The Forty Rules of Love (14 page)

Sitting there, I saw that everything served a purpose. 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. Behind all hardships was a larger scheme. I couldn’t make it out clearly, but I could feel it with my whole heart. Listening to Rumi in a packed mosque on that afternoon, I felt a cloud of tranquillity descend over me, as delightful and soothing as the sight of my mother baking bread.

Hasan the Beggar

KONYA, OCTOBER 17, 1244

Bristling with irritation, I sat under the maple tree. I continued to be angry at Rumi for his flamboyant speech on suffering—a subject he clearly knew little about. The shadow of the minaret inched its way across the street. Half dozing, half eyeing the passersby, I was about to fall asleep when I caught sight of a
dervish
I had never seen before. 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.

As his eyes scanned left and right, it didn’t take the dervish long to notice me. 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. I was so stunned I looked around just to make sure he wasn’t greeting someone else. But there was only me and the maple tree. Dazed, confused, I nonetheless put my hand on my heart and greeted him back.

Slowly the dervish walked toward me. I lowered my gaze, expecting him to leave a copper coin in my bowl or hand me a piece of bread. But instead he knelt down to my eye level.

“
Selamun aleykum,
beggar,” he said.

“
Aleykum selam,
dervish,” I responded. My voice sounded hoarse and strange to me. 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.

He introduced himself as Shams of Tabriz and asked my name.

I laughed. “What does a man like me need a name for?”

“Everybody has a name,” he objected. “God has countless names. Of those, only ninety-nine are known to us. 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. Instead I conceded, “I had a wife and a mother once. They used to call me Hasan.”

“Hasan it is, then.” The dervish nodded. Then, to my surprise, he gave me a silver mirror. “Keep it,” he said. “A good man in Baghdad gave it to me, but you need it more than I do. It will remind you that you bear God within you.”

Before I found the chance to say anything in return, a commotion broke out in the background. The first thing that came to my mind was that a pickpocket had been caught in the mosque. But when the shouts grew louder and fiercer, I knew that it had to be something bigger. No pickpocket would create such an uproar.

We found out soon enough. A woman, a known prostitute, had been found in the mosque dressed up as a man. A group of people were shoving her out, chanting, “Lash the deceiver! Lash the whore!”

In this state the angry mob reached the street. I caught sight of the young woman in men’s clothing. Her face was pale as death and her almond eyes terrified. I had seen many lynchings before. It never ceased to amaze me how dramatically people changed when they joined a mob. Ordinary men with no history of violence—artisans, vendors, or peddlers—turned aggressive to the point of murder when they banded together. Lynchings were common and ended with the corpses put on display to deter others.

“Poor woman,” I muttered to Shams of Tabriz, but when I turned to him for a response, there was no one standing there.

I caught sight of the dervish darting toward the mob, like a flaming arrow shot straight up into the sky. I jumped to my feet and rushed to catch up with him.

When he reached the head of the procession, Shams raised his staff like a flag and yelled at the top of his voice, “Stop it, people! Halt!”

Baffled, and suddenly silent, the men stared at him in wonder.

“You should all be ashamed of yourselves!” Shams of Tabriz shouted as he struck the ground with his staff. “Thirty men against one woman. 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. I recognized him instantly. He was a security guard named Baybars, a man all the beggars in town knew well for his cruelty and rapacity.

“This woman here dressed up as a man and sneaked into the mosque to deceive good Muslims,” Baybars said.

“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.

The question created a momentary lull. Apparently nobody had thought of it that way.

“She is a whore!” yelled another man, who looked so enraged that his face had turned a dark scarlet color. “She has no place in a holy mosque!”

That seemed enough to inflame the group again. “Whore! Whore!” a few people at the back chanted in unison. “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. The turban came loose, and the woman’s long blond hair, bright as sunflowers, fell down in graceful waves. We all held our breath, astonished by her youth and beauty.

Shams must have recognized the mixed feelings in the air, for he reproached them without skipping a beat: “You have to make up your minds, brothers. 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. She hid behind him, like a little girl hiding behind her mother’s skirts.

“You are making a big mistake,” the leader of the group said, raising his voice above the murmur of the crowd. “You are a stranger in this town and don’t know our ways. Stay out of this matter.”

Someone else chimed in. “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. He displayed no temper, remaining invariably tranquil. 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. Now, go back to the sermon and do a better job this time.”

An awkward silence descended on the entire street. Leaves skittered along the sidewalk, and for a moment they were the only things that moved.

“Come on, you lot! Off you go, back to the sermon.” Shams of Tabriz waved his staff, shooing the men away like flies.

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. A few of them were looking in the direction of the mosque as if considering returning. It was exactly then that the harlot mustered the courage to get out from behind the dervish. Fast as a rabbit, she took to her heels, her long hair flying every which way while she scurried into the closest side street.

Only two men attempted to chase her. But Shams of Tabriz blocked their path, swinging his staff under their feet with such suddenness and force that they tumbled over and fell down. A few passersby laughed at the sight, and so did I.

Embarrassed and stupefied, the two men managed to get to their feet again, but by that time the harlot had long vanished and the dervish was walking away, his work here done.

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.

“What’s going on?” I screamed as my eyes snapped open. “Did the Mongols attack us?”

There was a ripple of laughter. I turned around and found several other customers making fun of me. Dirty bastards!

“Don’t you worry, old drunk!” yelled Hristos, the tavern owner. “No Mongols coming after you. It’s Rumi passing by with an army of admirers.”

I went to the window and looked out. 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. I opened the window, ducked my head out, and watched them. Moving at a pace no faster than a snail’s, the procession came very near. In fact, some of the crowd were so close that I could easily have touched a few heads. Suddenly I had a brilliant idea. I was going to snatch off some people’s turbans!

I grabbed the wooden back scratcher that belongs to Hristos. 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. I was just about to pull the turban off when another man inadvertently looked up and saw me.

“Selamun aleykum,”
I saluted, smiling from ear to ear.

“A Muslim in a tavern! Shame on you!” the man roared. “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. I realized in sheer horror that it was a stone. If I hadn’t ducked at the last second, it would have cracked my skull. Instead it had shot through the open window, landing on the table of the Persian merchant sitting behind me. 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.

“Suleiman, close that window and go back to your table!” Hristos bellowed, his voice hoarse with worry.

“Did you see what happened?” I said as I staggered back toward my table. “Someone hurled a stone at me. They could have killed me!”

Hristos raised an eyebrow. “I’m sorry, but what were you expecting? Don’t you know there are people who don’t want to see a Muslim in a tavern? And here you are displaying yourself, reeking of alcohol, your nose glowing like a red lantern.”

“S-so what?” I stuttered. “Am I not a human being?”

Hristos patted me on the shoulder as if to say,
Don’t be so touchy.

“You know, this is exactly why I abhor religion. All sorts of them! Religious people are so confident of having God by their side that they think they are superior to everyone else,” I said.

Hristos did not respond. He was a religious man, but also a skilled tavern owner who knew how to soothe an incensed customer. He brought me another carafe of red wine and watched me as I guzzled it. Outside, a wild wind blew, slamming shut the windows and scattering dry leaves left and right. For a moment we stood still, listening carefully, as if there were a melody to be heard.

“I don’t understand why wine was forbidden in this world but promised in heaven,” I said. “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. “You are always full of questions. Do you have to question everything?”

“Of course I do. That’s why we were given a brain, don’t you think?”

“Suleiman, I have known you for a long time. You are not just any customer to me. You are my friend. And I worry about you.”

“I’ll be fine—” I said, but Hristos interrupted me.

“You are a good man, but your tongue is as sharp as a dagger. That’s what worries me. There are all sorts of people in Konya. And it’s no secret that some of them don’t think highly of a Muslim who has taken to drink. You need to learn to be careful in public. Hide your ways, and watch what you say.”

I grinned. “May we top off this speech with a poem from Khayyám?”

Hristos heaved a sigh, but the Persian merchant who had overheard me exclaimed cheerfully, “Yes, we want a poem from Khayyám.”

Other customers joined in, giving me a big round of applause. Motivated and slightly provoked, I jumped onto a table and began to recite:

“Did God set grapes a-growing, do you think
,

And at the same time make it a sin to drink?”

The Persian merchant yelled, “Of course not! That wouldn’t make any sense!”

“Give thanks to Him who foreordained it thus—

Surely He loves to hear the glasses clink!”

If there was one thing these many years of drinking had taught me, it was that different people drank differently. I knew people who drank gallons every night, and all they did was get merry, sing songs, and then doze off. But then there were others who turned into monsters with a few drops. 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.”

Another round of applause followed. Even Hristos joined the excitement. In the Jewish quarter of Konya, in a tavern owned by a Christian, we, a mixed bunch of wine lovers of all faiths, raised our glasses and toasted together, hard though it was to believe, to a God who could love and forgive us even when we ourselves clearly failed to do so.

Ella

NORTHAMPTON, MAY 31, 2008

“Better safe than sorry,” said the Web site. “Check his shirts for lipstick stains, see if he comes home smelling of unfamiliar perfumes.”

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.

In spite of her final test score, Ella didn’t want to confront David on this matter. She still had not asked him where he’d been on the nights he hadn’t come home. These days she spent most of her time reading
Sweet Blasphemy,
using the novel as an excuse to cover up her silence. Her mind was so distracted that it was taking her longer than usual to finish the book. Still, she was enjoying the story, and with every new rule of Shams’s she mulled her life over.

When the children were around, she acted normal.
They
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. But the truth was that Ella didn’t want a piece of information she wouldn’t know how to handle. The less she knew about her husband’s flings, the less they would occupy her mind, she thought. It was true what they say about ignorance. It was bliss.

The only time that bliss had been disrupted was last Christmas, when a survey from a local hotel arrived in their mailbox, addressed directly to David. Customer service wanted to know whether he was happy with his stays. Ella left the letter on the table, on top of a pile of mail, and that evening she watched him take the letter out of the opened envelope and read it.

“Ah, a guest evaluation form! The last thing I needed,” David said, managing a half smile for her. “We held a dental conference there last year. They must have included all the participants on their customer list.”

She believed him. At least the part of her that didn’t like to rock the boat did. The other part of her was cynical and distrustful. 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.

Deep inside, Ella blamed herself. She hadn’t aged well, and she’d gained considerable weight over the last six years. With every new pound, her sexual drive had declined a bit further. 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.

When she looked back at her life, she realized that rebellion had never suited her. 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 cut class. Never had teen sex. All around her, girls her age were having abortions or putting their out-of-wedlock babies up for adoption, while she observed their stories as though watching a TV program on famine in Ethiopia. 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 had never been a party girl, not even as a teenager. 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.

“Why can’t you be like Ella?” the mothers in the neighborhood asked their daughters. “See, she never gets herself in trouble.”

While their mothers adored her, the kids themselves saw her as a nerd with no sense of humor. No wonder she wasn’t very popular in high school. Once a classmate told her, “You know what your problem is? You take life so seriously. You’re fucking boring!”

She listened carefully and said she would think about that.

Even her hairstyle hadn’t changed much over the years—long, straight, honey-blond hair that she pulled into an unrelenting bun or braided down her back. 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. In any event, she never managed to draw two perfectly curved lines with the eyeliner and often went out with the line on one eyelid looking thicker than that on the other.

Ella suspected that there must be something wrong with her. She was either too intrusive and pushy (with regard to Jeannette’s marriage plans) or too passive and docile (with regard to her husband’s flings). There was an Ella-the-control-freak and an Ella-the-hopelessly-meek. She could never tell which one was about to emerge, or when.

And then there was a third Ella, observing everything quietly, waiting for her time to come. It was this Ella who told her she was calm to the point of numbness but that underneath there was a strangled self, harboring a fast freshet of anger and rebellion. If she kept going like this, the third Ella warned, she was bound to explode someday. It was just a matter of time.

Contemplating these issues on the last day of May, Ella did something she hadn’t done in a long while. She prayed. 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.

“Whichever one You choose, please be quick,” she added as an afterthought. “You might have forgotten, but I’m already forty. And as You can see, I don’t carry my years well.”