There is nothing dearer to a person than the place where he was born, the region where he grew up, the sky under which he lived. And not only humans - animals and birds, every living thing under the sun yearns for their native land.
A long time ago, when the Kalmyks still lived in China, they brought an unusual bird to the Chinese emperor as a gift. She sang so much that the sun at the highest point in the sky slowed down, listening to her song.
The emperor ordered to make a golden cage for the bird, cover it with the fluff of a young swan, and feed it from the imperial kitchen. The emperor appointed his first minister to be in charge of poultry care. He told his first minister:
“Let the bird feel as good here as it has never felt anywhere else.” And let it delight our ears, thirsting for beauty.
Everything was done according to the orders of the formidable ruler.
Every morning the emperor waited for the singing of a bird. But she was silent. “Apparently, the bird, accustomed to free air, is stuffy in the palace,” the emperor thought and ordered the cage to be taken out into the garden.
The emperor's garden was the only one in the world in beauty. The mighty trees rustled with transparent green carved leaves, the rarest flowers smelled invigoratingly, the earth played with all its colors. But the bird was still silent. “What is she missing now? - thought the emperor. “Is she feeling bad with me?” Why doesn’t she sing?”
The emperor invited all his sages to listen to their highly learned opinions. Some said that perhaps the bird got sick and lost its voice, others that the bird was not the same, and still others that it probably did not sing at all. The most venerable hundred-year-old sage suggested that the air exhaled by people depresses the bird and therefore it does not sing. After listening carefully to everyone, the emperor ordered the cage to be taken to a virgin forest.
However, even in the forest the bird remained silent. The wings are lowered to the floor, pearls of tears are rolling from the eyes.
Then the emperor ordered the captive sage to be brought.
“If you give us good advice and the bird sings, you will get freedom,” the emperor told him.
The captive sage thought for a week and reported:
- Take the bird around the country... Maybe it will sing. The emperor and the bird wandered around his domain for three years. Finally they reached a swamp. Stunted bushes grew around it, and beyond stretched dull yellow sands. Foul fumes rose from the swamps, and annoying midges flew in a swarm. They hung the cage on a dry saxaul branch. They posted a guard and everyone went to bed.
When the clear morning dawn lit up in the sky and its crimson began to spread wider and wider, the bird suddenly perked up, spread its wings, and hastily began to clean every feather with its beak.
Noticing the unusual behavior of the bird, the guard woke up the emperor.
And when the eternal luminary showed its scarlet crest, the bird quickly took off, hit the golden bars of the cage and fell to the floor. She looked around sadly and began to sing quietly. She sang one hundred and eight songs of sadness, and when she began a song of joy, thousands of birds like her flocked from all sides and took up her song. It seemed to people that it was not the birds singing to the strings of the rays of the rising sun, but their souls, yearning for beauty, singing.
“This is where our bird comes from, this is its native land,” the emperor said thoughtfully and remembered his incomparable Beijing, where he had not been for three years.
“Open the cage doors and let the bird out,” he commanded.
And then all the birds sang a thousand songs of praise to their native land, a thousand and one songs of praise to freedom.
This is what native land and freedom mean; you can only sing where you found life.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru