From England to Persia
1588-1625

In summer 1588, the day Spain's Invincible Armada set sail across the English Channel to seize the crown for the Catholic King Philip, my mother gave birth to her fourth son, Samuel Firebrook. As citizens of London in those turbulent days, my parents knew not whether he would be raised Catholic or Protestant.

Under Queen Elizabeth, who had rejected Philip's proposal of marriage, the Church of England remained officially Protestant; but a growing number of Puritans complained that their church was still more Romanist than the Creator intended. When the Archbishop of Canterbury learned that half of the dreaded Armada's ships had either fallen captive or sunk, he jumped out of bed, slipped into his cassock, and publicly decreed that church bells should ring with celebration and that prayers should ascend on behalf of Good Queen Bess.

When I, named Eric by my father, entered the world one year and a half later, no church bell rang to celebrate my arrival. Born prematurely and of the wrong gender, I displeased my mother immediately. With four sons already and no daughter in her brood, she had petitioned heaven with the request that I, the child of her womb, emerge as Abigail, the darling daughter of her heart's desire. But when the midwife informed her that the newborn was not the answer to her prayers, she turned her head to the wall and cried out, "Take it away!"

In truth and fairness, I should add that eventually my mother forgave me for arriving ahead of little Abigail. At the age of fifteen, I bade farewell to my good parents and my only sister after informing them of my intention to seek both position and fortune in the world.

Three years later, two Islamic Turks from Constantinople invited me to join them in a promising shipping venture. To my surprise, wealth came quickly. But when I prepared to return to England, the Turks turned against me, selling me into slavery.

Abbass Hakim, a Persian merchant who spoke five languages, became my master. From him, I learned three languages and the art of buying and selling for profit. Abbass's only son, Hamza, proved so ungrateful and lazy that he brought more shame than pride to the family.

Abbass and I soon discovered that we inspired the best in each other. I resolved to learn all I could from him while he relished serving as my patient teacher. He became more my master of instruction than my owner.

One spring day he said, "If Hamza is the son of my loins, you, Eric, are the son of my heart and head."

I remember not when I began calling him Abba, an ancient Aramaic word meaning "gentle father." But it pleased him and drew us closer together. Abba had many friends in cities and ports from India to the land of the Danes. As we sailed together over many seas, his friends became my friends.

He had three wives and many daughters, some of whom had their father's gift of selling and bartering. Through their own ingenuity and hard work, two of the daughters made a modest fortune by shipping their exquisite knotted silk rugs to European capitals.

As a follower of the Islamic faith, Abba was allowed four wives. One morning as we sailed through the Strait of Bonifacio, I asked, "Abba, why have you never taken a fourth wife?"

"Why have you never taken even one?" he replied.

In truth, my mate was the sea; I could not at the age of nineteen imagine taking another.

From the beginning, Abba had urged me to keep detailed journals about our friends and their customs in every land. "When you are much older," he often said, "your journals and diary will prove useful."

Over the years, I compiled several journals, including my interviews with a Buddhist priest in Bangkok and a French Jesuit who sometimes talked for hours with Abba when we were in Paris.

When I turned twenty-one, Abba said, "Eric, my son, I wish to see one of your journals."

"They are for no eyes but mine," I protested.

He frowned, paused for a long period, and nodded. "That is good. They are your property. Use them as you wish."

The saddest day of my life came in my mid-twenties. Near ten of the clock in the morning, like angry Zeus from the Greek mountains, a storm descended and snapped Abba's ship as if it were a dry twig. The waters of the Aegean Sea, which had carried us to numerous friendly ports, turned into taunting waves threatening to become our grave.

"Abba, where are you?" I cried out when he vanished from my sight. The wind had no mercy. The thunder clapped in my ears as darkness covered the waters like midnight. The relentless hail mocked my frantic efforts to find and rescue him. Only when the lightning flashed its teeth could I see. I prayed and shouted, hoping Abba had found wood on which to float. I heard men scream for help, but the wind's howling carried their voices in every direction.

"Abba!" I shouted until my voice weakened to a hoarse whisper. My arms ached from swimming the stormy waters, but the pain could not compare to my fear that Abba had suffocated beneath a mountainous wave.

Minutes became hours. My aching arms felt as if flames burned inside them. Refusing to give up hope and clinging now to bits of wreckage, I prayed that Providence would disperse the storm and send the sun's rays to shine upon us. Abba, you must not die!

When I at last washed ashore, I forced my exhausted frame to comb the beach in search of him. At sunset, my hope still burned inside as I thought that perhaps Providence had cast him like Jonah on the shore of some hospitable Nineveh.

Very early the following morning, Greek fishermen rolled me over in the sand, fed me, and informed me they had found two other survivors. Neither proved to be Abba.

Two months later, I ended my search, having gone to the ports on the Aegean that Abba would most likely visit. None of our friends had news of his survival.

I returned to Persia to meet with his three wives and daughters. An imam in a gray beard and black turban approached me. He spoke slowly, doubtless thinking my Persian inadequate. "Eric Firebrook, you are requested to attend the reading of Abbass Hakim's last testament."

The three wives, their many daughters, Abbass's son Hamza, and I sat before the imam. An exceedingly tall man whom I knew to be Abba's keeper of records accompanied the imam. Because of his accuracy and honesty, Abba had rewarded him handsomely over the years.

The keeper of records looked at me with his shiny black eyes. "Eric Firebrook, you have fallen heir to a considerable portion of Abbass Hakim's wealth."

Listening carefully, I learned that I had inherited a generous portion of Abba's money. The wives received his land, his houses, and the remainder of his money. To my surprise, the keeper of records disclosed that Abbass's larger ship, the Nahda (meaning renewal or renaissance), now belonged to me. It was docked on Persia's southern coast.

A deep sorrow shadowed me. If Abba had taken the magnificent Nahda instead of his older ship, we might have weathered the Aegean storm and Abba would still be among the living.

I heard the imam say solemnly to Hamza, "Your father has left you one camel and the hope that with your own mind and hands you will succeed in all your ventures."

Hamza looked around as if he had heard a disembodied voice. "An outrageous mistake has been made!" His face flushed crimson and his forehead dripped with sweat.

Speaking calmly, the imam told Hamza the story of a beloved prince who hired a carpenter to build a fine house.

Hamza hung his head in shame and left with his camel. He knew he had squandered his father's love over the years. That was the last time I saw him.

For the next eight years, hard work became my close companion. My heart spoke its gratitude every day to Abba for the knowledge he had given me during my years as his apprentice. My ship Nahda and I were always welcomed to the ports of many seas. As if he had known that someday I would become the captain of his ship and the heir of his enterprise, Abba left me a letter commending me as his true successor.

On the eighth year of my position as captain and at the peak of my success, I became strangely restless. Alone in my cabin during the nights, I often read books by candlelight and studied the journals Abba had urged me to compile.

One summer night, I left my cabin and stood alone on deck under the bright stars. The North Star caught my attention, and soon perplexing thoughts washed over me like waves. Abba had followed the way of Islam, and I the way of Christ and the Church of England. The Buddhists and Hindus, equally fervent in their faith, believed the North Star guided their journey. A Hindu merchant had once told Abba that in their separate religions all human beings followed the same Polar Star under different names; but Abba had disagreed in his polite, yet firm Islamic way.

Standing on the ship's deck nightly while glancing up now and then at the heavens, I often reflected on the dispute between Abba and the Hindu merchant. Disturbing thoughts kept invading my mind. Perhaps in religion there is no Polar Star. Perhaps we are all deluded. Perhaps none of our ships of faith has a destiny. Are we all wandering aimlessly, pretending to follow a star of our own invention?

My restlessness grew fierce, like the monsoons in the Bay of Bengal. Nothing would calm the storm. For a full year, my thoughts churned with questions and roared with doubts until at last I resolved to return to England. Two and a half years had elapsed since my ship had last crossed the channel, and I was now eager to see my relations and my good friend, the London lawyer John Winthrop.

Abba had often told me that I was a man of action who would in time become also a man of reflection. He prophesied that eventually I would take up the pen as readily as some men had taken up the sword. If my memory is correct, the time of reflection began in full earnest when I witnessed the execution of a woman in the sands of Arabia. I will not dwell on that grim incident. Perhaps it was only the last grain on my mental scale, for only a month earlier a Danish captain had informed me of an Anabaptist seized by the crew of Lutherans and thrown overboard.

It was as if my North Star had disappeared from the sky.

In June 1625, I anchored the Nahda off the coast of Portsmouth, less than thirty-four leagues south of London. As soon as I arrived in London, my friend John Winthrop dismissed everyone from his law office and insisted that I sit down and explain the words I had written him two months earlier.

Born in the year of the Spanish Armada's humiliation, Winthrop was now thirty-seven, tall, lean, and gifted with the special Puritan sense of humor that saw the irony of Providence in everything. He was thoroughly English: thrifty, fond of poetical expressions, and quite confident the English were heaven's chosen people. Like most Englishmen of his class, he believed that since danger and chaos loomed only steps away, every citizen stood duty-bound to contribute to the moral seawall that prevented chilling waves of anarchy from turning the jeweled island into a hellish swamp.

Winthrop and I talked far into the night. I had long admired his integrity in a profession familiar with corruption. Like many Puritans, he kept what he called his spiritual diary, which he had begun shortly after turning nineteen and a week before the birth of his first son.

A few days after my return to London, Winthrop, understanding my deep need to find my North Star again, said, "Captain, you must put your soul in harbor. It has been too long at sea."

"Have you a particular suggestion?" I asked.

"I know you to be an adventurer. But I sense in you some intense change. Although you have sailed far and wide, you seem restless to . . . ." He paused, stared at me, and tapped the tip of his finger against his temple. "Could it be that you now long to travel on the seas of the mind, to journey back in search of the wisdom of the Greeks and Romans, to comb the ancient Scriptures of our Lord?"

Although I knew Winthrop had attended Cambridge University, nothing had prepared me for his proposal that I seek entrance to the university, where I might sail the high seas of time, dropping my anchor with Homer, Plato, Virgil, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

"Your brain has overheated," I said. "Like yourself, I am in my mid-thirties."

He laughed. "So much the better."

"I am glad you find me amusing, John. But--"

"You have a gift for languages, do you not?"

"Yes, but--"

"That is half the battle at Cambridge."

Again, I protested; but my thoughts sped to the university. I recalled my visit there with my father to see my cousin, who was then twenty and I only eleven.

Winthrop urged me to ponder his suggestion and promised to use his influence to open the way for my entrance.

Events moved swiftly. When a Scotsman with his burring "r" asked to purchase my ship, I grew angry. "Sell Nahda?! " I shouted.

"I quite understand, Captain Firebrook." The Scotsman stared at me with his one good eye, which looked like a shining emerald set in a face of hard oak.

"You understand nothing. Selling Nahda is like selling . . . why, sir, it is like selling a wife."

As the Scotsman remained stone-faced, I realized he had often dealt with the likes of me. Captains become sorely attached to their ships.

He clamped his broad hand on my shoulder. "I will take proper care of your Nahda."

In time, I relented; yet I could not easily rid myself of the feeling that I had deserted a good and faithful friend.

On the night before selling her, I had a dream. Old Abba appeared and stood with me on some distant shore. Together we watched Nahda sail away without us. sometime thereafter, I packed my belongings, loaded my chest of journals onto a carriage, and departed north to Cambridge.

Soon I discovered that Winthrop had failed to reveal one fact about Cambridge, a crucial fact that descended upon me only after I became a student among new friends. The university was a hotbed of Puritans who possessed an intensity rivaled only by their contradictions!

My story begins in that hotbed. Of all the journals I kept over many years, I prize none above those depicting the winsome Roger Williams, a daring Puritan whose heart gushed forth as if from underground springs of a mysterious source. His adventure I am compelled to disclose.

Perhaps you will forgive me if like a playwright I frequently appear on stage alongside Roger, Winthrop, John Milton, and the other characters. I beg you not to think me vain. I long only to be accurate; and in fulfilling this longing, I must not yield to the false modesty of pretending I was nothing in their lives. I was present sometimes as a substantial person, other times as an attentive shadow. On still other occasions, I was present only vicariously through witnesses who proved to be most reliable sources.

In many ways, the adventure with those Puritans compares only to sailing around the hazardous tip of Africa--not a journey for the faint of heart.

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