The Forty Rules of Love (34 page)

Aladdin

KONYA, MAY 1247

Being forced into a decision that I knew I would deeply regret later, I remained silent and did not openly object to this marriage. 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. I sat up in bed gasping for breath like a drowning man, and then, annoyed with myself for wallowing in self-pity I slapped my face again and again. A strangled sigh escaped my lips. And it was that sound that made me realize I wasn’t my father’s son anymore.

I had no mother. No father. No brother. And no Kimya. I was all alone in the world. What little remained of my respect for my father had disappeared overnight. Kimya was like a daughter to him. I thought he cared about her. But apparently the only person he really cared about was Shams of Tabriz. How could he marry Kimya to a man like him? Anyone could see that Shams would make a terrible husband. 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.

I spent the whole day struggling with these thoughts while having to watch the preparations. The house was spruced up, and the bedroom where the newlyweds would sleep was cleansed with rosewater to ward off evil spirits. But they forgot the biggest evil! How were they going to fend off Shams?

By late afternoon I couldn’t stand it anymore. Determined not to be part of a celebration that meant only torture for me, I headed for the door.

“Aladdin, wait! Where are you going?” My brother’s voice came from behind me, loud and sharp.

“I am going to stay at Irshad’s house tonight,” I said without looking at him.

“Have you gone crazy? How can you not stay for the wedding? If our father hears this it will break his heart.”

I could feel rage rising from the pit of my stomach. “How about the hearts our father is breaking?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t you get it? Our father arranged this marriage just to please Shams and make sure he doesn’t run away again! He offered Kimya to him on a silver tray.”

My brother pursed his lips, looking hurt. “I know what you are thinking, but you are wrong. You think this is a forced marriage,” he said, “whereas it was Kimya who wanted to marry Shams.”

“As if she had a choice in the matter,” I snapped.

“Oh, God! Don’t you understand?” my brother exclaimed, lifting both palms up as though asking help from God. “She is in love with Shams.”

“Don’t say that again. That is not true.” My voice cracked like thawing ice.

“My brother,” Sultan Walad said, “please don’t let your feelings veil your eyes. You are jealous. But even jealousy can be used in a constructive way and serve a higher purpose. Even disbelief can be positive. It is one of the rules. Rule Number Thirty-five:
In this world, it is not similarities or regularities that take us a step forward, but blunt opposites. And all the opposites in the universe are present within each and every one of us. Therefore the believer needs to meet the unbeliever residing within. And the nonbeliever should get to know the silent faithful in him. 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.

That was the last straw for me.

“Look here, I’m sick of all this syrupy Sufi talk. Besides, why should I listen to you? It’s all your fault! You could have left Shams in Damascus. Why did you bring him back? If things get messy, and I am sure they will, you are the one who is responsible.”

My brother gnawed the insides of his mouth with a look that verged on fearfulness. 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. It was a bizarre feeling, but strangely comforting.

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. The thought of him taking her wedding dress off and touching her milky skin with his rough, ugly hands was revolting. My stomach was tied in knots.

I knew that a line had been crossed. Somebody had to do something.

Kimya

KONYA, DECEMBER 1247

Bride and groom—that is what we were supposed to be. It has been seven months since we got married. All this time he hasn’t slept with me as my husband even once. Hard as I try to hide the truth from people, I can’t help suspecting they know it. Sometimes I fear that my shame is visible on my face. Like writing on my forehead, it is the first thing that anyone who looks at me notices. While I am talking to neighbors on the street, working in the orchards, or bartering with the vendors in the bazaar, it takes people, even strangers, only a glance to see that I am a married woman but still a virgin.

Not that Shams never comes to my room. He does. Each time he wants to visit me in the evening, he asks me beforehand if it is all right. And each time I give the same answer.

“Of course it is,” I say. “You are my husband.”

Then all day long I wait for him with bated breath, hoping and praying that this time our marriage will be consummated. But when he finally knocks on my door, all he wants to do is sit and talk. He also enjoys reading together. We have read
Layla and Majnun, Farhad and Shirin, Yusuf and Zuleikha, The Rose and the Nightingale
—stories of lovers who have loved each other against all odds. Despite the strength and determination of their main characters, I find these stories depressing. Perhaps it is because deep inside I know that I will never taste love of such proportions.

When not reading stories, Shams talks about the Forty Rules of the Itinerant Mystics of Islam—the basic principles of the religion of love. Once he put his head on my lap as he was explaining a rule. He slowly closed his eyes, and as his voice trailed off into a whisper, he fell asleep. My fingers combed through his long hair, and my lips kissed his forehead. It seemed an eternity before he opened his eyes. Pulling me down toward himself, he kissed me softly. It was the most blissful moment we ever had together. But that was it. To this day his body is an unknown continent to me, as is my body to him.

During these seven months, I, too, have been to his room several times. But each time I visit him unannounced, my heart constricts with anxiety as I can never tell how he will receive me. It is impossible to predict Shams’s moods. Sometimes he is so warm and loving that I forget all my sorrow, but then at other times he can be extremely grumpy. Once he slammed his door in my face, yelling that he wanted to be left alone. I have learned not to take any offense, just as I have learned not to bother him when he is in deep meditation.

For months on end after the wedding, I pretended to be content, perhaps less with others than with myself. 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. Depending on the day, depending on his mood, I thought of him as one or the other, dressing him up in a different costume in my imagination.

And for a while it worked. Without expecting much, I began to look forward to our conversations. It pleased me immensely that he appreciated my thoughts and encouraged me to think more creatively. I learned so many things from him, and in time, I realized, I, too, could teach him a few things such as the joys of family life, which he had never tasted before. To this day I believe I can make him laugh as no one else could.

But it wasn’t enough. Whatever I did, I could not rid my mind of the thought that he didn’t love me. I had no doubt that he liked me and meant me well. But this wasn’t anything even close to love. So harrowing was this thought that it was eating me up inside, gnawing at my body and soul. I became detached from the people around me, friends and neighbors alike. I now preferred to stay in my room and talk with dead people. Unlike the living, the dead never judged.

Other than the dead, the only friend I had was Desert Rose.

United in a common need to stay out of society, we had become close friends. She is a Sufi now. She leads a solitary life, having left the brothel behind her. Once I told her I envied her courage and determination to start life anew.

She shook her head and said, “But I have not started life anew. The only thing I did was to die before death.”

Today I went to see Desert Rose for an entirely different reason. I had planned to maintain my composure and talk to her calmly, but as soon as I entered, I started choking back sobs.

“Kimya, are you all right?” she asked.

“I am not feeling well,” I confessed. “I think I need your help.”

“Certainly,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

“It is about Shams.… He doesn’t come near me … I mean, not in that way,” I stuttered halfway through but managed to finish my sentence. “I want to make myself attractive to him. I want you to teach me how.”

Desert Rose exhaled, almost a sigh. “I took an oath, Kimya,” she said, a weary note slipping into her voice. “I promised God to stay clean and pure and not even
think
anymore about the ways a woman could give pleasure to a man.”

“But you are not going to break your oath. You are just going to help me,” I pleaded. “I am the one who needs to learn how to make Shams happy.”

“Shams is an enlightened man,” Desert Rose said, lowering her voice a notch, as if afraid of being heard. “I don’t think this is the right way to approach him.”

“But he is a
man,
isn’t he?” I reasoned. “Aren’t all men the sons of Adam and bound by the flesh? Enlightened or not, we all have been given a body. 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.

“Oh, please,” I begged. “You are the only one I can confide in. It has been seven months. Every morning I wake up with the same heaviness in my chest, every night I go to sleep in tears. It can’t go on like this. I need to seduce my husband!”

Desert Rose said nothing. I took off my scarf, grabbed her head, and forced her to look at me. I said, “Tell me the truth. Am I so ugly?”

“Of course not, Kimya. You are a beautiful young woman.”

“Then help me. Teach me the way to a man’s heart,” I insisted.

“The way to a man’s heart can sometimes take a woman far away from herself, my dear,” Desert Rose said ominously.

“I don’t care,” I said. “I am ready to go as far as it takes.”

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. Even as I comforted her, deep inside I knew it was hopeless, I knew I should never have yielded to her demands. 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.

“Teach me, please,” she begged me, her hands demurely folded in her lap, like the good girl she was raised to be. Hers was a voice that no longer had a reason to hope yet was hopeful all the same.

What harm could there be in this?
I thought as my heart lurched in compassion. It was her husband she wanted to seduce, for God’s sake. Not a stranger! She had only one motive: love. 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. This is how I decided to help Kimya, this village girl whose only notion of beauty was applying henna to her hands.

I taught her how to make herself more attractive and good-looking. She was an avid student, eager to learn. I showed her how to take long perfumed baths, soften her skin with scented oils and ointments, and apply masks of milk and honey. I gave her amber beads to braid in her hair so that her head would have a sweet, lasting smell. Lavender, chamomile, rosemary, thyme, lily, marjoram, and olive oil—I told her how to apply each and which incenses to burn at night. Then I showed her how to whiten her teeth, paint her nails and toes with henna, apply kohl on her eyes and eyebrows, redden her lips and cheeks, how to make her hair look lush and silky and her breasts bigger and rounder. Together we went to a store in the bazaar I knew too well from the past. There we bought her silk robes and silk undergarments, the likes of which she had never seen or touched before.

Then I taught her how to dance in front of a man, how to use this body God had given her. After two weeks of preparation, she was ready.

That afternoon I prepared Kimya for Shams of Tabriz, the way a shepherd prepares a sacrificial lamb. First she took a warm bath, scrubbing her skin with soapy cloths and anointing her hair with oils. 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. I had chosen a cherry-colored sheath and a pink robe gilded with hyacinths, of the sort that would reveal the shape of her breasts. Lastly we applied lots and lots of paint on her face. With a string of pearls across her forehead added as a final touch, she looked so pretty that I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

When we were done, Kimya didn’t look like an inexperienced, timid girl anymore, but a woman burning with love and passion. A woman ready to make a bold move for the man she loved and, if necessary, to pay a price. As I stood inspecting her, I remembered the verse of Joseph and Zuleikha in the Holy Qur’an.

Just like Kimya, Zuleikha, too, had been consumed by a desire for a man who did not respond to her overtures. When the ladies in the city had maliciously gossiped about her, Zuleikha had invited them all to a banquet.
She gave each of them a knife: and she said (to Joseph), “Come out before them.” 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.”

Who could blame Zuleikha for desiring Joseph so much?

“How do I look?” Kimya asked anxiously before she put on her veil, ready to step out the door and onto the street.

“You look exquisite,” I said. “Your husband will not only make love to you tonight, he’ll come back tomorrow asking for more.”

Kimya blushed so hard her cheeks turned rosy red. I laughed, and after a brief pause she joined me, her laughter warming me like sunshine.

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. And yet when our eyes met just before she opened the door, I saw that a trace of doubt had crept into her gaze. Suddenly I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach, almost a premonition that something terrible was going to happen.

But I didn’t stop her. I should have known better. I should have seen it coming. For as long as I live, I will never forgive myself.