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The Forty Rules of Love

Elif Shafak is one of Turkey’s most acclaimed and outspoken novelists
...
She teaches at the University of
Arizona and divides her time between the US and Istanbul
...
, 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada
Inc
...
penguin
...
2010 First published in Great
Britain by Viking 2010
Copyright © Elif Shafak, 2010
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint excerpts from the following copyrighted works:‘Only Breath’ and ‘Why Wine
Is Forbidden’ from The Essential Rumi, translations by Coleman Barks (HarperCollins)
...

‘Tattooing in Qazwin’ from A Year with Rumi: Daily Readings by Coleman Barks
...
Reprinted by
permission of HarperCollins Publishers
...
Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously,
and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental
...
I thought all men saw the same
...
…
—SHAMS OF TABRIZ

Table of Contents

Prologue
Ella
Sweet Blasphemy
Foreword
The Killer
The Forty Rules of Love
PART ONE
Shams
Ella
Shams
Ella
The Master
Ella
The Novice
Ella
The Master
The Letter
Shams
Ella
The Letter
The Novice
Shams
The Novice
Ella
PART TWO
Rumi
Shams
Hasan the Beggar
Shams
Ella
Desert Rose the Harlot
Hasan the Beggar
Suleiman the Drunk
Ella
Desert Rose the Harlot
Suleiman the Drunk
Ella
Ella
PART THREE
The Zealot

Shams
Rumi
Ella
Aladdin
Rumi
Kerra
Kimya
Ella
Kerra
Shams of Tabriz
Ella
Baybars the Warrior
Ella
Rumi
Kimya
Sultan Walad
Kerra
Rumi
Sultan Walad
Ella
Desert Rose the Harlot
Kimya
Shams
Ella
Desert Rose the Harlot
Ella
Shams
PART FOUR
Suleiman the Drunk
Aladdin
Shams
Ella
The Zealot
Husam the Student
Baybars the Warrior
Ella
Kerra
Sultan Walad
Suleiman the Drunk
Aladdin
Shams
Ella
Sultan Walad
PART FIVE
Rumi

Shams
Kimya
Kerra
Ella
Shams
Aladdin
Kimya
Desert Rose
Kimya
Ella
Suleiman the Drunk
The Killer
Ella
Aladdin
Sultan Walad
Rumi
Ella
Acknowledgments
Glossary
Sources

Prologue

Between your fingers you hold a stone and throw it into flowing water
...
There will be a small ripple where the stone breaks the surface and then a splash, muffled by the rush
of the surrounding river
...

Throw a stone into a lake
...
The stone will
disrupt the still waters
...
Before long the ripples caused by one plop will expand until they can
be felt everywhere along the mirrored surface of the water
...

If a stone hits a river, the river will treat it as yet another commotion in its already tumultuous course
...
Nothing unmanageable
...

For forty years Ella Rubinstein’s life had consisted of still waters—a predictable sequence of habits,
needs, and preferences
...
During the last twenty years, every wish she had, every person she befriended, and every
decision she made was filtered through her marriage
...
She had always known that they did not connect on any deep level,
but connecting emotionally need not be a priority on a married couple’s list, she thought, especially for a
man and a woman who had been married for so long
...
Love was secondary to any of these
...

Ella’s children topped her list of priorities
...
Also, they had a twelve-year-old golden retriever, Spirit, who had been
Ella’s walking buddy in the mornings and her cheeriest companion ever since he’d been a puppy
...
Then again, that was how she was
...

The Rubinsteins lived in Northampton, Massachusetts, in a large Victorian house that needed some
renovation but still was splendid, with five bedrooms, three baths, shiny hardwood floors, a three-car
garage, French doors, and, best of all, an outdoor Jacuzzi
...
She and David had worked hard for
all this
...
They had built their marriage
around this shared vision and had attained most, if not all, of their dreams
...
Thank you for accepting me as I am
...

Yours,
David

Ella had never confessed this to David, but reading his card had felt like reading an obituary
...
And if they were sincere, they might also add this:
Building her whole life around her husband and children, Ella lacked any survival techniques to
help her cope with life’s hardships on her own
...
Even
changing her daily coffee brand was a major effort
...


But there was a reason: love
...
Not even on the same continent
...
Their lifestyles were so dissimilar that it seemed impossible
for them to bear each other’s presence, never mind fall in love
...
And it happened fast, so
fast in fact that Ella had no time to realize what was happening and to be on guard, if one could ever be on
guard against love
...


Ella

NORTHAMPTON, MAY 17, 2008

Birds were singing outside her kitchen window on that balmy day in spring
...

There they were, sitting around the table, having a late family lunch on a Saturday afternoon
...
Avi was playing his knife and fork
like drumsticks while his twin, Orly, was trying to calculate how many bites of which food she could eat
so as not to ruin her diet of 650 calories a day
...
Also at the
table sat Aunt Esther, who had stopped by to drop off one of her famous marble cakes and then stayed on
for lunch
...
Lately
they didn’t have too many shared family meals, and she saw this as a golden chance for everyone to
reconnect
...
“She found a great job
...
That was all
...

Not that she complained
...
She didn’t have to be a breadwinner on top of all these
...
Besides, she had never abandoned her passion for books and still
considered herself a voracious reader
...
The children were growing up, and they made it clear that
they didn’t need her as much as they once had
...
David had encouraged her, but though
they kept talking and talking about it, she rarely pursued the opportunities that came her way, and when
she did, potential employers were always looking for someone younger or more experienced
...

Nevertheless, in May 2008 whatever obstacle had impeded her from finding a job all these years
unexpectedly vanished
...
It was her husband who found her the job through one of his clients—or perhaps
through one of his mistresses
...
“I’m only a part-time reader for a literary agent
...
“Come on, tell them it’s a
well-known agency,” he urged, nudging her, and when she refused to comply, he heartily agreed with
himself
...
You should see the other assistants! Girls and boys fresh out of
the best colleges
...
Now, isn’t
she something?”

Ella wondered if, deep inside, her husband felt guilty about keeping her away from a career, or else
about cheating on her—these being the only two explanations she could think of as to why he was now
going overboard in his enthusiasm
...
We’re all proud of her
...
Always was,” said Aunt Esther in a voice so sentimental that it sounded as if Ella had
left the table and was gone for good
...
Even Avi didn’t make a cynical remark, and Orly for once seemed to
care about something other than her looks
...
She secretly prayed for
someone to change the subject
...
”
All heads turned toward her, faces beaming with expectation
...
“Oh, I know what you guys are going
to say! That we haven’t finished college yet and all that, but you’ve got to understand, we both feel ready
for the next big move
...
Orly and Avi exchanged blank looks, and Aunt Esther froze with her hand
tightened around a glass of apple juice
...
However,
right now he was anything but smiling
...

“Great! I expected you to share my happiness, but I get this cold treatment instead,” Jeannette whined
...

“Dad, I know it seems a bit too soon, but Scott proposed to me the other day and I’ve already said yes
...

From the way Jeannette looked at her, Ella reckoned, that was not the kind of question her daughter had
expected
...
The question “Why?” was another matter altogether and had
completely caught her off guard
...
” Jeannette’s tone was slightly condescending
...
“Are you pregnant or something?”
Aunt Esther twitched in her chair, her face stern, her anguish visible
...

“I’m going to be an uncle,” Avi said, giggling
...
“You can always tell us the truth
...
”
“Mom, will you please stop that?” Jeannette snapped as she pulled her hand away
...
You’re embarrassing me
...

“By insulting me, you mean
...
”
This elicited a scoff from Ella
...
Eight months is nothing in a relationship!”
“It took God only six days to create the entire universe,” said Avi, beaming, but cold stares from
everyone at the table forced him back into silence
...
”
“But, Dad, did you think we would date forever?” Jeannette asked
...
You’re too young to get involved in any serious relationship
...
“I’m
thinking you’re projecting your own fears onto me
...
”
Ella blushed crimson as if slapped in the face
...
As a baby and then as a toddler, her daughter
had drained all of her energy, which was why she had waited six years before getting pregnant again
...
“He’s a nice guy
...
”
Jeannette gave a small nod that conveyed little more than feigned acquiescence
...
He had always taken pride in being an open-minded and cultured
father, avoiding negative remarks about race, religion, or gender in the house
...
Turning to her mother, she asked, “Can you look me in the eye
and tell me you’d still be making the same objections if Scott were a young Jewish man named Aaron?”
Jeannette’s voice needled with bitterness and sarcasm, and Ella feared there was more of that welling
up inside her daughter
...
I know how wonderful it
is to be young and in love
...
But to get married to someone from a different background is
a big gamble
...
”
“And how do you know your right thing is the right thing for me?”
The question threw Ella off a little
...

“I love him, Mom
...
I can’t live without him
...
It was not her intention to make fun of her daughter’s feelings, not at all, but
that was probably what her laughing to herself sounded like
...
She’d had fights with Jeannette before, hundreds of them, but today it felt as though she
were quarreling with something else, something bigger
...

“Oh, give me a break! Stop daydreaming and get real, will you? You’re being so … ” Ella’s eyes
darted toward the window, hunting for a dramatic word, until finally she came up with “ … romantic!”
“What’s wrong with being romantic?” Jeannette asked, sounding offended
...
Since when was she so annoyed by
romanticism? Unable to answer the questions tugging at the edges of her mind, she continued all the same
...
Which century are you living in? Just get it in your head, women don’t marry the men
they fall in love with
...
Love is only a sweet feeling bound to come and quickly go away
...
David had clasped his hands in front of him,
slowly as if through water, and was looking at her like he’d never seen her before
...
“You’re jealous of my happiness and my youth
...
You want me to be you, Mom
...
Was
she an unhappy housewife? A middle-aged mom trapped in a failing marriage? Was this how her children
saw her? And her husband, too? What about friends and neighbors? Suddenly she had the feeling that
everyone around her secretly pitied her, and the suspicion was so painful that she gasped
...

“It’s all right
...

Jeannette gave her mother a mock leer
...
After a minute Orly and Avi silently followed suit, either in an
unusual act of solidarity with their elder sister or because they’d gotten bored of all this adult talk
...

David and Ella remained at the table, an intense awkwardness hanging in the air between them
...

David grabbed the fork he had put aside and inspected it for a while
...
”
“What is it you meant, then?” David said, still talking to the fork
...
”
“I was in love with you,” Ella said, but couldn’t help adding, “back then
...

Ella looked at her husband in astonishment, like someone who had never seen her reflection before and
who now held a mirror to her face
...
She wanted to respond but lacked not so much the will as the words
...
But instead they were
doing what they both were best at: letting the days go by, the routine take over, and time run its course of
inevitable torpor
...
David turned his anguished face away
...
Fortunately, the phone rang just then, saving them
...
“Hello … yes, she’s here
...
”
Ella pulled herself together and spoke up, doing her best to sound in good spirits
...
”
“Hi, this is Michelle
...
“It’s just
that yesterday Steve wanted me to check in with you, and I simply forgot
...
” Ella sighed, only now remembering the task awaiting her
...
She
was then expected to write an extensive report on it
...
I’ve already started reading,” Ella lied
...

“Oh, good! How is it?”
Ella paused, puzzled as to what to say
...
”

“Oh, it’s very … mystical
...

But Michelle was all business
...
“Listen, I think you need to get on this
...
… ”
There was a distant muttering on the phone as Michelle’s voice trailed off
...

“Are you still there?” Michelle asked a minute later
...
”
“Good
...
I need to go
...
”
“I know,” Ella said abruptly, trying to sound more determined
...
”
The truth was, Ella wasn’t sure she wanted to evaluate this manuscript at all
...
It had felt thrilling to be the first one to read an unpublished novel by an
unknown author and to play however small a role in his fate
...

Michelle must have detected her hesitation
...
When no answer came,
she grew insistent
...
”
After a bit of silence, Ella decided to tell her the truth
...
I
mean, I’m interested in Rumi and all that, but still, the subject is alien to me
...
”
“That’s such a skewed approach,” said Michelle
...
She glanced at her husband to see if he, too, had noticed this, but David’s
expression was hard to decipher
...
That’s part of our job
...
Should I have told her to send the manuscript to an Iranian agency instead?”
“No, of course not,” Ella mumbled, feeling silly and guilty
...
Listen, forget what I said
...

“Wonderful, that’s the spirit,” Michelle concluded in her singsong voice
...

And most of them are almost half your age
...
”
When Ella hung up the phone, she found David watching her, his face solemn and reserved
...
But she didn’t feel like mulling over their
daughter’s future anymore, if that was what they’d been worrying about in the first place
...
The sky felt so close and open that you could almost touch it
...
This month’s credit-card payments, Orly’s bad eating
habits, Avi’s poor grades, Aunt Esther and her sad cakes, her dog Spirit’s decaying health, Jeannette’s

marriage plans, her husband’s secret flings, the absence of love in her life … One by one, she locked them
all in small mental boxes
...
The title of the novel was written on the cover in indigo ink: Sweet Blasphemy
...
Z
...
His manuscript had been shipped to the literary agency from Amsterdam with a postcard inside
the envelope
...
The story I herewith send you takes place in thirteenth-century Konya in Asia Minor
...

I hope you will have the time to read SWEET BLASPHEMY, a historical, mystical novel on the remarkable bond between Rumi,
the best poet and most revered spiritual leader in the history of Islam, and Shams of Tabriz, an unknown, unconventional dervish full of
scandals and surprises
...

A
...
Zahara

Ella sensed that the postcard had piqued the literary agent’s curiosity
...
So he’d handed the package to his assistant, Michelle,
who had passed it on to her new assistant
...

Little did she know that this was going to be not just any book, but the book that changed her life
...

Ella turned the first page
...

A
...
Zahara lives in Amsterdam with his books, cats, and turtles when he is not traveling around the
world
...
He has no intention of becoming
a novelist and has written this book purely out of admiration and love for the great philosopher,
mystic, and poet Rumi and his beloved sun, Shams of Tabriz
...
And there Ella read something that rang strangely
familiar:
For despite what some people say, love is not only a sweet feeling bound to come and quickly go
away
...
She stood still for a moment, shivering with the thought that
some mysterious force in the universe, or else this writer, whoever he might be, was spying on her
...
This
writer had her in mind as his reader
...

In many ways the twenty-first century is not that different from the thirteenth century
...
At times like these, the need for love is greater than
ever
...
The beauty of
the sunset drifted toward the western horizon, and the air felt dull, joyless
...
As Rumi reminds us, it hits everybody,
including those who shun love—even those who use the word “romantic” as a sign of disapproval
...
”
Her gut instinct told her to put the manuscript aside, go into the house, give Michelle a call, and tell her
there was no way she could write a report on this novel
...


Sweet
Blasphemy
A Novel

A
...
ZAHARA

Sufi mystics say the secret of the Qur’an lies in the verse Al-Fatiha,
And the secret of Al-Fatiha lies in Bismillahirrahmanirrahim
And the quintessence of Bismillah is the letter ba,
And there is a dot below that letter
...
…

The Mathnawi starts with B,
Just like all the chapters in this novel
...
In the West, the Crusaders, on their way to Jerusalem, occupied and sacked
Constantinople, leading to the partition of the Byzantine Empire
...
In between, different Turkish tribes
fought among themselves while the Byzantines tried to recover their lost land, wealth, and power
...
Everywhere one turned, there was hostility and anguish and an intense fear of what might
happen next
...

Nicknamed Mawlana—“Our Master”—by many, he had thousands of disciples and admirers from all
over the region and beyond, and was regarded as a beacon to all Muslims
...
Their encounter altered both their lives
...
By
meeting this exceptional companion, Rumi was transformed from a mainstream cleric to a committed
mystic, passionate poet, advocate of love, and originator of the ecstatic dance of the whirling dervishes,
daring to break free of all conventional rules
...
Instead of an outeroriented jihad—defined as “the war against infidels” and carried out by many in those days just as in the
present—Rumi stood up for an inner-oriented jihad where the aim was to struggle against and ultimately
prevail over one’s ego, nafs
...
The
powerful spiritual bond between Shams and Rumi became the target of rumor, slander, and attack
...
Three years after
they met, they were tragically separated
...

In truth, there never was an end
...
…

The Killer

ALEXANDRIA, NOVEMBER 1252

Beneath dark waters in a well, he is dead now
...
I came to Alexandria hoping that if I
traveled far enough, I could escape this piercing memory and stop the wail echoing inside my mind, that
very last cry he gave out before his face drained of blood, his eyes bulged out, and his throat closed in an
unfinished gasp, the farewell of a stabbed man
...

When you kill someone, something from that person passes to you—a sigh, a smell or a gesture
...
” It clings to your body and seeps into your skin, going all the way into your heart,
and thus continues to live within you
...
I wear them around my neck like invisible necklaces,
feeling their presence against my flesh, tight and heavy
...
Ever since Cain slew Abel, in every
murderer breathes the man he murdered, that much I know
...
Not anymore
...
Take the way I found the job, for instance
...
My task was to help her to keep the
harlots under control and intimidate the customers who didn’t behave
...
I was hunting a harlot who had escaped the brothel to find God
...
I was this close to catching the
stupid woman when I found a mysterious letter on my doorsill
...

It turned out to be an anonymous letter signed by “a few true believers
...

“A former member of the Assassins! We also know that after the death of Hassan Sabbah and the
incarceration of your leaders, the order is not what it used to be
...
”
The letter said that my services were urgently needed on a matter of great importance
...
If interested, I was to appear in a well-known tavern that evening
after dark
...
I would soon be joined by the person or persons who would hire
me
...
Neither when they arrived nor as
they left, and at no point during our conversation, could I raise my head and look at their faces
...
But then again, I was used to dealing with the whims of clients
...
Experience had
taught me that, more often than not, the more strongly a client strived to hide his identity, the closer he
happened to be to his victim, but that was none of my business
...
Not to inquire into the
reasons behind my assignment
...

I seldom ask questions anyway
...
The fact that they don’t do anything about it doesn’t necessarily mean they are immune to the
desire to kill
...
People don’t get that until it happens to them
...
But it is just a matter of coincidence
...
A deliberate misunderstanding, a squabble over nothing, or
simply being at the wrong place at the wrong time can bring out a destructive streak in people who are
otherwise good and decent fellows
...
But not everyone can kill a stranger in cold blood
...

I did the dirty work of others
...
In this way human beings feared,
cursed, and hated the angel while His hands remained clean and His name unblemished
...
But then again, this world was not known for its justice, was it?
When darkness settled, I went to the tavern
...
It occurred to me to wake him up and tell him to go
somewhere else, but with drunks you never knew how they would react, and I had to be careful not to
draw too much attention to myself
...

Before long, two men arrived
...
I didn’t need
to look at them, though, to realize how young they were and how unprepared for the step they were about
to take
...

“We were told you were the best
...
I noticed they were scared of me, which was
a good thing
...

So I said, “Yes, I am the best
...
I have never let my clients down,
no matter how hard the task
...
” He sighed
...
”
Now the other guy spoke
...
Ever since
he came to this town, he has brought nothing but trouble
...
If anything, he has become all the more contentious
...
”
It was always the same
...

“I know what you mean
...

They seemed reluctant to give me a name, offering vague descriptions instead
...
An unruly man full of sacrilege and blasphemy
...
”
As soon as I heard this last word, a creepy feeling spread over my arms
...
I had killed
all sorts of people, young and old, men and women, but a dervish, a man of faith, was not among them
...

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to turn it down
...
Find someone else
...
But one of the men grabbed my hand and beseeched, “Wait, please
...
Whatever your fee is, we are ready to double the price
...

But to my surprise, after a brief hesitation, they both agreed
...
With
this money I could finally afford the price of a bride and get married and stop fretting over how to make
ends meet
...

How could I know in that moment that I was making the biggest mistake of my life and would spend the
rest of my days regretting it? How could I know it would be so hard to kill the dervish and that even long

after he was dead, his knifelike gaze would follow me everywhere?
Four years have passed since I stabbed him in that courtyard and dumped his body in a well, waiting to
hear the splash that never came
...
It was as if rather than falling down into the water he fell up
toward the sky
...


PART ONE

Earth

THE THINGS THAT ARE SOLID, ABSORBED, AND STILL

Shams

AN INN OUTSIDE SAMARKAND, MARCH 1242

Beeswax candles flickered in front of my eyes above the cracked wooden table
...

There was a big house with a courtyard full of yellow roses in bloom and in the middle of the
courtyard a well with the coolest water in the world
...
A few nocturnal animals hooted and howled in the background
...
His expression was vexed, and his eyes were immensely sad
...

The wind blew hard, and the moon hid behind a cloud, as if it didn’t want to witness what was about
to happen
...
An absolute stillness descended upon the world
...
“Shams, dearest,” he
whispered
...

The man leaned closer and looked down into the well again
...
But then, deep down at the bottom of the well, he caught sight of my
hand floating aimlessly on the rippling water like a rickety raft after a heavy storm
...
My eyes were fixed on the moon as if waiting for an explanation from the
skies for my murder
...
“They killed him! They killed my Shams!”
he yelled
...
But the man didn’t notice the killer
...

“Hey, you! Stop screaming like a maniac
...
I pretended not to hear him,
preferring to stay inside my vision for at least a bit longer
...
I also
wanted to see the man with the saddest eyes
...
It yanked me back into this world
...
He was a tall, corpulent
man with a hoary beard and thick mustache, curved and pointy at the tips
...
Almost instantly I noticed two things about him: That he was a man used to intimidating people

with tough talk and sheer violence
...

“What do you want?” I asked
...
“I want you to stop screaming, for starters, that’s
what I want
...
”
“Really? Have I been screaming?” I muttered as I managed to pull myself free from his grip
...
What happened to
you? Did you doze off during dinner? You must have had a nightmare or something
...
Still, I did not want to lie
...
“Actually, I never have
dreams
...

“I had a vision
...
”
He gave me a bewildered look and sucked on the ends of his mustache for a while
...
Especially you wandering types
...
No wonder you start hallucinating—your brain is fried!”
I smiled
...
They say there is a thin line between losing yourself in God and losing your
mind
...
They went around the hall distributing them, filling the air with the scents of onion, garlic,
and spices
...

“Do you have money to pay for those?” the innkeeper asked, with a flicker of condescension
...
“But allow me to offer an exchange
...
”
To this he responded with a sneer, his arms akimbo, “You just told me you never had dreams
...
I am a dream interpreter who doesn’t have dreams of his own
...
Like I said, you dervishes are nuts,” the innkeeper said, spitting out the
words
...
Find a nice woman and settle down
...
That will help to keep your feet on
the ground
...

There is nothing new out there
...
After a few
drinks, I hear the same stories from them all
...
Same food, same water, same
old crap
...
I’m looking for God,” I said
...
”
“Then you are looking for Him in the wrong place,” he retorted, his voice suddenly thickened
...
”
My heart flailed away at my chest wall upon hearing this
...

An odd, slanted smile etched along the innkeeper’s mouth
...

“Doesn’t God say, I am closer to you than your jugular vein?” I asked
...
He is inside each and every one of us
...
How can He
abandon Himself?”
“But He does abandon,” the innkeeper remarked, his eyes cold and defiant
...
“How we see God is a direct reflection of how we see ourselves
...
If we see God as full of love and compassion, so are we
...
“How is that any
different than saying God is a product of our imagination? I don’t get it
...
When we turned
in that direction, we saw two rough-looking men yelling drunken gibberish
...

“Somebody should take care of these troublemakers, don’t you think?” hissed the innkeeper between
clenched teeth
...
The man must not have been expecting this at all, for he collapsed on the floor
like an empty sack
...

The other man proved stronger, and he fiercely fought back, but it didn’t take the innkeeper long to
knock him down, too
...
We heard the crack of a finger breaking, or maybe more
...
“You are going to kill him
...
In this world of illusions, so many people were
ready to fight without any reason, and so many others fought for a reason
...
There was no way I could resort to violence
...

“You stay out of this, dervish, or I’ll beat the hell out of you, too!” the innkeeper shouted, but we both
knew he wasn’t going to do that
...
A fearful silence descended on the dining hall
...
When he spoke again, it
sounded as if he were addressing everyone around, his voice soaring high and wild, like a marauder bird
boasting in the open sky
...
Violence wasn’t my element, but it is now
...
So next time
you talk to Him, you tell Him that
...
They will turn into wolves
...
“You are mistaken
...
I can see that you have become a wolf indeed
...
’ ”
“Wait, I haven’t finished with you!” the innkeeper shouted behind my back
...
In return for
food and bed, you were going to interpret my dreams
...
“I’ll read your palm
...
Instinctively, distrustfully, he
flinched
...
I inspected
the lines and found them deep, cracked, marking uneven paths
...
His spiritual energy was hollowed out and
thinned around the edges, as if it had no more strength to defend itself against the outside world
...
To make up for the loss of his spiritual energy, he
had doubled up his physical energy, which he used in excess
...
At first dimly, as if behind a veil, then with
increasing clarity, a scene appeared in front of my eyes
...

“You have lost a loved one,” I said, and took his left palm in my hand
...
She is stuck in a
hut on fire
...
The thick
smell of burning hay and human flesh
...
The mighty army of Genghis Khan
...
“Your wife was pregnant with your first child
...
Suddenly he looked old beyond his years
...
“It
wasn’t the fire or the smoke that killed her
...
She died instantly, without any pain
...
”
The innkeeper furrowed his brow, bowed under a pressure only he could understand
...
“You have been blaming yourself for not giving her a proper funeral
...
But your mind is playing games with
you
...
”
I then added, measuring each word, “You can become a lamb again, because you still have it in you
...
“I don’t
like you, dervish,” he said
...
But make sure you are gone early in the morning
...
”
It was always like this
...
The more you talked about love, the
more they hated you
...
She felt as though the lid of a boiling cauldron had suddenly
been lifted, emitting old conflicts and new resentments in the rising steam
...
And she had done it by dialing Scott’s number and asking him not to
marry her daughter
...
But
on this day in May, she was so sure of herself and the ground beneath her feet that she could not for the
life of her fathom any dire consequences from her intrusion
...
This is Jeannette’s mom, Ella,” she said, trying to sound jovial, as if calling her daughter’s
boyfriend were something she did all the time
...
Rubinstein, how may I help you?” Scott stammered, surprised but ever so civilized
...
Upset as he might be to receive this call now, she
added, someday in the not-so-distant future he would understand and even thank her for warning him in
time
...

There was a thick, dense silence
...
Rubinstein, I don’t think you understand,” Scott said when he finally found his voice
...
”
There it was again! How could people be naïve enough to expect love to open every door for them?
They looked at love as if it were a magic wand that could fix everything with one miraculous touch
...
Instead she said, “I understand how you feel, believe me, I do
...
Who knows? Tomorrow you might fall in love with someone else
...
Rubinstein, I don’t want to be rude, but don’t you think the same rule applies to everyone,
including yourself? Who knows? Tomorrow you, too, might fall in love with someone else
...

“I’m a married woman
...
So did my husband
...
Marriage is a serious decision, which needs to be considered very carefully
...

The conversation went downhill from there, filled with distress and disappointment
...


Half an hour later, she received a call from her husband
...
Tell me you didn’t do this
...
“Wow, word gets out fast
...
”
But David interjected tensely, “There is nothing to explain
...
Scott told
Jeannette, and now she’s extremely upset
...
She doesn’t

want to see you right now
...
“And I don’t blame her
...
David sent Ella a text message
informing her of a sudden emergency that had arisen
...

It was so unlike him and against the spirit of their marriage
...
No matter how deep the rift between them, she always
cooked and he always ate, gladly and gratefully, whatever she put on his plate
...
She forgave him
...

This was the first time her husband had acted this brazen, and Ella blamed herself for the change
...


When she sat at the table with her twins, Ella’s guilt gave way to melancholy
...
And although on the surface she was the same hands-on, concerned
mother, she felt a surge of despair rise in her, a sharp taste in her mouth, sour like bile
...
Suddenly the food she had cooked, the outcome of hours of hard work, seemed not only
dull and boring but easily replaceable
...
It was a pity that, at almost forty, she
hadn’t been able to make more of her life
...

Her thoughts turned to Sweet Blasphemy
...

“It could be nice to have someone like him around,” she joked to herself
...
She smiled at the image
...
Would he explain to her why her mind
turned from time to time into a coven of dark thoughts? Or how come she felt so lonely even though she
had a large, loving family? What about the colors in her aura? Were they bright and bold? Had anything in
her life been bright and bold lately? Or ever?
It was then and there, while sitting alone at the kitchen table with only a faint glimmer of light from the
oven, that Ella realized that despite her high-flying words denying it, and despite her ability to keep a stiff
upper lip, deep inside she longed for love
...
I stepped over bare feet and hands to reach my empty bedroll that reeked of sweat and
mold
...

Since I was a boy, I had received visions and heard voices
...
Some days I ascended all the way up to the seventh sky as light as a whisper
...
Every so often I lost my appetite for food and went without
eating for days on end
...
Human beings tended to disparage what they couldn’t comprehend
...

The first person to misjudge my visions was my father
...

One day, while my father was teaching me how to build a cedar chest so that I could become a carpenter
like him, I told him about my guardian angel
...
“And you better keep it to yourself
...
”
A few days before, the neighbors had complained about me to my parents, accusing me of acting
strange and scaring their kids
...
Why can’t you accept that you are no more remarkable than
your parents?” my father asked
...
So have you
...

“Father, I am from a different egg than your other children
...
I
am not a domestic bird destined to spend his life in a chicken coop
...
For unlike you I can swim, and swim I shall
...
If you are with me, come to
the ocean
...
”
My father’s eyes grew large, then small and distant
...
”
Much to the chagrin of my parents, the visions did not disappear as I got older
...
I knew I made my parents nervous, and I felt guilty for upsetting them so, but
the truth is, I didn’t know how to end the visions, and even if I had, I don’t think I would have
...
Since then Tabriz has become a smooth, sweet word, so fine and delicate
that it melts on my tongue
...

I have been a wandering dervish ever since, not sleeping in the same place more than once, not eating
out of the same bowl twice in a row, every day seeing different faces around me
...
In this state I roam east and west, searching for God high and low
...
Having roots nowhere, I have
everywhere to go
...
From the coasts of the Black Sea to the cities of Persia, from
the vast steppes of Central Asia to the sand dunes of Arabia, I have passed through thick forests, flat
grasslands, and deserts; sojourned at caravansaries and hostels; consulted with the learned men in age-old
libraries; listened to tutors teaching little children in maktabs; discussed tafsir and logic with students in
madrassas; visited temples, monasteries, and shrines; meditated with hermits in their caves; performed
zikr with dervishes; fasted with sages and dined with heretics; danced with shamans under the full moon;
come to know people of all faiths, ages, and professions; and witnessed misfortunes and miracles alike
...
I have seen the worst and the best in
humanity
...

As I went through all these experiences, I began to compile a list that wasn’t written down in any book,
only inscribed in my soul
...
To me these were as universal, dependable, and invariable as the laws of nature
...

And one of those rules said, The Path to the Truth is a labor of the heart, not of the head
...
Meet, challenge, and ultimately prevail over your nafs with
your heart
...

It had taken me years to finish working on these rules
...
And now that I was done, I
knew I was nearing the final stage of my time in this world
...
It wasn’t death that worried me, for I didn’t see it as an end, but dying without leaving a legacy
behind
...
I wanted to hand all
this knowledge to one other person, neither a master nor a disciple
...

“God,” I whispered into the dark, damp room, “all my life I traveled the world and followed Thy path
...
I stayed away from the ivory towers of scholars,
preferring to spend time with outcasts, expatriates, and exiles
...
Help me to hand Thy
wisdom to the right person
...
”
Before my eyes the room was showered with a light so bright that the faces of the travelers in their
beds turned lurid blue
...

“Go to Baghdad,” fluted my guardian angel in a singsong voice
...

“You prayed for a companion, and a companion you will be given
...
”
Tears of gratitude welled up in my eyes
...
Sooner or later we were destined to meet
...


Ella

NORTHAMPTON, MAY 19, 2008

Before the sun had set and the children had come back home, Ella placed a bookmark in the manuscript
and put Sweet Blasphemy aside
...
Z
...

To her surprise, a personal blog appeared
...
Having never seen
a whirling dervish before, Ella took a careful look at the picture
...


The page was full of postcards from cities and sites all around the world
...
It was while reading these that Ella came across three pieces
of information that immediately drew her attention: First, that the A in A
...
Zahara stood for Aziz
...
Third, that at the moment he was traveling somewhere in
Guatemala
...
Most were portraits of people of all
colors and stripes
...
For some the missing element was a simple
thing, like an earring, a shoe, or a button, while for others it was much more substantial, like a tooth, a
finger, or sometimes a leg
...
It’s like we have lost something and need to get it
back
...
And of those who do, even fewer manage to go out and look for it
...
At the bottom of the page, there was an e-mail address, azizZzahara@gmail
...
Next to that she found a poem by Rumi:
Choose Love, Love! Without the sweet life of
Love, living is a burden—as you have seen
...
For a fleeting
moment, it felt as if everything Aziz Z
...
It was a strange and slightly supercilious

thought, but one that made perfect sense to her
...
She had Sweet Blasphemy
open in front of her, but her mind was so preoccupied she couldn’t concentrate on the manuscript
...
She could name it The
Forty Rules of the Deeply Settled, Earthy Housewife
...
“Stop looking for love! Stop running after impossible dreams!
There are surely more important things in life for a married woman about to be forty
...
Unable to
hold herself back anymore, she gave her elder daughter a call
...

“Jeannette, dear, I know it was wrong of me to call Scott
...
I just wanted
to make sure …”
She paused, deeply regretting not planning this message in advance
...
It made her nervous to think that the tape was rolling and
time was running short
...
I know I shouldn’t complain when I’m so blessed
...
The answering machine came to a stop
...
What had come over her? She hadn’t known she was unhappy
...
She hadn’t been
feeling much of anything lately
...
Zahara’s e-mail address
...
Without giving it much thought, she went to
her computer and started composing an e-mail:
Dear Aziz Z
...
I am reading your novel Sweet Blasphemy in my capacity as a reader for the literary agency
...
This, however, is my personal opinion and is not reflective of the views of my boss
...

It seems like you believe that love is the essence of life and that nothing else matters
...
Suffice it to say that I do not completely agree
...

I am writing because the “timing” of my reading Sweet Blasphemy couldn’t have been more bizarre
...
The day before, I asked her boyfriend to call off their marriage plans
...
I have a feeling you two would get along well, as you seem to have very similar views on
love
...
That wasn’t my intention
...
Traveling around the world must be quite a thrill
...

Best wishes,
Ella

Her first e-mail to Aziz was not a letter so much as an invitation, a cry for help
...


The Master

BAGHDAD, APRIL 1242

Baghdad took no note of the arrival of Shams of Tabriz, but I will never forget the day he came to our
modest dervish lodge
...
The high judge had dropped by with a
group of his men, and I suspected there was more than cordiality behind his visit
...

The judge was an ambitious man
...
He had to stop eating so much, but I suspected that nobody had the courage to tell
him, not even his doctor
...
With one ruling he could send a man to the gallows, or he could just as easily pardon a
convict’s crimes, lifting him up from the darkest dungeons
...
I did not
approve of his big ego, but for the well-being of our lodge I did my best to remain on good terms with this
man of influence
...
“Today Baghdad overflows with refugees running away from the Mongol army
...
This is the center of the world, don’t you think, Baba Zaman?”
“This city is a gem, no doubt,” I said carefully
...

They are born, they go through childhood and adolescence, they grow old, and eventually they die
...
We are not as wealthy as we used to be at the time of Caliph
Harun ar-Rashid, though we can still take a measure of pride in being a center of trade, crafts, and poetry
...
”
“Such pessimism!” The judge shook his head as he reached out to another bowl and picked a date
...
That is, of course, if the status quo is not disrupted by the
traitors among us
...
”
I chose to remain silent
...
He accused us of paying no heed to the sharia
and thus disrespecting the men of authority—men like him
...

“Your brotherhood is harmless, but don’t you think some Sufis are beyond the pale?” the judge asked,
stroking his beard
...
Thank God just then we heard a knock on the door
...
He made a beeline toward me and whispered in my ear that we had a visitor, a
wandering dervish who insisted upon seeing me and refused to talk to anyone else
...
But as the judge was giving me a hard time, it
occurred to me that a wandering dervish could dispel the tension in the room by telling us colorful stories
from faraway lands
...

A few minutes later, the door opened and in walked a man dressed head to toe in black
...
He wore a long, hooded cloak, a wool garment, and sheepskin boots
...
He held a wooden bowl in his hand of the sort that mendicant
dervishes carry to overcome their personal vanity and hubris by accepting the charity of others
...
That people could
confuse him with some vagrant, or even a beggar, didn’t seem to bother him in the least
...
It was in his eyes, in his elaborate gestures, written all over him
...

“Welcome to our lodge, dervish,” I said as I motioned for him to take a seat on the cushions across
from me
...

Finally his gaze stopped at the judge
...

I offered the dervish warm goat milk, sweetened figs, and filled dates, all of which he politely refused
...

“And were you able to find Him?” I inquired
...
”
The judge interjected with a smirk he didn’t bother to hide, “I never understand why you dervishes
make life so complicated
...
When he looked up
again, his face was calm, his voice measured
...
”
“Such wordplay,” the judge scoffed
...
Not everyone needs to dress in tatters and hit the road like
you!”
There followed a ripple of laughter as the men in the room were eager to show their agreement with the
judge—high-pitched, unconfident, and unhappy laughs from people used to toadying to superiors
...
Obviously it hadn’t been a good idea to bring the judge and the dervish together
...
I didn’t mean to say one could not find God if he stayed in his
hometown
...
“There are people who have never traveled
anywhere and yet have seen the world
...

“What I meant to say, Judge, was that one could not find God if he stayed in the fur coat, silk garment,
and pricey jewelry that you are wearing today
...

We all held our breath, as if expecting something bigger to happen, though what could have been more
shocking, I didn’t know
...

“When something needs to be said, I’ll say it even if the whole world grabs me by the neck and tells me
to keep quiet
...
“Well, whatever,” he
said
...
We were just talking about the splendor of our city
...
Is there a place more charming than Baghdad?”

Softly, his gaze moving from one man to another, Shams explained, “There is no question Baghdad is a
remarkable city, but no beauty on earth lasts forever
...
Like giant
mirrors, they reflect the hearts of their residents
...
It happens, and it happens all the time
...
Shams of Tabriz turned to me, momentarily distracted from his thoughts, with a
friendly flicker in his eyes
...
That was when I clearly
saw how he merited his name
...
He was indeed Shams, “the sun
...
“You Sufis make everything too complicated
...
It falls upon the leaders to see to their needs and make sure they do not go astray
...
”
“The sharia is like a candle,” said Shams of Tabriz
...
But let us
not forget that a candle helps us to go from one place to another in the dark
...
I felt a wave of anxiety wash over me
...
Didn’t Shams know that?
Just as I was looking for an appropriate excuse to take the dervish out of the room, I heard him say,
“There is a rule that applies to this situation
...

Shams of Tabriz straightened up, his gaze fixed as if reading from an invisible book, and he
pronounced:
“Each and every reader comprehends the Holy Qur’an on a different level in tandem with the depth
of his understanding
...
The first level is the outer meaning and it is the
one that the majority of the people are content with
...
Third, there is
the inner of the inner
...
”
With glinting eyes Shams continued
...
Sufis
know the inner meaning
...
And as for the fourth level, that is known only
by prophets and those closest to God
...

A subtle, sardonic smile curved the dervish’s mouth, but he didn’t answer
...
“There is a thin line between where you stand and sheer
blasphemy
...
“What exactly is ‘sheer
blasphemy’?” he asked, and then with a sharp intake of breath he added, “Allow me to tell you a story
...

The man was on his knees with his hands spread out to the sky, praying
...
But
when he got closer, he was equally stunned to hear the shepherd’s prayer
...
I will do anything for Thee, just say
the word
...
Thou would roast it and put its tail fat in Thy rice to make it more tasty
...

“Afterward I would wash Thy feet and clean Thine ears and pick Thy lice for Thee
...
”
Having heard enough, Moses interrupted the shepherd, yelling, “Stop, you ignorant man! What do
you think you are doing? Do you think God eats rice? Do you think God has feet for you to wash? This
is not prayer
...
”
Dazed and ashamed, the shepherd apologized repeatedly and promised to pray as decent people did
...
Then he went on his way, utterly pleased with
himself
...
It was God’s
...
He might not be saying the right things in the right way, but he was sincere
...
I was pleased with him
...
”
Moses immediately understood his mistake
...
He found him praying again, except this time he was praying in the way
he had been instructed
...
Regretting what he had done to him, Moses patted the
shepherd’s back and said: “My friend, I was wrong
...
Keep praying in your own way
...
”
The shepherd was astonished to hear this, but even deeper was his relief
...
Neither did he abide by the formal prayers that Moses had taught
him
...
Though satisfied and blessed in his
naïve devotion, he was now past that stage—beyond his sweet blasphemy
...
“To each his own
way and his own prayer
...
He looks deep into our hearts
...
”
I checked the judge’s face
...
Yet at the same time, being the astute man that he was, he had detected a tricky
situation
...
It was therefore better for him to pretend there was nothing to be upset
about and leave it there
...
In a little while, the judge rose to his feet, saying he had some important business to
attend to
...
His men followed
wordlessly
...

Shams of Tabriz brushed his hair from his face, smiling
...
I am used to people
not liking me much
...
I had been the master of this lodge long enough to know that it was not
often such a visitor came
...


Ella

NORTHAMPTON, MAY 20, 2008

Belly dancers and dervishes spun in Ella’s dream on the night her husband didn’t come home
...

Then she saw herself
...
All around her, people moved slowly, as if dancing to a tune she couldn’t hear
...
The man
looked at her blankly and hobbled away
...
At first she thought it was because she couldn’t speak their language
...
With increasing panic she
looked around for a mirror to see her reflection and figure out if she was still the same person, but there
was none in the bazaar
...

When Ella opened her eyes, she found Spirit frantically scratching at the back door
...
Skunks made him particularly nervous
...
It had taken Ella weeks to remove that
nasty odor from the dog, and even after she’d washed him in tubs of tomato juice, the smell lingered,
reminiscent of burning rubber
...
It was a quarter to three in the morning
...
Jeannette had not returned her call, and in her pessimistic state Ella
doubted she ever would
...
The desire to scoop out some cherry vanilla ice
cream warred with the fear of gaining weight
...

Then Ella opened a bottle of red wine and poured herself a glass
...
Only when she was filling the second glass did it
occur to her she might have opened one of David’s expensive Bordeaux
...
Not knowing what to make of that, she frowned at the bottle
...
So she decided to check her e-mail
...
Zahara
...
It’s one of the few places left where they still use a Mayan
calendar
...
They call it The Tree of the Brokenhearted
...

I hope you won’t find this too presumptuous, but after reading your e-mail I went to the wish tree and prayed that you and your
daughter solve this misunderstanding
...

One thing that has helped me personally in the past was to stop interfering with the people around me and getting frustrated when I
couldn’t change them
...
Submission is a form of

peaceful acceptance of the terms of the universe, including the things we are currently unable to change or comprehend
...
A major astrological shift is on its way, ushering in a new human
consciousness
...

May love find you when you least expect, where you least expect
...
She closed her eyes and imagined her name written on a piece of paper tied to
a wish tree, dangling like a kite in the air, free and happy
...
Spirit stood beside her, uneasy and growling, constantly sniffing the air
...
Ella and her dog stood side by side under the late-spring moon, staring into
the thick, vast darkness, similarly frightened of the things moving in the dark, frightened of the unknown
...
I was surprised to find Baba Zaman and the wandering dervish in the same position as when
I left them, neither one saying a word
...
I lingered there as long as I could, arranging the
cushions, tidying up the room, picking up the crumbs on the carpet, but after a while I ran out of reasons to
stay
...
As soon as he saw me, the cook started to rain
orders
...
Every day he made me work like a dog and
called this torture part of my spiritual training, as if washing greasy dishes could be spiritual in any way
...

He threw a wooden spoon at my head and yelled at the top of his lungs, “Such back talk will get you
nowhere, son
...
Rebelliousness is not a
good quality in a novice
...
I had never disobeyed his orders
...

As soon as the cook turned his back, I sneaked out of the kitchen and tiptoed to the main room again,
dying to learn more about the wandering dervish
...
His eyes looked fierce and unruly, even when he bowed his head in modesty
...

I peeped through a crack in the door
...
But soon my eyes adjusted to the
semidarkness inside the room and I could make out their faces
...
“No, it wasn’t a dream that brought me here
...
I never have
dreams
...
“It’s just that you might not remember them all the
time
...
”
“But I do not,” the dervish insisted
...
You see, when I was a boy, I
saw angels and watched the mysteries of the universe unfold before my eyes
...
When I confided in my friends, they, too, said
I was a hopeless dreamer
...
Finally I
understood that whenever people heard something unusual, they called it a dream
...
”
Upon saying this, the dervish paused as if he had heard a sudden sound
...
He stood up, straightened his spine, and slowly, deliberately began to walk toward the door,
all the while looking in my direction
...


It was as if he could see through the wooden door
...
I wanted to run back to the kitchen but couldn’t see how
...
Through and beyond the door, the dark eyes of Shams of Tabriz were fixed
upon me
...
He
approached, put his hand on the door handle, but just when I thought he was about to open the door and
catch me, he stopped
...

We waited like that for an unbearably long minute
...

“When I got a little older, I asked God to take away my ability to dream, so that every time I
encountered Him, I would know I wasn’t dreaming
...
He took them all away
...
”
Shams of Tabriz now stood by the open windows across the room
...
But to compensate for
that loss, He allowed me to interpret the dreams of others
...
”
I expected Baba Zaman not to believe this nonsense and to scold him, as he scolds me all the time
...
Tell me, what
can I do for you?”
“I don’t know
...
”
“What do you mean?” asked the master, sounding puzzled
...
I am skilled in the ways of nature, although
the ways of society are still alien to me
...
I can name the constellations in the sky, identify the trees in the forests, and read like an open
book the types of people the Almighty has created in His image
...
Then he continued
...
But if you are still in need of knowing where exactly His abode is,
there is only one place to look for Him: in the heart of a true lover
...
Whoever finds Him will remain with
Him forever
...

“But knowledge is like brackish water at the bottom of an old vase unless it flows somewhere
...
Finally, in a vision
in Samarkand, I’ve been told I should come to Baghdad to fulfill my destiny
...
”
Outside, the night had settled, and a wedge of moonlight streamed in through the open windows
...
The cook must have been looking for me
...
For once it felt good
to break the rules
...
“But if there is a piece
of information I am destined to reveal, I know it will happen in due time
...
Be our guest
...

That is when the master asked that bizarre question: “You say you are ready to deliver all your knowledge
to another person
...
But opening up someone’s heart to spiritual light is no small task for a human being
...
What are you willing to pay in return?”
For as long as I live, I will never forget the answer the dervish gave then
...
”
I flinched, feeling a cold shiver travel down my spine
...

“Perhaps we have done enough talking for today
...
“You must be tired
...
He will show you to your bed and provide clean sheets and a glass of milk
...
More than that
...
Perhaps he was involved with black magic or had
been trained by Harut and Marut, the two angels of Babylon that the Qur’an warned us against
...
Either way he scared me
...
“I’ve a feeling he is nearby and
has already heard us
...
In utter panic I jumped to my feet
and scurried into the garden, seeking refuge in the dark
...

“So there you are, you little rascal!” yelled the cook as he ran toward me with a broom in his hand
...

“Come here or I’ll break your legs!” the cook shouted behind me, puffing
...
Instead I dashed out of the garden as fast as an arrow
...
My heart pounding, my throat dried up, I ran
until my knees gave out and I could run no more
...
He took a step toward her to pull her
blanket up a little and make sure she was snugly covered, but then he changed his mind
...
She wasn’t surprised to hear him in the bathroom taking a shower
...
When David finished and walked
back through the room, Ella pretended to be asleep, thus saving him from having to explain his absence
...
Life
seemed to have resumed its regular course
...

There were many reasons that Ella liked cooking
...
But more than that, she enjoyed cooking
because it was something she was really good at
...
The kitchen was the one
place in her life where she could avoid the outside world altogether and stop the flow of time within
herself
...

People who cooked on TV programs made it sound as if cooking was about inspiration, originality, and
creativity
...
” Ella disagreed
...
All you had to do was use time-honored traditions, not
experiment with them
...

Ella also cherished her daily routines
...
Because David was a workaholic with little time on his hands, Ella
was in charge of everything at home: managing the finances, caring for the house, reupholstering the
furniture, running errands, arranging the kids’ schedules and helping them with their homework, and so on
...
Every Friday she spent hours
at the farmers’ market, chatting with the farmers about their products, inspecting a jar of low-sugar
organic peach jam, or explaining to another shopper how best to cook baby portabella mushrooms
...

Then, on Saturday evenings, David took Ella out to a restaurant (usually Thai or Japanese), and if they
weren’t too tired or drunk or simply not in the mood when they came home, they would have sex
...
Once their most reliable connection,
sex had lost its allure quite a while ago
...
Ella found
it odd that sex had once been so important in her life, and now when it was gone, she felt relieved, almost
liberated
...

The only problem was that David hadn’t abandoned sex as much as he had abandoned sex with his
wife
...
The fact
that none of their close friends knew anything made it easier for her to feign ignorance
...
She didn’t know how he
managed it, given the frequency of his couplings with other women, particularly with his young assistants,
but her husband handled things deftly and quietly
...
That much Ella knew
...
Had her
loss of interest in sex been the cause of her husband’s cheating? Or was it the other way round? Had
David cheated on her first, and then she’d neglected her body and lost her sexual desire?
Either way the outcome remained the same: The glow between them, the light that had helped them to
navigate the uncharted waters of marriage, keeping their desire afloat, even after three kids and twenty
years, was simply not there anymore
...
She chopped
tomatoes, minced garlic, sautéed onions, simmered sauce, grated orange peels, and kneaded dough for a
loaf of whole-wheat bread
...

“Nothing reminds a man of home like the smell of freshly baked bread,” she had said
...
Bake it yourself, honey
...
”
Working the entire afternoon, Ella set an exquisite table with matching napkins, scented candles, and a
bouquet of yellow and orange flowers so bright and striking they looked almost artificial
...
When she was done, the dining table resembled those found in
stylish home magazines
...
A young therapist had been stabbed
in her apartment, an electrical short had caused a fire in a hospital, and four high-school students had been
arrested for vandalism
...
How could people like Aziz Z
...

The Rubinsteins sat at a picture-perfect table at 7:30 P
...
, the burning candles giving the dining room a
sacred air
...
Even Jeannette’s absence didn’t tarnish the picture
...
For once Ella felt grateful to them for being so
chatty and noisy and covering up the silence that would otherwise have rested heavily between her and
her husband
...
Her
gaze dropped to his thin, pale lips and pearl-white teeth—the mouth she knew so well and had kissed so
many times
...
For some reason the rival who appeared in her
mind’s eye was not David’s young secretary but a big-bosomed version of Susan Sarandon
...
Ella imagined David kissing this woman with
haste and hunger, not at all the way he chewed his cauliflower at the family table
...
She understood
with chilling clarity and calm that despite her inexperience and timidity, one day she would abandon it
all: her kitchen, her dog, her children, her neighbors, her husband, her cookbooks and homemade-bread
recipes
...


The Master

BAGHDAD, JANUARY 26, 1243

Being part of a dervish lodge requires far more patience than Shams of Tabriz possesses
...

In the beginning I expected him to pack up and leave at any moment, so visible was his aversion to a
strictly ordered life
...
He was used to flying as a lonely bird,
wild and free
...
Nevertheless, great as his need for
solitude, even greater was his commitment to finding his companion
...
With
this faith he stayed
...
What took other dervishes months, sometimes years, to learn took him only weeks,
if not days
...
So many days I found him in the garden admiring the symmetry of a spiderweb or the dewdrops
glistening on a night-blooming flower
...
But just when I would start thinking he had no interest in reading, I
would find him immersed in an age-old book
...

When I asked him about this, he said one should keep the intellect satisfied and yet be careful not to
spoil it
...
“Intellect and love are made of different materials,” he said
...
Intellect is
always cautious and advises, ‘Beware too much ecstasy,’ whereas love says, ‘Oh, never mind! Take the
plunge!’ Intellect does not easily break down, whereas love can effortlessly reduce itself to rubble
...
A broken heart hides treasures
...
But I also suspected there was a
downside to Shams’s unrivaled ingenuity and originality
...
I taught my dervishes never to see the faults of other people and, if they did, to be
forgiving and quiet
...
Whenever he saw anything wrong, he
spoke out about it right away, never beating around the bush
...

Forcing him to do ordinary tasks was difficult
...
When it came to a routine, he got desperate, like a tiger trapped
in a cage
...
Values cherished by most human beings, such as security, comfort, and
happiness, had hardly any meaning in his eyes
...
That, too, was one of his rules: Most of the problems of the world stem from
linguistic mistakes and simple misunderstandings
...
When you step
into the zone of love, language as we know it becomes obsolete
...

In time I became concerned about his well-being
...


At the end of the day, our fates are in the hands of God, and only He can tell when or how we each will
depart the world
...
And for a while I thought I might succeed
...

That letter changed everything
...

It has been a long time since we have last seen one another, and I hope my letter finds you in good spirits
...
I am writing this
letter in confidentiality to share with you something that has been preoccupying my mind
...

As you know, the late Sultan Aladdin Keykubad was a remarkable man who excelled in leadership in difficult times
...
A dream many called impossible given the
chaos and hostility in the world, especially with the Crusaders and Mongols attacking from both sides
...
Christians
killing Muslims, Christians killing Christians, Muslims killing Christians, Muslims killing Muslims
...
But Keykubad was a determined leader
...

Now, in Konya there lives a scholar you may or may not have heard of
...
I have had the pleasure of meeting him, and not only that, of studying with him, first as his teacher, then, upon his father’s
death, as his mentor, and, after years, as his student
...
So talented and judicious was
he, after a point I had nothing else to teach him and started to learn from him instead
...
But Rumi
has a quality that very few scholars ever have: the ability to dig deep below the husk of religion and pull out from its core the gem that is
universal and eternal
...
When Rumi met the great mystic, druggist, and perfumist
Fariduddin Attar as a young man, Attar said of him, “This boy will open a gate in the heart of love and throw a flame into the hearts of
all mystic lovers
...
Today, thirteen years later, the residents of Konya look up to
him as a role model, and every Friday people from all over the region flock to the city to listen to his sermons
...
Already he is said to have ten thousand disciples
...

But to me Rumi has always been like a son
...
And now that I am
an old man who is nearing his final days, I want to make sure he is in the right company
...
There is something missing in his life—an emptiness that neither his family nor his disciples can fill
...
His cup was full to the brim, and yet he needed to have the door to his soul opened
so that the waters of love could flow in and out
...
”
Had the subject not come up again, I might have forgotten about it completely, but on the day I left Konya, Rumi came to me to ask
my opinion on a recurrent dream that had been bothering him
...
Words in Arabic
...
Mulberry trees and silkworms waiting patiently in secretive
cocoons for their moment to arrive
...

At the outset I had no idea what the fragments in his dreams indicated
...
But then one day, after I had
received a silk scarf as a gift, the answer came to me and the riddle was solved
...
I recalled the wonderful things I had heard about your tariqa
...
In short, my brother, I can’t help wondering whether Rumi’s companion lives under
your roof
...

I don’t know if there is such a person in your lodge
...
If you and I can play even a minute role in helping two rivers meet and flow into the ocean of Divine Love as one single
watercourse, if we can help two good friends of God to meet, I will count myself blessed
...
Rumi might be an influential man adored and respected by many,
but that doesn’t mean he does not have critics
...
Furthermore, such a flowing-together might generate discontent and opposition
and cause rivalries beyond our comprehension
...

The person who is openly loved by someone who is admired by so many people is bound to draw the envy, if not the hatred, of others
...
In other words, my brother, the person you send to Konya
might never make it back
...

I am sorry to put you in a difficult position, but as we both know, God never burdens us with more than we can bear
...

May the light of faith never cease to shine upon you and your dervishes,
Master Seyyid Burhaneddin

Shams

BAGHDAD, DECEMBER 18, 1243

Beyond dangling icicles and snow-covered roads, a messenger appeared in the distance
...
A messenger with a message urgent enough to be carried through
snowstorms could only mean one of two things: Either something terrible had happened or something
important was about to happen
...
But, shrouded in a cloak of mystery, he gave no hints
whatsoever
...

During that time it wasn’t sheer curiosity that prompted me to closely observe Baba Zaman
...
I spent many
evenings in the praying room reciting the ninety-nine names of God for guidance
...

In the following days, while everyone in the lodge was making wild speculations, I spent my time alone
in the garden, observing Mother Nature now cuddled under a heavy blanket of snow
...
Upon entering the
main room in the khaneqah, I found everyone present there, novices and senior dervishes alike, sitting in
a wide circle
...

After clearing his throat, he said, “Bismillah, you must be wondering why I summoned you here today
...
It doesn’t matter where it came from
...
”
Baba Zaman paused briefly and stared out the window
...
But when he continued to speak, an unexpected determination
filled his voice
...
He is good with words, but not so with
metaphors, for he is no poet
...
Because of reasons far beyond me and you, someone from our lodge might have to go to meet him
and be his comrade
...
I exhaled slowly, very slowly
...
Loneliness and solitude are two different things
...
Solitude is better for us, as it means being alone
without feeling lonely
...

Remember, only in another person’s heart can you truly see yourself and the presence of God within
you
...
“I am here to ask if any one of you would like to volunteer for this spiritual
journey
...
For it can be done only out of love and in the name of love
...
“Who is this scholar, Master?”
“I can reveal his name only to the one who is willing to go
...
There were nine

candidates
...
Baba Zaman waved his hand, gesturing at us to wait for him
to finish
...
”
With that, the master told us the journey was beset with great danger and unprecedented hardships, and
there was no guarantee of coming back
...
Except mine
...

“Shams of Tabriz,” the master said slowly and dourly, as if my name left a heavy taste in his mouth
...
You are our guest
...

The master was silent for a long, reflective moment
...
When spring comes, we will talk again
...
Though he knew that this mission was the sole reason I had come to Baghdad in the
first place, Baba Zaman was robbing me of the chance to fulfill my destiny
...

But the master retorted in a cold, stern voice I wasn’t used to hearing from him, “There is nothing to
discuss
...
”

It was a long, harsh winter
...
For the next three months, I
didn’t speak a word to anyone
...
But after snow came more snow
...
Still, as low-spirited
as I was outside, I remained grateful and hopeful inside, keeping in mind yet another rule
...
Even when all doors remain closed, God will open up a new
path only for you
...
A Sufi is thankful not only for
what he has been given but also for all that he has been denied
...
It was a bush clover covered with tiny lavender flowers
...
As I walked back to the lodge, I ran into the ginger-haired novice and saluted him merrily
...

“Smile, boy!” I yelled
...
The last snow melted, the trees
budded, sparrows and wrens returned, and before long a faint spicy smell filled the air
...
I was the first to reach the main room this time
...
Again no one else volunteered
...
“But I’ll wait for autumn before reaching a decision
...
I could not believe that this was happening
...
With
a plunging heart, I protested and complained and begged the master to tell me the name of the city and the
scholar, but once again he refused
...

Having endured from winter to spring, I could hold my fire from spring to autumn
...
If anything, it had raised my spirits, deepening my determination
...
It means to be farsighted enough to
trust the end result of a process
...
Impatience means to be so shortsighted as to not be able to
see the outcome
...

When in autumn the copper bell rang for the third time, I walked in unhurriedly and confidently, trusting
that now things would finally be settled
...
Nevertheless, when he saw me raise my hand again, he neither looked away nor
dropped the subject
...

“All right, Shams, there is no question you are the one who should embark on this journey
...
”
I kissed the master’s hand
...

Baba Zaman smiled at me warmly and thoughtfully, the way a father smiles at his only son before
sending him to the battlefield
...
Everyone else followed suit
...
Inside, there were two pieces of information written in graceful handwriting
...
Apparently I was going to Konya to meet a certain Rumi
...
I had never heard his name before
...
One by one, I said the letters of his name: the powerful, lucid
R; the velvety U; the intrepid and self-confident M; and the mysterious I, yet to be solved
...
”

Ella

NORTHAMPTON, MAY 22, 2008

Beneath her white duvet, Ella swallowed past a sore throat, feeling worn out
...
Still, she went downstairs to prepare
breakfast and sat at the table with her twins and her husband, doing her best to look interested in their
ongoing chatter about the coolest cars at school when all she wanted was to go back to bed and sleep
...
Is that true, Mom?” Her voice reeked of suspicion and accusation
...
Your sister and I had a quarrel, as you know, but we love each other,” Ella
said
...

Ella glanced at her husband with widened eyes, but David raised his eyebrows and flipped his hands
open to indicate it wasn’t he who’d told them such a thing
...
“That’s not quite right
...
All I
said was not to rush into marriage
...

“Yeah, as if any guy would want to have you as his wife!” Avi snapped
...
She suppressed it
...

Only when she returned to her seat at the table could she get rid of the smile, and she did that simply by
allowing herself to sulk
...
Half-eaten
scrambled eggs, unfinished bowls of cereal, and dirty mugs cluttered the counter
...


Back from the garden, Ella found the red light flashing on the answering machine
...

“Mom, are you there …? Well, I guess not, or you would have picked up the phone
...

“Okay, I was so angry at you I didn’t want to see your face again
...
I mean, what
you did was wrong, that’s for sure
...
But I can understand why you did
it
...
I’m not that premature baby who needed to be kept in
an incubator anymore
...
The sight of Jeannette as a newborn baby flashed across her mind
...
Ella had spent many a sleepless night listening to
her breathing just to make sure she was alive and would survive
...
“I love you
...
Her mind shifted to Aziz’s e-mail
...
At least the first part of it
...
Now it fell upon Ella to
fulfill the rest
...

“I got your message, honey
...
I want to apologize to you
...
“That’s all right, Mom
...
I should have shown more respect for your feelings
...

“Yes, dear
...
“What you said the other day kind of worried me
...
“I raised three beautiful children—how can I be
unhappy?”
But Jeannette didn’t sound convinced
...
”
Ella didn’t know what to say, except the truth
...
It’s
difficult to remain in love after so many years
...

After she hung up, Ella allowed herself to muse over love
...
Love was for those
looking for some rhyme or reason in this wildly spinning world
...

Dear Aziz (if I may),
Thanks for your kind and heartwarming reply, which helped me through a family crisis
...

You were right about one thing
...
Either I meddle too much in
the lives of loved ones or I feel helpless in the face of their actions
...
Honestly, I don’t think I have what
it takes to be a Sufi
...
I owe you a big thank-you
...
Oops, did I speak like the innkeeper in your story? Don’t
worry, I’m not that bitter
...
Not yet
...

I was very pleased to receive your letter and learn that you were as devoted to the path of love as ever
...
For as soon as I learned you were looking for the companion of Rumi, I knew who you were talking about
...

You see, there was under my roof a wandering dervish, Shams of Tabriz, who fit your description to the letter
...
Looking for neither disciples nor
students, he asked God for a companion
...
He had come to put his
finger on the pulse of those who guided the world to the Truth
...
Still, to make sure every one of my dervishes got an
equal chance, I gathered them and without going into any details told them about a scholar whose heart had to be opened
...
That was back in
winter
...

You might be wondering why I waited this long
...
It pained me to know that I was sending him on a dangerous journey
...
As long as he lived a nomadic life, he could manage it pretty well, but if he stays in a town
and mingles with the townspeople, I am afraid he will ruffle some feathers
...

The evening before Shams left, we took a long walk around the mulberry trees where I grow silkworms
...

Painfully delicate and surprisingly strong, silk resembles love
...
This is why the farmers have to make a choice between the silk and the silkworm
...
It takes the lives of hundreds of silkworms to
produce one silk scarf
...
A chilly wind blew in our direction, and I shivered
...
It was because I realized this was the last time Shams would stand in my garden
...
Not in this world
...

This morning at the crack of dawn, he came to kiss my hand and ask for my blessings
...
Before he left, he said his part in this story resembled
the silkworm
...
But eventually, for the silk to survive, the silkworm had to die
...
May God protect him
...

In the end we all belong to God, and to Him we shall return
...
Everybody warned me so
...
Ever since I came here, I have been working like a dog
...
I wonder if anybody notices how awfully I am being treated
...
And the harder I strive, the worse it seems to get
...
“The new novice,” they call me, and behind my back they whisper, “that ginger-haired
ignoramus
...
The man has a stone
instead of a heart
...
I can’t recall ever hearing him say anything nice to anyone
...

Once I asked a senior dervish if all the novices had to go through the trial of working with the cook in
the kitchen
...
”
Then why me? Why does the master want me to suffer more than the other novices? Is it because my
nafs is bigger than theirs and needs harsher treatment to be disciplined?
Every day I am the first to wake up, to get water from the nearby creek
...
Preparing the soup to be served at breakfast is also my responsibility
...
Everything needs to be cooked in cauldrons that are no smaller than bathtubs
...
I prepare marmalades and spicy relishes
...
If I add too much or too little salt,
the cook throws a fit and breaks all the jars, and I have to make everything anew
...
The cook
wants me to pray aloud so that he can check whether I skip or mispronounce a word
...
“The better you bear the hardships in the kitchen, the faster you will mature, son,” my
tormentor claims
...
”
“But how long is this trial going to last?” I asked him once
...
“If Scheherazade the storyteller managed to come up with
a new tale every night for that long, you, too, can endure
...
I don’t see any hard work there
...
I don’t know if anyone is counting
...
And I have 624 more days to go
...
If I longed for proper food or some comfort, was scared of the
dark or the loneliness, or God forbid had wet dreams about a woman’s body, I was ordered to ring the
silver bells dangling from the ceiling for spiritual help
...
This is not to say I never had any
distracting thoughts
...

And suffer I did
...
That night, when the cook finally caught up with me, he gave
me the worst beating of my life, breaking willow stick after willow stick on my back
...
In a
dervish lodge, they never kick you out or tell you openly that you have failed; instead they make you
silently leave
...
“A man can bring a donkey to
the water but cannot make him drink
...
There’s no other way
...
Frankly, I would have left this place a long time ago had it not
been for Shams of Tabriz
...
I had never met anyone like him
before
...
Even the cook respected him
...
Not the humble old
master
...
After seeing him, I decided I didn’t need to turn myself into a meek
dervish
...
So
when autumn came and I realized that Shams was leaving for good, I decided to leave with him
...

“What do you want, novice?” he asked wearily, as if seeing me tired him
...
I want to
go with him
...
”
“I didn’t know you cared for him so much,” the master said suspiciously
...
You can hardly be called a
dervish
...

The master lowered his gaze, lapsing into contemplation
...
But he did no
such thing
...

“Perhaps you were not created for life in a lodge, my son
...
My feeling is you are not fit to be a dervish and need to look for your
kismet elsewhere
...
”
Thus giving me notice, Baba Zaman closed the subject with a polite but dogged gesture of his head and
went back to his book
...


Shams

BAGHDAD, SEPTEMBER 30, 1243

Battling the winds, my horse and I sped away at the crack of dawn
...
The
dervish lodge resembled a bird’s nest hidden among mulberry trees and shrubs
...
I knew he was concerned about me
...
I had embarked on an inner journey of Love
...
No matter what your destination, just
be sure to make every journey a journey within
...

Though I anticipated hardships ahead, that didn’t worry me much
...
As a Sufi, I had been trained to accept the thorn with the rose, the difficulties with the
beauties of life
...
Likewise, for a new Self to be born,
hardship is necessary
...


The night before I left the dervish lodge, I opened all the windows in my room to let the sounds and the
smells of the darkness waft in
...
Thick clusters of it
fell to the floor
...
When done, I inspected
the face in the mirror, now brighter and younger
...
It had no past or future, sealed forever in this moment
...

“And it hasn’t even started yet
...
“It is another one of the forty rules: The quest for Love changes us
...
The moment you
start looking for Love, you start to change within and without
...
Inside, I found three things:
a silver mirror, a silk handkerchief, and a glass flask of ointment
...
Use them when need be
...
In case your reputation is stained, the handkerchief will remind you
of how pure your heart is
...
”
I caressed each object, closed the box, and thanked Baba Zaman
...

As the birds chirped and tiny dewdrops hung from the branches with the first light of the morning, I
mounted my horse
...


The Novice

BAGHDAD, SEPTEMBER 30, 1243

Behind Shams of Tabriz, I rode my stolen horse
...
When Shams stopped at a bazaar in
Baghdad to refresh himself and buy a few things for the road, I decided to make myself known and threw
myself in front of his horse
...

I knelt, clasped my hands, and craned my neck, as I had seen beggars do, and implored, “I want to come
with you
...
”
“Do you have any idea where I am going?”
I paused
...
“No, but it makes no difference
...
You are my role model
...
“So just go on your way
...
Don’t confuse power-driven, selfcentered people with true mentors
...
True mentors are as transparent as glass
...
”
“Please give me a chance,” I implored
...
”
Shams scratched his chin pensively, as if acknowledging the truth in my words
...

I jumped to my feet, nodding with all my heart: “I certainly do
...
”
“Very well, then
...
You will drink it here in the bazaar
...
I could chop a hundred onions in one sitting or peel and
mince cloves of garlic, all in the name of spiritual development
...
I looked at him in horror
...
If my father learns, he’ll break my legs
...
What will my family and friends think of me?”
I felt the burning glare of Shams on me and shivered under the pressure, just like the day I had spied on
him behind closed doors
...
“You are too timid for me
...
But you know what? Because you are so desperate to win
the approval of others, you’ll never get rid of their criticisms, no matter how hard you try
...
“How
was I to know you were not asking that question on purpose? Wine is strictly forbidden by Islam
...
”
“But that would be playing God
...

I looked around in despair, not knowing what to make of his words, my mind pounded like dumpling
dough
...
Money, fame, power, lavishness, or carnal pleasure—whatever it is that one holds most dear in life,
one should dispose of that first
...
Find an honest tradesman and become his apprentice
...
But don’t be a greedy one! Now, with your permission, I need to get going
...
I hopped onto my horse and chased him toward the outskirts of Baghdad, but the
distance between us got greater and greater until he was no more than a dark spot in the distance
...


Ella

NORTHAMPTON, MAY 24, 2008

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day
...
A good breakfast, she thought, set the
tone for the rest of the day
...
And though she firmly believed in this research, she had yet to experience the joyful
breakfast the magazines wrote about
...
Everyone wanted to eat a different thing at
breakfast, which was entirely against Ella’s notion of eating together
...
Every morning she prepared it, determined that no
child of hers would begin the day munching on candy or some other junk food
...
She logged on to the
Internet to see whether there was an e-mail from Aziz
...

Dear Ella,
I was so happy to learn that things have improved between you and your daughter
...
Strange, I stayed here only a few days, and yet when the time came to bid farewell, I felt sad, almost
grieved
...

Each time I say good-bye to a place I like, I feel like I am leaving a part of me behind
...
Moments are born and
moments die
...
Don’t you think?
While in Momostenango, I meditated and tried to visualize your aura
...
I had a feeling these were your colors
...

My final stop in Guatemala is Chajul—a small town with adobe houses and children with eyes wise beyond their years
...
I asked a granny to choose a tapestry and said it was for a lady living in
Northampton
...
I swear to God, there were more than
fifty tapestries of every possible color in that pile
...
I thought you might like to know about this coincidence, if there is such a thing in God’s universe
...
S
...


Ella closed her eyes and tried to imagine how the colors of her aura surrounded her face
...

Many things came flooding back to her, memories that she thought she had long left behind
...
She remembered how she had spent her teenage years holding her mother responsible for
the suicide of her father
...
In her endeavor to make her
marriage as different from her mother’s as possible, she had not married a Christian man, preferring to
marry inside her faith
...

“Mom! … Earth to Mom! Earth to Mom!”
Ella heard a ripple of giggles and whispers behind her shoulder
...
Orly, Avi, Jeannette, and David had for once all come to
breakfast at the same time and were now standing side by side inspecting her as if she were an exotic
creature
...

“Good morning, you all
...

“How come you didn’t hear us?” Orly asked, sounding genuinely surprised
...

Ella’s gaze followed her husband’s, and there on the open screen in front of her, she saw Aziz Z
...
In a flash she closed her laptop, without waiting for it to shut down
...
“I was working on
my report
...

What was it in teenage boys that made them so eager to detect everyone’s flaws and lies? Ella
wondered
...
In fact, they were all looking
somewhere else now, focused on the kitchen counter
...
“Mom, how come you haven’t made
us any breakfast this morning?”
Now Ella turned to the counter and saw what they had seen
...
She nodded repeatedly as if agreeing with an
inner voice that spoke an undeniable truth
...
I got up from the
bed and looked out the window into the courtyard, awash in moonlight
...

“Effendi, you look pale
...
“Shall I bring you a
glass of water?”
I told her not to worry and to go back to sleep
...
Our dreams were part
of our destiny, and they would run their course as God willed it
...

The beginning of the dream differed slightly each time
...
On this occasion I saw myself reading the Qur’an in a carpeted room
that felt familiar but was like no place I had been before
...
He was holding a candelabrum with five glowing candles providing me
with light so that I could read
...
He had been holding
out his hand to me, with each one of his fingers aflame
...
I took off my cloak and threw it on the
dervish to extinguish the flames
...

From this point onward, it was always the same dream
...
Next I ran into the courtyard, where the roses had blossomed in a sea of bright
yellow
...

“Come back, beloved
...
At first I couldn’t see anything, but in a little while the moon showered me in its glittering
light and the courtyard acquired a rare luminosity
...

“They killed him!” somebody shouted
...
Perhaps this was what my own voice would
sound like in a state of infinite agony
...
In that moment I had the impression that the
dream was still with me, vivid and frightening
...

At times like these, I feel a sudden wave of sadness take hold of me, though I can never tell why
...

At age thirty-eight, I have been given by God more than I could ever have asked for
...
Guided by my late father, educated by the best teachers
of our time, I have worked hard to deepen my awareness with the belief that this was the duty God had
assigned me
...

For many years I have been teaching at the madrassa, discussing theology with other sharia scholars,
instructing my disciples, studying law and hadiths, giving sermons every Friday at the biggest mosque in
town
...
It is flattering to hear people praise
my preaching skills and tell me how my words changed their lives at a time when they most needed
guidance
...
Never in my life have I suffered
destitution or scarcity, although the loss of my first wife was devastating
...
Both of my sons are grown,
although it never ceases to amaze me to see how different from each other they turned out to be
...
I am proud of them, just as I am proud of our
adopted daughter, who has unique talents
...

Why, then, do I feel this void inside me, growing deeper and wider with each passing day? It gnaws at
my soul like a disease and accompanies me wherever I go, as quiet as a mouse and just as ravenous
...
Never in my life have I arrived at a new place without getting
the blessing of its saints first
...
I believe that the saints are beyond such trivial nominal distinctions
...

So when I saw Konya for the first time from a distance, I did what I always did
...
Instead of greeting me back and offering their blessings, as they always did, the saints
remained as silent as broken tombstones
...
But once again there followed silence
...
They just weren’t giving me their blessing
...

In a little while, the wind returned with an answer
...
Either pure love or pure hatred
...
Enter at your own
risk
...
“As long as I can encounter pure love, that’ll be enough
for me
...
But I didn’t want to enter the city just yet
...
The minarets of Konya glistened in the sun like shards of glass
...
What kinds of joys and sorrows, I wondered, were
being lived at this moment behind closed doors and latticed windows? Being used to an itinerant life, I
found it slightly unnerving to have to settle in a city, but I recalled another fundamental rule: Try not to
resist the changes that come your way
...
And do not worry that your life
is turning upside down
...
“Selamun aleykum, dervish!”
When I turned around, I saw an olive-skinned, brawny peasant with a drooping mustache
...

“Aleykum selam, may God bless you!” I called out
...
”
I smiled
...
”
“Don’t sell my ox short,” the peasant said, sounding offended
...
”
Put in my place by these words, I jumped to my feet and bowed before the peasant
...
“Please forgive me
...
He stood deadpan for a moment, weighing whether I

was mocking him or not
...

“You mean apologize to your ox?”
“Well, that, too
...
It’s usually the other way round
...
Even when people do me wrong, I apologize to them
...
“The Qur’an tells us each and every one of us was made in the best of
molds
...

“What rule?” he asked
...
He is fully occupied
with you
...
We are each an unfinished work of art both waiting and striving to be completed
...
”
“Are you here for the sermon, too?” the peasant asked with a renewed interest
...
He is a remarkable man
...
“Tell me, what is so special about
Rumi’s sermons?”
The peasant fell quiet and squinted into the vast horizon for a while
...

Then he said, “I come from a village that has had its share of hardships
...
They burned and plundered every village in their way
...
They captured Erzurum, Sivas, and Kayseri and massacred the entire male population, taking
the women with them
...
But I did lose something
...
”
“What’s that got to do with Rumi?” I asked
...
”
Personally, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with sadness
...
But I didn’t tell this to the peasant
...
One way or the other, it walked the same excruciatingly slow walk
...
We ate as we talked
...

“Take good care, my friend,” I said as I jumped off the cart and loosened the reins of my horse
...

I nodded as I waved good-bye
...
”
Although I was eager to listen to the sermon and dying to meet Rumi, I wanted to spend some time in
the city first and learn what the townspeople thought about the great preacher
...


Hasan the Beggar

KONYA, OCTOBER 17, 1244

Believe it or not, they call this purgatory on earth “holy suffering
...
Neither the
dead nor the living want me among them
...
Artisans chase me from their storefronts to ward off the bad
luck that follows me everywhere, and pregnant women turn their faces away whenever they set eyes on
me, fearing that their babies will be born defective
...

It is the skin that changes first, becoming thicker and darker
...
There is a lot of stinging and burning in this phase,
but then somehow the pain withers away, or else one becomes numb to it
...
The hands turn to claws, and the face is so deformed as to be
unrecognizable
...
Tears and
saliva flow without my control
...
Oddly
enough, I still have my hair
...

I heard that in Europe lepers are kept outside the city walls
...
We are also allowed to beg, which is a good thing,
because otherwise we would probably starve
...
The other is
praying
...
Hence, as much as they despise us, the townspeople also respect us
...
They pay and feed us well, hoping to squeeze out of our mouths
a few extra prayers
...

Whenever I am hired to pray, I bow my head and make incomprehensible sounds in Arabic, pretending
to be absorbed in prayer
...
I have no reason to
believe He does
...
At least I am not deceiving anyone
...
The last day of Ramadan is by far the best time to make money
...
Once a
year, people don’t turn away from beggars
...
So profound is their need to show off how generous and charitable they are, not only
do they race to give us alms, but for that single day they almost love us
...
The mosque
is already packed
...
The afternoon is the
perfect occasion for panhandlers and pickpockets
...

I sat down right across from the entrance of the mosque with my back to a maple tree
...
I put my
mendicant bowl in front of me
...
A
leper doesn’t need to whine and implore, making up stories about how wretched his life is or how poor
his health
...
So I simply uncovered

my face and sat back
...
All were chipped copper
...
Since the late Aladdin Keykubad had loosened the
rules on currency, coins issued by the beys of Aleppo, the Fatimid rulers in Cairo, and the caliph of
Baghdad, not to mention the Italian florin, were all pronounced valid
...

Together with the coins, a few dry leaves fell on my lap
...
Suddenly I realized that the maple tree and I had something in common
...

I was a naked tree
...
Every day another part of my body
abandoned me
...

What I lost, I lost forever
...

Whenever they placed a coin in my bowl, they did so with amazing speed and avoided any eye contact, as
if my gaze were contagious
...
As much as they
disapproved of such outlaws, they didn’t treat them as if they were invisible
...
That’s what scared them—to recognize that
death could be this close and this ugly
...
I heard somebody yell, “He is coming! He is
coming!”
Sure enough, there was Rumi, riding a horse as white as milk, wearing an exquisite amber caftan
embroidered with golden leaves and baby pearls, erect and proud, wise and noble, followed by a throng
of admirers
...
Even his horse stood tall and firm, as if aware of the
distinction of the man he carried
...
Inside, it was so packed it seemed impossible to breathe, let alone find a seat
...

“Brothers,” Rumi said, his voice rising high, sweeping low
...
Some of you might be asking, ‘What meaning could I, in my limitedness,
possibly have for God?’ This, I believe, is a question that has occurred to many from time to time
...
”
Rumi’s two sons were in the front row—the handsome one, Sultan Walad, who everyone said
resembled his late mother, and the young one, Aladdin, with an animated face but curiously furtive eyes
...

“The children of Adam were honored with knowledge so great that neither the mountains nor the
heavens could shoulder it,” Rumi continued
...
Only man took it up
...
”
Pronouncing his vowels in that strange way only the educated are capable of, Rumi talked about God,
assuring us that He dwelled not on a distant throne in the sky but very close to each and every one of us
...

“Your hand opens and closes all the time
...
Your deepest presence
is in every small contracting and expanding
...
”

At first I liked what he said
...
But almost instantly I felt a wave of resentment rise up in my throat
...
I knew he had lost his first wife, but I didn’t believe he had ever experienced
real misfortune
...
Why was
God so unfair? To me He had given poverty, sickness, and misery
...

With his flawless reputation and royal demeanor, he hardly belonged to this world, at least not to this city
...
I wondered how he would fare if he were in my shoes? Had it ever occurred to him
that even someone as perfect and privileged as he could someday tumble and fall? Had he ever
contemplated how it would feel to be an outcast, even for one day? Would he still be the great Rumi if he
had been given the life I was given?
With each new question, my resentment rose, sweeping away whatever admiration I might otherwise
have had for him
...
Several people in the audience
eyed me curiously, wondering why I was leaving a sermon that so many others were dying to attend
...
The Inn of Sugar Vendors seemed just what I needed
...

Having thus settled down, I roamed the streets, amazed at the mixture of religions, customs, and
languages permeating the air
...
In the slave market, I saw concubines with skin
white as milk and hefty, dark eunuchs who had seen such atrocities that they had lost their ability to speak
...
There were pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem and vagrants who I
suspected were runaway soldiers from the last Crusades
...
Despite their seemingly endless differences, all of these people gave off a similar air of
incompleteness, of the works in progress that they were, each an unfinished masterwork
...
Everything was constantly shifting, splitting, coming to light,
transpiring, thriving, dissolving, decomposing, and dying
...
As I watched the people around me, I recalled
another golden rule: It’s easy to love a perfect God, unblemished and infallible that He is
...
Remember, one
can only know what one is capable of loving
...
Unless we learn to love
God’s creation, we can neither truly love nor truly know God
...
In every place
I visited, I overheard the townspeople talk about Rumi
...
Gradually the surroundings began to change
...
The smells changed, too, getting heavier, more garlicky and spicy
...
I had reached the seamy side of town
...
In front of the house, a group of women sat chatting
...
Beside them was a garden with roses of every
color and shade imaginable and the most amazing smell
...

I didn’t have to wait too long to learn the answer
...
She was heavy-jowled, tall, and enormously
fat
...
She had a thin, dark
mustache and thick sideburns
...

“What do you want?” the hermaphrodite asked suspiciously
...

I introduced myself and asked her name, but she ignored my question
...

“Why not?”
“Don’t you see this place is a brothel? Don’t you dervishes take an oath to stay away from lust? People
think I wallow in sin here, but I give my alms and close my doors in the month of Ramadan
...
Stay away from us
...
”
“Filth is inside, not outside,” I objected
...
”
“What are you talking about?” she croaked
...
“Real filth is the one inside
...
There is only one type of dirt that cannot be cleansed with pure waters, and that is the stain of
hatred and bigotry contaminating the soul
...
”
The hermaphrodite was having none of it
...
I’ve got all sorts of
customers here
...
”
I couldn’t help chuckling
...

“Don’t worry, I’m not here to visit your brothel,” I assured her
...
”
“Oh, that”—the hermaphrodite shrugged dismissively—“is the creation of one of my girls, Desert
Rose
...
Delicate chin,
pearl-luster skin, and dark almond eyes clouded with worry
...
As I
looked at her, I had a sense she was someone in the process of a big transformation
...
“That girl is a good girl
...
She’ll abandon this place forever
...
”
The hermaphrodite looked at me flabbergasted before she burst out, “What the hell are you talking
about? Nobody is telling me what to do with my girls! You better get the hell out of here
...

“Believe me, you wouldn’t want to know,” the hermaphrodite said, shaking her finger to emphasize her
point
...
“Anyway, I’m
leaving,” I said
...
I’m not one of
those pious types who spend their whole lives hunched on prayer rugs while their eyes and hearts remain
closed to the outside world
...
But I read the Qur’an in the
budding flowers and migrating birds
...
”
“You mean you read people?” The patron laughed a halfhearted laugh
...
The quest for God is
ingrained in the hearts of all, be it a prostitute or a saint
...
That is what one of the forty rules is all about: The
whole universe is contained within a single human being—you
...
Therefore, do not look for Sheitan outside yourself either
...
It is an ordinary voice within
...
When a person knows himself or herself, he or she knows God
...

“A dervish who preaches to harlots!” she grunted
...
You better stay away from my brothel! Because if you don’t, I swear to
God, Jackal Head will cut off that sharp tongue of yours and I’ll eat it with pleasure
...
But not sad as in weepy and unhappy, only sad as in
unwilling to smile and take things lightly
...
As she was brewing coffee in the kitchen, she took her list of resolutions out of the drawer
and scanned through it
...


Improve your time management, be better organized, and be determined to make the most of your time
...

(Accomplished)

2
...

4
...

6
...
(Accomplished)
Take action for fewer wrinkles
...
(Accomplished)
Change the upholstery, buy new plants, get new cushions
...
(Half accomplished)
Eliminate meat from your diet, make a healthy menu every week, and start giving your body the respect it deserves
...

8
...

10
...
(Accomplished)
Take the kids to a Broadway musical
...
( Unaccomplished)
Open your heart to love!!!

Ella stood still, her eyes fixed on the tenth item on her list, not knowing whether to put a check next to it or
not
...
What was she thinking? “It must be the
effect of Sweet Blasphemy,” she murmured to herself
...


Dear Aziz,
Today is my birthday! I feel like I have reached a milestone in my life
...
They also say that forty is the new thirty (and sixty is the new forty), but as much as I’d like to believe all that, it sounds too
far-fetched to me
...

Birthdays have always made me happy, but this morning I woke up with heaviness in my chest, asking questions too large for
someone who hadn’t even had her morning coffee yet
...
What if both a yes and a no might generate equally disastrous consequences? So I found
another answer: maybe!
Warm wishes,
Ella

P
...
Sorry I couldn’t write a more cheerful e-mail
...
I can’t
give you a reason
...
I guess this is what they call midlife crisis
...
Did you know that in mystic thought forty symbolizes the
ascent from one level to a higher one and spiritual awakening? When we mourn we mourn for forty days
...
And when we are in love we need to wait for forty days to be sure of our feelings
...
In Islamic mysticism there are forty degrees between man and God
...
Jesus went into the wilderness for forty days and nights
...
Buddha meditated under a linden tree for forty days
...

You receive a new mission at forty, a new lease on life! You have reached a most auspicious number
...
There are no wrinkles or gray hair strong enough to defy the power of forty!
Warmly,
Aziz

Desert Rose the Harlot

KONYA, OCTOBER 17, 1244

Brothels have existed since the beginning of time
...
But there is something that
amazes me: Why is it that although people say they hate seeing women prostitute themselves, the same
people make life hard for a prostitute who wants to repent and start life anew? It is as if they are telling us
they are sorry that we have fallen so low, but now that we are where we are, we should stay there
forever
...
All I know is, some people feed on the miseries of others and they don’t
like it when there is one less miserable person on the face of the earth
...

This morning I woke up bursting with a desire to listen to the great Rumi preach
...
“Since when do whores go to mosques?”
she would have said, laughing so hard her round face would have turned crimson
...
After that hairless dervish left, the patron looked so preoccupied I sensed it was the
right time to go and talk
...
I told her I needed to go to
the bazaar to run some errands
...
After nine years of my working like a dog for her, she
does
...
“Sesame is coming with you
...
I liked Sesame
...
How he survived in such a cruel world was a mystery to me
...
We had named him so because of his infatuation
with sesame halva
...
He was the best guard I could have wished for
...
When we reached the first intersection,
I asked Sesame to wait for me, and I disappeared behind a bush where I had hidden a bag full of men’s
clothes
...
Wrapping long scarves around my breasts, I flattened
my chest
...
Finally I covered
half my face with a scarf, hoping to resemble an Arab traveler
...

“Let’s go,” I urged him, and when he didn’t budge, I uncovered my face
...
“Why
did you dress up like that?”
“Can you keep a secret?”
Sesame nodded, his eyes widening with excitement
...
“We are going to a mosque
...
”
Sesame’s bottom lip quivered
...
We were going to the bazaar
...
First we are going to listen to the great Rumi
...
The change in plans was unsettling to him
...
“If you agree and promise not to tell anyone about it, I’ll buy you a huge
chunk of halva
...
” Sesame clucked his tongue with delight, as if the word alone had left a sweet taste in his

mouth
...


I was born in a small village near Nicaea
...
” The times were bad, unpredictable
...
First there were rumors of the Crusaders coming back
...
Next we heard about Seljuk attacks
...
The name and the face of
the enemy changed, but the fear of being destroyed by outsiders remained as steady as snow on Mount Ida
...
One of my earliest memories is the smell of bread out of
the oven
...
Even as a child, I knew that
...
I had seen the stare in
the eyes of the poor when they came to the bakery begging for crumbs
...
It felt like talking to a friend
...

When I was seven, my mother became pregnant
...
I was so innocent that if
anyone asked me how babies were made, I would have said God kneaded them out of soft, sweet dough
...
Mother had become so huge she could barely move
...

What neither my mother nor the midwife knew was, there wasn’t one baby but three
...
My
brothers had waged a war inside my mother’s body
...
For four days my mother remained in labor
...

Unable to save my mother, the midwife did her best to save my brothers
...
This is how my brother was born
...

With my mother gone and my father turned into a sullen, bitter man, life was never the same
...
We lost our customers
...
But it was my
brother who really suffered
...
He never had any
of that
...
I wish I had protected my brother
...
Life is so strange
...
The only difference in my brother’s life was that whereas before it
was my father who ill-treated him, now it was my father and his new wife who did so
...
One day my father beat
him so badly he almost killed him
...
There was a cold, cruel stare in his eyes
that wasn’t there before
...
I wish I had known
...

Then, one morning in spring, my father and stepmother were found dead, killed with rat poison
...
When the guards started asking
questions, he ran away in panic
...
And just like that, I was alone in the world
...
I was thirteen
...
I was the youngest passenger on board and the only one traveling
alone
...
They took everything—suitcases,
clothes, boots, belts, and jewelry, even the driver’s sausages
...
But just when they were about to leave, the gang leader
turned to me and asked, “Are you a virgin, dainty thing?”
I blushed and refused to answer such an improper question
...

“Let’s go!” the gang leader shouted
...
The robbers took me
to a thick, dense forest, where I was surprised to see they had created a whole village
...
Ducks, goats, and pigs were all over the place
...

Soon I understood why the gang leader had asked me if I was a virgin
...
He had been in bed for a long time, with red spots all over his body,
trying countless treatments to no avail
...

There are things in my life I don’t want to remember
...
Even today,
whenever the forest comes to my mind, I think of the pine trees and only the pine trees
...
There were also a number of harlots who had come there on their own
...
I was determined to do so
...
It was a mystery to me
why they were not robbed, until I realized that some carriage drivers bribed the robbers before passing
through the forest and in return got the right to travel safely
...
After stopping a carriage heading to the big city, I pleaded with the driver to take me with
him
...
I paid him the only way I knew how
...
The city was worse
...
I never looked for my old aunt
...
I was on my own
...
Suddenly I was in another world altogether—a world of malice, rape,
brutality, and disease
...

I saw things on those streets for which I have no words
...
Then a man called Jackal Head found me and brought
me to this brothel in Konya
...
She was delighted to learn I couldn’t have babies and would not cause her any problems in that
respect
...

Which is how I think of faith—like a hidden rose garden where I once roamed and inhaled its perfumed
smells but can no longer enter
...
With that longing I am circling that
garden, searching for an entrance, hoping to find a gate that will let me in
...
Men of all ages and professions
occupied every corner, even the place in the back that would normally be reserved for women
...
Thanking my
lucky stars, I wriggled into his space, leaving Sesame outside
...
I didn’t even want to
think what could happen if they found out there was a woman amid them, let alone a harlot
...

“God created suffering so that joy might appear through its opposite,” Rumi said
...
Since God has no opposite, He remains hidden
...

“Look at the abasement of the earth and the exaltation of the heavens
...
Whatever happens, do not forget, nothing God has
created is in vain, whether wrath or forbearance, honesty or guile
...
My mother’s pregnancy and the war in her womb,
my brother’s incurable loneliness, even the murder of my father and stepmother, my dreadful days in the
forest, and every brutality I saw on the streets of Constantinople—they each contributed, in their own
way, to my story
...
I couldn’t make it out clearly, but I could feel
it with my whole heart
...


Hasan the Beggar

KONYA, OCTOBER 17, 1244

Bristling with irritation, I sat under the maple tree
...
The shadow of the minaret inched its way
across the street
...
Dressed in black rags, holding a large staff in his hand, with no facial
hair and a tiny silver earring in one ear, he looked so different that I couldn’t help fixing my gaze upon
him
...
Instead of ignoring my
presence, the way people who saw me for the first time always did, he put his right hand on his heart and
greeted me as if we were two old friends
...
But there was only me and the maple tree
...

Slowly the dervish walked toward me
...
But instead he knelt down to my eye level
...

“Aleykum selam, dervish,” I responded
...
It had been such a
long time since I’d felt the need to speak to anyone that I had almost forgotten what my voice sounded
like
...

I laughed
...
“God has countless names
...
If God has so many names, how can a human being who is the very reflection of Him go around
without a name?”
I didn’t know how to respond to that and so didn’t even try
...
They used to call me Hasan
...
” The dervish nodded
...
“Keep it,” he
said
...
It will remind you that you
bear God within you
...
The first
thing that came to my mind was that a pickpocket had been caught in the mosque
...
No pickpocket would create such an
uproar
...
A woman, a known prostitute, had been found in the mosque dressed up as a
man
...
I caught sight of the young woman in men’s clothing
...
I had seen many lynchings before
...
Ordinary men with no history of
violence—artisans, vendors, or peddlers—turned aggressive to the point of murder when they banded
together
...

“Poor woman,” I muttered to Shams of Tabriz, but when I turned to him for a response, there was no
one standing there
...
I
jumped to my feet and rushed to catch up with him
...

“You should all be ashamed of yourselves!” Shams of Tabriz shouted as he struck the ground with his
staff
...
Is that fair?”
“She doesn’t deserve fairness,” said a square-faced, burly man with a lazy eye, who seemed to have
proclaimed himself the leader of this impromptu group
...
He was a security
guard named Baybars, a man all the beggars in town knew well for his cruelty and rapacity
...

“Are you telling me you want to punish a person for going into a mosque? Is that a crime?” Shams of
Tabriz asked, his voice dripping with scorn
...
Apparently nobody had thought of it that way
...
“She has no place in a holy mosque!”
That seemed enough to inflame the group again
...
“Let’s get the whore!”
As if that were an order, a young lad leaped forward and grabbed the woman’s turban, yanking it
forcefully
...
We all held our breath, astonished by her youth and beauty
...
Do you really despise this woman, or do you in fact
desire her?”
With that, the dervish caught the harlot’s hand and pulled her toward him, away from the young lad and
the mob
...

“You are making a big mistake,” the leader of the group said, raising his voice above the murmur of the
crowd
...
Stay out of this matter
...
“What kind of a dervish are you anyway? Don’t you have anything better to do
than to defend the interests of a whore?”
Shams of Tabriz was quiet for a moment, as if considering the questions
...
Then he said, “But how did you notice her in the first place? You go to a
mosque but pay more attention to the people around you than to God? If you were the good believers you
claim to be, you would not have noticed this woman even if she were naked
...
”
An awkward silence descended on the entire street
...

“Come on, you lot! Off you go, back to the sermon
...

They did not all turn and walk away, but they did take a few steps back, swaying unsteadily, puzzled as
to what to do next
...

It was exactly then that the harlot mustered the courage to get out from behind the dervish
...

Only two men attempted to chase her
...
A few passersby laughed
at the sight, and so did I
...


Suleiman the Drunk

KONYA, OCTOBER 17, 1244

Before the commotion I was snoozing peacefully with my back to the tavern wall, and then the racket
outside made me nearly jump out of my skin
...
“Did the Mongols attack us?”
There was a ripple of laughter
...

Dirty bastards!
“Don’t you worry, old drunk!” yelled Hristos, the tavern owner
...
It’s
Rumi passing by with an army of admirers
...
Sure enough, there they were—an excited procession of disciples
and admirers repeatedly chanting, “God is great! God is great!” In the middle of it all was the erect figure
of Rumi, mounted on a white horse, radiating strength and confidence
...
Moving at a pace no faster than a snail’s, the procession came very near
...
Suddenly I had a
brilliant idea
...
Holding the window open with one hand
and the scratcher in the other, I leaned forward, managing to reach the turban of a man in the crowd
...

“Selamun aleykum,” I saluted, smiling from ear to ear
...
“Don’t you know wine is the handiwork of
Sheitan?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but before I could make a sound, something sharp whizzed by my head
...
If I hadn’t ducked at the last second, it would have cracked my
skull
...
Too tipsy to comprehend what had happened, the merchant held the stone in his hand,
examining it as if it were an obscure message from the skies
...

“Did you see what happened?” I said as I staggered back toward my table
...
They could have killed me!”
Hristos raised an eyebrow
...
”
“S-so what?” I stuttered
...

“You know, this is exactly why I abhor religion
...

Hristos did not respond
...
He brought me another carafe of red wine and watched me as I guzzled it
...
For a
moment we stood still, listening carefully, as if there were a melody to be heard
...
“If it’s as

bad as they claim, why would they serve it in paradise?”
“Questions, questions …” Hristos murmured as he threw his hands up
...
Do you have to question everything?”
“Of course I do
...
You are not just any customer to me
...

And I worry about you
...

“You are a good man, but your tongue is as sharp as a dagger
...
There are all
sorts of people in Konya
...
You need to learn to be careful in public
...
”
I grinned
...
”
Other customers joined in, giving me a big round of applause
...
I knew people who drank gallons every night, and all they did was get merry, sing songs, and
then doze off
...
If the same drink
made some merry and tipsy and others wicked and aggressive, shouldn’t we hold the drinkers responsible
instead of the drink?
“Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why;
Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where
...
Even Hristos joined the excitement
...


Ella

NORTHAMPTON, MAY 31, 2008

“Better safe than sorry,” said the Web site
...
”
This was the first time Ella Rubinstein had taken an online test, titled “How to Tell If Your Husband Is
Cheating on You!” Although she found the questions tacky, by now she knew that life itself could
occasionally feel like one big cliché
...
She still had not asked
him where he’d been on the nights he hadn’t come home
...
Her mind was so distracted that it
was taking her longer than usual to finish the book
...

When the children were around, she acted normal
...
However, the moment she and
David were alone, she caught her husband looking at her curiously, as if wondering what kind of wife
would avoid asking her husband where he’d spent the night
...
The less she knew about her husband’s flings, the less
they would occupy her mind, she thought
...
It was bliss
...
Customer service wanted to know whether he was
happy with his stays
...

“Ah, a guest evaluation form! The last thing I needed,” David said, managing a half smile for her
...
They must have included all the participants on their customer
list
...
At least the part of her that didn’t like to rock the boat did
...
It was that same part that the next day found the hotel’s number and dialed it, just
to hear what she already knew: Neither this year nor the one before had they ever hosted a dental
conference
...
She hadn’t aged well, and she’d gained considerable weight over the
last six years
...
The cooking classes
rendered it more difficult to shed the extra pounds, though there were women in her group who cooked
more often, and better, and still remained half her size
...
She had never
smoked weed with boys behind closed doors, gotten kicked out of bars, used morning-after pills, thrown
fits, or lied to her mother
...
Never had teen sex
...
It saddened Ella that such tragedies were unfolding
in the world, but the truth was that she never saw herself as sharing the same universe with those
unfortunate ones
...
She preferred to sit at home and read a good
book on a Friday night rather than whoop it up with strangers at some wild party
...
“See, she never

gets herself in trouble
...
No
wonder she wasn’t very popular in high school
...
You’re fucking boring!”
She listened carefully and said she would think about that
...
She wore little makeup, just a touch of reddish brown
lipstick and a moss green eyeliner, which according to her daughter did more to hide than to bring out the
gray-blue of her eyes
...

Ella suspected that there must be something wrong with her
...
There was an Ella-the-control-freak and an Ella-the-hopelessly-meek
...

And then there was a third Ella, observing everything quietly, waiting for her time to come
...
If she kept going like this, the third Ella warned, she was
bound to explode someday
...

Contemplating these issues on the last day of May, Ella did something she hadn’t done in a long while
...
She asked God to either provide her with a love that would absorb her whole being or else
make her tough and careless enough not to mind the absence of love in her life
...
“You might have
forgotten, but I’m already forty
...
”

Desert Rose the Harlot

KONYA, OCTOBER 17, 1244

Breathless, I ran and ran along the narrow alley, unable to look back
...
Only then
could I muster the courage to look behind me
...
He stopped beside me, out of breath, his hands dangling limply at his sides, his
expression bewildered and vexed, unable to comprehend why all of a sudden I had started running like
crazy through the streets of Konya
...
One
minute I was sitting in the mosque, absorbed in the sermon, drinking in Rumi’s pearls of wisdom
...
Before I knew it, the scarf came loose and my turban slid aside, exposing my face and a bit of my
hair
...

But when I raised my eyes again, I saw a young man in the front row looking at me intently
...
I recognized him
...

Baybars was one of those pesky customers none of the girls in the brothel wanted to sleep with
...
He was such
a man
...
Once he beat a girl so badly that even the
boss, who loved money more than anything, had to ask him to leave and never come back
...
At least for a few more months
...
Now there he was, sitting in the front row, having grown a
full beard like a devout man but still with the same fierce sparkle in his eyes
...
But it was too late
...

Baybars whispered something to the man next to him, and then the two of them turned around and stared
at me
...
I felt my face blush and my heart race, but I couldn’t budge
...

When I dared to open my eyes again, Baybars was pushing his way through the crowd toward me
...

In a flash Baybars had reached me, so menacingly close I could smell his breath
...

His friends joined him
...
Everyone around turned to see what the commotion was about, and a few people
tsk-tsked disapprovingly, but nobody intervened
...
Once we reached the street, I hoped, Sesame would come to my aid, and if
worst came to worst, I would run away
...
I realized in horror that in the mosque, out of respect for the preacher
and the community, they had been careful not to raise their voices or shove me around, but outside on the
street there was nothing to stop them
...
After
years of hesitation, today I had taken a step toward God, and how had He responded? By kicking me out

of His house!
“I should never have gone there,” I said to Sesame, my voice cracking like thin ice
...
A harlot has no place in a mosque or a church or in any of His houses
...
It was him, the wandering
hairless dervish
...
I lurched forward to kiss his
hands, but he stopped me midway
...
”
“But how can I thank you? I owe you so much,” I beseeched
...
“You owe me nothing,” he said
...
”
He introduced himself as Shams of Tabriz and then said the strangest thing ever: “Some people start
life with a perfectly glowing aura but then lose color and fade
...
Once your
aura was whiter than lilies with specks of yellow and pink, but it faded over time
...
Don’t you miss your original colors? Wouldn’t you like to unite with your essence?”
I looked at him, feeling utterly lost in his words
...
”
“I am dirty,” I said, biting my lip
...
And this is what he told me:
One day a prostitute passed by a street dog
...
The prostitute immediately took off her shoe and filled it with water from the nearest well for
the dog
...
The next day she ran into a Sufi who was a man of great wisdom
...
She was shocked
...

I understood what Shams of Tabriz was trying to tell me, but something inside me refused to believe
him
...
”
“You cannot know that; only God can
...
“No, that’s not the way the system works
...
”
“Do you think they would listen to me? Those men hate me
...
“Because there is no such thing as ‘them,’ just as there is no
‘I
...

We are not hundreds and thousands of different beings
...
”
I waited for him to explain, but instead he continued: “It’s one of the forty rules
...
Unless you learn to love
yourself, fully and sincerely, there is no way you can be loved
...
It is a sign that you will soon be showered
in roses
...
I thought about all the
men I had slept with—the way they smelled, the way their callused hands felt, the way they cried when
they came
...
Once I had a
customer who had the habit of spitting on prostitutes while he had sex with them
...
“You dirty whore
...
It felt like a tasteless joke,
but when I forced myself to laugh, the sound didn’t pass through my throat, and I ended up suppressing a
sob
...
If you let it dominate your present moment, it will suck you in,” said Shams as
if he had read my thoughts
...
What you need is to live this very moment
...
”
Upon saying that, he took out a silk handkerchief from the inside pocket of his robe
...

“A good man in Baghdad gave it to me, but you need it more than I do
...
”
With that, the dervish grabbed his staff and stood up, ready to go
...
”
“Where? How? I have no place to go
...
“Fret not where the road will take you
...
That’s the hardest part and that’s what you are responsible for
...
Do not go
with the flow
...
”
I nodded
...


Suleiman the Drunk

KONYA, OCTOBER 17, 1244

Before midnight I downed my last drink and left the tavern
...
Watch your tongue,” Hristos cautioned as he waved good-bye
...
But as soon as I stepped into the dark,
empty street, I was seized by a kind of exhaustion such as I had never felt before
...
I could have used a drink
...
It pained me to recall the flicker of loathing in their eyes
...
I had been reprimanded by prim and proper people so
many times that even the memory of them was enough to send a shiver down my spine
...
It was darker here because of
the massive trees towering above
...
Otherwise I would have noticed the two security guards
approaching me
...

But the guards didn’t return my greeting
...

“Just walking,” I mumbled
...

One of the men took a step toward me and sniffed the air
...

“Yeah, it reeks of wine,” the other guard confirmed
...
“Don’t worry yourselves
...
Since
it is only metaphorical wine that we Muslims are allowed to drink, the smell must also be metaphorical
...

Just then the moon came out from behind the cloud, covering us with its soft, pallid light
...
He had a square face with a protruding chin, ice blue eyes, and a sharp nose
...

“What are you doing on the streets at this hour?” the man repeated
...
“These are profound questions, son
...
”
“Are you making fun of me, you filth?” the guard demanded, frowning, and before I knew what was
happening, he took out a whip, cracking it in the air
...
The next thing he did was to bring the
whip down on my chest
...

“Perhaps this will teach you some manners,” the guard retorted as he passed his whip from one hand to
the other
...

“Then go ahead and punish me,” I retorted
...
”

In a fit of rage, the young guard started to whip me with all his might
...
A merry old song popped into my mind, forcing its way past my bloodied lips
...
”

My sarcasm drove the guard into a deeper rage
...
I would never have
guessed there could be so much anger piled up inside one man
...
“Stop it, man!”
As suddenly as it had started, the lashing stopped
...
My stomach churned, and before I knew
it, I vomited
...
“You have only yourself to blame for what I did to you
...

I don’t know how long I lay there
...

Time lost its weight, and so did everything else
...
Soon I was floating in limbo between life and
death and not caring where I would end up
...
My head was
wobbly, my limbs sore
...

I must have blacked out
...
I was praying to God either to numb me or to provide me with drink when I
heard footsteps approaching
...
It could be a street urchin or a robber, even a
murderer
...

Out of the shadows walked a tall, slender dervish with no hair
...
He introduced himself as Shams of Tabriz and asked my name
...
“Nice
to meet you
...
“Not only on the
outside, but inside as well
...
“Apply this ointment to your
wounds,” he said
...
However, you
should know that the wound inside you is deeper, and that is the one you should worry about
...
”
“Thank you,” I heard myself stutter, touched by his kindness
...

He said I deserved it
...

Shams of Tabriz shook his head
...
Every individual is self-sufficient in his
search for the divine
...
No two people are alike
...
If
God had wanted everyone to be the same, He would have made it so
...
”
“That sounds good,” I said, amazing myself by the ease in my voice
...
“We do, and doubts are good
...
”
He spoke in a lilting tone, exactly as if he were reciting from a book
...
He thinks he is a believer; then something
happens in his life and he becomes an unbeliever; after that, he becomes a believer again, and then an
unbeliever again, and so on
...
This is the only way
forward
...
”
“If Hristos heard you talk like this, he would tell you to watch your tongue,” I said
...
”
“Well, he’s got a point
...
“Come on, let
me take you home
...
”
He helped me get on my feet, but I could hardly walk
...

“I warn you, I stink,” I mumbled in shame
...
”
In this way, never minding the blood, urine, or stench, the dervish carried me along the narrow streets
of Konya
...
Dogs barked at us, loudly and
ferociously, from behind the garden walls, informing everyone of our presence
...
“Is it real or
metaphorical wine that the Sufis praise?”
“What difference does it make, my friend?” Shams of Tabriz asked before he dropped me off in front of
my house
...
In everything we do, it is our hearts that make the difference, not our outer appearances
...
When a Sufi stares at someone, he keeps
both eyes closed and instead opens a third eye—the eye that sees the inner realm
...
As miserable as
I felt, somewhere deep inside me there was a blissful tranquillity
...
At that moment I knew there was a God after all, and
He loved me
...


Ella

NORTHAMPTON, JUNE 3, 2008

Beach Boys tunes streaming through their open windows, university students drove past, their faces
sporting early-summer tans
...
First she had found Spirit dead in the kitchen, and although she’d told herself many
times to be ready for this moment, she was seized by not only a profound grief but also a sense of
vulnerability and loneliness, as if losing her dog had the effect of throwing her out into the world all by
herself
...
This brought a wave of guilt to Ella, leading her to have doubts about her relationship with
her younger daughter and to question her record as a mother
...

During this time Ella started exchanging multiple e-mails with Aziz Z
...
Two, three,
sometimes up to five
...
How he could find the time or even an Internet connection to check his e-mails while traveling in
remote places was beyond Ella
...
Soon she
was checking her e-mail at every opportunity—first thing in the morning and then again after breakfast,
when she came back from her morning walk and while she was making lunch, before she went out to run
errands and even during them, by stopping at Internet cafés
...
When there
were no new messages from Aziz, she reread the old ones
...
For something was taking place
...
From a woman with lots of dull grays and browns on her life’s canvas, she was turning
into a woman with a secret color—a bright, tantalizing red
...

Aziz was no man for small pleasantries
...
(Ella wondered if this might put her on his list of inanimate objects
...
He wrote about other things, deeper things, like life and
death, and above all love
...

If there was a trace of flirtation in their exchange, Ella thought, it was an innocent one that might do
them both good
...
Thanks to this exchange, she hoped to regain a portion of the sense of worth
she had lost during her marriage
...
And perhaps he, too, could find something pleasing in being the center of attention of a
middle-aged American woman
...
It was like nibbling on
forbidden fruit without having to worry about the extra calories—there were no consequences
...


Ella

NORTHAMPTON, JUNE 5, 2008

Beloved Aziz,
In one of your earlier e-mails, you said the idea that we could control the course of our lives through rational choices was as absurd as a
fish trying to control the ocean in which it swam
...
”
And now it’s time for me to confess: I’m a bit of a control freak myself
...

Until recently I was a very strict mom
...
Once my eldest daughter accused me of adopting the strategy of a guerrilla
...
“What will be, will be” has never sat right with me;
I just can’t go with the flow
...
Though as a family we celebrate the Sabbath every so often,
personally I don’t even remember the last time I prayed
...
In my kitchen just two days ago, but that doesn’t count,
because it was more like complaining to a higher Self
...
I had
even made plans with an eccentric girlfriend to spend a month at an ashram in India, but that phase of my life didn’t last long
...
Since then I haven’t changed
my mind
...
Please see it as a confession long overdue from someone who cares about you
...
I have been assigned to take pictures of the people in a
village where AIDS is rampant and most children are orphans
...
Can I hope so? Yes
...
The rest is not in my hands
...
The inexplicable and uncontrollable divine element that we as human beings cannot comprehend and
yet should always be aware of
...

But I do believe in respecting the fifth element
...
I know that I did
...
I accepted the fact that there are things beyond my limits
...

Now, you think I am a religious man
...

I am spiritual, which is different
...
When I look at the world, I see a deepening quandary
...
In many ways human beings are becoming more self-centered
and the world is becoming more materialistic
...
After relying on
reason for so long, we seem to have reached a point where we acknowledge the limits of the mind
...
More and more people in the West are trying to carve
out a space for spirituality in the midst of their busy lives
...
Spirituality is
not yet another dressing for the same old dish
...

I know you like to cook
...
Everything we do, feel, or think is an ingredient in that mixture
...
Are we adding resentments, animosities, anger, and violence? Or are we adding love and harmony?
How about you, dear Ella? What ingredients do you think you are putting in the collective stew of humanity? Whenever I think about
you, the ingredient I add is a big smile
...
I propped myself up in bed, suspecting they
must have noticed a robber trying to break in to a house, or some dirty drunk passing by
...
There is debauchery and lechery everywhere
...

This town was a safer place until a few years ago
...

Such is the state of our town today
...

Thank God there are people who put the interests of the community before their own and work day and
night to enforce order
...
My wife and I are proud of him
...

Upon my brother’s early death, I became the primary guardian for Baybars
...
Gossipmongers claimed that it was thanks to my position as a
madrassa teacher that he was able to get the job
...
He would also have made an excellent soldier
...

“We need you here, son,” I said
...
”
Indeed there was
...
It is no coincidence
that every day we hear of a new tragedy
...
When people lose hold of the rope of
God, they are bound to go astray
...
If not the Mongols,
it would have been an earthquake, a famine, or a flood
...
One day soon we might all be wiped out, walking in the footsteps of the residents
of Sodom and Gomorrah
...
How dare they call themselves Muslims when they say
things no Muslim should even think of? It boils my blood to hear them utter the name of the Prophet, peace
be upon him, to promote their silly views
...
Sufis argue that ever since then the ego is the only adversary a
Muslim should be warring against
...

The Sufis go as far as claiming that the sharia is merely a stage on the way
...
And since they like to think of themselves as having already reached a
supreme level, they use this as a poor excuse to disregard the rules of the sharia
...
They keep preaching that since
there is no hierarchy in Islam, everyone is entitled to his own personal quest for God
...
So they examine how every word
vibrates to a number, study the hidden meaning of numbers, and look out for veiled references in the text,
doing everything in their power to avoid reading God’s message, plain and clear
...
If this isn’t sheer blasphemy, I don’t
know what is
...
Qalandaris,
Haydaris, Camiis—they’re known under all sorts of names
...
What good could
come out of a man who cannot settle down? If a man has no sense of belonging, he can drift in every
direction, like a dry leaf in the wind
...

Philosophers are no better than the Sufis
...

A philosopher met a dervish one day, and they instantly hit it off
...

Finally, when they parted company, the philosopher reported of the conversation, “All that I know,
he sees
...
”
So the Sufi thinks he sees, and the philosopher thinks he knows
...
Don’t they realize that as simple, limited, and ultimately mortal human beings, we are not
expected to know more than we should? The most a human being is capable of attaining is a mere
smattering of information about the Almighty
...
Our task is not to interpret God’s teachings but to
obey them
...
It has become a habit, our small ritual
...
It pleases me to see what a good appetite he has
...
A young, principled guy like him has much work to do in this ungodly town
...
My heart rejoiced
at the magnificence of the universe God had created in His image, so that everywhere we turned, we
could both seek and find Him
...

I recalled the individuals I had met—the beggar, the prostitute, and the drunk
...
These were the kind of people that the scholars
failed to see while sitting in their ivory towers
...
If not, I made a
note to myself that I should be a conduit between him and the underbelly of society
...
It was that time of night when even the nocturnal animals are
reluctant to disturb the reigning peace
...
But I hadn’t made any choice
...

I remembered a tale
...

“Go away!” they shouted at him
...
”
As long as I knew myself, I would be all right
...

The moon showered me with its warm glow
...
I thanked God for this blessed moment and left myself in His hands
...
Only children would mistake a toy for the real thing
...
In this life
stay away from all kinds of extremities, for they will destroy your inner balance
...
A Sufi always remains mild and moderate
...
He can be as great a preacher as
everyone says, but in the end the breadth and scope of every speaker are determined by those of his
audience
...
While pretty flowers are instantly plucked, few people pay
attention to plants with thorns and prickles
...

Isn’t it the same with the garden of love? How can love be worthy of its name if one selects solely the
pretty things and leaves out the hardships? It is easy to enjoy the good and dislike the bad
...
The real challenge is to love the good and the bad together, not because you need to take the rough
with the smooth but because you need to go beyond such descriptions and accept love in its entirety
...
I cannot sleep
...
On this last day of October, the air has a new chill
and the winds blow stronger, announcing the departure of autumn
...
While preaching to large crowds, I always take care
to neither forget nor remember my audience
...
Hundreds of people listen to me every week, but I always talk to one person
alone—the one who hears my words echo in his heart and who knows me like no other
...
The animal’s mane had
been braided with strands of gold and tiny silver bells
...
In a
measured pace, we passed by shabby stores and houses with thatched roofs
...
Most of these
people wanted me to pray for them; some simply wished to walk close to me
...
These
were the ones who worried me
...
His
movements were deft and focused, and he exuded an aura of self-sufficient competence
...

No beard
...
And though his face was as open as a man’s face could ever be, his expression
was inscrutable
...
Over the years I had seen wandering dervishes of all
sorts pass through Konya in their quest for God
...
They either wore their hair very long
or shaved it off completely
...
So when I saw
the dervish for the first time, it wasn’t his outer shell that startled me
...

His black eyes blazing at me sharper than daggers, he stood in the middle of the street and raised his
arms high and wide, as if he wanted to halt not only the procession but also the flow of time
...
My horse got nervous and started to snort loudly, jerking its
head up and down
...

Before my eyes the dervish approached my horse, which was shying and dancing about, and whispered
something inaudible to it
...
A wave of excitement rippled through the crowd, and I heard
someone mutter, “That’s black magic!”
Oblivious to his surroundings, the dervish eyed me curiously
...
I came here today to ask you a question, if I may?”
“Go ahead,” I said under my breath
...
”
I was so stunned to hear this that I couldn’t speak for a moment
...
No one had ever dared to address me like this before
...
The dervish had already turned his back and was walking away
...
“I want to hear your question
...
“All right, do tell me, please, which of
the two is greater, do you think: the Prophet Muhammad or the Sufi Bistami?”
“What kind of a question is that?” I said
...
Still
studying my face carefully, he insisted, “Please think about it
...
The question didn’t seem so absurd anymore
...
A furtive smile, like a passing
breeze, crossed the lips of the dervish
...
He was a man with a
question—a question I hadn’t thought about before
...

“I’ll compare the two statements and tell you why, even though Bistami’s statement sounds higher, it is in
fact the other way round
...

“You see, God’s love is an endless ocean, and human beings strive to get as much water as they can out
of it
...
Some people
have barrels, some buckets, while some others have only got bowls
...

“Bistami’s container was relatively small, and his thirst was quenched after a mouthful
...
It was wonderful that he recognized the divine in himself, but even then there still
remains a distinction between God and Self
...
As for the Prophet, he was the Elect of
God and had a much bigger cup to fill
...
No wonder he
said, ‘We do not know You as we should,’ although he certainly knew Him as no other did
...
He then placed his hand on his
heart in a gesture of gratitude and stayed like that for a few seconds
...

I stared past the dervish into the pearl gray landscape that was typical of our town at this time of the
year
...
The dervish looked at me with renewed interest, and in
the dying light of the setting sun, for a split second, I could swear that I saw an amber aura around him
...
And I bowed to him
...
After a while the crowd around us began to stir nervously, having
watched our exchange with an astonishment that verged on disapproval
...

The dervish must have sensed the censure in the air
...

“Wait,” I objected
...
Stay!”
I glimpsed a trace of thoughtfulness in his face, a wistful pucker of the lips, as if he wanted to say more
but simply couldn’t or wouldn’t
...

And how about you, great preacher? Tell me, how big is your cup?
Then there was nothing else to say
...
I took a step toward the dervish, getting so
close I could see the flecks of gold in his black eyes
...
Not once, but more than a dozen times
...
A tall, slender man with a veil on his face, his fingers aflame
...
The dervish who
stood across from me was no other than the man I had been seeing in my dreams
...
But instead of feeling ecstatic with joy, as I always thought I
would be, I was seized by cold dread
...
The two of them were so
different in every respect that she wondered what they could possibly have in common to e-mail each
other about so frequently
...
With every new e-mail from him,
another piece of that puzzle fell into place
...

She had learned from his blog that Aziz was a professional photographer and an avid globe-trotter who
found navigating his way through the farthest corners of the world as natural and easy as taking a stroll
around the neighborhood park
...
Traveling with only a backpack and a reed flute, he had
made friends in places Ella couldn’t even find on the map
...

Ella thought Aziz was a gushing waterfall
...
Where she
hesitated and worried before acting, he acted first and worried later, if he ever worried at all
...
He wore many hats and he wore them
well
...
She separated issues into clear-cut
categories, organizing her world pretty much as she organized her house, neat and tidy
...

Though she was by no means an atheist and enjoyed performing a few rituals every now and then, Ella
believed that the major problem consuming the world today, just as in the past, was religion
...
Fanatics of all religions were bad and unbearable, but deep inside she thought that fanatics of
Islam were the worst
...
A die-hard meat eater, he said he would
never refuse a plate of well-cooked shish kebab
...
” Ever since
then he had shared bread with hundreds of mystics from every country and religion, and he declared them
“brothers and sisters along the path
...
” Language, he said, did more to hide than reveal the Truth, and as a result
people constantly misunderstood and misjudged one another
...
In general, one shouldn’t be too rigid about
anything because “to live meant to constantly shift colors
...
Literally and metaphorically
...
She spent a considerable part of her days obsessing over plans for the next year, the next month,
the next day, or even the next minute
...

For Aziz, on the other hand, time centered on this very moment, and anything other than now was an
illusion
...
” Love could only be here and now
...
”
“What a bizarre thing to say,” Ella wrote him back, “to a woman who has always put too much thought
into the past and even more thought into the future but somehow never even touched the present moment
...
I had gone deer hunting with several
friends and came back only the next day
...
Who was this dervish, people gossiped, and how come an erudite man like Rumi had taken
him seriously, to the point of bowing down to him?
Ever since I was a boy, I had watched people kneel in front of my father and had never imagined that it
could be any other way—that is, unless the other person was a king or a grand vizier
...
Yes, it was true, a
wandering dervish named Shams of Tabriz had challenged my father in public, and, what’s more, he was
now staying in our house
...
“Your father and the dervish are in the library
...
I headed in that direction, but Kerra stopped me
...
They asked not to be disturbed
...
Neither the next day nor the one following
...
Every morning Kerra prepared breakfast and left it on a tray in front of
their door
...

Perturbed, jittery, I was grabbed by an ill mood during this period
...
Never minding what would happen if
they suddenly opened the door and found me eavesdropping there, I spent a lot of time hunched over,
trying to comprehend what they were talking about
...
I couldn’t
see much either
...
Without much to
see or hear, I allowed my mind busily to fill in the silences, fabricating the conversations they must be
having
...
By this time she was more
desperate than I to learn what was going on
...

But it was a different story when my brother, Sultan Walad, caught me eavesdropping
...

“You have no right to spy on other people, especially not on your father,” he reprimanded
...
“Honestly, brother, doesn’t it bother you that our father spends his time with a stranger? It
has been more than a month now
...
Doesn’t that upset you?”
“Our father hasn’t brushed anyone aside,” my brother said
...
Instead of nagging and complaining like a toddler, you should be happy for our father
...
”
That was the sort of thing only my brother could say
...
Always the nice boy, he was the darling of the family and the
neighborhood, my father’s favorite son
...
I was crouched at the door again, eavesdropping on a thicker silence than usual, when
all of a sudden I heard the dervish speak up
...
Every day we discussed another of The Forty Rules of
the Religion of Love
...
Your absence might have upset
your family
...
“Don’t worry
...
”
“Well, I don’t know anything about your wife, but your two boys are as different as night and day,”
Shams responded
...
His heart is darkened with resentment and envy
...
How could he say such awful things about me when we hadn’t even met?
“He thinks I don’t know him, but I do,” said the dervish a little while later
...
”
I felt a sudden chill pass across me as every hair on my arms stood on end
...
My father’s eyes widened with
incomprehension, but it didn’t take long for his shock to be replaced by anger
...

Ignoring that question, I pointed at Shams and exclaimed, “Why don’t you first ask him how he dares to
talk about me like that?”
My father didn’t say a word
...

“Please, Father, Kerra misses you
...
How can you turn your back on all your
loved ones for a lousy dervish?”
As soon as those words came out of my mouth, I regretted them, but it was too late
...
I had never seen him like this before
...
Get out of here—this minute,” my father said
...
Do not talk to me until you have looked inside and recognized your mistake
...

With a sinking heart, I left the room, my palms wet, my knees trembling
...
Since the death of my mother eight years ago, this was the second time I
had felt abandoned by a parent
...
Open my mind so I may see the Truth
...
In front of us extended the seven
stages on the Path to Truth—seven maqamat every ego had to go through in order to attain Oneness
...
Most human beings are stuck there, struggling and suffering in the service
of their ego but always holding others responsible for their continuing unhappiness
...
Instead of blaming other
people all the time, the person who has reached this stage blames himself, sometimes to the point of selfeffacement
...

In the third stage, the person is more mature and the ego has evolved into the Inspired Nafs
...
Anyone who has made it this far will possess and display patience,
perseverance, wisdom, and humility
...
Nevertheless, many
of the people who reach the third level feel an urge to dwell here, losing the will or the courage to go
further
...

Those who manage to go further reach the Valley of Wisdom and come to know the Serene Nafs
...
Generosity, gratitude,
and an unwavering sense of contentment regardless of the hardships in life are the main characteristics
accompanying anyone who has arrived here
...
Those who are here
will be pleased with whatever situation God places them in
...

In the next stage, the Pleasing Nafs, one becomes a lantern to humanity, radiating energy to everyone
who asks for it, teaching and illuminating like a true master
...
Wherever he goes, he will make a big difference in other people’s lives
...

Finally, in the seventh stage, one attains the Purified Nafs and becomes Insan-i Kâmil, a perfect human
being
...

The stages along the path are easy to summarize, difficult to experience
...
The route from the first
to the last stage is by no means linear
...
Given the many traps along the
way, it is no wonder that in every century only a few people manage to reach the final stages
...
He wanted me to
consider how far I was willing to go to efface my personality in order to be absorbed in God
...

“How about you, great preacher?” he was asking me
...
Yet I cannot help but wish that I were more knowledgeable
in religion, history, and philosophy and all the things Rumi and Shams must be talking about day and night
...
When you are born a girl, you are
taught how to cook and clean, wash dirty clothes, mend old socks, make butter and cheese, and feed
babies
...
But that’s
about it
...

In the first year of our marriage, I used to sneak into Rumi’s library at every opportunity
...
I knew how much Rumi adored his books, most of which had been handed down to him by
his late father, Baha’ al-Din
...
Many nights he would stay
awake until dawn reading it, although I suspected he knew the whole text by heart
...

“Each of these books is a priceless legacy from my ancestors
...
”
I learned the hard way just how much his books meant to him
...
I took out all the books from the shelves
and wiped their covers with a piece of velvet dabbed in rosewater
...
In order to
ward him off, it is the custom to write a note of warning inside each book: “Stand thou still, Kebikec,
stay away from this book!” How was I to know that it wasn’t only Kebikec who was supposed to stay
away from my husband’s books, but me as well?
That afternoon I dusted and cleaned every book in the library
...
Only when I heard a dry, distant voice behind me did I
realize how much time I had spent there
...
In
all our eight years of marriage, that was the only time he’d spoken to me like that
...
“I wanted to make it a surprise
...
In fact, I’d rather you did not
enter this room at all
...
I understood and
accepted that the world of books was not and never had been, nor ever would be, for me
...
A wound that I didn’t even know I had began to
bleed
...
My
real parents were people who worked hard and aged before their time
...
I was the only one in the house who could see the ghosts
...
I tried to explain, to no avail, that they
didn’t need to be frightened or worried, since none of my dead siblings looked scary or unhappy
...

One day a hermit passed by our village
...
That evening, as we all sat by the fireplace and grilled goat cheese, the hermit told
us enchanting stories from faraway lands
...
I found a seashell there on the beach, big and coiled, and put it in my pocket
...

When I opened my eyes, I found myself lying on the floor with everyone in the house around me,
looking worried
...

“She is back!” My sister clapped her hands with glee
...
Then she turned to the hermit, explaining, “Ever since she was
a little girl, Kimya has been having fainting spells
...
”
In the morning the hermit thanked us for our hospitality and bade us farewell
...
She is very
gifted
...
You should send her to a school—”
“What would a girl need an education for?” my mother exclaimed
...
She’s a talented carpet weaver, you
know
...
“Well, she could make an even better scholar someday
...
Do you claim to
know better than God?” he asked
...
”
My mother shook her head
...
Knowing his love for
education and knowledge, and his appreciation of my abilities, it didn’t surprise me to hear him ask, “We
don’t know of any scholars
...
He said, “I know a wonderful
scholar in Konya named Mawlana Jalal ad-Din Rumi
...
Take
her to him
...
”
When the hermit was gone, my mother threw her arms up
...
Soon there will be another
mouth to feed in this house
...
A girl doesn’t need books
...
”
I would have much preferred it if my mother had opposed my going away for other reasons
...
But she said none of this
...

Shortly after, my father and I traveled to Konya
...
When he walked out, I was too embarrassed to look up at him
...
His
fingers were long, supple, and slender, more like an artisan’s than a scholar’s
...

“My daughter is very gifted
...
We have been told you are the
most learned man in the region
...
He must have been used to
such requests
...
But on the way back, I was pleasantly surprised when I spotted a young woman
standing in a corner by herself, her round face still and white as if carved of marble
...
She
looked stunned, but after a brief hesitation she returned my wave
...

When I nodded, the woman broke into a smile, clapping her hands
...
”
We walked back toward my father and Rumi
...

“Come here, Kimya,” said Rumi
...
Tell me, what is it in
books that you like so much?”
I swallowed hard, unable to answer, paralyzed
...

I wanted to answer correctly, with a response that would make my father proud of me, except I didn’t
know what that was
...

My father and I would have gone back to our village empty-handed had the young woman not
intervened then
...
It’s going to be fine, I
promise
...
I’m not
afraid of hard work
...
“That’s very good,” he said, yet then he paused as if he had just
remembered a nasty detail
...
Even if we study intensely and make good progress, you’ll
soon get married and have children
...
”
Now I didn’t know what to say and felt disheartened, almost guilty
...
Once again it was the young woman who came to my help
...
”
Rumi laughed when I conveyed the message
...
But let me assure you, Kerra doesn’t get involved in my teaching responsibilities
...
You were talking about Gevher, the mother of his two sons
...
“The mother of your sons
...
“Gevher is dead, my child,” he said dryly
...
“I’m sure she didn’t mean ill, Master
...

She never disrespects her elders
...
“Your late wife is here
...
She has dark brown almond eyes, pretty freckles, and she wears a long yellow robe
...
“She wants me to tell you about her

slippers
...
They are very
pretty
...
“She loved them
...
But when he spoke again, his voice was gentle and friendly, without a trace of gloom
...
“Let’s go to
my house
...
I’m sure she’ll make an excellent student
...
”
Rumi then turned to me and asked, “Will you tell this to Gevher?”
“There is no need, Master
...
“She says she needs to go now
...
”
Rumi smiled warmly
...
There was now an easiness hanging in the air that hadn’t been
there before
...
I had never been close to my mother, but as if to compensate for her lack, God was giving
me two fathers, my real father and my adopted father
...
Kerra was
loving and compassionate, more so than my own mother, and Rumi’s sons were welcoming, especially his
elder son, who in time became a big brother to me
...
As much as I missed my father and siblings, there hasn’t been a single
moment when I regretted coming to Konya and joining Rumi’s family
...

That is, until Shams of Tabriz came
...


Ella

NORTHAMPTON, JUNE 9, 2008

Being one who had never enjoyed solitude, Ella found she preferred it lately
...

She could have finished earlier, but she did not want to
...
This week, for the first time, she
skipped the Fusion Cooking Club, unwilling to cook and chat with fifteen women who had similar lives at
a time when she wasn’t sure what to do with hers
...

Ella treated her communication with Aziz as a secret, of which suddenly she had way too many
...
In the
span of a few weeks, she had converted from a woman whose life was as transparent as the skin of a
newborn baby into a woman wallowing in secrets and lies
...
It was as if she were waiting, confidently and patiently,
for something momentous to happen
...

By this time e-mails weren’t enough
...
Now, despite the five-hour time
difference, they talked on the phone almost every day
...
When she laughed, her laughter came in ripples, punctuated by short gasps, as if she weren’t sure
how much more to laugh
...

“Just go with the flow,” he said
...
Avi had started taking private classes in mathematics, and Orly was now seeing a counselor for
her eating disorder
...
Meanwhile Jeannette had set off a
bombshell by announcing her breakup with Scott
...
Ella wondered if “space” was a code for a new love, given that neither Jeannette
nor Scott had lost any time in finding someone new
...
If there was one thing she had learned from her
correspondence with Aziz, it was that the more she remained calm and composed, the more her children
shared with her
...

Somehow things were working more smoothly and closer to her liking than in the times when she had
tirelessly tried to help and repair
...
She watched events unfold and days waft by, not necessarily coldly or indifferently but with
visible detachment
...

“The fifth element,” she muttered to herself several times during the day
...
Was this why all of a sudden he wanted to spend more time with her? He came home earlier these
days, and Ella suspected he had not been seeing other women for a while
...

“I am right as rain,” she answered, smiling back each time
...
Now that the pretenses between them were gone, she could see their defects
and mistakes in all their nakedness
...
And she had a feeling David was about
to do the same
...
Then they remained silent, acknowledging the
blunt fact that they didn’t have much else to talk about
...

Sometimes she caught her husband looking at her intently, waiting for her to say something, almost
anything
...
But she wasn’t
sure she wanted to know
...
Now, however, she
stopped acting as if she didn’t know what he’d been doing when he was away
...
It was precisely this new aloofness that scared her husband
...

A month ago if David had taken even a tiny step to improve their marriage, she would have felt
grateful
...
Not anymore
...
How had she arrived at this point? How had the fulfilled mother of three discovered
her own despondency? More important, if she was unhappy, as she once told Jeannette she was, why was
she not doing the things unhappy people did all the time? No crying on the bathroom floor, no sobbing into
the kitchen sink, no melancholic long walks away from the house, no throwing things at the walls …
nothing
...
She felt more stable than she’d ever been, even as she was
swiftly gliding away from the life she’d known
...
Did she look younger? Prettier? Or perhaps more full of
life? She couldn’t see any difference
...


Kerra

KONYA, MAY 5, 1245

Branches that once sagged under the weight of snow are now blossoming outside our window, and still
Shams of Tabriz is with us
...
In the beginning I thought they would soon get bored with
each other, but no such thing occurred
...
When together, either
they are strangely silent or they talk in an incessant murmur interspersed with peals of laughter, making me
wonder why they never run out of words
...

The bond that unites them is a nest for two, where there is no room for a third person
...
Even their moods seem to depend on each other
...
Either way, I cannot recognize my husband anymore
...
The only time I feel close to him is when he is in deep sleep
...

I keep telling myself that this is a temporary stage
...
He is a wandering
dervish, after all
...
He belongs to this town and to his students
...
But patience doesn’t come easily, and it’s getting harder with each passing day
...

“Kerra is a Christian
...
“A leading scholar of Islam should not marry a
woman outside his faith
...
Neither then nor later on
...

Anatolia is made up of a mixture of religions, peoples, and cuisines
...
Ours is an ever-liquid world where everything flows and mixes
...

Because I am the wife of a famous scholar, people expect me to think highly of scholars, but the truth is,
I don’t
...
Muslim
scholars criticize Christianity for accepting the Trinity, and Christian scholars criticize Islam for seeing
the Qur’an as a perfect book
...
But if you ask
me, when it comes to the basics, ordinary Christians and ordinary Muslims have more in common with
each other than with their own scholars
...
And the

hardest thing for a Christian converting to Islam is said to be letting go of the Trinity
...

Yet for me the idea that Jesus was not a son of God but a servant of God wasn’t that hard to believe
...
I haven’t told this to anyone, not even to Rumi, but
sometimes I yearn to see Mary’s kind brown eyes
...

The truth is, ever since Shams of Tabriz came to our house, I have been so distressed and confused that
I find myself longing for Mary more than ever
...
At times like these, guilt consumes me, as if I
am cheating on my new religion
...
Not even my neighbor Safiya, who is my confidante in all other matters
...
I wish I could share it with my husband, but I cannot see how
...
Rumi used to be everything to me
...
I never knew it was possible to live with someone under the same roof, sleep in the same bed,
and still feel that he was not really there
...

Do they think God resides in Mecca or Medina? Or in some local mosque somewhere? How can they
imagine that God could be confined to limited space when He openly says, Neither My heaven nor My
earth embraces Me, but the heart of My believing servant does embrace Me
...
Pity
the ignorant who assume they can negotiate and settle debts with God
...
A living God! Why would I want a dead
God? Alive He is
...
Why would I wallow in endless fears and
anxieties, always restricted by prohibitions and limitations? Infinitely compassionate He is
...
All-Praiseworthy He is
...
The name is al-Hamid
...
Beautiful beyond all dreams and
hopes
...
Through famine and flood, dry and athirst, I will sing and
dance for Him till my knees buckle, my body collapses, and my heart stops pounding
...
Gratefully, joyously, and relentlessly, I commend His splendor and
generosity
...

Recalling another rule on my list, I felt a fresh wave of happiness and hope
...
“I breathed into him of My Spirit,” God says
...
Ask yourself, just how often do you
behave like a delegate, if you ever do so? Remember, it falls upon each of us to discover the divine
spirit inside and live by it
...
Looking at the whole universe with fear-tinted
eyes, it is no wonder that they see a plethora of things to be afraid of
...
Always resentful of somebody for this or that, they seem to expect God
the Almighty to step in on their behalf and take their pitiful revenges
...

There is such a thing in faith as not being able to see the forest for the trees
...
Individual rules need to be read in the light of
the whole
...

Instead of searching for the essence of the Qur’an and embracing it as a whole, however, the bigots
single out a specific verse or two, giving priority to the divine commands that they deem to be in tune with
their fearful minds
...
Unable to cross the bridge, the
sinful will tumble into the pits of hell underneath, where they will suffer forever
...
This, in a nutshell, is their notion of afterlife
...
So is heaven
...
Every time we fall in love, we ascend to heaven
...
This is what Rule Number Twenty-five
is about
...
He will tell you what hell is
...
He will tell you what heaven is
...

Love is the reason
...

And when you love God so much, when you love each and every one of His creations because of Him
and thanks to Him, extraneous categories melt into thin air
...
All you amount to is a zero so big it covers your whole being
...
Not any religion or
cultural system
...
…
My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless
...
But there is a poet in him
...

Yes, Rumi is right
...
He belongs in the Kingdom of Love
...


Ella

NORTHAMPTON, JUNE 12, 2008

By now Ella had finished reading Sweet Blasphemy and was putting the final touches on her editorial
report
...
It wouldn’t be right
...
She hadn’t even told Aziz
that after reading his novel she had bought a copy of Rumi’s poems and was now reading at least a few
poems every night before going to sleep
...
But on the twelfth of June, something happened that blurred the line between the
two forever
...
There being no photos of him on his Web site,
she had no idea what he looked like
...
But over time her curiosity began to get the best of her, and the need to put a face to his messages
tugged at her
...

So, out of the blue, she sent him a picture of herself
...
She was smiling in the picture—a halfpleased, half-troubled smile
...
Above them the sky was a patchwork of grays and purples
...
Or so she hoped
...
It was her way of asking Aziz to send her his photo
...

When Ella saw the picture Aziz sent her, she thought it must have been taken somewhere in the Far
East, not that she had ever been there
...
Dressed in a black shirt and black trousers, he had a lean build, a
sharp nose, high cheekbones, and long, dark, wavy hair falling to his shoulders
...
He wore a single
earring and a necklace with an intricate shape that Ella couldn’t make out
...

As she inspected the man in the picture, taking in every detail, Ella had a feeling she recognized him
from somewhere
...

And suddenly she knew
...
Zahara
...
Ella wondered if Aziz
had deliberately based his character’s looks on himself
...

As she considered this, another possibility arose
...
Zahara could be connected in
a way that went beyond a simple literary gimmick
...
First, she felt the need to go back to Sweet

Blasphemy and read the novel again, with a different eye, not for the sake of the story this time but to find
the author hidden in its central character, to find the Aziz in Shams of Tabriz
...
Who was he? What was his story? In an
earlier e-mail, he had told her he was Scottish, but then why did he have an Eastern name—Aziz? Was it
his real name? Or was it his Sufi name? And by the way, what did it mean to be a Sufi?
There was something else that occupied her mind: the very first, almost imperceptible signs of desire
...
But it was there
...
She realized that she desired the man in the
picture and wondered what it would be like to kiss him
...


Baybars the Warrior

KONYA, JULY 10, 1245

“Baybars, my son, trust no one,” my uncle says, “because the world is getting more corrupt each day
...
Since his death everything has been going downhill
...

Even at the time of the Prophet, people had their share of hostilities, didn’t they? War is the core of life
...
Nature is cruel
...
To stay alive you need to fight
...

And fight we must
...
Things took a
nasty turn five years ago when a hundred Mongol diplomats sent out by Genghis Khan to negotiate for
peace were all slaughtered
...
How and why the diplomats were killed, nobody could say
...
It could be true
...
But I do know that in five years the Mongols
devastated the whole Khorasan area, causing destruction and death everywhere they galloped
...
The
only reason the Mongols didn’t wipe us out is that it is more profitable for them to keep us under their
yoke
...
Specialized in more ways than one, they use a vast
array of weapons, each designed for a specific purpose
...
On top of that, they have arrows that can penetrate armor, set whole
villages ablaze, poison their victims, or pierce the hardest bones in the human body
...
With such well-developed
warfare skills and no God to fear, the Mongols attack and annihilate every city, town, and village on their
way
...
And it is not only the
Mongols
...
When surrounded by cold-blooded enemies on all
sides, how can we afford to be peaceful?
This is why people like Rumi get on my nerves
...
For me
he is a coward who spreads nothing but cowardice
...
At a time when the enemies of Islam are
looming large, what does Rumi preach? Peace! Passivity! Submission!
Brother, stand the pain
...
The sky will bow to your beauty
If you do
...

A particular glows with the universal
...
He says for every

prophet there is a community of followers and for every community there is an appointed time
...
” If it were up to him, we
would all just sit in our houses and wait to be slaughtered by our enemies or be stricken by some other
calamity
...
There are
people who have heard him say, “When school and mosque and minaret get torn down, then dervishes can
begin their community
...
Many other powerful and wealthy people at the time
had received an open invitation from the sultan of Seljuks, among them Rumi’s father
...
It’s easy to preach tolerance when you have a history like
that!
The other day I heard a story that Shams of Tabriz told a group of people in the bazaar
...
Ali was about
to thrust his sword into the other man’s heart when all of a sudden the infidel raised his head and spit at
him
...
The infidel was stunned
...

“Because I’m very angry at you,” said Ali
...
“I don’t understand
...
My ego was provoked, yearning for
revenge
...
And that would be a huge mistake
...
The infidel was so touched that he became Ali’s friend and follower, and in
time he converted to Islam of his own free will
...
And what is his message? Let the
infidels spit in your face! I say, over my dead body! Infidel or not, nobody can spit in the face of Baybars
the Warrior
...

Master Sameed used to say to me, “Even if there might be a Shams equivalent in some people, what matters is, where are the
Rumis to see it?”
Warm regards,
Aziz

Dear Aziz,
Who is Master Sameed?
Best,
Ella

Beloved Ella,
It’s a long story
...

Love,
Ella

Rumi

KONYA, AUGUST 2, 1245

Bountiful is your life, full and complete
...
Like a mirror that reflects what is absent rather than
present, he shows you the void in your soul—the void you have resisted seeing
...
Sometimes it can be a child to look after
...
All the prophets have given the same advice: Find the one who will be your
mirror! For me that mirror is Shams of Tabriz
...

It’s as if for years on end you compile a personal dictionary
...
” At every major turning point in life,
you refer to this dictionary, hardly ever feeling the need to question its premises
...

“All your definitions need to be redefined,” he says
...
”
And you, for some reason unbeknownst to your mind but obvious to your heart, instead of raising
objections or getting cross with him, gladly comply
...
Our friendship
has taught me so much
...

When you love someone this much, you expect everyone around you to feel the same way, sharing your
joy and euphoria
...

How could I possibly make my family and friends see what I see? How could I describe the
indescribable? Shams is my Sea of Mercy and Grace
...
I call him the King
of Kings of Spirit
...
His
companionship is like the fourth reading of the Qur’an—a journey that can only be experienced from
within but never grasped from the outside
...
To them Shams is an
eccentric dervish
...
To me, however, he is the epitome of Love that moves the whole universe, at times
retreating into the background and holding every piece together, at times exploding in bursts
...
Once in thirty-eight years
...
But there is no way I can answer them
...

The quandary I find myself in reminds me of the story of Layla and Harun ar-Rashid, the famous
Abbasid emperor
...

This Layla must be a very special creature, he thought
...
Perhaps she is an enchantress unequaled in beauty and charm
...

Finally one day they brought Layla to the emperor’s palace
...
Not that Layla was ugly, crippled, or old
...
She was a human being with ordinary human needs and several defects, a simple woman,
like countless others
...
“Are you the one Majnun has been crazy about? Why, you
look so ordinary
...
“Yes, I am Layla
...
“You have to see
me with the eyes of Majnun
...
”
How can I explain the same mystery to my family, friends, or students? How can I make them
understand that for them to grasp what is so special about Shams of Tabriz, they have to start looking at
him with the eyes of Majnun?
Is there a way to grasp what love means without becoming a lover first?
Love cannot be explained
...

Love cannot be explained, yet it explains all
...
As much as I
miss our lessons and feel neglected, I am not upset with him
...
Or maybe it’s because I can understand better than anyone else how he feels, for deep
inside I, too, am swept up by the bewildering current that is Shams of Tabriz
...
Their love for each other is so visible
and intense, and what they have is so rare, that one can’t help feeling despondent around them, seized by
the realization that a bond of such magnitude is missing in one’s own life
...
So many times I’ve caught him looking daggers at Shams
...
We are all sitting on a powder keg
...

Part of me is bitter at Shams for taking Rumi away from us
...
I have been struggling with these mixed feelings for some time now, but today, I
am afraid, I might have given myself away
...
In the
past, Rumi and I had always followed the order in which the verses were handed down to us, but now that
there was nobody guiding me and our lives had been turned topsy-turvy, I saw no harm in reading without
an order
...
It turned out to
be al-Nisa, the one verse in the whole book that has troubled me the most
...
As I stood there reading the verse
one more time, it occurred to me to ask for help
...
So I grabbed my Qur’an and went to his room
...
He looked so handsome I had to avert my eyes
...
“I was looking for Mawlana
...
”
“Why the rush? Stay,” Shams said
...
Perhaps I could be
of help
...
“Well, there is this verse in the Qur’an that I find a bit hard to
understand,” I said tentatively
...
She’ll open her veil only if
she sees that the onlooker is soft and compassionate at heart
...
“There are some parts in it where men are said to be superior to women
...
… ”
“Is that so?” Shams asked with such exaggerated interest that I couldn’t be sure whether he was serious
or teasing me
...

“Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others and
because they spend out of their property; the good women are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen
as Allah has guarded; and (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave
them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them; then if they obey you, do not seek a way against

them; surely Allah is High, Great
...

“Men are the support of women as God gives some more means than others, and because they spend
of their wealth (to provide for them)
...
As for women you feel are averse, talk to them suasively; then leave
them alone in bed (without molesting them) and go to bed with them (when they are willing)
...
Surely God is sublime and great
...

“Yes I do,” I said
...
The former sounds as if it gives consent to married
men to beat their wives, whereas the latter advises them to simply walk away
...
Why is that?”
“Why is that? Why is that?” Shams echoed several times, as if enjoying the question
...
Have you ever gone swimming in a river?”
I nodded as a childhood memory returned to me
...
Of the younger girl who had spent many happy afternoons in those streams
with her sister and her friends, there was now little left behind
...

“When you look at a river from a distance, Kimya, you might think there is only one watercourse
...
The river conceals various currents,
all of them flowing in harmony and yet completely separate from one another
...
My heart skipped a beat
...

“The Qur’an is a gushing river,” he said
...
But
for those swimming in it, there are four currents
...
”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” I said, although I was beginning to
...
Many
people are like that
...
No wonder when they read a verse like the Nisa,
they arrive at the conclusion that men are held superior to women
...
”
“How about the other currents?” I asked
...

“There are three more currents
...
As
your awareness expands, so does your grasp of the Qur’an
...
”
Listening to him, I felt both empty and fulfilled at the same time
...

“The third undercurrent is the esoteric, batini, reading
...
And each and
every one of us, including you and me, has both femininity and masculinity in us, in varying degrees and
shades
...
”
“Are you telling me that I have manliness inside me?”
“Oh, yes, definitely
...
”
I couldn’t help but chuckle
...
“Every man has a degree of womanliness inside
...

I stifled a giggle, feeling like a little girl
...
He was a
strange man, his voice oddly charming, his hands lithe and muscular, and his stare like a crease of
sunlight, making everything that it fell upon look more intense and alive
...
I wanted to protect him
...

Shams put his hand on my shoulder, his face so close to mine that I could feel the warmth of his breath
...
He held me captive with his touch, caressing my cheeks,
his fingertips as warm as a flame against my skin
...
Now his finger moved down,
reaching my bottom lip
...
But no sooner had he touched my lips than Shams drew his hand back
...

I walked out, my head dizzy and my cheeks flushed
...
What was it? How could
one ever achieve that kind of depth?
And what happened to those who took the plunge?

Sultan Walad

KONYA, SEPTEMBER 4, 1245

Being his older brother, I have always worried for Aladdin, but never as much as I do now
...

Ready to squabble over almost anything, no matter how senseless or small, he is so petulant these days
that even the children on the street take fright when they see him coming
...
Just this morning I noticed a new wrinkle next to
his mouth from holding it in a tight line all the time
...
It was
Aladdin, his lips set in a tense scowl
...
He asked me what I was doing
...
“It’s good to have an extra copy of every one of
them
...
“Father has stopped giving lectures or sermons
...
Don’t you see he has thrust aside all his
responsibilities?”
“This is a temporary situation,” I said
...
”
“You are only fooling yourself
...
”
Aladdin emitted a chuckle, waiting for me to agree with him, but when I said nothing, he started pacing
the room
...

“People are gossiping,” Aladdin went on morosely
...
If he doesn’t get a hold of himself soon, he might never be able to find students again in this
town
...
And I wouldn’t blame them
...
He was only a boy, really, although his every
gesture and expression said he felt on the edge of manhood
...
Just who the girl could be, I didn’t know, and his close
friends wouldn’t tell me
...

Don’t listen to what others say
...
”
As soon as these words came from my mouth, I regretted my patronizing tone
...
Like
bone-dry wood, Aladdin easily catches fire
...
“Is that what you call this calamity that has befallen us? How can you
be so blind?”
I took out another parchment, caressing its delicate surface
...
Even after a
hundred years passed, people could read my father’s teachings and be inspired by them
...

Still complaining, Aladdin stood next to me and glanced at my work, his eyes brooding and bitter
...


With a plunging heart, I realized it wasn’t Shams he was truly angry at
...

Aladdin was angry at my father for not loving him enough and for being who he was
...

“They say Shams put a spell on our father,” Aladdin said
...
”
“The Assassins!” I protested
...
”
The Assassins were a sect famous for their meticulous killing methods and extensive use of poisonous
substances
...
They had gone as far as leaving a poisoned cake in Saladin’s tent with a note
that said You are in our hands
...
How could people think Shams could be linked with this sect of
terror?
I put my hand on Aladdin’s shoulder and forced him to look at me
...
”
Aladdin briefly considered this possibility
...
They left the castle of Alamut, pledging to spread terror and trouble
wherever they went
...
”
I was starting to lose patience
...
So
agitated was he by his conspiracy theories that red blotches had formed on his cheeks
...
“Look, people say all sorts of things all the time,” I said
...
Clear your mind of spiteful thoughts
...
”
Aladdin groaned resentfully, but I continued nonetheless
...
You
do not have to
...
”
Aladdin looked at me with bitterness and contempt
...
He was also disappointed in me
...
Perhaps he thought that in order to earn my father’s favor, I was being
subservient and spineless
...

Still, I could not get angry at him, and even if I did, my anger would not last very long
...
To me he would always be that boy running after street cats, getting his feet dirty in rain puddles,
and nibbling slices of bread topped with yogurt all day long
...
All he did was to look down at his feet as if suddenly ashamed of
his shoes and purse his bottom lip until its color was gone
...
I wish he would have cried
...
“You came home
crying, with a bloody nose
...

“She told you that whenever you got angry with someone, you should replace the face of that person in
your mind with the face of someone you love
...
”
A furtive smile, as swift and timid as a passing cloud, hovered over Aladdin’s lips, and I was amazed
at how much it softened his expression
...


My heart melted
...
As he hugged me back, I felt
confident that he would repair his relationship with Shams and the harmony in our house would soon be
restored
...


Kerra

KONYA, OCTOBER 22, 1245

Beyond the closed door, Shams and Rumi were talking fervently about God knows what the other day
...
Normally
Shams doesn’t say anything when I am around, as if my presence forces him into silence
...
He eats very little anyhow
...
But this time as soon as he took a bite
from my halva, his eyes lit up
...
How did you make it?” he asked
...
Instead of seeing the compliment for what it was, I heard myself
retort, “Why are you asking? Even if I told you how, you couldn’t make it
...
I
waited for him to say something in return, but he just stood there, mute and calm
...
And I
probably would not have remembered it again, had it not been for what transpired this morning
...
I rushed
outside, only to witness the craziest scene ever
...
From all the ink dissolving in it, the water in the fountain
had turned a vivid blue
...
No sooner had the book
submerged than he reached for another
...

I gasped in horror
...
Knowing how much Rumi adored his father and doted
upon this old manuscript, I looked at him, expecting him to throw a fit
...
I couldn’t understand
for the life of me why he didn’t say anything
...
It wasn’t
fair
...

“What are you doing?” I asked Shams
...
They are very valuable
...
“Is that what you think, too?” he asked
...

“Why don’t you say anything?” I yelled at my husband
...
“Calm down, Kerra, please
...
”
Giving me a glance over his shoulder, relaxed and confident, Shams rolled up his sleeves and started to
pull the books out of the water
...

“Is this magic? How did you do that?” I asked
...
“Even if I told you how, you couldn’t do it
...
And there, amid pots and pans, stacks of herbs and spices, I sat down and cried my heart out
...

We rode our horses for a while, through meadows and valleys and across ice-cold streams, enjoying the
breeze on our faces
...

On the way back, Shams pulled at the reins of his horse and pointed to a massive oak tree outside the
town
...
Shams placed
his cloak on the ground, and as calls to prayer echoed from mosques near and far, we prayed there
together
...
He smiled at a distant memory, but then
grew pensive and said, “A peasant gave me a ride
...
He told me your
sermons cured sadness
...
“But it all feels so far away now
...
I feel like I am done
...
“But instead of a preaching mind, you have
a chanting heart now
...
The dawn had erased what remained of the night
before, turning the sky into a blameless orange
...

“People everywhere are struggling on their own for fulfillment, but without any guidance as to how to
achieve it,” murmured Shams with a shake of his head
...
And I’ll do everything in
my power to help you
...
”
“Don’t say that,” I protested
...
”
Oblivious to my objection, Shams continued
...
As
a famous preacher, you have been surrounded by fawning admirers
...
Can we love all of God’s creatures? It is a difficult test, and one that only a few can pass
...

“You are right,” I conceded
...
I don’t even know how ordinary
people live
...
”
With this, Shams picked up a dead branch and drew a large circle around the oak tree
...
At the same time, he began to whirl inside the circle, first slowly and tenderly
but then accelerating steadily, like a late-afternoon breeze
...
So captivating was his frenzy that I couldn’t help but feel as if the whole universe—

the earth, the stars, and the moon—spun with him
...

Finally Shams slowed down to a halt, his chest rising and falling with every ragged breath, his face
white, his voice suddenly deep, as if coming from a distant place
...

Everything and everyone is interconnected through an invisible web of stories
...
Do no harm
...
And do not gossip
behind anyone’s back—not even a seemingly innocent remark! The words that come out of our mouths
do not vanish but are perpetually stored in infinite space, and they will come back to us in due time
...
One man’s joy will make everyone smile,” he murmured
...
”
Then he turned his inquisitive gaze to me
...

“One day you will be known as the V
oice of Love,” Shams remarked
...
”
“How is that going to happen?” I asked incredulously
...
“But I am not talking about lectures or sermons
...
”
“Poetry?” My voice cracked
...
I am a scholar
...
“You, my friend, are one of the finest poets the world will
ever come to know
...
Besides, I didn’t feel like
arguing
...
We will walk on this path
together
...

When he finally spoke, he uttered those ominous words that have never left me, scarring my soul
permanently: “As much as I would love to join you, I’m afraid you will have to do it alone
...

With a wistful pucker of the lips, Shams lowered his gaze
...
”
A sudden wind blew in our direction, and the weather turned chilly, as if warning us that the fall would
soon be over
...
And that was the first time the thought of Shams’s leaving me hit me like a sharp pain
in the chest
...
How can people be so disdainful and scornful with
regard to things they know so little about? It is queer, if not frightening, how out of touch with truth people
are! They don’t understand the depth of the bond between my father and Shams
...
Because if they had, they would know that there are similar stories of spiritual
companionship, such as the story of Moses and Khidr
...
Moses was an exemplary man, great enough to become a
prophet someday, as well as a legendary commander and lawmaker
...
And that companion was no other than Khidr, the
Comforter of the Distressed and Dejected
...
God has assigned me to roam the world and do what
needs to be done
...
Can you bear to accompany me without questioning? Can you trust me fully?”
“Yes, I can,” Moses assured him
...
I promise, I won’t ask you any questions
...
But when he witnessed Khidr perform
senseless actions, like killing a young boy or sinking a boat, Moses could not hold his tongue
...

“What happened to your promise?” Khidr asked back
...
In the
end, Khidr explained the reason behind each and every one of his actions
...
His brief companionship with Khidr was to
be the most eye-opening experience in his life
...
This is how I regard Shams’s presence in my
father’s life
...
Unfortunately, Shams does
not make it easy for people to like him
...

“What do you want to see the great Mawlana for?” he asks
...
And Shams sends them away
...
But seeing these goods annoys Shams even more
...

One day a man got so upset with Shams he shouted, “What gives you the right to block Mawlana’s
door? You keep asking everyone what they are bringing! How about you? What did you bring him?”
“I brought myself,” Shams said, just loud enough to be heard
...
”
The man trudged off, mumbling something under his breath, looking more confused than enraged
...
Scarcely able to contain my apprehension, I pointed out that he had gained many
enemies lately
...
“But I have no enemies,” he
said with a shrug
...
”
“Yes, but you quarrel with people,” I objected
...
“I don’t quarrel with them, I quarrel with their ego
...
”
Then he added softly, “It is one of the forty rules: This world is like a snowy mountain that echoes
your voice
...
Therefore, if there is
someone who harbors ill thoughts about you, saying similarly bad things about him will only make
matters worse
...
Instead for forty days and
nights say and think nice things about that person
...
”
“But people are saying all sorts of things about you
...

Upon hearing this, Shams put his hand on my arm and smiled his usual calming smile
...

Two men were traveling from one town to another
...
Just when they were about to cross the water, they noticed a young, beautiful woman
standing there all alone, in need of help
...
He picked the
woman up and carried her in his arms across the stream
...

During the rest of the trip, the second traveler was unusually silent and sullen, not responding to
his friend’s questions
...
It is you who have been carrying her ever since
...
“They carry their own fears and biases on their shoulders,
crushed under all that weight
...
It didn’t happen overnight
...
Whenever I think about the past, I
fondly remember the fishing boats, their nets heavy with fish and strands of seaweed dangling like green snakes, sandpipers scurrying
along the shore pecking at worms, ragwort plants growing in the most unexpected places, and the smell of the sea in the background,
sharp and salty
...

While the world tumbled heavily into the 1960s and became the scene of student demonstrations, hijackings, and revolutions, I was
cut off from it all in my quiet, green corner
...
As a child I had a touch of both the loneliness of a shepherd and the introspectiveness of a bookseller
...
Every now and then, my heart
would constrict with a longing for adventures, but I liked Kinlochbervie and was happy with the predictability of my life
...
The first was a professional camera
...
The second was love
—a Dutch woman who was touring Europe with friends
...

She was eight years my elder, beautiful, tall, and remarkably headstrong
...
But I had early on observed that she was one more thing: a
pendulum woman
...
Always furious at what she construed as “the hypocrisy of the bourgeois lifestyle,” she questioned
every detail in life, waging battles against society
...
But I didn’t
...
I was head over heels in love
...
I
promised myself to stay by her side and protect her not only from the outside world but also from herself
...
But I know she did love me in her own self-centered and self-destructive way
...
We got married there
...
Working for an organization that specialized in immigrants’
needs, she helped traumatized people from the most troubled corners of the world find their feet in Holland
...
Families from Indonesia, Somalia, Argentina, and Palestine named their daughters after her
...
After graduating from
business school, I started working for an international firm
...
Hungry for power, I wanted to sink my teeth into important works
...
In two years we would start having children
...
I was confident of the future that awaited us
...
We were young, healthy, and in love
...
It is hard to believe I am fifty-four years old now and Margot is no longer alive
...
A staunch vegan at a time when the word hadn’t been coined, she ate only healthy things, exercised
routinely, stayed away from drugs
...
She took such
good care of herself that despite the age difference between us, I looked older than she did
...
One night, on her way back from a visit to a famous Russian journalist who had
applied for asylum, her car broke down in the middle of the highway
...
Instead of putting on the flashers and waiting for help, she got out of the car and decided to walk to the
next village
...
A vehicle hit her—a trailer from Yugoslavia
...
So completely had Margot melted into the
night
...
Love opened up my eyes to a more fulfilled life
...

Neither a boy nor an adult, I became a trapped animal
...
”
I hope I haven’t bored you with such a long letter
...
I am grounded forever
...
The truth is, I haven’t been feeling much of
anything lately
...
I don’t comb my hair or pinch my
cheeks to redden them anymore
...
They may be right
...

To my horror, it turned out to be Baybars
...

“I am sure you would have loved to lynch me that day,” I said
...
”
“Don’t mention that revolting name
...
”
“Hah! A dervish in a brothel!” Baybars snorted
...
“It’s not like that at all
...
How he managed to sneak inside without
being seen by the others, especially by the patron, was beyond my comprehension
...
But I knew it wasn’t that
...
A
man of faith
...
Other than my mother back in my childhood, Shams was the only
person who treated me with unconditional compassion
...
Whenever I told him there was no way someone like me could shed the past, he would remind me of
one of his rules: The past is an interpretation
...
The world does not move
through time as if it were a straight line, proceeding from the past to the future
...

Eternity does not mean infinite time, but simply timelessness
...

Shams always told me, “You see, the present moment is all there is and all that there ever will be
...
Then you can walk out of this brothel for
good
...
When he looked at me, his right eye looked off to the side
...
He scared me
...


“So what is your specialty?” Baybars asked after he guzzled his second beer
...
The boss would have killed me if she heard me say such things to a client, but I
didn’t care
...

But, to my disappointment, Baybars shrugged and said he didn’t care
...

“Do you want some?” he asked
...
I knew what it was
...
” He grinned as he reclined on the bed, drifting away from his
own body into a stupor of cannabis
...
Even though Genghis Khan was dead and his flesh decomposed, his ghost still accompanied
the Mongol armies, Baybars said
...
He told me about the veil of silence, as soft
and peaceful as a blanket on a cold winter night, that descended upon a battlefield after hundreds had been
killed and wounded, and dozens more were about to give up their last breath
...

“It sounds so sad,” I murmured
...
There was nothing else to talk about
...
His eyes were bloodshot, his voice hoarse, and his smell
was a repugnant mixture of cannabis, sweat, and hunger
...
I
tried to move aside and relax my thighs to lessen the pain, but he pressed both hands on my bosom with
such force that it was impossible to budge
...
Clearly
dissatisfied, he kept moving with such roughness that I feared he was going to get hard again, but then
suddenly it all came to an end
...

“Put something on,” he ordered as he rolled aside
...

“From now on, I want you to be my mistress,” he said with his jaw jutting out
...
I knew how to handle these
delicate situations, giving the client the false impression that I would love to be his mistress and serve
solely him, but for that to happen he had to spend a lot of money and make the patron happy first
...

“I can’t be your mistress,” I said
...
”
Baybars guffawed as if this were the funniest thing he had ever heard
...

I knew I shouldn’t be quarreling with him, but I couldn’t help it
...
We
both have done things in the past that we deeply regret
...
I have no uncle backing me, you see
...
Dashing forward, he grabbed me by the hair
...
“Who do
you think you are?”
I opened my mouth to say something, but a sharp stab of pain silenced me
...


It wasn’t the first time
...


I fell on the floor, and then Baybars started to kick me hard in the ribs and legs while hurling insults at me
...
As I cringed in pain, my body crushed under the
weight of each blow, my soul—or what felt like it—separated from my body, turning itself into a kite,
light and free
...
As if thrown into a peaceful vacuum where there was nothing to resist
and nowhere to go, I simply hovered
...
It
felt like falling, except falling upward into the bottomless sky
...
My worries diminished
...

And suddenly I realized I was living my fear and, to my surprise, it wasn’t frightful
...

Shams of Tabriz was right
...
I shut my eyes and imagined this other
me, pristine and penitent and looking much younger, walking out of the brothel and into a new life
...
The vision was so alluring and so very real, despite the blood
before my eyes and the throbbing in my ribs, that I couldn’t help smiling
...
I had been meaning to
ask him about the deepest reading of the Qur’an, but for weeks I hadn’t had a chance
...
But this morning as I was sweeping the courtyard, Shams
appeared next to me, alone and in the mood to chat
...

“How is it going, dear Kimya?” he asked jovially
...
I knew he had been having visions, lately more often than ever, and by now I had learned to read
the signs
...

“A storm is impending,” Shams murmured, squinting at the sky, where grayish flakes swirled, heralding
the first snow of the year
...
“Remember when you told
me that we all understood the Qur’an in accordance with the depth of our insight?” I said carefully
...
”
Now Shams turned toward me, his gaze raking my face
...
I
thought he was his handsomest at times like this, his lips pursed, his forehead slightly creased
...
“There is a stage after which language fails us
...
”
“I wish I could step into the zone of love someday,” I blurted, but then instantly felt embarrassed
...
”
An odd little smile etched Shams’s mouth
...
You’ll dive into
the fourth current, and then you’ll be the stream
...
Next to him I felt both
like a child learning life anew and like a woman ready to nurture life inside my womb
...
“You mean, like destiny?”
“Yes, that’s right
...

“But what does destiny mean?”
“I cannot tell you what destiny is
...
In fact, there is another rule
regarding this question
...
Therefore,
to leave everything to fate and to not actively contribute to the music of the universe is a sign of sheer
ignorance
...

“Your destiny is the level where you will play your tune
...
”
I must have given him a befuddled look, for Shams felt the need to explain
...
With dark, deep eyes glinting he said, “Allow me to tell you a story
...
“Come with me,” the dervish said
...
” Soon they ran into a procession
...
The dervish asked, “That man will be executed
...
He is paying for what he did
...
There are good things
and bad things, and a difference between the two
...
“You like distinctions
because you think they make life easier
...
Otherwise there would be no notions of haram or halal
...
Imagine if you could not scare people with hell or encourage them with heaven
...
”
Snowflakes skittered in the wind, and Shams leaned forward to pull my shawl tighter
...
It was a mixture of sandalwood and soft amber with a faint,
crisp tang underneath, like the smell of earth after the rain
...
How embarrassing it was—and yet, oddly, not embarrassing at all
...

Was he talking about the Love of God or the love between a woman and a man? Could he be referring
to us? Was there such a thing as “us”?
Unaware of my thoughts, Shams continued
...
I’d rather extinguish the
fire in hell and burn heaven, so that people could start loving God for no other reason than love
...
People are mean
...

Shams smiled a brave, almost valiant smile
...

“Perhaps you are right, but don’t you think that gives me all the more reason to speak my mind?
Besides, narrow-minded people are deaf anyhow
...
”
“Whereas to me everything you say is only sweet!”
Shams looked at me with a disbelief that verged on astonishment
...

How could I have said such a thing? Had I taken leave of my senses? I must have been possessed by a
djinn or something
...

My cheeks burning with shame, my heart pounding with all the things we had said and left unsaid, I
scampered out of the courtyard back into the house
...
After this moment I could not ignore the truth that I had known all along: I was in love with
Shams of Tabriz
...
I heard the rumors about me
...
It doesn’t surprise me
...
They
always condemn those who drink wine, or are on the lookout for adulterous women to stone, but when it
comes to gossiping, which is a far more serious sin in the eyes of God, they take no notice of any
wrongdoing
...

One day a man came running to a Sufi and said, panting, “Hey, they are carrying trays, look over
there!”
The Sufi answered calmly, “What is it to us? Is it any of my business?”
“But they are taking those trays to your house!” the man exclaimed
...

Unfortunately, people always watch the trays of others
...
It never ceases to amaze me the things they fabricate! Their imagination
knows no limits when it comes to suspicion and slander
...

Some go so far as to claim that I am the son of the last Ismaili imam of Alamut
...
Some others even make the
outrageous accusation that I have put a spell on Rumi
...
What else is there to do? What harm comes to a
dervish from the sourness of others? If the whole world were swallowed by the sea, what would it matter
to a duck?
Nevertheless, I can see that the people around me are worried, particularly Sultan Walad
...
And then there is Kimya,
sweet Kimya
...
But the worst thing about the gossip is that Rumi gets his
share of vilification
...
It torments me to see him
distressed over the words of ignorant people
...
I, on the other hand,
have both beauty and ugliness
...
But
how can an erudite scholar who is used to having serious conversations and logical conclusions handle
the claptrap of ignorant people?
No wonder the Prophet Muhammad said, “In this world take pity on three kinds of people
...
”
And yet I can’t help thinking that there could be some good for Rumi in all this
...
His whole life he has been admired, respected,
and imitated, having a reputation beyond reproach
...
Nor has he been pestered by the sort of vulnerability and loneliness that one feels
from time to time
...
But he needs
that
...
It is Rule Number Thirty:

The true Sufi is such that even when he is unjustly accused, attacked, and condemned from all sides, he
patiently endures, uttering not a single bad word about any of his critics
...
How can there be opponents or rivals or even “others” when there is no “self” in the first
place?
How can there be anyone to blame when there is only One?

Ella

NORTHAMPTON, JUNE 17, 2008

Beloved Ella,
You were kind enough to ask me to tell you more
...
But here it is:
After Margot’s death my life underwent a dramatic change
...
I
became a night creature, befriended the wrong people, woke up in strangers’ beds, and lost more than twenty-five pounds in just a few
months
...
My body had rejected the drug
...
Before I knew it, I had replaced sniffing with injections
...
It didn’t take me long to make a mess of myself, mentally and physically
...

And when high I planned spectacular ways to kill myself
...
Perhaps they sold me
some kind of green tea and had a laugh at my expense
...
Women took care of me
...
I lived in
their houses, slept in their beds, stayed in their summer resorts, ate the food they cooked, wore their husbands’ clothes, shopped with
their credit cards, and refused to give them even a speck of the love they demanded and no doubt deserved
...
I lost my job, I lost my friends, and finally I lost the apartment Margot and I had spent
many happy days in
...
I spent more than fifteen months at one squat house in Rotterdam
...
We shared everything
...

Years into a life of drugs and debauchery, I hit rock bottom, a shadow of the man I used to be
...
I had never seen anybody so young who was so drained and sad
...
The same day I rummaged through the boxes where I kept Margot’s belongings
...
Then I put them back in boxes and gave them away to the children of the
immigrants she cared so deeply about
...

With the help of God-sent connections, I found a job at a well-known travel magazine as a photographer
...

Then a British anthropologist I met in the Saharan Atlas gave me an idea
...
I didn’t know what he was talking about
...
No Christians or Jews were allowed, unless one found a way to
break in to the city and take pictures
...
I was all ears
...

The anthropologist said I could not do this alone and needed a connection
...

You never know, they might agree to help, he said
...
As long as they offered to help, I was happy to meet the Sufis
...
But then, at the time, so was everyone and everything else
...
In the end I never made it to Mecca or Medina
...
Not even after I converted to Islam
...
Though motivated by purely materialistic reasons at the outset, when the
journey came to an end, I was a transformed man
...
”
Love,
Aziz

Desert Rose the Harlot

KONYA, FEBRUARY 1246

Bitter and bleak, the day I left the brothel was the coldest day in forty years
...
By midafternoon the chill had become so severe there were
frozen cats on the streets with whiskers turned into thin threads of ice, and several ramshackle houses
collapsed under the weight of the snow
...
There
were half a dozen frozen bodies—all curled up in the fetal position with beatific smiles on their faces, as
if expecting to be reborn into a better and warmer life
...
I took no more than a few simple clothes, leaving behind all the silk garments and
accessories I used to wear for special customers
...

Halfway down the stairs, I saw Magnolia standing at the main door, chewing the brown leaves she was
addicted to
...

At night I heard her toss and turn in bed
...
Younger
girls jokingly said they envied Magnolia, since she would not have to worry about having periods,
pregnancies, or abortions anymore and could sleep with a man every single day of the month, but we all
knew that an aged prostitute had little chance of survival
...
My heart chose the latter
...

Magnolia’s face brightened but then darkened again as she noticed the bag in my hand
...
She knew that the patron had forbidden me to leave my room, never mind leaving the
brothel
...

I didn’t say anything
...
She could either stop me in my tracks and
alert everyone to my plan or simply let me go
...

“Go back to your room, Desert Rose,” she said
...
Don’t
you know what he did to …?”
But she didn’t finish her sentence
...
There was no point
in disturbing them in their graves
...

“Even if you manage to escape, how are you going to make a living?” Magnolia insisted
...
”
What I saw in Magnolia’s eyes was fear—not the fear that I could fail and be punished by the patron
but the fear that I might succeed
...
I felt a momentary
pang of doubt and would have gone back had the voice of Shams of Tabriz not kept echoing in my head
...
“I’m not staying here another day
...
It was as if I had no more fear left inside me
...
I
was determined to dedicate what remained of my life to God
...
Shams of Tabriz had said that faith and love turned human
beings into heroes because they removed all the fear and anxiety from their hearts
...

And the strange thing is, Magnolia understood it, too
...


Ella

NORTHAMPTON, JUNE 19, 2008

Beloved Ella,
Thank you for being so compassionate
...
I am not used to talking about my
past with anyone, and it strangely makes me lighter to share all this with you
...
My room was white, small, and simple
...
There was no telephone, no television, no clock, and no electricity
...
Having lived in
squat houses for years, I couldn’t see why I shouldn’t survive in a dervish lodge
...
He said I was more than welcome to stay with them until
ready to leave for Mecca
...
How did they know? Had they been rummaging
through my suitcase while I was out? I’ll never forget what the master said next: “We don’t need to look through your belongings to
know you are using drugs, Brother Craig
...
”
And the funny thing is, Ella, until that day I had never thought of myself as an addict
...
“Numbing the pain is not the same as healing it,” Master Sameed said
...
”
I knew he was right
...
But soon it
became apparent that my determination was not strong enough to pull me through what was to come
...
For one who chose intoxication over
sobriety, it wasn’t hard to find drugs, even as a foreigner
...
I had to sleep in the garden
...

Apart from these shaming incidents, I managed to get along fine with the Sufis, enjoying the calm that settled on the lodge in the
evenings
...

On the surface we lived a collective life where everyone ate, drank, and performed the same activities at the same time, but
underneath we were expected and encouraged to remain alone and look within
...
Next you discover the crowd within your solitude—the voices inside you
...
Like a man who had not realized how thirsty
he was until he took his first sip of water, I found that my encounter with Sufism made me yearn for more
...

Three months later, out of the blue, Master Sameed said I reminded him of someone—a wandering dervish by the name of Shams
of Tabriz
...

I was intrigued
...
As I listened to Master Sameed tell me more about Shams, I felt a shiver
down my spine, an odd feeling of déjà vu
...
But I swear to God, at that moment I heard a rustle of silk in the background, first far off,
then drawing nearer, and I saw the shadow of someone who wasn’t there
...
Either way, I suddenly knew that I didn’t need to go anywhere
...
I was
sick and tired of always longing to be somewhere else, somewhere beyond, always in a rush despite myself
...
All I needed was to stay and look within
...
”
Love,
Aziz

Shams

KONYA, FEBRUARY 1246

Bidding fair to be an eventful day, the morning proceeded faster than usual, and the sky hung low and
gray
...
The room was dim on account of the
heavy velvet curtains being half closed, and there was a strange wedge of daylight that fell upon the spot
where Rumi sat, giving the whole scene a dreamy quality
...
I saw Rumi, a much older and frailer version of himself, clad in a dark green robe and sitting
in exactly the same spot, looking more compassionate and generous than ever, but with a permanent scar
on his heart in the shape of me
...
And that the wound left by my absence would never heal
...

“Are you all right? You look pale,” said Rumi
...
My voice came out a bit cranky and less forceful than I intended
...
I am very thirsty,
and there is nothing in this house to quench my thirst
...

“No, because what I need is not in the kitchen
...
I am in the mood to get drunk, you
see
...

“Instead of going to the kitchen for water, would you go to the tavern for wine?”
“You mean, you want me to get you wine?” Rumi asked, pronouncing the last word cautiously, as if
afraid of breaking it
...
I’d so much appreciate it if you would get us some wine
...
But do me a favor, please
...
Stay there for a while
...
I’ll be waiting here for you
...
”
Rumi gave me a look that was half irritated, half bewildered
...

His concern for the opinions of others had held him back
...

But to my great relief, Rumi stood up and nodded
...
I don’t think drinking is the right
thing to do
...
There must be a reason you have
asked me to do such a thing
...
I’ll go and bring us wine
...

As soon as he was out of the room, I fell to the ground in a state of profound ecstasy
...


PART FOUR

Fire

THE THINGS THAT DAMAGE, DEVASTATE, AND DESTROY

Suleiman the Drunk

KONYA, FEBRUARY 1246

Beguiled by wine, I have had many crazy delusions when drunk, but seeing the great Rumi enter the tavern
door was really wild, even for me
...

“Hey, Hristos, what did you serve me, man?” I yelled
...
You’d never guess what I’m hallucinating right now
...

I looked around to see who was trying to quiet me and was stunned to find every man in the tavern,
including Hristos, gawking at the door
...
The Persian rug
merchant stopped singing those awful melodies he called songs
...

It was Hristos who broke the silence
...
“It is an honor to see you under this roof
...

“Thank you,” Rumi said with a large but flat smile
...
”
Poor Hristos was so surprised to hear this that his jaw dropped
...

I greeted him back and uttered a few pleasantries, but I am not sure the words came out right
...

I leaned forward and, dropping my voice to a whisper, said, “Would it be terribly rude if I ask what a
man like you is doing here?”
“I’m going through a Sufi trial,” Rumi said, winking at me as if we were best friends
...
”
“And is that a good thing?” I asked
...
“Well, it depends on how you look at it
...
If we are too attached to our family, our position in society,
even our local school or mosque, to the extent that they stand in the way of Union with God, we need to
tear those attachments down
...
I had always suspected that these Sufis were a crazy, colorful bunch capable of all kinds of
eccentricities
...
“I was walking home late at night, and I bumped
into this security guard who beat the crap out of me
...

“Because I had drunk wine,” I said, pointing to the bottle that Hristos had just placed in front of Rumi
...
At first he seemed entirely befuddled, as if he didn’t believe that such things
could happen, but soon his lips twisted into a friendly smile
...
Over
bread and goat cheese, we conversed about faith and friendship and other things in life that I thought I had

long forgotten but was now delighted to rake up from my heart
...
Everyone in the tavern stood to bid him farewell
...

“You cannot leave without telling us why wine has been forbidden,” I said
...

“Hush, Suleiman
...
“You have seen us
...
You tell me, what is so wrong with drinking wine, provided we behave
ourselves and don’t harm anyone?”
Despite an open window in the corner, the air inside the tavern had become musty and smoky, and
suffused with anticipation
...
Pensive, kind, sober,
Rumi walked toward me, and here is what he said:
“If the wine drinker
Has a deep gentleness in him,
He will show that,
When drunk
...
”

There was a brief lull as we all contemplated these words
...
I believe it is better for us to
abstain from drinking
...
It is our own
arrogance and anger that we should be working on
...
At the end of the day whoever
wants to drink will drink and whoever wants to stay away from wine will stay away
...
There is no compulsion in religion
...
I, for my part, preferred to raise my glass in my
belief that no piece of wisdom should go untoasted
...
“No matter what people say about what you did today,
and I’m sure they are going to say plenty, I think as a preacher it was very brave of you to come to the
tavern and talk with us without judgment
...
Then he grabbed the wine bottles he had left untouched and walked out
into the evening breeze
...
I have spent many hours talking to him in my imagination, rephrasing
the same sentences over and over, searching for a better way of expressing myself
...
If he said that Kimya and I were like sister and
brother, I would remind him that we were not bound by blood
...
I had everything worked out in my mind, except I
couldn’t find a moment alone with my father
...
I was about to leave the house to meet
with my friends when the door creaked open and in walked my father holding a bottle in each hand
...
“Father, what is it that you are carrying?” I asked
...
“It’s wine, my son
...
“Is this what has become of the great Mawlana? An old man blasted on
wine?”
“Watch your tongue,” came a sulky voice from behind me
...
Staring into my face without so much as a blink, he said, “That is no way to talk to your
father
...
”
“Why am I not surprised?” I couldn’t help smirking
...
“Aladdin, we can talk about this,” he said
flatly
...
”
Then he cocked his head to one side and told me I had to soften my heart
...
“If you want to strengthen your faith, you will need to soften inside
...
Through an illness,
accident, loss, or fright, one way or another, we all are faced with incidents that teach us how to
become less selfish and judgmental, and more compassionate and generous
...

The only way to get closer to Truth is to expand your heart so that it will encompass all humanity and
still have room for more Love
...
“I’m not taking orders from drunken dervishes
...
”
“Aladdin, shame on you,” my father broke in
...
So many resentments I thought I had left
behind came flooding back to me
...
Don’t you see you are hurting him?”
“Don’t you see you are ruining our lives?” I shot back
...
I thought he was going to slap me, but when he didn’t, when he wouldn’t, I felt even more uneasy
...

My eyes welled with tears
...
How
long had she been standing there watching us from a corner with fearful eyes? How much of this squabble

had she heard?
The shame of being humiliated by my father in front of the girl I wanted to marry churned in my
stomach, leaving a bad taste in my mouth
...

Unable to stay there a moment longer, I grabbed my coat, pushed Shams aside, and dashed out of the
house, away from Kimya, away from all of them
...
After
Aladdin was gone, Rumi was so sad he couldn’t talk for a while
...
It was one of those bleak February evenings when the air felt heavy with a peculiar
stillness
...
The wind brought us a whiff of the forests from afar, fragrant and musky, and for a moment I
believe we both wanted to leave this town for good
...
I knelt beside a climbing rose tree that stood thorny and bare in
the snow, and I started to pour the wine on the soil beneath it
...

Slowly, stunningly, the bare rose tree came alive, its bark softening like human skin
...
As I kept pouring the wine under the tree, the rose revealed a lovely warm
shade of orange
...
The rose’s orangey color turned into a
bright crimson tone, glowing with life
...
I poured that into a glass, drank half of it, and the remaining half I offered to Rumi
...

“Religious rules and prohibitions are important,” he said
...
It is with such awareness that I drink the wine you offer me today, believing with
all my heart that there is a sobriety beyond the drunkenness of love
...
The
wine spilled on the snow, like drops of blood
...

“If you weren’t going to ask me to drink this wine, why did you send me to the tavern in the first
place?” Rumi asked, his tone not so much curious as compassionate
...
“Spiritual growth is about the totality of our consciousness, not about
obsessing over particular aspects
...
Not imams, priests, rabbis, or any other custodians of moral or religious leadership
...
Believe in your values and your rules, but never lord them over
others
...

“Stay away from all sorts of idolatry, for they will blur your vision
...
Learn the Truth, my friend, but be careful not to make a fetish out of your truths
...
But today my admiration for him had grown by leaps and bounds
...
The more signs of success
they earned, the more they seemed to be in need of them
...
That was a common pattern
...
But it was rare, as rare as
rubies, for a man who had already made his way up, a man who had plenty of gold, fame, and authority, to
renounce his position all of a sudden one day and endanger his reputation for an inner journey, one that

nobody could tell where or how it would end
...

“God wants us to be modest and unpretentious,” I said
...
“He wants us to know Him with every fiber of our
being
...
”
I agreed
...
There
was, beneath the chill of the evening, the scent of something fresh and sweet
...


Ella

NORTHAMPTON, JUNE 24, 2008

“Baby, there’s a new Thai place in town,” David said
...
Why don’t we go there
tonight? Just the two of us
...
But David
was so insistent that she couldn’t say no
...
It
didn’t take Ella long to feel out of place there
...

It was her husband
...
Something wasn’t normal
...
What disturbed her most was that he had stuttered a few times
...

A young waitress dressed in a traditional outfit came to take their orders
...
They also ordered wine
...
Then there was silence
...
Or so Ella thought
...

Ella nodded, though with some surprise
...

“I started reading his poetry to help me to write my report on Sweet Blasphemy, but then I became
interested in it, and now I’m reading it for myself,” Ella said by way of explanation
...
“Ella, I know what’s going on,” he said
...
”
“What are you talking about?” Ella asked, although she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer
...
“I’m aware of it
...
In the glow of the candle that the waitress had just lit for
them, David’s face showed pure despair
...
She instantly noticed the couple at
the next table turning in their direction
...
“I checked your e-mail account and read your messages with that man
...

Ignoring the question, his face contorted with the weight of what he was about to announce, David said,
“I don’t blame you, Ella
...
I neglected you, and you looked for compassion elsewhere
...
The wine had a charming color—a deep, dark ruby
...
And
perhaps there was a trail
...

Now David paused, deciding how best, or whether, to reveal what he had in mind
...


There were many things Ella wanted to say at that moment, poignant and mocking, tense and dramatic,
but she chose the easiest one
...
Ella and David sat back and watched her leave the plates
on the table and refill the glasses with exaggerated politeness
...
“This is not about revenge
...
”
“Then what is it about?”
Ella clasped her hands, feeling as if everything and everyone in the restaurant—the customers, the
waiters, the cooks, and even the tropical fish in the fish tank—had stopped to hear what she was going to
say
...
“I love Aziz
...
But when she finally found the courage to look him in
the eye, there was only horror on his face, quickly replaced by the expression of someone who was trying
to solve a problem with minimal damage
...
“Love” was a serious
word, loaded and quite unusual, for her—a woman who had said so many negative things about love in
the past
...

“Yes, and I love them very much,” Ella said with a slump in her shoulders
...
He took a big gulp from his glass before he spoke again
...
And I have never loved anyone else
...
For my part I can promise you that the same thing won’t happen again
...
”
“I didn’t go out and seek love,” Ella muttered, more to herself than to him
...
All we need to do is to eliminate the barriers inside that keep us away
from love
...
In
truth, she’d remembered another moment in time when she herself had said virtually the same words to
her daughter
...
Nodding her head slowly, she put her napkin
aside
...
“I’m not hungry
...
And early in the morning, the first thing Ella did was write a
letter to Aziz
...
“Rumi was seen in a tavern in the
Jewish quarter yesterday!”
“Yes, I heard about that,” I said, “but I wasn’t surprised
...
What did you expect?”
Abdullah nodded gravely
...
We should have seen it coming
...
Somebody suggested that
Rumi should not be allowed to preach in the Great Mosque anymore
...
I
agreed
...

I had always suspected that Rumi had a dark side ready to float up to the surface someday
...
It was utterly disgusting
...
But I hold a different
view
...

There are people who heard Shams remark, “A scholar lives on the marks of a pen
...
But Rumi, too, is a scholar, isn’t he? Or does he not consider himself one of us anymore?
Should Shams enter my classroom, I would chase him away like a fly, never giving him the opportunity
to sputter gibberish in my presence
...
The man has a Christian wife, for starters
...
It is in her
blood and in the blood of her child
...
To those who are naïve enough to
believe that, I always say, “Can water and oil ever mix? That is the extent to which Muslims and
Christians can!”
Having a Christian for a wife and being notoriously soft toward minorities, Rumi was already an
undependable man in my eyes, but when Shams of Tabriz started living under his roof, he totally deviated
from the right path
...
And Shams is
the devil incarnate
...
God knows how he convinced
him
...
How dare he compare the Prophet Muhammad, may
peace be upon him, with that irreligious Sufi Bistami? Wasn’t it Bistami who pronounced, “Look at me!
How great is my glory!” Wasn’t it he who then said, “I saw the Kaaba walking around me”? The man
went as far as stating, “I am the smith of my own self
...
For just like Bistami, he, too, is a heretic
...
Finally! Shams’s critics
increase with each passing day
...
In the bathhouses
and teahouses, in the wheat fields and orchards, people tear him apart
...
As soon as I opened the door
to my classroom, I sensed there was something unusual
...

Then I understood why
...

“Selamun aleykum, Sheikh Yassin,” he said, staring hard at me across the room
...
Instead I turned to my students and
inquired, “What is this man doing here? Why did you let him in?”
Dazed and uneasy, none of the students dared to answer
...

His tone insolent, his gaze unwavering, he said to me, “Don’t scold them, Sheikh Yassin
...
You see, I was in the neighborhood and said to myself, ‘Why don’t I stop by the madrassa and visit
the one person in this town who hates me most?’ ”

Husam the Student

KONYA, FEBRUARY 1246

Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, we were all sitting on the floor in the classroom when the door opened and
in walked Shams of Tabriz
...
Having heard so many bad and bizarre things about
him, mostly from our teacher, I, too, couldn’t help but cringe upon seeing him in our classroom in the
flesh
...
After greeting us all, he said he had come to have a
word with Sheikh Yassin
...
Perhaps you should talk to him some other
time,” I said, hoping to avoid a nasty encounter
...
“Don’t you worry, though
...
”
Irshad, sitting next to me, muttered between clenched teeth, “Look at his nerve! He is the devil
incarnate
...
Set against him as I was, I couldn’t
help liking his forthrightness and audacity
...
He
had taken no more than a few steps inside when he stopped and blinked distractedly in the direction of the
uninvited visitor
...
The tension between the
two men was so thick that the air in the classroom could be cut with a knife
...
“Now, why don’t you take your leave, so that we can get on with our studies?”
“You say you won’t talk to me, but you have been talking about me,” Shams remarked
...
”
Sheikh Yassin sniffed through his big, bony nose and narrowed his mouth to a pout, as if he had
something sour on his tongue
...
I already know what I need
to know
...
”
Shams now turned to us with a swift, sardonic glance
...
”
“Really?” Sheikh Yassin looked amused and animated
...
I chose to remain silent
...
“But since you are so good with answers, may I ask you a question?”
That was when I started to worry about where this conversation was heading
...

“Since you claim I am the devil’s servant, could you kindly tell us what exactly your notion of Sheitan
is?” asked Shams
...
“Our religion, which is the
last and the best of Abrahamic religions, tells us it was Sheitan who caused Adam and Eve to be expelled
from heaven
...
Sometimes he comes in the form of a gambler who invites us to gamble, sometimes a beautiful
young woman who tries to seduce us
...
”
As if expecting this remark, Shams smiled knowingly
...
It must be a huge relief,
and an easy way out, to think the devil is always outside of us
...

“Well, if Sheitan is as wicked and indomitable as you are saying he is, then we human beings have no
reason to blame ourselves for our wrongdoings
...
In either case we’ll be exempt from all criticism
and self-examination
...
“But let’s for one
moment imagine there is no Sheitan
...
All these
bloodcurdling images were designed to show us something, but then they became clichés and lost their
original message
...

“Ah, so you do have questions after all,” Shams said
...
Hell is inside us, and so is heaven
...
We are higher than the highest, but also lower than the lowest
...
What we need
is sincere self-examination
...
”
“You go and examine yourself, and inshallah someday you will redeem yourself,” Sheikh Yassin
answered, “but a proper scholar has to keep an eye on his community
...

And here is what he told us:
Four merchants were praying in a mosque when they saw the muezzin enter
...
“Hey, you spoke while you were
praying
...
You need to start anew!”
Upon hearing this, the third merchant interjected, “Why do you blame him, you idiot? You should
have minded your own prayer
...
”
The fourth merchant broke into a smile and said loudly, “Look at them! All three have messed up
...
”
After telling this story, Shams stood facing the classroom and asked, “So what do you think? Which of
the merchants’ prayers, in your opinion, were invalid?”
There was a brief stirring in the classroom as we discussed the answer among ourselves
...
But the
first merchant is innocent, because all he wanted was to consult the muezzin
...
“It is obvious that all
the merchants were wrong, except the fourth one, who was just talking to himself
...
I had a feeling

my views might not be welcome
...
“If these merchants made a mistake, it is not because
they spoke during prayer,” I said, “but because instead of minding their own business and connecting with
God, they were more interested in what was going on around them
...
”
“So what is your answer?” Sheikh Yassin asked, suddenly interested in the conversation
...
”
Shams of Tabriz took a step toward me and looked at me with such affection and kindness that I felt
like a little boy savoring the unconditional love of a parent
...
”
I blushed up to my ears when I heard this
...
But all my worries quickly evaporated
...
He gave me a wink in return and, still smiling, continued to explain
...
’ An
orthodox scholar, however, is always on the lookout for the mistakes of others
...
”
“Stop confusing the minds of my students!” Sheikh Yassin broke in
...
People ask us many questions and expect to be answered duly,
so that they can live their religion fully and properly
...
The Shafi, Hanefi, Hanbali, and
Maliki teachings differ from one another when it comes to these matters
...
”
“That’s good, but don’t get so attached to nominal distinctions
...
“The logos of God is
complete
...
”
“Details?” Sheikh Yassin echoed incredulously
...
And we scholars
guide them in their endeavor
...
They derive a different pleasure in the verses of the Qur’an and so do not require the
guidance of a sheikh
...
“There is nothing temporary in the guidance we provide,” he said
...
”
“The sharia is only a boat that sails in the ocean of Truth
...
”
“So that sharks might eat him up,” Sheikh Yassin retorted, chuckling
...
”
A few students joined in the chuckle, but the rest of us sat quietly, feeling increasingly uncomfortable
...

Shams of Tabriz must have felt the same gloom, for he looked pensive now, almost forlorn
...

“In all my travels, I have come to know many sheikhs,” Shams said
...
I wouldn’t trade the dust off of the

old shoes of a real lover of God for the heads of today’s sheikhs
...
”
“That’s enough! I think we’ve heard enough of your forked tongue,” Sheikh Yassin announced
...
“What you
witnessed here today is an old debate that extends back to the time of the Prophet Muhammad, may peace
be upon him,” he remarked
...
It is present in the
heart of every Abrahamic religion
...
You take your pick!”
Shams paused briefly to let us feel the full impact of his words
...

Then he added, “In the end, neither your teacher nor I can know more than God allows us to know
...
Only one thing matters, though
...
”
With that, Shams of Tabriz placed his right hand on his heart and bade farewell to us all, including
Sheikh Yassin, who stood aside, grim and unresponsive
...

It was Irshad who pulled me out of my trance
...
Only then did I realize that my right hand was resting on my heart in salute to a Truth that it
had recognized
...
I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard that Shams had found the nerve to confront
my uncle in front of his students
...
I would have kicked him out before he even had the chance to open that
wicked mouth of his
...
I take their words with a grain of salt, though, since
their accounts are inconsistent and give too much credit to that rotten dervish
...
It is all because of that harlot Desert Rose
...
She
reminds me of jewelry boxes with secret compartments
...

It is her surrendering that troubles me most
...
How
come she just lay there on the floor under my feet, listless as a dirty old rug? Had she hit me back or
screamed for help, I would have stopped hitting her
...
Did she really not care at all whether I killed
her?
I have been trying hard not to go to the brothel again, but today I gave in to the need to see her
...
In case she complained about me and
things got nasty, I was going to bribe or threaten that fat patron of hers
...

“What do you mean, Desert Rose is not here?” I burst out
...
Seeing how upset I was, she added in a softer voice, “Why don’t you take a look at the other
girls, Baybars?”
“I don’t want your cheap whores, you fat hag
...
”
The hermaphrodite raised her dark, pointed eyebrows at this form of address but didn’t dare to argue
with me
...
“She is gone
...
”
It was too absurd to be even laughable
...

“You find her now!”
The patron looked at me as if she were seeing, really seeing me, for the first time
...

“I am a security guard who has an uncle in high places
...
It was soft and chewy
...
Her face became livid with rage, but she did not
dare to pick a fight
...
“Blame that dervish
...
”
For a moment I couldn’t understand who she was talking about, but then it dawned upon me it was no
other than Shams of Tabriz that she meant
...
Clearly that heretic didn’t know his
boundaries
...
You know, the old-fashioned way, with ink, a perfumed paper, a matching envelope, and a
stamp
...
I need to do this right away because if I delay in mailing my letter, I am afraid
I will never be able to do it
...
Someone who sees everything in a
different light and forces you to shift, change your angle of vision, observe everything anew, within and without
...
You think you can navigate your way through this beautiful storm until you realize, much too suddenly, you
are thrust out into the open and in fact you control nothing
...
All I know is, our correspondence has been changing me
...
Chances are I will regret saying this
...

Ever since I “met” you through your novel and your e-mails, you have dominated my thoughts
...
Throughout
the day you are on my mind all the time
...

When I go to a nice restaurant, I want to go there with you
...
The other day my younger daughter asked me if I had done something with my hair
...

Then I remind myself that we haven’t even met yet
...
And the reality is that I don’t know what to
do with you
...
(Oh, yes, I was writing an editorial report on it
...
Although I can’t share with you the details of my report, you should know that I absolutely loved your book
...
Your words will stay with me always
...
What
has compelled me is this thing between us, whatever it is, and its overwhelming impact upon me is eluding my control
...
I first loved your imagination and your stories, and then I realized I love the man behind the stories
...

As I said, I need to send this letter immediately
...
I will act as if there is nothing new in
my life, nothing unusual
...

I could pretend if it weren’t for this sweet ache in my heart …
With love,
Ella

Kerra

KONYA, MAY 1246

Baptism of fire
...
This morning, out of nowhere, a woman
came asking for Shams of Tabriz
...
That was when I got suspicious and started to
inquire into who she was and where she came from
...
Despite her bruises and cuts, she was very pretty and so
lithe
...
She was a harlot from the brothel
...
“I went to the public bath and washed myself forty
times with forty prayers
...
From now on, my life is dedicated to
God
...
I didn’t want to see a fallen woman
anywhere near my house, but there was something about her that broke my heart, a kind of simplicity,
almost innocence, I had never seen in anyone before
...
I couldn’t bring myself to shoo her away
...
That was the most I could
do
...

An hour later, when Shams and Rumi returned from their walk, I rushed to tell them about the
unexpected visitor
...

“Yes, and she says she has left the brothel to find God
...
“Why did
you keep her outside? Bring her in!”
“But what will our neighbors say if they learn we have a harlot under our roof?” I objected, my voice
cracking with the tension
...
“Kings and
beggars, virgins and harlots, all are under the same sky!”
How could I argue with Shams? He always had a ready answer for everything
...
No sooner had Desert Rose entered the room than she ran to kiss the hands of Shams, sobbing
...
” Shams beamed as if talking to an old friend
...
That stage of your life is completely over
...
“But the patron will never leave me in peace
...
You don’t know how—”
“Clear your mind, child,” Shams interrupted
...
Live this life as light and empty as the number zero
...
It is not the decorations outside but the emptiness inside that holds us straight
...
”

Late in the evening, I showed Desert Rose the bed where she would sleep
...

“You should come to our performance,” Shams said when he saw me coming
...

“A spiritual dance, Kerra, the likes of which you have never seen
...
What was going on? What dance were they talking about?
“Mawlana, you are a respected scholar, not an entertainer
...

“Don’t you worry,” Rumi said
...
We want to
introduce the dance of the whirling dervishes
...
Whoever yearns for Divine Love is
more than welcome to join us
...

“What if people don’t like it? Not everyone thinks highly of dance,” I said to Shams, hoping this would
have the effect of stopping whatever he was about to say next
...
”
“Not everyone thinks highly of God,” Shams said without missing a beat
...
There were no more words to exchange, and the sound of the
wind filled the house, bursting through the slats in the walls and pounding in my ears
...
“Everybody will watch the same dance, but
each will see it differently
...
”
Yet on the evening of the sema, I told Shams I was worried that nobody would show up
...
“The townspeople might not like me, they might not even be fond of
your father anymore, but they cannot possibly ignore us
...
”
And just so, on the evening of the performance, I found the open-air hall packed
...
Women were sitting in the rear
...
That a man of
such a high rank supported my father would keep tongues quiet
...
In my itch to sit next to someone
who would not speak ill of Shams, I sat next to Suleiman the Drunk
...

My legs were jumpy, my palms sweaty, and though the air was warm enough for us to take off our
cloaks, my teeth chattered
...
I
prayed to God, but since I didn’t know what exactly to ask for, other than things turning out all right, my
prayer sounded too lame
...
It was so captivating and
moving that all held their breath, listening
...

“It is called the ney,” I said, remembering a conversation between my father and Shams
...
”
When the ney abated, my father appeared onstage
...
Six dervishes followed him, all my father’s disciples, all wearing long white
garments with large skirts
...
Then the music started, and, one by one, the dervishes began to spin, first slowly, then with
breathtaking speed, their skirts opening up like lotus flowers
...
I couldn’t help but smile with pride and joy
...
Even the nastiest gossipers were watching the performance with visible
admiration
...
Then the music rose, the sound of
a rebab from behind a curtain catching up with the ney and the drums
...
Wearing a darker robe than everyone else and looking
taller, he was also spinning faster
...

I heard many people in the audience gasp with awe
...
I glanced at my father
...

Finally the music slowed down
...
With a tender salute, my father blessed everyone onstage and in the audience, and for a
moment it was as if we were all connected in perfect harmony
...
Nobody
knew how to react
...

My father’s voice pierced the silence
...
From this day on, dervishes of every age will dance the sema
...
”
The audience smiled and mumbled in agreement
...
I was so touched by seeing this affirming response that tears welled up in my eyes
...

The evening could have ended on that warm note and I could have gone home a happy man, feeling
confident that things were improving, had it not been for what happened next, ruining everything
...
And of all
the things that I have witnessed tonight, the most startling was the finale
...
In
consummate smugness he approached the stage, and after giving a great whoop of laughter, he said,
“Congratulations, dervishes! I was impressed by your performance
...
Then the musicians stood up
together and greeted the sovereign with ultimate respect
...
Kaykhusraw
bounced the pouch in his palm several times to show how heavy it was with golden coins and then flung it
onto the stage
...
So deeply were we moved by the generosity of
our ruler
...
But no sooner had he taken a step toward the exit
than the very pouch he’d flung on the stage was tossed back at him
...
Everything had happened so fast that for a full minute we all stood
still and perplexed, unable to make sense of what was going on
...
The insult was so obvious and definitely too personal to be forgivable
...

It was Shams of Tabriz
...

“We don’t dance for money,” he boomed in a deep voice
...
So take back your gold, sovereign! Your money is no good here!”
A dreadful silence descended upon the hall
...
Nobody dared to make a sound
...
As if the skies had been waiting for this signal, it started to rain, sharp and stinging
...

“Let’s go!” Kaykhusraw yelled to his men
...
His many guards and servants scurried behind him one by one,
stomping on the spilled coins on the floor with their heavy boots
...

As soon as the sovereign had left, a murmur of disapproval and disappointment rippled through the
audience
...

“How dare he insult our ruler?” others joined in
...
At the head of the protesters were Sheikh Yassin and his students
...


Aladdin

KONYA, JUNE 1246

By Allah, I had never been so embarrassed in my life
...
How could he disgrace himself like that in front of the whole town? On top of this, I was
utterly appalled when I heard there was among the audience a harlot from the brothel
...

To me the entire performance was sheer sacrilege
...
How could that insolent man find the nerve to pour scorn on our ruler? He is very lucky that
Kaykhusraw didn’t have him arrested on the spot and sent to the gallows
...
The last thing I
wanted was for the townspeople to think that I was on the side of a heretic
...

That night I didn’t go home
...
Overcome with emotion, we
talked about the day’s events and discussed at great length what to do
...
“And now he has brought a
prostitute into your house
...
”
As I stood listening to the things they said, my face burning with a scalding shame, one thing was clear
to me: Shams had brought us nothing but misery
...


The next day I went back home determined to talk to Shams of Tabriz man to man
...
Fully immersed in his
music, he hadn’t noticed my presence
...

After what seemed like several minutes, the music stopped
...
Knowing of his ability to see through closed doors, it didn’t surprise me that he
had eyes in the back of his head
...

“I thought it was disgraceful,” I answered at once
...
I never have
...
”
A spark flickered in his eyes as Shams put his ney aside and said, “Is that what this is about? If Rumi’s
reputation is ruined, people won’t look up to you as the son of an eminent man anymore
...
Still, it was a while before
I could say anything
...
“My father
is a respected scholar and a family man
...
”
His neck craned forward, his brow furrowed in mighty concentration, Shams drew in a deep breath
...
It flashed through my mind that I could slug him, beat him to a
pulp, before anyone could run to his rescue
...

When I stared back at him, I found Shams inspecting me, his gaze avid, bright
...
It must have been black magic
...

“You are scared of me, Aladdin,” Shams said after a pause
...

“It’s a story
...
“I have no time for them
...
“A man who has no time for stories is a man who has
no time for God,” he said
...
This assistant
always saw double
...
The assistant
came back empty-handed
...
“Which
one do you want me to bring?” Knowing his assistant too well, the artisan said, “Why don’t you break
one of the jars and bring me the other one?”
Alas, the assistant was too shallow to understand the wisdom behind these words
...
He
broke one of the jars and was very surprised to see the other one break, too
...
To display my temper in front of Shams was a mistake, but I
couldn’t help it
...
I am telling you that like the cross-eyed assistant you see dualities
everywhere,” Shams said
...
If you break me, you’ll break him as well
...
“If I break the second jar, I’ll set the first one
free
...
Not then
...

Not until it was too late
...
They think God gave us music—not only
the music we make with our voices and instruments but the music underlying all forms of life, and then He
forbade our listening to it
...
… Everything partakes,
passionately and spontaneously, in one magnificent melody
...
Just as a drop of seawater carries within it the entire ocean, our dance both
reflects and shrouds the secrets of the cosmos
...
The six dervishes
who were going to whirl in the evening joined us
...
Then
we donned our costumes
...
The honey-colored hat symbolized the tombstone, the
long white skirt the shroud, and the black cloak the grave
...

Before leaving the hall for the stage, Rumi recited a poem:
“The gnostic has escaped from the five senses
And the six directions and makes you aware of what is beyond them
...
First came the sound of the ney
...
One by one, the dervishes followed him, their heads bowed in modesty
...
As firmly as I resisted the suggestion, Rumi insisted on my performing
that part tonight
...
Do you not see?
Then started the kudüm accompanying the piercing sound of ney and rebab
...


Giving himself over to the hands of God, the first dervish started to whirl, the hems of his skirts gently
swishing with a separate life of their own
...
Whatever we received from the skies, we passed on to the earth, from God to
people
...
When the music
ceased, we jointly bowed to the essential forces of the universe: fire, wind, earth, and water, and the fifth
element, the void
...
But I am sorry
for putting Rumi in a difficult position
...
Now he has at least a smattering of insight into something that
average people experience all the time—the deep, vast rift between the ruling elite and the masses
...

Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation
...

With the initiation of poetry, music, and dance, a huge part of Rumi’s transformation is complete
...
As for me, I, too, have changed and am changing
...
From one season to another, one stage to the next, from life to death
...
We thrived, rejoiced, bloomed, and basked in each
other’s company, savoring absolute fullness and felicity
...
For the silk to prosper, the silkworm had to die
...
Through our companionship Rumi and I had experienced an
exceptional beauty and learned what it was like to encounter infinity through two mirrors reflecting each
other endlessly
...


Ella

NORTHAMPTON, JUNE 29, 2008

Beyond wildest dreams, Aziz said, strange things happened to people when they were ready for the
unusual and the unexpected
...
Zahara came to Boston to see her
...
The Rubinsteins had just sat down to eat when Ella noticed a text message on
her cell phone
...
Instead she served the evening’s specialty: honey-roasted duck with sautéed potatoes and
caramelized onions on a bed of brown rice
...

Even Jeannette, who was depressed after seeing Scott with his new girlfriend and realizing she still loved
him, seemed ravenous
...
Ella was privy to every
conversation at the table
...
Only after she had placed the dirty dishes in the
dishwasher and served the white chocolate crème brûlée did it occur to her to check the message on her
cell phone
...
Just got off the plane
...

“You got a message?” David asked, raising his head from his plate
...

Turning his anguished face away, David dabbed his mouth and then, with amazing slowness and
precision, folded his napkin into a perfect square
...

Ella knew that her husband didn’t believe her, not in the least, and yet she also felt she had to stick with
her story, not to convince her husband or deceive her children but for herself, to make it possible for her
to take that one step from her house to Aziz’s hotel
...
“She called
to tell me there’s going to be a meeting tomorrow morning at the agency to discuss next year’s catalog
...
”
“Well, you should go, then,” said David with a flicker in his eyes that indicated he, too, was in on the
game
...
”
Ella stared at her husband, aghast
...
“But we’re going to need to leave the house
before seven A
...
Michelle says she wants to talk to me in private before the others join in
...
“Daddy
could never get up in time!”
Now Ella and David looked at each other, locking into a level gaze over the heads of their children,

each waiting for the other one to make the first move
...

Ella nodded with relief, though she felt a slight flush of shame at her audacity, because at that moment
she had another idea, a bolder one
...
In fact,” she said, “why don’t I go now?”
The thought of going to Boston tomorrow morning and having breakfast with Aziz was enough to make
her heart beat faster
...
It was almost a two-hour drive from her house to Boston, but she didn’t mind
...
She could certainly drive two hours
...
And tomorrow I could be at the agency early enough to see
Michelle before the meeting
...
It seemed an eternity before he could say anything
...

“I can drive to Boston tonight, and stay in our apartment,” Ella said, seemingly to her children but in
truth only to David
...

David rose from his chair with a glass of wine in his hand
...
”
“But, Mom, I thought you were going to help me with math this evening,” Avi objected
...
“I know, dear
...
” Orly turned to her brother teasingly
...
When are you going to grow up?”
Avi frowned but said nothing further, Orly was supportive, Jeannette didn’t care one way or the other,
and just like that, Ella grabbed her cell phone and dashed upstairs
...

I can’t believe you’re here
...


She stared at her phone in growing panic as she watched her message being sent
...
If she was going to regret this evening, which she suspected she might, she
could regret it later
...
It took her twenty minutes to jump into the shower, blowdry her hair, brush her teeth, choose a dress, take it off, try another dress, then another, comb her hair, put
on some makeup, look for the small earrings Grandma Ruth had given her on her eighteenth birthday, and
change her dress again
...
Eternity by Calvin Klein
...
David had never been fond of perfume
...
But European men might have a different
take on this, Ella assumed
...
Why hadn’t he told her he was coming? If
she’d known, she would have gone to a hairdresser, gotten a manicure, had a facial, and perhaps tried a
new hairstyle
...
Why did she want to change her looks? What difference would it
make whether there was chemistry between them or not? Any adventure with this man was bound to be

ephemeral
...
She had a life
...
Annoyed with
herself for indulging in such unlikely scenarios, she closed down her mind, which always proved easier
...
David was nowhere to be
seen
...


PART FIVE

The Void

THE THINGS THAT ARE PRESENT THROUGH THEIR ABSENCE

Sultan Walad

KONYA, JULY 1246

Breathing with difficulty and barely able to stand straight, my father came to my room, looking like a
shadow of the man he used to be
...
But what surprised me most was that his beard had gone white
...

I ran to him and grabbed his arm
...
”
He was silent for a minute, as though crushed under the weight of what he was going to say next
...
He has left me
...
Sad and shocked though I was, it also occurred to me that this could be for the best
...
I
wanted things to get back to how they were before he came
...
“He and I are one
...
Shams is my unruly side
...
My heart sank
...
I had never seen so much
suffering in a man’s eyes
...
I couldn’t speak for a while
...
Bring him back
...
” My father’s voice dropped to a whisper
...
”
I promised him I would bring Shams back
...


I spent the whole week roaming the streets of Konya, hoping to trace the footsteps of Shams
...
I
met a leper who loved Shams immensely
...
I never knew there were so many who loved Shams, since they
were the kind of people who had been invisible to me till now
...
Kerra brought me a bowl of rice pudding,
fragrant with the essence of roses
...
I couldn’t help noticing how much she had aged this past year
...
Do you know where he has gone?” she asked
...
But I also heard people say he headed to Isfahan,
Cairo, or even Tabriz, the city of his birth
...
I’ll go to Damascus
...
”
A solemn expression crossed Kerra’s face, and she murmured, as though thinking aloud, “Mawlana is
writing verses
...
Shams’s absence is turning him into a poet
...
I could see that Kerra was torn deep
inside
...
She
was ready to do anything in her power just to see him smile again
...

“What if I cannot find him?” I heard myself ask
...
We will continue with our lives as before,” she remarked, a sparkle
of hope flickering in her eyes
...
I didn’t have to find
Shams of Tabriz
...
I could leave Konya tomorrow, wander for a
while, find myself a nice roadside inn to stay at, and come back a few weeks later, pretending to have
looked for Shams everywhere
...

Perhaps that would be best, not only for Kerra and Aladdin, who had always been suspicious of Shams,
but also for my father’s students and disciples, and even for me
...
Suddenly she had no more words inside her
...


Rumi

KONYA, AUGUST 1246

Barren is the world, devoid of sun, since Shams is gone
...
I can’t sleep at night, and during the day I only wander around
...
I can’t help feeling cross at everyone
...
I remember
what he, with a touch of harshness in his voice, had once told me: “Someday you will be the voice of
love
...
Words give me openings to
break through the darkness in my heart
...
Every incident that happens, no matter how colossal or small, and every
hardship that we endure is an aspect of a divine plan that works to that end
...
That is why it says in the Qur’an, Certainly we will show Our ways to those who struggle on Our
way
...
And it was no coincidence that Shams of
Tabriz crossed my path on that day in October almost two years ago
...

And then he had told me a story
...

He had only one student, and he was quite happy with what he was given
...
In his desire to see everyone else marvel at the powers of his master, he kept begging
him to take on more followers
...
“If it will make you happy, I’ll do as you say
...
In one of the stalls, there were bird-shaped candies
...
Speechless, the
townspeople immediately gathered around him with admiration
...
Soon there were so many followers and admirers around him that his
old disciple couldn’t see him much anymore
...
It was much better in the old days,” the disciple moaned forlornly
...
Make them all go away, please
...
If it will make you happy, I’ll shoo them away
...
His followers were appalled
...
Only his old disciple remained
...

And the disciple answered, “I didn’t come to you because of the first wind, nor would I leave you
because of the last
...
This is what the townspeople could never understand
...
He threw my
books into water, forcing me to unlearn all that I knew
...
Shams had deep knowledge in
alchemy, astrology, astronomy, theology, philosophy, and logic, but he kept his knowledge hidden from
ignorant eyes
...

He opened our doors to a prostitute and made us share our food with her
...
Once he made me beg across from the mosque where I used to preach,
forcing me to put myself in the shoes of a leper beggar
...
Thanks to him I came to know persons I would
have otherwise never met
...
Wherever he saw any kind of mental boundary, a prejudice or a taboo, he took the bull
by the horns and confronted it
...
Before, I had plenty of admirers; now I have gotten rid of the
need for an audience
...
Because of him I learned
the value of madness and have come to know the taste of loneliness, helplessness, slander, seclusion, and,
finally, heartbreak
...
They are too frightening
...
He asks again and again
...
My books,
sermons, family, wealth, or name—I am ready to give up anything and everything, just to see his face one
more time
...
Though I have never thought
highly of poets, I wasn’t surprised to hear that
...

My mouth is spewing out lines of poetry, constantly and involuntarily, and, listening to them, one might
conclude that I am becoming a poet indeed
...
I am only a vehicle for letters that are placed in my mouth
...

Marvelous sun of Tabriz! Where are you?

Shams

DAMASCUS, APRIL 1247

By the time spring was in full swing in Damascus, and ten months had passed since my departure from
Konya, Sultan Walad found me
...
He was a man whose inner equilibrium did not tilt easily, a man who knew the meaning of
submission
...
For it is one of the forty rules: Submission does not mean being
weak or passive
...
Just the opposite
...
Those who submit to the divine essence of life will live
in unperturbed tranquillity and peace even when the whole wide world goes through turbulence after
turbulence
...
With a quick and brave decision, he
moved his rook
...

“Nice to see you,” I said
...
”
He gave me a rueful smile, then turned somber, surprised to hear that I was aware of the internal
struggle he had been through
...

“I spent some time wandering around instead of looking for you
...
I couldn’t bring myself to lie to my father
...
”
“You are an honest man and a good son,” I said
...
”
Sultan Walad shook his head dolefully
...
I want you to come
back to Konya with me
...
”
Many things churned in my brain upon hearing this invitation, and none of them were clear at first
...

Don’t listen to him
...
You don’t have to return to Konya
...
It’s way too dangerous
...

I wanted to keep traveling the world, meet new people and see new cities
...
Traveling to a new place often engendered a dreadful
sense of loneliness and sadness in the soul of a man
...

Yet I knew too well that my heart was in Konya
...
At the end of the day, what difference would it make which city I stayed in, as long as
Rumi was not beside me? Wherever he lived, there was my qibla
...
Francis’s eyes flew open as he detected the fatal position
...

“Please come with me,” implored Sultan Walad, interrupting my thoughts
...
Everything will be better this time, I promise
...
Nobody can!

But instead I nodded and said, “I would like to watch the sunset in Damascus one more time
...
”
“Really? Thank you!” Sultan Walad beamed with relief
...
”
I then turned to Francis, who was patiently waiting for me to return to the game
...

“Watch out, my friend,” he said, his voice triumphant
...
”

Kimya

KONYA, MAY 1247

Bearing a mysterious gaze in his eyes and a distance in his demeanor that he’d never had before, Shams of
Tabriz came back into my life
...
His hair long enough to fall into his eyes,
his skin tanned under the Damascus sun, he looks younger and more handsome
...
As bright and reckless as ever his black eyes might be,
there is now a new glimmer to them
...

But I think a deeper transformation has been taking place in Rumi
...
On the day Shams returned, Rumi
greeted him outside the city walls with flowers
...
I think I know the reason
...
I can understand as no one else can, because I, too, am afraid of losing
him
...
Well, she is not technically a
person, but I don’t call her a ghost either
...
Although we
converse about everything, lately there is only one topic between us: Shams
...
I wish I could help him,” I said to Gevher today
...
There is something occupying his mind these days, but he hasn’t shared it with
anyone yet,” Gevher said mysteriously
...

“Rumi thinks if Shams gets married and starts a family, the townspeople would be less set against him
...
”
My heart skipped a beat
...
”
I was stunned
...
Now
fifteen, I knew I had reached the age to marry, but I also knew that girls who got married changed forever
...
Even little children could tell the difference between a married woman and an
unmarried one
...
She had noticed that it was the getting-married part that
worried me, not getting married to Shams
...

“Tell me, Kimya,” he said lovingly, “what can I do for you?”
“When my father brought me to you, you had told him that a girl would not make as good a student as a
boy because she would have to marry and raise her children, do you remember that?”

“Of course, I remember,” he answered, his hazel eyes filled with curiosity
...
“But perhaps it is possible to get
married and not have to leave this house
...

“Aladdin?” I repeated in shock
...

Rumi must have detected my surprise
...

I gasped
...
“And what did you say, Master?”
“I told him I would have to ask you first,” Rumi said
...
“I came here to tell you I want to marry Shams of Tabriz
...
“Are you sure about this?”
“It could be good in many ways,” I said, as inside me the need to say more wrestled with the regret of
having said too much
...
”
“So is that why you want to marry him? To help him stay here?” asked Rumi
...
“I mean, yes, but that’s not all
...
”
This was as close as I could get to confessing to anyone that I loved Shams of Tabriz
...
In stunned silence she greeted the news with a broken
smile, but as soon as we were alone in the house, she started to ask me questions
...
“You are so young! Don’t
you think you should marry someone closer to your own age?”
“Shams says in love all boundaries are blurred,” I told her
...
“My child, I wish things were that simple,” she remarked, tucking a lock of gray
hair into her scarf
...
Men like him aren’t used to domestic
life, and they don’t make good husbands
...
“I will give him so much love and happiness he
will have to change
...
”
That was the end of our talk
...

I slept peacefully that night, feeling exultant and determined
...


Kerra

KONYA, MAY 1247

Broaching a subject as deep and delicate as love is like trying to capture a gusty wind
...
After a while I didn’t ask Kimya any
other questions, not because I was convinced by her answers but because I saw in her eyes a woman in
love
...

The month of Ramadan went by so fast and busy, I didn’t have time to dwell on this matter again
...
Four days later we married Kimya to Shams
...
I was alone in the
kitchen, sitting in front of a floured board and a rolling pin, preparing flatbread for the guests
...
I sculpted a
small, soft Mother Mary
...
With the help of a knife, I carved her long robe and her face,
calm and compassionate
...

“What is it that you are making, Kerra?”
My heart jumped inside my chest
...
It occurred to me to hide the dough, but it was too late
...

“Is that Mary?” he asked, and when I didn’t answer, he turned to me with a beaming countenance
...
Do you miss Mary?”
“I converted long ago
...

But Shams continued to talk as if he hadn’t heard me
...
There is Aisha, for sure, and certainly Fatima, but you might think it is not the
same
...

“May I tell you a story?” Shams asked
...
Upon reaching a small
town, they decided to get something to eat
...
Each said he had the best food in the world in mind
...
” Unable to understand one another’s language, they began to argue
...
With the money collected the Sufi
bought a bunch of grapes
...
He made the
travelers drink the juice and threw away the skin, because what mattered was the essence of the fruit,
not its outer form
...
While they quarrel about the outer form, the
Sufi is after the essence,” Shams said, giving me a smile that conveyed such excitement that it was hard
not to be carried away by it
...
As a Muslim woman, you can still feel attached to her
...

“I don’t see why not
...
Mother Mary stands for
compassion, mercy, affection, and unconditional love
...
As a Muslim
woman, you can keep liking her and even name your daughter Mary
...

“You will have one
...
”
I felt excited to hear such words, but before long the excitement was washed away by another feeling:
solidarity
...
My heart warmed to Shams, and for the first time since he’d come to our house, I was able to see
what Rumi saw in him: a man with a big heart
...


Ella

BOSTON, JUNE 29, 2008

By the time Ella got to the hotel, she was so tense she couldn’t think properly
...

She crossed the lobby, scanning the paintings on the walls, so as not to have to look in the eyes of the
people around her
...
And the moment her gaze
slid toward the meeting area, she saw him, watching her
...
His curly chestnut hair fell over his green eyes, giving him an air of
confidence and mischief all at once
...
He spoke with a Scottish brogue, which she found charming, and smiled with
an ease of manner, looking genuinely happy and excited to see her
...

Later on, she would not be able to remember how one cup of coffee became several cups, or how the
conversation took on an increasingly intimate tone, or how at some point he planted a kiss on her
fingertip, just as she would not be able to explain why she didn’t do anything to stop him
...
It was half past eleven o’clock
in the evening
...

“So you’re here for Smithsonian magazine?” Ella asked
...
“After reading your letter, I wanted to come and see you
...
Up to a certain moment, it remained
possible to pretend that everything was just on friendly terms—the e-mails, the phone calls, even the
glances
...
She could have drawn a line
...
His question made everything
far too real, as if a mantle had been lifted and the truth, the naked truth that had been there all along, now
looked them squarely in the face
...
This was the most impulsive decision she had made
in her life, and yet at the same time it felt as if the decision had already been made for her
...


Room 608 was pleasantly decorated in hues of black, red, gray, and beige
...
She
tried to remember the last time she’d stayed in a hotel
...
After that, they had spent all their vacations at their house in Rhode
Island, and she’d had no reason to stay in a place where the towels were changed daily and breakfast was
prepared by others
...
And perhaps she was
...


But as soon as she walked into the room, her nervousness came back
...
Standing next to it made her feel
awkward and guilty
...
Would they make
love now? Should they? If they did, how could she look her husband in the eye afterward? But David
never had any difficulty looking her in the eye despite his many flings, did he? And what would Aziz think
of her body? What if he didn’t like it? Shouldn’t she be thinking about her children now? Were they
asleep or awake watching TV at this hour? If they learned what she was about to do, would they ever
forgive her?
Sensing her unease, Aziz held her hand and moved her toward an armchair in the corner, away from the
bed
...
“It’s so crowded inside your mind
...
”
“I wish we had met earlier,” Ella heard herself say
...
“Everything happens at the right time
...
Then he opened a suitcase and brought out the
tapestry he’d bought in Guatemala and a small box that turned out to be a necklace of turquoise and red
coral balls with a silver whirling dervish
...
Where his fingers touched her skin, she felt warm
...

“I already love you
...

“But you don’t even know me!”
“I don’t have to know to love
...
“This is crazy
...
Then he gently
moved her onto the bed
...
All the while his lips muttered words that
sounded like a secret ancient code to Ella
...
He was praying
...
It was the
most spiritual thing she had ever experienced
...

All at once her palms, her elbows, her shoulders, her whole body began to tingle with a strange energy
...
She sensed a living presence around him, then
around her, as if they were both being showered in a drizzle of light
...
There might be a
waterfall at the end for all she knew, but even if she could have stopped, she wasn’t sure she wanted to
...
She felt
insecure about her body, her hips and thighs and the shape of her breasts, which were far from perfect
after three kids and all these years, but the anxiety came and went
...
And just like that, she realized she could love this man
...

With that feeling she put her arms around Aziz, pulling him toward her, ready to go further
...

“You don’t want me?” Ella asked, amazed by the fragility of her voice
...
”
Half of her felt like crying; the other half was elated
...

She was entirely confused, but, to her great surprise, for once it felt okay to be confused
...
She lay on the leather
couch, unwilling to sleep in the master bed
...


Shams

KONYA, MAY 1247

Beautiful bride, don’t you cry
Say bye to your mom, bye to dad
You will hear the birds sing tomorrow
Though it will never be the same
...
Laughter, music, gossip
...
I stood there thinking and chanting, shivering and feeling numb,
all at the same time
...
Why was it that women always sang sad songs on
wedding nights? Sufis associated death with weddings and celebrated the day they died as their union
with God
...
Even when
they were happily getting married, a wave of sadness descended upon them
...

After the guests left, I returned to the house and meditated in a quiet corner
...
I found her sitting on the bed, wearing a white robe adorned with
golden threads, her hair braided into a multitude of plaits, each of which was ornamented with beads
...
Except for a candle
that flickered by the window, the room was without light
...

Beside our bed there was a pomegranate and a knife, so that we could eat the fruit and have as many
children as the seeds inside
...
But I never had gold coins in my life and did not want to greet my bride with
coins borrowed from someone else
...
She smiled
...

“You are beautiful,” I said
...
But then she squared her shoulders, doing her best to look more tranquil and mature than
she could ever be
...

Then she pointed toward the beautiful carpet on the floor, which she had crafted on her own and with
great care as part of her dowry
...
As soon as I saw it I knew that every
knot and every pattern on the carpet was about me
...

I kissed her again
...
She smelled of
jasmine and wildflowers
...
All I wanted was to enter her and get lost inside her
...

I pulled away
...
I can’t do this
...
The disappointment in her eyes was too much

to bear
...

“I need to go,” I said
...
“What will people say if you
leave the room now? They will know that this marriage was not consummated
...
”
“What do you mean?” I murmured, half to myself, because I knew what she was suggesting
...
I’ll have to live in shame
...
These codes of
honor had less to do with the harmony God created than with the order human beings wanted to sustain
...
People should mind their own business,” I objected, but I knew that Kimya was right
...
I glimpsed a trace of panic in
Kimya’s face, slowly replaced by the expression of someone who recognized a sad situation and accepted
it
...
My blood dripped on our bedsheet, leaving dark crimson stains
...
This will shut their mouths, and your name will remain pure and clean, the
way it should be
...
She rose to her feet, but, not knowing what to do next, she
repeated once again, “I am your wife now
...
My head throbbing
with pain, I walked out of the room into the night
...
I
wasn’t designed to perform marital duties
...
What saddened me was the cost of this
knowledge
...
Yet the thought of seeing Rumi the next morning held me anchored
here
...

I was trapped
...
But on the day Kimya was going to be married to Shams, I woke up with a pain
such as I had never felt before
...
A strangled sigh escaped my
lips
...

I had no mother
...
No brother
...
I was all alone in the world
...
Kimya was like a daughter to him
...
But apparently the only person he really cared about was Shams of Tabriz
...
The more I thought about it, the clearer it became that just to make Shams safe, my father had
sacrificed Kimya’s happiness—and along with it mine
...
The house
was spruced up, and the bedroom where the newlyweds would sleep was cleansed with rosewater to
ward off evil spirits
...
Determined not to be part of a celebration that meant only
torture for me, I headed for the door
...

“I am going to stay at Irshad’s house tonight,” I said without looking at him
...
”
I could feel rage rising from the pit of my stomach
...
”
My brother pursed his lips, looking hurt
...
You think
this is a forced marriage,” he said, “whereas it was Kimya who wanted to marry Shams
...

“Oh, God! Don’t you understand?” my brother exclaimed, lifting both palms up as though asking help
from God
...
”
“Don’t say that again
...
” My voice cracked like thawing ice
...
You are jealous
...
Even disbelief can be
positive
...
Rule Number Thirty-five: In this world, it is not similarities or
regularities that take us a step forward, but blunt opposites
...
Therefore the believer needs to meet the unbeliever residing
within
...
Until the day one reaches the
stage of Insan-i Kâmil, the perfect human being, faith is a gradual process and one that necessitates
its seeming opposite: disbelief
...

“Look here, I’m sick of all this syrupy Sufi talk
...
Why did you bring him back? If things get messy, and I am sure
they will, you are the one who is responsible
...
I realized in that
instant that for the first time in our lives he was frightened of me and the things I was capable of doing
...

As I walked to Irshad’s house, taking the side streets that reeked of foul smells so that nobody would
see me cry, I could think of only one thing: Shams and Kimya sharing the same bed
...
My
stomach was tied in knots
...
Somebody had to do something
...
It has been seven months since we got married
...
Hard as I try to hide the truth from people,
I can’t help suspecting they know it
...
Like writing on
my forehead, it is the first thing that anyone who looks at me notices
...

Not that Shams never comes to my room
...
Each time he wants to visit me in the evening, he
asks me beforehand if it is all right
...

“Of course it is,” I say
...
”
Then all day long I wait for him with bated breath, hoping and praying that this time our marriage will
be consummated
...
He also enjoys
reading together
...
Despite the strength
and determination of their main characters, I find these stories depressing
...

When not reading stories, Shams talks about the Forty Rules of the Itinerant Mystics of Islam—the
basic principles of the religion of love
...
He
slowly closed his eyes, and as his voice trailed off into a whisper, he fell asleep
...
It seemed an eternity before he opened his eyes
...
It was the most blissful moment we ever had
together
...
To this day his body is an unknown continent to me, as is my body to him
...
But each time I visit him
unannounced, my heart constricts with anxiety as I can never tell how he will receive me
...
Sometimes he is so warm and loving that I forget all my sorrow, but then at
other times he can be extremely grumpy
...
I have learned not to take any offense, just as I have learned not to bother him when he is in
deep meditation
...
I forced myself to see Shams not as a husband but as almost everything else: a friend, a soul mate,
a master, a companion, even a son
...

And for a while it worked
...
It
pleased me immensely that he appreciated my thoughts and encouraged me to think more creatively
...
To this day I believe I can make him laugh as no one
else could
...
Whatever I did, I could not rid my mind of the thought that he didn’t love me
...
But this wasn’t anything even close to love
...
I became
detached from the people around me, friends and neighbors alike
...
Unlike the living, the dead never judged
...

United in a common need to stay out of society, we had become close friends
...
She
leads a solitary life, having left the brothel behind her
...

She shook her head and said, “But I have not started life anew
...
”

Today I went to see Desert Rose for an entirely different reason
...

“Kimya, are you all right?” she asked
...
“I think I need your help
...
“What can I do for you?”
“It is about Shams
...
“I want to make myself attractive to him
...
”
Desert Rose exhaled, almost a sigh
...
“I promised God to stay clean and pure and not even think anymore about the ways a woman could
give pleasure to a man
...
You are just going to help me,” I pleaded
...
”
“Shams is an enlightened man,” Desert Rose said, lowering her voice a notch, as if afraid of being
heard
...
”
“But he is a man, isn’t he?” I reasoned
...
Even Shams has a body, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, but … ” Desert Rose grabbed her tasbih and started to finger the beads one at a time, her head
tilted in contemplation
...
“You are the only one I can confide in
...
Every
morning I wake up with the same heaviness in my chest, every night I go to sleep in tears
...
I need to seduce my husband!”
Desert Rose said nothing
...
I said,
“Tell me the truth
...
You are a beautiful young woman
...
Teach me the way to a man’s heart,” I insisted
...

“I don’t care,” I said
...
”

Desert Rose

KONYA, DECEMBER 1247

Bursting into tears, she kept begging me to help, her face swollen, her chest heaving harder and faster,
until I finally told her I would lend a hand
...
Still, I wonder how could I not have seen this tragedy
coming? Torn with guilt, I keep asking myself again and again, how could I have been so naïve and not
seen that things would take such a terrible turn?
But the day she came to me crying for help, there was no way I could turn her down
...
Hers was a voice that no longer had a reason to hope yet was hopeful all the same
...
It was her husband she
wanted to seduce, for God’s sake
...
How could this lead to
anything incorrect? Her passion might be too strong, but it was halal, wasn’t it? A halal passion!
Something inside me sensed a trap, but since it was God who set it, I saw no harm in walking right in
...

I taught her how to make herself more attractive and good-looking
...
I showed her how to take long perfumed baths, soften her skin with scented oils and ointments, and
apply masks of milk and honey
...
Lavender, chamomile, rosemary, thyme, lily, marjoram, and olive oil—I told her
how to apply each and which incenses to burn at night
...
Together we went to a store in the
bazaar I knew too well from the past
...

Then I taught her how to dance in front of a man, how to use this body God had given her
...

That afternoon I prepared Kimya for Shams of Tabriz, the way a shepherd prepares a sacrificial lamb
...
Then I
helped her to get dressed in clothes that a woman could wear only for her husband, and even for him only
once or twice in a lifetime
...
Lastly we applied lots and lots of paint on her face
...

When we were done, Kimya didn’t look like an inexperienced, timid girl anymore, but a woman
burning with love and passion
...
As I stood inspecting her, I remembered the verse of Joseph and Zuleikha in the
Holy Qur’an
...
When the ladies in the city had maliciously gossiped about her, Zuleikha had invited them all to
a banquet
...
” When
they saw him, they did extol him, and (in their amazement) cut their hands: they said, “God preserve

us! No mortal is this! This is none other than a noble angel
...

“You look exquisite,” I said
...
”
Kimya blushed so hard her cheeks turned rosy red
...

I meant what I’d said, as I felt confident that she would be able to attract Shams, the way a flower rich
with nectar attracts a bee
...
Suddenly I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach, almost a premonition
that something terrible was going to happen
...
I should have known better
...
For as long as I live, I
will never forgive myself
...
But there is one thing he
doesn’t know anything about: the pain of unrequited love
...
The soft rustle of the silk dress against my body, the scent of my perfume, the taste of rose petals on
my tongue—it all made me feel awkward, but also unusually brave
...
My body was neither rotund nor milky, and my bosom not as ample as I would have
liked, but I still thought I looked pretty
...
Then I wrapped myself in a long,
thick shawl and tiptoed to Shams’s room
...

“I had to see you,” I said and stepped inside without waiting for him to invite me in
...

When we were alone in the room, it took me a few seconds to muster my courage
...
Almost
instantly I felt the weight of my husband’s surprised eyes on my back, from my neck down to my feet
...
But that warmth, whether it was real or imagined in my excitement,
was quickly replaced by the coldness of the silence that descended upon the room
...

In the pregnant silence, we stood listening to the wind outside, howling, raging, and wailing through the
city
...

It was quite an effort to find my voice, but I managed to say, “I want you
...
My knees buckled beneath me, but I didn’t budge
...
I caressed his chest and whispered soft words of love
...

As if he had touched a burning stove, Shams jerked away
...
”
I put my arms around his neck and kissed him, ever so hard
...
They all do
...

“I am disappointed in you, Kimya,” Shams said
...
No anger
...
And I couldn’t tell which hurt me the most: the sharpness of his words or the blankness on his
face
...
I bent down to take my robe, but my hands were trembling so
hard I couldn’t hold the slippery, delicate fabric
...
Sobbing, gasping, and still half naked, I ran out of the room and away from him, away from this
love that I now understood existed only in my imagination
...
After that day I never left my room
...
A week passed, then another, and then I stopped counting the
days
...
Only my palms felt alive
...

I never knew that death had a smell
...
I came to know it only when it started to waft around my room,
enveloping me like thick, wet fog
...
People came to
see me
...
Kerra waited by one side of my bed, her eyes swollen, her face ashen
...

“Goddamn that heretic,” said Safiya
...
All because of him!”
I tried to force a sound, but it didn’t make it past my throat
...
“How can you attribute such
powers to a mortal man?”
But they didn’t listen to Kerra, and I was in no state to convince anyone of anything
...
People who didn’t like
Shams had found another reason in my illness to hate him, whereas I could not dislike him even if I
wanted to
...
I could not distinguish people’s faces anymore and could not hear
spoken words beyond a distant hum in the background
...
Perhaps he never did
...
Or perhaps he did come after all, and
sat by my bed, played me the ney for hours, held my hand, and prayed for my soul
...

Nonetheless, one way or the other, it didn’t matter anymore
...

How could I be, when I was flowing in a stream of pure awareness?
There was so much kindness and compassion in God and an explanation for everything
...
Ten days after I visited Shams’s room clad in silk and perfumed tulles, ten
days after I fell ill, I plunged into a river of pure nonexistence
...


Ella

BOSTON, JULY 3, 2008

Boston had never been this colorful and vibrant, Ella thought
...
Every day Ella drove from Northampton to Boston to see him
...
They talked endlessly on subjects as diverse as the curiosities of local
cuisines, different meditation techniques, aboriginal art, gothic novels, bird-watching, gardening, growing
perfect tomatoes, and the interpretation of dreams, constantly interrupting and completing each other’s
sentences
...

When they were outside on the street, they took care not to touch each other, but that proved to get
increasingly difficult
...
Goaded by a strange courage she never knew she had in her, in restaurants and on the streets
Ella held Aziz’s hand, kissed his lips
...
Several times they returned to the hotel together, and on each occasion they came very
close to making love, but they never did
...

“There’s something I need to tell you,” Ella said
...
”
Aziz raised one eyebrow, acknowledging the sudden shift in Ella’s tone
...
”
“Okay, you go first
...
”
Still smiling her half smile, Ella lowered her gaze, contemplating what to say and how to say it
...
“Before you came to Boston, David and I went out one evening and had a long talk
...
Apparently he read our e-mails without my knowledge
...
About us, I mean
...
“To make a long story short, I told my husband that I loved another man
...
Ella was
distracted momentarily, but then she was able to finish
...
I want to come with you to Amsterdam
...
There was smoke
coming out of one of the buildings in the distance—a thick black cloud hovering in the air
...
When he started to speak, it sounded as if he were addressing the
entire city
...
”
“What do you mean?” Ella asked nervously
...
”
“You mean there is someone else in your life …?”
“No, sweetheart, no
...
“It’s nothing like that
...
’
You never asked me about the fourth stage, and hard as I tried, I couldn’t bring myself to tell you
...
Would you like to listen to it now?”
“Yes,” Ella said, although she feared anything and everything that could disrupt this moment
...
”

In a hotel room on that day in July, a few hours prior to his flight back to Amsterdam, Aziz told Ella how
he had become a Sufi in 1977, adopting a new name for himself and also, as he had hoped, a new destiny
...

He had made close friends on six continents, people who saw him as part of their family
...
Never taking off
the necklace in the shape of the sun that he wore to remind him of Shams of Tabriz, Aziz had lived life by
traveling, reading, and teaching in the footsteps of Sufi dervishes, encountering signs of God everywhere
and in everything
...

It started with a lump in his armpit, which apparently he was late to notice
...
The doctors said it didn’t look good, but they had to run
several tests before giving him a more definite diagnosis
...

At the time he was fifty-two
...

Ella moved her lips to say something, but the words did not come out and her mouth felt bone dry
...

Aziz kept speaking, his tone firm and urgent
...
There were still places he wanted to see, and the first thing he did was find a
way to get to them all
...
As an
amateur ney player, he gave concerts with Sufi musicians in Indonesia, Pakistan, and Egypt and even
made an album with a group of Jewish and Muslim mystics in Córdoba, Spain
...
Master Sameed was long
dead, and Aziz prayed and meditated by his grave, contemplating on the trajectory his life had followed
...
“You know, it was one of those things I had wanted to
do for a long time
...
A week later I received an intriguing
e-mail from a mystery woman in Boston
...
A weak smile of respectful compassion, tender and pained
...
From a man getting ready to die, he had
turned into a man falling in love at a most unexpected time
...
Spirituality, life, family, mortality, faith, and love—he found
himself rethinking their meanings again and not wanting to die
...
” And he
said so far this stage had proved to be much more difficult than all the earlier ones, because it had come at
a time when he thought he’d worked through most, if not all, of his inner conflicts, a time when he thought
he was spiritually mature and fulfilled
...
I have gone through each of those stages, step by step
...
She

writes to me, and I write back
...
Words
become more precious than ever
...

And I realize I want to get to know this person
...
Suddenly my life is not enough
anymore
...
”
“But we will have time
...

“My doctors tell me I have sixteen months,” Aziz said, lightly but firmly
...
Or
they might be right
...
You see, Ella, all I can give you is the present moment
...
But the truth is, no one has more than that
...
”
Ella peered down at her feet, leaning sideways, as if part of her were about to fall down and part of her
resisted
...

“Don’t, please
...
I wanted to say, ‘Let’s
travel the world together
...
’ ”
“That would be nice,” Ella said sniffing, like a child offered some bright-colored toy in the midst of
her wailing
...
He looked away from her toward the window
...
I was even afraid to touch you, let alone make love
...
You
can do it for me
...
”
“Why do we have to fight everything?” Aziz wanted to know
...

… Don’t we have any other way of dealing with things?”
“I’m not a Sufi,” Ella croaked impatiently, her voice sounding like the voice of someone else, someone
older
...

“I know you’re not a Sufi
...
“And you don’t have to be one
...
That’s all I’m
asking of you
...

“Some time ago you asked me if I was Shams, remember? You said I reminded you of him
...
I think he was way beyond and above me
...
If
you let love take hold of you and change you, at first through its presence, then through its absence—”
“I’m not a poet,” Ella said this time
...
But he was transformed into one
...

“We’re all what we are,” murmured Aziz
...
It is a journey from here to
there
...
And if you are brave enough and if I am brave enough, we can go to
Konya together in the end
...
”
Ella gasped
...
There was a new expression on his face
now, a distance in his tone, as if he were swiftly drifting away, like a dry leaf at the mercy of the wind
...
Go back to your children and your house
...


Whatever you choose, I will respect your decision and I will love you till the end
...
Outsiders think drinkers are lazy people who have nothing else to do
...
We carry the weight
of the world on our shoulders
...
There was
a big, black bull, angry as hell, chasing me on unfamiliar streets
...
Still running, I entered a thoroughfare that turned out to be a
dead-end street
...
Suddenly the egg started to
hatch, and out came the ugliest baby bird ever, wet and noisy
...
Just
as the bird began to descend, its sharp beak and even sharper claws pointed at me, I woke up
...
Though my mouth
tasted like rusty nails and I was dying to have a drink, I felt too tired to even move
...

I heard a heated argument rising and falling like the buzz of swarming bees
...
And that is when I overheard that ominous word: murder
...
One hears all sorts of things in a tavern and in time
learns not to take every spoken word seriously
...
My jaw dropped open when it finally dawned upon
me that they were serious
...

As soon as they left the table, I stopped feigning sleep and jumped to my feet
...

“What is it this time?” Hristos came running
...
Not even him
...
What if there were more
people involved in this conspiracy against Shams? I had to keep my mouth shut and my eyes wide open
...
“Could you please bring me some soup? Make it with a lot of
garlic
...
In a few minutes, he brought me a bowl of goat-intestine soup, spicy and scorching, which I ate
in haste, my tongue burning
...

First I tried Rumi’s house
...
Then I went to the mosque, the madrassa, the teahouse, the
bakery, the hamam
...
I even checked the old
Gypsy woman’s tent among the ruins, in case he had gone there to get rid of a sore tooth or a bad spell
...
Fear began to gnaw at me
...
And just like magic, only a few steps away from the tavern door, I bumped right into him
...
You look preoccupied,” Shams said, smiling
...

When he managed to pull away from my embrace, Shams stared at me, looking quite amused
...
My head ached so much that at any other time I would have downed a few
bottles to get drunk as quickly as possible and doze off
...

I swallowed hard
...
Even I couldn’t be sure
...
“I have no idea who they are
...
You see,
I was sleeping
...
I mean, I did have a dream, but it wasn’t like this
...
Well, I had drunk a few glasses, but I wasn’t—”
Shams put his hand on my shoulder
...
I understand
...
Now, go back to the tavern, and don’t you worry about me
...
And neither are you,” I objected
...
You
need to be careful
...
That is the first place they will look for you
...

“Listen, dervish, my house is small and a bit stuffy
...
”
“Thank you for your concern,” Shams murmured
...
It is one
of the rules: This world is erected upon the principle of reciprocity
...
Fear not the plots, deceptions, or tricks of other people
...
He is the biggest plotter
...
Simply and fully believe in that
...
”
Having said that, Shams gave me a wink and waved good-bye
...


The Killer

KONYA, MARCH 1248

Bastards! Idiots! I told them not to come with me
...
But they insisted, reasoning that since the dervish had supernatural
powers, they had to see him dead with their own eyes
...
“But make sure you don’t get anywhere near me until everything is
over
...
There were three of them now
...
They all had their faces wrapped in black scarves
...
I jumped over the stone wall into the courtyard and hid
myself behind a bush
...
All I had to do was wait
...
The sword felt heavy and cold in my
palm, the two coral beads that embellished its handle rough under my fingers
...

There was a pale blue haze around the moon
...
I
caught the sweet whiff of roses in the wind buffeting the trees
...
Even
before I reached the house, I hadn’t been in the best of moods
...
As I stood there,
wrapped by that overly sweet odor, I couldn’t help but feel a strong urge to drop the entire plan and leave
this spooky place at once
...
I didn’t know how much time had passed
...
As the wind’s fury intensified, for some reason unbeknownst to
me my mind kept raking up memories, dark and vexing, of all the men I had killed
...
It usually didn’t make me nervous to remember the past
...

I whistled a few songs to boost my morale, and when that didn’t help, I fixed my gaze on the back door
of the house and whispered, “Come on, Shams
...
Come out into the
courtyard
...
No movement
...

All of a sudden, it began to rain
...
Soon the downpour was so hard that the streets turned into rushing rivers and I was completely
soaked
...
“Damn! Damn!”
I was considering giving up for the night when I heard a sharp sound over the clatter of rain on the roofs
and roads
...

It was Shams of Tabriz
...

“It is a lovely night, isn’t it?” he asked
...
Was there someone else next to him, or was he talking
to himself? Did he know I was here? Could he possibly be aware of my presence? My mind was boiling
with questions
...
How could the lamp in his hand keep burning despite the mighty
wind and the heavy rain? And as soon as this question crossed my mind, I felt a shiver down my spine
...
He so excelled in black magic, people said, that he could turn
anyone into a braying donkey or a blind bat by simply tying a piece of string from that person’s clothes
and uttering his evil incantations
...

“Years ago I had a master in Tabriz,” Shams said as he put the lamp on the ground, thus taking it out of
my eyesight
...
It is one of the last rules
...
If he knew I was
here, there was no point in hiding
...

But then, as if to deepen my confusion, I noticed the silhouettes of the three men waiting under a
covering outside the garden wall shift restlessly
...

“It is Rule Number Thirty-seven,” Shams continued
...
So precise is
His order that everything on earth happens in its own time
...

And for everyone without exception, the clock works accurately
...
”
In that moment I understood that he was talking to me
...
He had known it even
before he stepped out into the courtyard
...
I felt as if all around me the air were
being sucked away
...
And just like that, I stood up and walked out
from behind the bush
...
We
stood face-to-face, the killer and the victim, and despite the strangeness of the situation everything seemed
natural, almost peaceful
...
The dervish dodged the blow with a swiftness I
did not expect from a man of his size
...

Apparently the three young men had brought friends
...

I stood watching, shocked and furious
...
I was so angry at the three young men for their insolence that I could easily have let
the dervish go and fought them instead
...
“Help! Help us, Jackal Head! He is going to
kill us
...
The
seven of us knocked the dervish to the ground, and in one swift move I stabbed him in the heart
...
He didn’t stir again, nor did he breathe
...
Gasping loudly
for air, we each then took a step back and waited to hear the sound of his body hitting the water
...

“What the hell is going on?” said one of the men
...
“How could he not?”
They were panicking
...

“Maybe he got caught on a hook on the wall,” the third man suggested
...
It took the burden of finding an explanation off our shoulders, and we

gladly embraced it, though we all knew there were no hooks on the walls of wells
...
A cool breeze crossed the
courtyard, sprinkling thin, brown willow leaves around our feet
...
We might have stayed there until long into the day had
the back door of the house not opened and a man walked out
...
It was Mawlana
...
“Are you there, Shams?”
At the mention of his name, all seven of us took to our heels
...
I remained behind, searching for my dagger, which I found under a bush,
covered with mud
...

And when I did, I saw Rumi stagger into the courtyard and then suddenly lurch to his left, toward the
well, as if guided by an intuition
...
Then he pulled back, fell to his knees, pounded his
chest, and let out a terrifying scream
...


Ella

NORTHAMPTON, AUGUST 12, 2008

Balmy and sunny, it was an ordinary day in August
...
Ella woke up early in the
morning, prepared breakfast for her husband and children, watched them leave for work and chess and
tennis clubs, went back to her kitchen, opened her cookbook, and chose the day’s menu:
Spinach Soup with Creamy Mushroom Mash
Mussels with Mustard Mayonnaise
Seared Scallops with Tarragon-Butter Sauce
Garden Salad with Cranberries
Zucchini Rice Gratin
Rhubarb and Vanilla Cream Lattice Pie

It took her all afternoon to cook the dishes
...
She set the
table, folded the napkins, and arranged the flowers
...
She prepared the croutons, put the dressing in the salad, thick and
fatty, just as Avi preferred
...
It was better to leave the table like this
...
Untouched
...

Then she grabbed the suitcase she had earlier prepared and left her house
...
“It is never too late to ask yourself, ‘Am I ready to change the life I am
living? Am I ready to change within?’
“Even if a single day in your life is the same as the day before, it surely is a pity
...
There is only one way to be
born into a new life: to die before death
...
I found him in
the library, sitting alone by the firelight, as still as an alabaster statue, shadows leaping across his face
...

Slowly, hazily, as if swimming back to the shore from a sea of reveries, he looked at me and said
nothing
...
“Between you and me, son of mine,
words have dried up
...

“Please don’t say that
...
“I swear to God
...
I
know the people who did it, but it wasn’t me
...
”
I flinched and instantly checked the ends of my robe
...
It all seemed clean
...

By inadvertently checking my hem for blood, I had given myself away
...
I did join them in the tavern that evening
...
And later that night, when Shams was talking to his killer
under the rain, I was one of the six men eavesdropping by the garden wall
...
But that’s it
...
I didn’t take part in the fight
...
And when they panicked, Jackal Head did the rest
...
Once or twice I conjured a memory of Shams escaping
from our hands into the pitch-black night, and the image was so vivid I almost believed it
...
Dance, poetry, music, and all the things that I
thought would vanish once he was gone have stayed firmly planted in our lives
...
Shams was right
...

My father had always been a loving man
...
He was kind toward not
only Muslims but also Christians, Jews, and even pagans
...

I believe he could even love Shams’s killers
...


Sultan Walad

KONYA, SEPTEMBER 1248

Beggars, drunks, prostitutes, orphans, and thieves … He distributes all his gold and silver to criminals
...
Everyone says he has lost his mind to grief
...
Qays put
on dervish robes, gave up all his wealth, and from then on wandered from one landscape to another
...
“It dissolves your king-self into dust
and brings out your dervish-self
...
I am not a scholar or a
preacher anymore
...
Here is my fana, herein my baqa
...

He said he had known Shams of Tabriz way back from his years in Baghdad
...

As he said all this, there wasn’t a trace of honesty on his face
...
He asked the
man what he wanted in return for this wonderful news
...
Upon hearing this, my
father took out his velvet caftan and handed it to him, just like that
...

And this is what my father said: “You think a caftan is too high a price to pay for his lie? But my dear
son, imagine, if he were telling the truth, if Shams were really alive, I would have given my life!”

Rumi

KONYA, OCTOBER 31, 1260

By and large over time, pain turns into grief, grief turns into silence, and silence turns into lonesomeness,
as vast and bottomless as the dark oceans
...
Every year on the last day of October, I retreat into a solitude that
grows in weight day by day
...
I remember and
review each of them, but there in the far reaches of my mind there is only Shams of Tabriz, glittering
...
You think that the light of your soul has been put out and that you
will stay in the dark forever
...
And only then do you come to realize that eyesight
conflicts with inner knowledge
...
After grief comes
another season, another valley, another you
...

You see him in the drop of water that falls into the ocean, in the high tide that follows the waxing of the
moon, or in the morning wind that spreads its fresh smell; you see him in the geomancy symbols in the
sand, in the tiny particles of rock glittering under the sun, in the smile of a newborn baby, or in your
throbbing vein
...
My chest
is a cave where Shams is resting
...
Of the scholar and preacher I once was, not even the smallest speck remains
...
Instead it has filled me with poetry
...
I am a believer of words
...
It was while listening to him work in his small store, beating leaves of gold to perfection, that
I had the most wonderful inspiration to put the final touches to the dance of the whirling dervishes
...

In time my elder son married Saladin’s daughter, Fatima
...
I taught her the Qur’an
...
That is the one thing dear Kimya proved to me long ago: that girls are
just as good students as boys, if not even better
...

Four years ago I began to recite The Mathnawi
...
Ever since then the poems spill out of my lips as
if by a force of their own
...
It was Saladin who painstakingly wrote out those
early poems
...
It is thanks to them that the poems survived, because the
truth is, if asked to repeat any one of them today, I don’t think I could
...
I am only the bed of water where they
stop and rest on their way to warmer lands
...
It could be long or it could be
short
...
And when the poem is over, I’m quiet again
...
And “Silence,”
Khamush, is one of the two signatures I use in my ghazals
...


The world has been moving and changing at a speed we human beings can neither control nor
comprehend
...
The one city that prided itself on its fortitude and
glamour and claimed to be the center of the world suffered defeat
...
My
dervishes and I had a huge celebration, passing through the streets with drums and flutes, dancing and
singing in joy, because that is how a saint should be buried
...
The Mamelukes of Egypt defeated them
...
Every winner is inclined to think he will be triumphant forever
...
But both are wrong for the same reason: Everything changes
except the face of God
...
He is the
scribe to whom I dictated the entire Mathnawi
...
That’s who I
am
...
You
need to keep walking, though there’s no place to arrive at
...
With that knowledge we dervishes will dance our way through love
and heartbreak even if no one understands what we are doing
...
We will dance in our hurt and grief, with joy and elation, alone and together, as
slow and fast as the flow of water
...
There is a perfect harmony and subtle
balance in all that is and was in the universe
...
Rule Number Thirty-nine: While the parts change, the whole always remains the
same
...
And every decent person who passes
away is replaced by a new one
...

For every Sufi who dies, another is born somewhere
...
And we are all connected in a chain of hearts
...
For every Shams of Tabriz who has passed away,
there will emerge a new one in a different age, under a different name
...


Ella

KONYA, SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

By his bed she was sleeping on a plastic chair when she suddenly opened her eyes and listened to an
unexpected sound
...
She realized it was the call to
prayer coming from outside
...
But she had a feeling it would also be the end
of something
...
That it is beautiful, rich, and mysterious
...
Just like love
...
She blinked repeatedly in
the dark until she could make sense of the male voice filling the room from the open windows
...
This wasn’t the spacious house she
had shared with her husband and three children
...

No, she wasn’t in Massachusetts
...
And the man whose deep, steady breathing she now heard as an undertone
to the call for the morning prayer was not her husband of twenty years but the lover for whom she had left
him one sunny day last summer
...
“And how about your kids? Do you think they will ever forgive you?”
And that is how Ella had come to understand that if there was anything worse in the eyes of society than
a woman abandoning her husband for another man, it was a woman abandoning her future for the present
moment
...
It was the smallest hospital
room she had ever seen, not that she’d seen many hospital rooms in her life
...
Everything else was placed in relation to the bed—a wooden closet, a square coffee table, an
extra chair, an empty vase, a bed tray with pills of varying colors, and next to it the book Aziz had been
reading since the beginning of this trip: Me & Rumi
...
Everything was
going well until the day before, when Aziz, while having lunch at a restaurant, collapsed on the floor and
had to be rushed to the nearest hospital
...

“My dear, are you sleeping?” Ella asked
...

There came no answer other than a fleeting lull in the rhythm of his breathing, a missing note in the
sequence
...

“I am now,” Aziz said slowly
...

Aziz sat straight up now, his green eyes unblinking
...

“The morning prayer is special,” he murmured
...
We prefer to keep sleeping
...
It says, ‘Prayer is better than
sleep
...
If only we could fall asleep together
...

In a little while, the call to prayer came to an end, its echoes drifting away on retreating waves
...
It had been a year since they’d
been together
...
Most of the time, Aziz had been well enough to keep
traveling with Ella, but in the past two weeks his health had deteriorated visibly
...
Her mind filled with anxieties
...
She passed through corridors where all the walls had been
painted shades of green and entered wards where she saw patients, old and young, men and women, some
recovering, others failing
...
She had never felt so out of place anywhere before
...

A few minutes later, she was sitting by the water fountain in the hospital’s small, pleasant garden
...
She groped in her pockets for a coin but couldn’t find anything
there other than scribbled notes and half a granola bar
...
Smooth, black, and shiny
...
The pebble hit the wall
of the fountain and bounced aside, falling right into the lap of the stone angel
...

When she walked back half an hour later, she found a doctor and a young, head-scarved nurse in the
room and the bedsheet pulled over Aziz’s head
...


Aziz was buried in Konya, following in the footsteps of his beloved Rumi
...
First she arranged the spot where he would be buried—under
a huge magnolia tree in an old Muslim cemetery
...
To her delight, quite a
number of them were able to come, from as far away as Cape Town, St
...
Among them were photographers like him, as well as scholars, journalists, writers, dancers,

sculptors, businessmen, farmers, housewives, and Aziz’s adopted children
...
They celebrated his death, as they
knew he would have wanted
...
A Mexican poet distributed pan de
los muertos, and an old Scottish friend of Aziz’s sprinkled rose petals on everyone, raining over them
like confetti, each and every one a colorful testimony that death was not something to be afraid of
...

Two days after the funeral, finally alone, Ella wandered the city, watching the families walk past her,
merchants in their shops, and street vendors eager to sell her something, anything
...
She was a complete stranger
here, a complete stranger everywhere
...
A color too meek and docile for a woman who’s trying to be
neither, she thought
...
Orly and Avi were still not speaking to their mother
...

Ella leaned forward into empty space and smiled as if her daughter were standing right across from
her
...
”
“Oh, Mom, I’m so sorry
...
It was Jeannette who broke the silence
...
In her daughter’s question, she heard another unstated question
...
But she could always give private lessons in English, work
for a magazine, or who knows, be a good fiction editor one day
...
She had never been on her own like this before, and yet, oddly enough,
she didn’t feel lonely
...
“And I’ve missed your brother and sister, too
...
“They have incredibly cute little flats there, overlooking the
canals
...
I’ll need to improve my biking
...
… I’m not going to make
plans, honey
...
I’ll see what my heart says
...
It
swirled with an invisible speed of its own, dissolving into nothingness and encountering therein infinite
possibilities, like a whirling dervish
...
“A life without love is of no account
...
…
Divisions only lead to more divisions
...
It is what it is, pure and
simple
...
And a lover is a soul of fire!

“The universe turns differently when fire loves water
...
I owe a bigger debt of gratitude than I can ever express to friends
everywhere—Istanbul, Amsterdam, Berlin, and London
...
I am deeply grateful to Marly Rusoff, my literary agent, who has believed in me from
day one and has always seen through me with that third eye of hers
...
I am indebted to my editor,
Paul Slovak, for his many valuable contributions and inner wisdom, as well as for his indispensable
suggestions as the manuscript traveled between Istanbul and New York
...
Thank you, dear Zeynep, Emir, Hande, and Beyza,
for your time, patience, amity, and precious contributions
...

Finally, to Eyup and my children, I thank you for showing me, a nomadic soul, that it was possible to
settle down in one place and still be free
...


Glossary

baqa: permanency that comes after annihilation, a higher state of life with God
baraqa: blessing
dervish: someone who is on the Sufi path
fana: annihilation of the Self while physically alive
faqih: a scholar of law
faqir: a Sufi practicing spiritual poverty
ghazal: a type of poetry common in Indo-Perso-Arabic civilization
hadith: the words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad
hafiz: a person who has memorized the Qur’an
hamam: Turkish bath
Insan-i Kâmil: the perfect human being according to Sufism; the stage is genderless and is thus reachable
for both men and women
inshallah: “if Allah wills it”
khaneqah: a center for dervishes
kismet: luck, fortune
kudüm and rebab: musical instruments
lokum: Turkish delight
madrassa: college, school where students are educated in a wide range of fields
maktab: elementary school
maqamat: stages of development
nafs: false ego
ney: a reed flute played mostly by Malawi dervishes
qibla: the direction Muslims face for daily prayers
salwar: loose pants
saqui: one who serves wine
sema: the spiritual dance of whirling dervishes

semazenbashi: a dance master
Shafi, Hanefi, Hanbali, and Maliki: the four schools of law of Sunni Islam
sharia: 1
...
the mainstream; main venue
tafsir: interpretation or commentary, usually of the Qur’an
Tahafut al-Tahafut: The Incoherence of the Incoherence, by Averroës, in which the author defends
Aristotelian philosophy in Islamic thought
tariqa: a Sufi order, or the way, the mystical path
tasbih: a rosary
zikr: remembrance of God

Sources

While writing this novel I benefited greatly from my readings of the Mathnawi by R
...
Nicholson and
The Autobiography of Shams-ı Tabrizi by William Chittick
...

Lewis, and Annemarie Schimmel
...
wikipedia
...
H
...
H

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