When the chisel slipped—deliberately, they said—I left a crack running down the neck of the kneeling rebel. The crack is still there. Rain found it. Then lichen. Then a British officer in 1835, pressing paper against the stone, copying my master’s lie.
Darius’s hand did not carve this.
The cliff keeps both truths.
Go there, if you dare. Run your finger along the third panel, seventh column. Feel the bird’s beak. That is the real inscription—the one no king could read. behistunskaa nadpis- armenia
The swallow flies east every spring. Past Lake Urmia. Past the broken bridge at Van. It lands on a khachkar that is not yet carved, in a kingdom that will call itself Hayastan long after Elamite is a ghost. When the chisel slipped—deliberately, they said—I left a
He did not copy the swallow.