A Persian merchant got a parrot as a gift from his Indian trading partners and kept her in a cage. The parrot could sing well and every day after work the merchant would enjoy listening to her songs.
When the merchant left for India again, he asked the parrot what she wanted from her country. “I do not need anything, Master,” said the parrot, “However, if you see parrots of my family there, tell them that I am trapped in a cage here and that I miss them very much. Ask them whether it was fair that they were free to fly anywhere, while I was slowly dying here in captivity. Ask them also what I should do.”
The merchant went to India for his business and one day he did see a group of parrots very much like the one he had in his home. They were happily flying among the trees. When the merchant conveyed his parrot’s message, one of the parrots just fell from the tree and appeared dead. The merchant was distraught at the effect of his message. He wondered whether that parrot was a relative of his parrot and died from grief.
When the merchant returned home, his parrot asked him whether he had met any parrots of her family. The merchant hesitantly told the parrot what happened. He added, “I’ll never forgive myself for causing the poor bird’s death. But what’s the use? Once the arrow has left the bow it will never return, and so are words that leave our lips.”
Before he could finish his sentence, his parrot fell from her perch on to the cage floor, apparently dead. The merchant began to cry, blaming himself for causing another parrot to die. After a while, he opened the cage door, picked up the parrot gently and took her outside. He let her down on the grass and was looking for a place to dig a grave for her.
Suddenly, the parrot flew away and, from the high branch of a tree, told him: “The parrot you saw in India was perhaps not related to me, but her action showed me how I could go free! She helped me understand that my imprisonment was due to my beautiful song, my talent for entertaining you and your guests. My precious voice was in fact the cause of my servitude! By her action, she taught me that my freedom would lie in the act of dying in the sense of forsaking my attachment to my worldly talents, which I had prized so highly.”
Saying so, the parrot flew away to freedom.
Background: This is my version of yet another story from the book The Book of Rumi: 105 Stories and Fables that Illumine, Delight, and Inform, translated by Maryam Mafi. I have reproduced the last para from the book.
Jalaluddin Rumi was a 13th-century Persian Muslim poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic. His famous work is the six-volume Masnavi, which contains short teaching stories such as the one above. We can find great truths in Rumi’s work.
You can read the previous Rumi story here.