Love in a Headscarf (27 page)

Majnoun was the man in the classic Eastern love story of Layla and Majnoun, an equivalent to Romeo and Juliet or Orpheus and Eurydice. His name was Qays, and as a child he fell in love with a girl at his school, Layla. They were from different tribes and were prevented from marrying by their families. He spent his whole life absorbed in his longing for her, and roamed the arid desert in despair at being separated from the one he loved. A wise man advised him to declare war on Layla’s tribe in order to secure her, but her father arranged her marriage to another man. This pushed Qays further into madness, so he was given the name Majnoun, mad man, because to everyone else his commitment to Love was utterly crazy. When Layla’s husband died, Majnoun was advised this time to pretend he was sane in order to secure her hand in marriage.

He replied, “How can one who is in love, pretend not to be in love?”

Layla and Majnoun were only united in death when they were buried together.

Majnoun’s story is the perilous tale of a lover who is utterly consumed by his search for love. He is devoted to Love itself. Is Layla the beloved of the story or is there a deeper meaning about Divine Love? Majnoun’s love is the unattainable love for the Divine, which can only be reached when no longer held back by the body. Eric Clapton was just as moved as I was when he read the myth of Layla and Majnoun. He wrote his song “Layla” about her. I wish he hadn’t; his cheesy lyrics and wailing ruined the story for me.

Mohamed carried on talking about his heartbreak. “She just said she didn’t care anymore. How could that be? How could she have turned my life upside down by taking me out of my safe, solid existence, and then suddenly just walk away? She ripped out my whole being and for what? Why?”

He looked so vulnerable. Here he was heartbroken, like a child. He had experienced emotions that he had not known he could feel, and this had opened his eyes to dimensions of the universe that he had been unaware of. He was a Muslim who had been trying to walk the difficult path of being a moral spiritual person, which he called “Islam”; and on this journey he had seen the possibility of someone completing him and allowing him to fly.

He was a good man, on a spiritual quest. Why had I not done anything about this before? His emotions touched me deeply. Despite all the chatter around us, a shrill voice inside my head demanded to know why I had been blind to the possibility of considering him as a suitor when I had first met him. I had noted his intelligence, his faith, his spirituality, and, of course, his good looks, and yet I had walked away unmotivated to find out more about him. I could easily have asked my family to find out if there was a possibility of securing a meeting, a match. Safura and Moses popped into my head again, and how Safura had grabbed her opportunity and was confident enough to create a meeting herself. Instead, I’d only noticed Mohamed when he was already heartbroken and when all he wanted was a listener to hear his painful story.

Every so often, Mohamed and I would speak a few words to each other at the weddings and get-togethers of friends and family. I listened to his agonizing but gradually diminishing pain. In return he explained slowly and in detail the spiritual quest of the seeker. I had already realized as I lay beneath the starry skies in Jordan that my pursuit of love was one significant part of my ultimate goal to find Love itself. I was the seeker, and I was determined to pursue this quest.

I stood firmly on that path as he described the journey toward Love. I had never felt as energized and moved as I did in those conversations. I felt like a human spirit, rather than just a brain and a body. It was not him that I was mesmerized by, but the fact that all the information and book knowledge I had about Islam suddenly felt like it truly meant something in my real journey as a human being living in this world of ours. Instead of thinking too hard with my head, I felt and understood with my heart. It was as though I was able to relate to the world around me in a new way, not just through rules and information, but in spirit, sensation, and awe. Because book knowledge was no longer enough, it was hard to find words to describe it.

He told me that some called this journey he was describing “the path of
tasawwuf.
”

I asked him, “Is that like being a Sufi?”

He smiled. “It’s very fashionable these days to be a Sufi. No one is quite sure about the origin of this word. Some think it refers to the woolen clothes Sufis used to wear, some say it is about their dedication to purity.”

He paused to chuckle to himself. “People think being a Sufi is all cool, hip mysticism, chilled out, easy-going, no rules.” He leaned forward. “Sufis are the people who change the world. They understand how the journey of the spirit makes you live a life that is dedicated to making the world a better place.”

I was wide-eyed. “Are you a Sufi?” I asked with surprise. Sufis did not always have a very good reputation among those within mainstream Islam, who saw them as giving the mystical experience more importance than the day-to-day rules of behavior and actions like
salat
, prayers.

He laughed wisely, his eyes crinkling with affection. “The name is not important in the search. We are all too obsessed with words, names, labels. In order to avoid all these complications, I prefer to call it
irfan
, which means spiritual knowledge. The ultimate goal of
irfan
is to gain
ma’arifah
, knowledge of the Divine.
Irfan
and
ma’arifah
come from the same meaning of ‘knowing.’” As soon as he said the words, I was surprised to realize how obvious it was that my long search for love hid a deeper quest for the knowledge of who I was, and my place in the universe. What was this connection between knowing and loving?

Mohamed explained that knowledge was of three kinds. The weakest form of knowledge was what people told you, and its credibility was based on the authority of the person telling you. A stronger form of knowledge was seeing with your own eyes, and this was how most of us constructed our world.

“The ultimate level of certainty,” he went on, “is the knowledge that you have tasted for yourself. No one can ever persuade you away from something you have experienced yourself. Someone who speaks from experience creates a resonance that someone who speaks only from book knowledge will never achieve.”

“Practice what you preach,” I echoed. “That is the only way to have an impact.”

“Exactly!” He threw his fist up passionately into a small air punch. “And that is why the Prophet Muhammad caused such a stir with his words. When he explained the importance of good manners, kindness, and etiquette, people listened because he practiced it himself. His behavior was so exquisite, we’re still listening today. More importantly, if you want to achieve
ma’arifah
, real knowledge of Love, then the Prophet’s words have the greatest impact because he had seen the Divine for himself.” Seeing was not with the eyes, but the heart. That is why love underpinned all our experiences.

“In fact he had tasted it. He had experienced Love in its purest form himself, and that is the final stage of knowledge.”

I gazed intently at him, slowly realizing that simply knowing was not enough. That was far away from understanding the secrets of the universe—the secrets of Love that I had been searching for. I wanted to “taste” it myself.

“If you reach the truest heights of experience, you can be utterly lost in it. That is when you will reach
fanaa
, the place that the ‘I’ that you are, or the ‘I’ that I am, is completely annihilated. After this you reach
baqaa
, the eternal remaining. That is the immortality that we all yearn for.” The elixir that so many myths had been written about to meet that human longing to live forever was right at our fingertips. But to get there, the journey that Mohamed was describing—the journey that unknowingly I was already engaged in—was at once passionate and perilous.

The explanation echoed the statement that a person speaks when they declare that they want to become a Muslim. First, “There is no god.” This is the nothing “except the Divine.” This is the everything that remains after the material world we see around us.

Mohamed continued to speak passionately. “The arrogance of the ‘I’ separates you from the Divine and puts veils between you. The bigger your ego—the more we all talk about our superiority as human beings—the further we recede from the secrets of the Divine and the universe. You have to remove the barriers between your heart and the Divine. Be nothing in order to be reborn into everything.”

So I asked the question that critics of the mystical path raise: “What about the rules?” I inquired. “What of the limits, guidance, laws, and rituals embedded in Islam? You can’t just abandon those for this goal of annihilation.”

“The inner is meaningless on its own,” he responded. “In order to reach the point of ‘knowing,’ you have to be able to live in the physical world around you. You have to be in harmony with the environment and with other human beings. That is what is meant by being a balanced human being. To do that you need to follow rules of behavior and laws, otherwise how can you live peacefully with other people?”

I nodded in agreement: by interacting with others, you learned how to be a better person.

“You need three paths: law, compassion, and love.”

“The first is
shari’ah
, a word thrown around in all discussions about Islam but without people really understanding what it means.
Shari’ah
is not something vulgar that means chopping off hands and locking up women.”

The word
shari’ah
was used lazily as verbal shorthand for “backward” Islam. In day-to-day parlance
shari’ah
was used to refer to the legal code that was used in local law and which jurists spent many years studying, just as they might study British law in universities and at the bar. Such local law varied across the Muslim world due to the different interpretations that scholars placed on the sources of law, as well as the different perspectives and needs that their cultures required.

“On the big picture scale,
shar’iah
means the principles on which the universe is organized, the Divine code. It’s how the whole amazing world around us works, and the physical as well as spiritual laws that make it all hang together.”

Shari’ah
offered guidelines for yourself as well as for managing your interactions with others. It prescribed how to look after your own body in the best possible way. The idea of eating only meat that was
halal
meant eating good wholesome food. Fasting helped you to keep in shape and detox. Not drinking alcohol kept your body healthy. Not being intoxicated allowed you to see clearly and be in control of your actions at all times, all the while being able to have a direct clear-headed conversation with the Divine.
Shari’ah
also explained some things relevant to personal life as a Muslim: how to pray, how to marry, how to fast.
Shari’ah
is the basic idea of working toward justice and equality by regulating how you live with other people: not stealing or killing, treating people well, observing your duties and responsibilities to the people and environment around you.

I had followed a lot of rules throughout my own search, and I was tiring with the obsession with them. How would they offer me freedom?

As though reading my thoughts, Mohamed said, “
Shari’ah
is only the stepping stone to
tariqah
, the
way
you do things. It’s not enough to stick to the letter of the law: you have to apply its spirit too. The best possible way to do things is with kindness and compassion.”

This reminded me of Karim and his lightning story. He could have just told me that he wasn’t interested rather than spinning me along and then suggesting his preposterous story that lightning had intervened. Or Khalil, who had rejected me before we’d even met because I was too short but wanted to meet me anyway; and then took my money from me.

It was easy to forget that along with what you do, it is
how
you do it that is important. It is the difference between following the rules begrudgingly and softening life with a smile, a small kindness, generosity, compassion. If you fulfilled your duties by the book, you had only observed the method, the
shari’ah.
Tariqah
was the manner in which you carried out your responsibilities.
Tariqah
was doing things in the best way possible.

Mohamed became most alive and passionate when we spoke about
haqiqah
.

His eyes lit up. “This is when you truly know the Truth. You can taste the Divine and witness it. This is the inner path, where the soul has already been freed by following the
shari’ah
and the
tariqah
, and now it can soar into the arms of the Beloved.”

Beloved?
Who spoke about God as the Beloved? It sounded very romantic, but maybe that was the idea. There were many names to describe God. God was Just, Compassionate, Merciful. God was Beauty, Majesty, and Life. I agreed that he was also Love. But really, who used an affectionate name like Beloved?

Mohamed then told me something that I had heard thousands of times before, but this time it changed my life. “Allah says that He created the human being in order to be
known.
To be known requires someone or something to do the knowing.” He paused to let this sink in. “Allah also says that He created the human being in order to be
loved.
To be loved requires someone or something to do the loving.” I waited, wanting to hear how it all came together. “For God to be known, to be loved, someone or something has to
do the loving
and
do the knowing
of the Creator. Human beings are the best of all creatures, and they exist to know and love the Divine. We’ve been created for the very simple and single purpose: to love.”

I had found my place, my meaning. I now understood how my search for the one, my Prince Charming, made sense as part of my search for the One, the Beloved. I was a human being who was made to Love, we all were.