Do I know you? Asked Hoopoe; to the strange bird with a long tail and enormous height. The bird replied, “don’t you?” Overwhelmed with the presence of this magnificent creature, hoopoe reiterated, “Who are you?” the bird replied: “I am Phoenix”, and added further “, remember me?” hoopoe was dazzled already; it stumbled little “oh oh .. my Majesty, how do I have the pleasure meeting with you?” Phoenix smiled and turned away, jumping to the next branch from the hoopoe to see a silver moon, “you didn’t recognise me” “I … I didn’t expect to be visited by….” “Do not worry, and look at that moon”, interrupted Phoenix. “Did you create the moon?” asked Hoopoe, Phoenix laughed, and it laughed hard, “why do you think I have created the moon?” “My mother said so,” replied hoopoe. Leaves started to rustle as a gust of air blew and surpassed them. Hoopoe felt like a child. “This night has some secrets within”, – Phoenix turned to hoopoe and looked into its eyes, “something you must remember, look into yourself and burn yourself”,- advised Phoenix. Hoopoe closed its eyes for a second, and Phoenix disappeared as it opened in a blink. Hoopoe stood a while, gazed at the moon, and tried to remember something that it had forgotten: "What is there below the moon” a giant structure with an irregular shape. “I remember it, mount Qaf,” hoopoe said to itself. A sudden excitement is enlightened in it. “I have been there, didn’t I? asked itself, thought continued “, but why am I not remembering it?”“It’s like a lifetime has passed, and whatever I saw there is just too hard to remember, but this mountain, mount Qaf……… what happened there?- Hoopoe question to itself, a question which will change its life …… once again.
Readers of this encounter must be thinking about what happened to our beloved hoopoe and its ecstatic meeting with Phoenix once attar told us in his Conference of Birds. My answer is, “same thing which has happened to all of us; we forgot.”
