The Slave Who Feared the Sea

Marzieh Gail translated this tale from Sa‘dí’s Garden of Roses (the Gulistán):

A king was sailing in a ship with his Persian slave. The slave had never been on the sea before; he began to weep and cry out and to shudder with fear, and however much they sought to quiet him he would not be still. The king's excursion was in a fair way to be spoiled and none knew what to do. Then a wise man who was on the ship said to the king, 'If thou wish, I shall quiet him.' The king answered, 'Truly this were a gracious deed.' The wise man bade them throw the slave into the sea. After he had choked down some water they seized him by the hair and drew him toward the ship. He clung to the ship with both hands, and once out of the water he sat in a corner and was still. The king was astonished, and asked, 'What wisdom lay in this?' The wise man answered: 'The slave did not know what it is to drown, and thus he did not value the safety of the ship. Even so doth a man value security who hath known calamity.'

Source: Marzieh Gail, Dawn Over Mount Hira and Other Essays, p. 9 (“From Sa‘dí’s Garden of Roses”).

Collected from bahaistories.com (Subject: fear).

Various. *bahaistories.com archive*. https://bahaistories.com/subject/fear