The beach appeared to taper to a point and vanish beyond the horizon to the north and south as far as he could see. Every few steps, he paused, squatted down, picked up a starfish, examined it carefully, and gently tossed it back into the sea.

Rostam’s father, Zal, concerned about his young son’s absence as dusk gave way to night, carefully made his way down the winding bluff and approached Rostam on the shore. Zal asked him what could be so important that it would take the young pahlawan away from the family festivities for such a long time. Rostam explained how the unusual winds had forced large numbers of starfish ashore and that they would all die if he didn’t return them to the water. Zal, now instructing his child, said that the shore they were standing on stretched hundreds of leagues northward toward Ur and south into the Great Ocean. He finished his lesson saying, “Son, there are thousands of starfish in harm’s way. You can’t possibly make a difference for these creatures.” Bending once again and softly casting another starfish toward the last glimmer of light still clinging to where the sun had just set in the gulf, Rostam, the child who would become the greatest mythic hero of Persian antiquity, smiled and said, “Father dear, with respect, I made a difference for that one.”