The Forty Rules of Love (29 page)

Baybars the Warrior

KONYA, MAY 1246

Bloody but unbowed. I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard that Shams had found the nerve to confront my uncle in front of his students. Doesn’t this man have any decency? How I wished I had been in the madrassa when he arrived. I would have kicked him out before he even had the chance to open that wicked mouth of his. But I wasn’t there, and it seems that he and my uncle had a long conversation, which the students have been blabbering about ever since. I take their words with a grain of salt, though, since their accounts are inconsistent and give too much credit to that rotten dervish.

I feel very nervous tonight. It is all because of that harlot Desert Rose. I can’t rid my mind of her. She reminds me of jewelry boxes with secret compartments. You think you own her, but unless you have the keys, she remains locked up and unreachable even when you hold her in your arms.

It is her surrendering that troubles me most. I keep asking myself why she didn’t resist my fits. 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. But she lay motionless, her eyes bulging, her mouth shut, as if determined to take it on the chin, come what may. 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. On the way there, I kept wondering how she would react upon seeing me. In case she complained about me and things got nasty, I was going to bribe or threaten that fat patron of hers. I had everything worked out in my mind and was ready for every possibility, except for the possibility of her having run away.

“What do you mean, Desert Rose is not here?” I burst out. “Where is she?”

“Forget about that harlot,” the patron said, popping a
lokum
into her mouth and sucking the syrup off of her finger. 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. I need to see Desert Rose, and I need to see her now.”

The hermaphrodite raised her dark, pointed eyebrows at this form of address but didn’t dare to argue with me. Her voice dwindled to a whisper, as if ashamed of what she was about to say. “She is gone. Apparently she ran away while everyone was sleeping.”

It was too absurd to be even laughable. “Since when do whores walk out of their brothels?” I asked. “You find her now!”

The patron looked at me as if she were seeing, really seeing me, for the first time. “Who are you to give me orders?” she hissed, as her small, defiant eyes, so unlike those of Desert Rose, blazed back at me.

“I am a security guard who has an uncle in high places. I can shut this den down and put you all out on the street,” I said as I reached over to the bowl on her lap and plucked out a lokum. It was soft and chewy.

I wiped my sticky fingers on the patron’s silk scarf. Her face became livid with rage, but she did not dare to pick a fight.

“Why are you blaming me?” she said. “Blame that dervish. He is the one who convinced Desert Rose to leave the brothel and find God.”

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.

First disrespecting my uncle in front of his students, and now this. Clearly that heretic didn’t know his boundaries.

Ella

NORTHAMPTON, JUNE 26, 2008

Beloved Aziz,

I decided to write you a letter this time. You know, the old-fashioned way, with ink, a perfumed paper, a matching envelope, and a stamp. I am going to mail it to Amsterdam this afternoon. 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.

First you meet someone—someone who is completely different from everyone around you. 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 keep a safe distance from him. 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.

I cannot tell when exactly I became captivated by your words. All I know is, our correspondence has been changing me. Right from the start. Chances are I will regret saying this. But having spent my whole life regretting the things I failed to do, I see no harm in doing something regrettable for a change.

Ever since I “met” you through your novel and your e-mails, you have dominated my thoughts. Every time I read an e-mail from you, I feel something inside me swirl and realize that I have not known such contentment and excitement in a long while. Throughout the day you are on my mind all the time. I talk to you silently, wondering how you would respond to every new stimulus in my life. When I go to a nice restaurant, I want to go there with you. When I see anything of interest, I am saddened by not being able to show it to you. The other day my younger daughter asked me if I had done something with my hair. My hair is the same as always! But it’s true that I look different, because I feel different.

Then I remind myself that we haven’t even met yet. And that brings me back to reality. And the reality is that I don’t know what to do with you. I have finished reading your novel and turned in my report. (Oh, yes, I was writing an editorial report on it. There were times when I wanted to share my views with you, or at least send you the report I gave the literary agent, but I thought that wouldn’t be right. Although I can’t share with you the details of my report, you should know that I absolutely loved your book. Thank you for the pleasure. Your words will stay with me always.)

Anyway,
Sweet Blasphemy
has nothing to do with my decision to write this letter, or perhaps it has everything to do with it. What has compelled me is this thing between us, whatever it is, and its overwhelming impact upon me is eluding my control. It has become more serious than I can handle. I first loved your imagination and your stories, and then I realized I love the man behind the stories.

Now I don’t know what to do with you.

As I said, I need to send this letter immediately. If not, I will have to tear it into a dozen bits. I will act as if there is nothing new in my life, nothing unusual.

Yes, I could do what I always do and pretend that everything is normal.

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

With love,

Ella

Kerra

KONYA, MAY 1246

Baptism of fire. I don’t know how to deal with this situation. This morning, out of nowhere, a woman came asking for Shams of Tabriz. I told her to come back later, as he wasn’t at home, but she said she had nowhere to go and would rather wait in the courtyard. That was when I got suspicious and started to inquire into who she was and where she came from. She fell to her knees and opened her veil, showing a face scarred and swollen from many beatings. Despite her bruises and cuts, she was very pretty and so lithe. Amid tears and sobs, and in a surprisingly articulate way, she confirmed what I had already suspected. She was a harlot from the brothel.

“But I have abandoned that awful place,” she said. “I went to the public bath and washed myself forty times with forty prayers. I took an oath to stay away from men. From now on, my life is dedicated to God.”

Not knowing what to say, I stared into her wounded eyes and wondered how she, young and fragile as she was, had found the courage to abandon the only life she knew. 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. Her brown eyes reminded me of Mother Mary’s eyes. I couldn’t bring myself to shoo her away. I let her wait in the courtyard. That was the most I could do. She sat there by the wall, staring into space as motionless as a marble statue.

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

“Did you say there was a harlot in our courtyard?” Rumi asked, sounding puzzled.

“Yes, and she says she has left the brothel to find God.”

“Oh, that must be Desert Rose,” Shams exclaimed, his tone not so much surprised as pleased. “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.

“Aren’t we all living under the same roof anyhow?” Shams said, pointing to the sky above. “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.

I ushered the harlot into the house, praying that the inquisitive eyes of the neighbors would not fall upon us. No sooner had Desert Rose entered the room than she ran to kiss the hands of Shams, sobbing.

“I am so glad you are here.” Shams beamed as if talking to an old friend. “You won’t go back to that place ever again. That stage of your life is completely over. May God make your journey toward Truth a fruitful one!”

Desert Rose commenced to cry harder. “But the patron will never leave me in peace. She will send Jackal Head after me. You don’t know how—”

“Clear your mind, child,” Shams interrupted. “Remember another rule:
While everyone in this world strives to get somewhere and become someone, only to leave it all behind after death, you aim for the supreme stage of nothingness. Live this life as light and empty as the number zero. We are no different from a pot. It is not the decorations outside but the emptiness inside that holds us straight. Just like that, it is not what we aspire to achieve but the consciousness of nothingness that keeps us going.
”

Late in the evening, I showed Desert Rose the bed where she would sleep. And when she fell asleep immediately, I returned to the main room, where I found Rumi and Shams talking.

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

“What performance?” I asked.

“A spiritual dance, Kerra, the likes of which you have never seen.”

I looked at my husband in astonishment. What was going on? What dance were they talking about?

“Mawlana, you are a respected scholar, not an entertainer. What will people think of you?” I asked, feeling my face growing hot.

“Don’t you worry,” Rumi said. “Shams and I have been talking about this for a long time. We want to introduce the dance of the whirling dervishes. It is called the
sema
.
Whoever yearns for Divine Love is more than welcome to join us.”

My head started to ache madly, but the pain was slight compared to the torment in my heart.

“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. “At least consider postponing this performance.”

“Not everyone thinks highly of God,” Shams said without missing a beat. “Are we going to postpone believing in Him, too?”

And that was the end of the argument. 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.

Sultan Walad

KONYA, JUNE 1246

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” Shams kept saying. “Everybody will watch the same dance, but each will see it differently. So why worry? Some will like it, some won’t.”

Yet on the evening of the
sema,
I told Shams I was worried that nobody would show up.

“Don’t worry,” he said forcefully. “The townspeople might not like me, they might not even be fond of your father anymore, but they cannot possibly ignore us. Their curiosity will bring them here.”

And just so, on the evening of the performance, I found the open-air hall packed. There were merchants, blacksmiths, carpenters, peasants, stonecutters, dye makers, medicine vendors, guild masters, clerks, potters, bakers, mourners, soothsayers, rat catchers, perfume sellers—even Sheikh Yassin had come with a group of students. Women were sitting in the rear.

I was relieved to see the sovereign Kaykhusraw sitting with his advisers in the front row. That a man of such a high rank supported my father would keep tongues quiet.

It took a long time for the members of the audience to settle down, and even after they had, the noise inside didn’t fully subside and there remained a murmur of heated gossip. In my itch to sit next to someone who would not speak ill of Shams, I sat next to Suleiman the Drunk. The man reeked of wine, but I didn’t mind.

My legs were jumpy, my palms sweaty, and though the air was warm enough for us to take off our cloaks, my teeth chattered. This performance was so important for my father’s declining reputation. 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.

Shortly there came a sound, first from far away, and then it drew nearer. It was so captivating and moving that all held their breath, listening.

“What kind of an instrument is this?” Suleiman whispered with a mixture of awe and delight.

“It is called the
ney
,” I said, remembering a conversation between my father and Shams. “And its sound is the sigh of the lover for the beloved.”

When the
ney
abated, my father appeared onstage. With measured, soft steps, he approached and greeted the audience. Six dervishes followed him, all my father’s disciples, all wearing long white garments with large skirts. They crossed their hands on their chests, bowing in front of my father to get his blessing. 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.

It was quite a scene. I couldn’t help but smile with pride and joy. Out of the corner of my eye, I checked the reaction of the audience. Even the nastiest gossipers were watching the performance with visible admiration.

The dervishes whirled and whirled for what seemed like an eternity. Then the music rose, the sound of a
rebab
from behind a curtain catching up with the
ney
and the drums. And that was when Shams of Tabriz entered the stage, like the wild desert wind. Wearing a darker robe than everyone else and looking taller, he was also spinning faster. His hands were wide open toward the sky, as was his face, like a sunflower in search of the sun.

I heard many people in the audience gasp with awe. Even those who hated Shams of Tabriz seemed to have fallen under the spell of the moment. I glanced at my father. While Shams spun in a frenzy and the disciples whirled more slowly in their orbits, my father remained as still as an old oak tree, wise and calm, his lips constantly moving in prayer.

Finally the music slowed down. All at once the dervishes stopped whirling, each lotus flower closing up into itself. 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. A thick, sudden silence ensued. Nobody knew how to react. Nobody had seen anything like this before.

My father’s voice pierced the silence. “This, my friends, is called the
sema
—the dance of the whirling dervishes. From this day on, dervishes of every age will dance the
sema
. One hand pointed up to the sky, the other hand pointing down to earth, every speck of love we receive from God, we pledge to distribute to the people.”

The audience smiled and mumbled in agreement. There was a warm, friendly commotion all over the hall. I was so touched by seeing this affirming response that tears welled up in my eyes. At long last my father and Shams were beginning to receive the respect and love that they most certainly deserved.

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.