The Question With No Right Answer

Rostam wakes in the air and is offered a choice. Where shall I drop you — into the water, or onto the mountain? The Shahnameh gives his reasoning in full, and it turns on a fact about what he is dealing with rather than on courage. He sees that everything in the creature's hands runs backwards. The mountain would finish him and the sea might not; so he must ask for the mountain, because a div does the reverse of what it is asked. Then he supplies a pious-sounding reason for the request, about a man who dies in water not reaching paradise. Akvan roars and throws him into the sea.