In the rarefied air of that holy space, Nouri’s thoughts soared like a dove. So he was utterly unprepared when a voice cried—
“Look out!”
—and the polished lamp that the young man had been hanging came crashing to the ground.
Nouri froze, his hand glued to Sheikh Bailiri’s, a strange light dazzling his eyes. He felt as if he could see things as they were. As if he could see himself. The thoughts that crowded his head disappeared. The laws of the physical world seemed to dissolve into the welter of metal and glass at his feet.
“That’s it, Nouri!” whispered Sheikh Bailiri. “That’s what you’re after! That’s who you truly are!”
Nouri did not understand what he meant. But he suddenly saw that another world existed. And as its light began to fade, and the contours of his usual world rose over him, he vowed that he would find his way back.
* * *
WHEN SHEIKH BAILIRI TOOK NOURI under his wing, Habbib glowed with fatherly pride. He’d spent countless nights gazing at the youth while he slept, wondering what would be his fate. He knew that no one could prepare him for that fate better than Sheikh Bailiri. Yet he could not help but feel a certain sadness at how the new patterns of the boy’s life created a distance between them. When Nouri was not out roaming the city with Sheikh Bailiri, he was immersed in a series of small daily tasks: laying the table for the morning meal, lighting the candles in the chapel mosque, filling the water jugs that sat beside the doors of the brothers’ cells. Habbib would wait patiently until bedtime, when the child would curl up beside him and listen to one of his tales. On his eighth birthday, however, Sheikh Bailiri announced that he was going to give Nouri his own cell.
“The Sufi must be a part of the community. But like everyone on the spiritual path, he can only find himself in solitude.”
So Habbib and Nouri still toiled in the garden and immersed themselves in the stories of the Shahnameh and sat beside each other at meals. But the time they spent together was now a fraction of what it had been.
Even at its most extreme, however, Habbib’s reaction to Sheikh Bailiri’s devotion to Nouri was mild when compared with that of Sharoud. On the day when he’d unraveled the boy’s head garment and exposed his secret, Sharoud had expected Nouri to be cast out into the street. When Sheikh Bailiri instead called Sharoud to his cell and took him to task, the somber dervish could hardly control his fury.
“Surely it must be for the best,” he cried, “that such a horror has been brought to light!”
“The Sufi is respectful of others at all times,” said Sheikh Bailiri. “You had no right to tamper with the boy’s apparel.”
“But who knows where he came from?” said Sharoud. “Habbib’s story is full of holes!”
“He’s a boy with a special gift,” said Sheikh Bailiri. “As you yourself pointed out.”
Sharoud—not wishing to offend the Sufi master—said no more. But as the weeks passed and Sheikh Bailiri began to mentor the child, he could not hold his tongue.
“How can you honor this creature with your guidance? It’s an insult! An outrage!”
“Remember the rules of conduct, Sharoud.”
“But he has two sets of ears! It’s a sacrilege!”
“No, Sharoud. It’s a blessing. A miracle.”
But Sharoud was insistent. “He’s unfit to be among us!”
Sheikh Bailiri had spent decades on Sharoud: trying to support what was highest in him, helping him to move through his dark, difficult moods. In that moment, however, it was clear that it was he, and not Nouri, who was unfit to be in their midst. So on the following morning Sharoud awoke to find his shoes turned outward at the door to his cell, which meant that he had until sundown to take leave of the lodge. It was a shock to everyone. Sharoud had been a part of their lives for so long it was unfathomable that he should suddenly go. But Sheikh Bailiri was firm, and by the snuffing out of that evening’s candles, Sharoud was gone.
As far as the others were concerned, they were not so much dismayed by Nouri’s ears as they were amazed.
“No wonder he can invent such splendid verse,” said Jamal al-Jani. “He can hear more words than anyone else!”
“With Nouri among us,” said Piran Nazuder, “the order is most surely twice blessed!”
So once Nouri’s head cloth was retied, he was treated like a rose petal in the washbasin: a flash of color in a world of function, a reminder of the wonder of Allah.
As for Nouri himself, he could not stop thinking about that moment at the mosque when he’d been swept to another world. He wished, more than anything, to go there again. Yet try as he might, he was unable to find his way back. He returned to the Darni Sunim, but its shimmering surfaces remained locked up tight. He held his breath—he pressed his fingers against his eyelids—but nothing came of it at all. He thought that another crash might somehow trigger the experience. So he dropped a ceramic bowl onto the floor. He shattered a vase against the stones of the courtyard. He smashed a plate against the wall. Yet nothing evoked the stunning awareness he’d experienced at the mosque.
Eventually he decided that only a precise reenactment of what had happened could lead him back. So one morning he fetched a ladder from the garden, carried it into the chapel, and placed it beside the small glass lamp that hung from the ceiling. He climbed the ladder, attached a rope to the chain, and climbed back down. Then he positioned himself so that, with one good tug, the lamp would come crashing down at his feet.
He closed his eyes. He tightened his fingers around the rope. But then he heard Sheikh Bailiri’s voice.
“Even if it startles you,” said the Sufi master, “it won’t be the same.”
Nouri opened his eyes to find Sheikh Bailiri standing at the entrance to the chapel.
“You can’t spend your life pulling down lamps.” He crossed the room to where Nouri stood, and he knelt down. “What happened at the Darni Sunim was a gift. To get there again will require effort. And will. Only you can say if you have the strength to remain on the path. Only time will reveal whether you do.”
Nouri gazed into Sheikh Bailiri’s eyes. He had no idea what awaited him on the path. He suddenly pictured it aswarm with demons. But his destiny beckoned. And there was no way he could turn back now.
Five
So the weeks and the days and the months went by, and Nouri’s education continued on.
“You cannot avoid life, Nouri. You have been given it for a reason. You have to move through it—the struggles—the fears—until you can be in it and out of it at the same time.”
He explained to Nouri that to be a Sufi was to strive for a direct experience of God.
“Why wait until you die to see Allah,” he said, “when you can see Him now?”
As Nouri’s ninth birthday approached, Sheikh Bailiri taught him that the world was an illusion.
“There are a thousand veils that cover the Self. You must dissolve them. Anything that separates you from God is a veil.”
As Nouri’s tenth birthday approached, Sheikh Bailiri taught him about the need to develop the heart.
“You must bypass the intellect. The mind will always obscure the truth. But the heart is a mirror. If you polish away the rust, you can reflect the truth back to itself.”
As Nouri’s eleventh birthday approached, Sheikh Bailiri taught him about love.
“All service, all prayer, must come from love. The Sufi would give everything he has—even his life—for a friend on the path.”
Sheikh Bailiri taught Nouri about the chart of virtues. The science of letters. The magic of numbers. He outlined the Degrees of Ascent and the Seven Stations of the Soul. But most of all, he encouraged the boy to study himself.
“Who are you, Nouri? Are you this creature that eats and sleeps and shits? This vessel of desires? This sack of contradictions? Or are you a particle of God, waiting to reunite with your source?”
As the years passed, Nouri learned how to adapt his head cloth to his spurts in g
rowth. Sometimes he simply needed to add a new strip of cloth to the tail. Other times he had to fashion an entirely new head garment. But he always saw the process of unwinding it—and washing it—and keeping the four ears clean—as a ritual. Whatever the ears meant, they were his, and he vowed to treat them with respect.
Nouri’s life might have continued on this way indefinitely had Vishpar not arrived. It was on a sultry morning toward the end of the month of Rajab, just a few weeks before Nouri’s twelfth birthday. He was sitting in Sheikh Bailiri’s cell, waiting for the day’s instruction to begin, when Jamal al-Jani appeared at the door.
“There’s a youth at the front gate,” said Jamal al-Jani. “He says that he wants to become a dervish.”
It had been a long while since anyone had appeared at the front gate wishing to join the order. The process of initiation was rigorous, and Sheikh Bailiri knew that this youth—like most of the young men who had tried—was not likely to make it past the first few days. He was happy to offer him the chance, however. So he told Nouri to rise and they followed Jamal al-Jani to the front gate to meet him.
As they moved down the hall, Nouri pictured the other youths who’d appeared on the doorstep over the years wishing to devote themselves to Allah. Some had been tall and some had been small, but they’d all been pale and enveloped in thick clouds of thought. So when they reached the gate, he was surprised to see the strapping youth who stood before them.
“Praise be to Allah!” said the youth, bowing his head down low as they approached.
Sheikh Bailiri took a step toward him. “What is your name?”
“Vishpar Izad al-Hassan al-Ibrahim.”
The Sufi master nodded. “You may raise your head.”
The youth raised his eyes to the Sufi master’s.
“And what is your purpose?”
“I wish,” said the youth, “to know God.”
“That is a large aim,” said Sheikh Bailiri.
“It is the only real aim that a man can have.”
Sheikh Bailiri was silent, and in the space of that silence Nouri studied the youth: his strong body, his hair like spun gold, his face both angelic and fierce. He’d never seen anything like him and he might have kept staring at him forever had Sheikh Bailiri not instructed Jamal al-Jani to lead him away. “Take him to the initiate’s pelt,” he said, “and explain what he must do.”
The youth bowed again. Then he started off into the lodge after Jamal al-Jani.
For the first three days, while Vishpar knelt in silence on the worn pelt that lay beside the door to the refectory, Sheikh Bailiri made a thorough investigation of his past. Everyone he spoke to said the same thing, however: despite his odd coloring—which some said was due to the salt baths his mother had taken while she was carrying him and others said was due to a tryst with a passing infidel—they had never met anyone as loyal or selfless or true as Vishpar Izad al-Hassan al-Ibrahim. On the fourth day, the Sufi master told him that he could still change his mind before embarking upon the penitential retreat. The youth, however, could not be dissuaded from his goal. So Sheikh Bailiri led him to the kitchen and for the next eighteen days he washed lentils, sliced eggplants, and chopped onions while the brothers shouted things like “You numbskull!” and “You’re doing it all wrong!” The youth took the barrage of insults in stride. So on the twenty-second day, Sheikh Bailiri handed him the plain muslin shift of the murid. Then he set about to complete the long months of service required to become a full-fledged dervish.
The work was hard. Cleaning the tiles on the roof of the chapel. Mending the mortar along the southern wall. Mucking out the sludge and slime from the bottom of the well. But whatever was asked of him, Vishpar responded to it with ardor and good cheer. So when the last of his tasks—scrubbing out the latrines—had been completed, he was ordered to prepare for the ceremony of full confession, which would be followed by his induction into the order.
This was what Vishpar had longed for for years. For from the time he was a child, nothing could dim the fervent gleam of the warrior in his eyes. He was stronger and smarter than the other boys, yet he did not show the least interest in the games they played or the jokes they told or the girls they vied for. Instead, he spent hours roaming the woods beyond the River Tolna on the lookout for thieves. When he was ten, he challenged the other boys to a wrestling match and barely exerted himself as he pinned each one to the ground. When he was twelve, one of the town’s wealthy merchants, who bought his saddles from his father, offered to teach him to ride, and Vishpar spent the next several years thundering down the open roads that skirted the city of Tan-Arzhan.
When he was fourteen, something changed. Perhaps it was the perfection of a rose that grew in his mother’s garden. Perhaps it was the sight of Sheikh Bailiri moving silently down the street. Whatever it was, Vishpar suddenly knew that not only was he a warrior, he was a warrior of God. He received no visitation from a pear tree like Sharoud had. But his morning walks always wound up at the lodge. And the books he read always paled beside the blazing fire of the Qur’an. So on his sixteenth birthday, he announced his intention to become a Sufi. And the following year, he arrived at the door to the lodge.
On the morning of his induction into the order, the sun rose fat into a pristine sky. Piran Nazuder brought him a khirqa and a sikke. Then he led him to the courtyard, where Sheikh Bailiri and the others were waiting.
“May your heart flourish,” said the Sufi master. “May you draw ever nearer to God.”
He placed the sikke upon Vishpar’s head. Then he escorted him to an empty cell to begin his new life.
Just as he’d knelt for three days outside the refectory, Vishpar knelt in prayer for three more. The door to his cell remained open, however, and the brothers went in and out, bringing him his food and offering gifts of supplication. On the third day, Jamal al-Jani led him to Sheikh Bailiri’s cell, where he took an oath of allegiance. Then Sheikh Bailiri invested him with the mantle of the order and pronounced him a dervish.
As was the custom in all orders, the new initiate was to be given a particular area of study to focus upon. And it was here that a competition rose up between the brothers. Piran Nazuder felt that Vishpar should be given to him to train for the sema.
“With a body so lithe and graceful,” he said, “he was born to whirl!”
Salim Rasa felt that the youth should be given to him to train as a cook.
“With a spirit so forceful, he’ll evoke God with a simple stew!”
Hajid al-Hallal felt that he should be given to him to train in languages.
“Imagine the sound of Urdu flowing from his lips!”
Sheikh Bailiri understood the brothers’ interest in the boy. His arrival was like an invigorating wind blowing through the lodge. He saw that for all his many gifts, however, Vishpar had the most expressive hands. So he gave him to Jamal al-Jani to train as a calligrapher.
“You won’t regret it!” cried Jamal al-Jani. “In no time at all, he’ll make the scriptures sing!”
As for Vishpar, he did not really care what he studied or which activities filled his days. All that mattered was that he was now a Sufi. And one step closer to God.
* * *
IT WOULD HAVE BEEN NATURAL for Nouri to be jealous of Vishpar. He was so righteous—so radiant—so robust—it was as if he’d stepped out of one of Habbib’s bedtime tales. The truth, however, was that Nouri was relieved to have the attention of the brothers drawn away from himself for a little while. So while they hovered like honeybees around the new aspirant, he took long walks along the shaded pathways of the woods and delved more deeply into his studies, grateful for the delicious quiet his solitude brought. He committed the entire Qur’an to memory. Each sura. Each verse. And, guided by Sheikh Bailiri, he attempted to grasp the meaning beneath the words. He studied jurisprudence and the Hadith. Astronomy. Arabic grammar. No matter how intently he focused, however—no matter how he tried to remain apart—it soon became clear that he could not
stop thinking about Vishpar. If the youth was filling buckets at the well, Nouri would find himself seized by a sudden thirst. If the youth was in the chapel, Nouri would feel the sudden need to pray. He tried not to call attention to himself. He tried not to make eye contact. He tried not to smile. But whenever he found himself near the golden youth his heart swelled.
The truth was, his heart wasn’t the only thing that swelled. For Vishpar’s arrival coincided with the strange upheaval in Nouri’s body called puberty. Dark thoughts tangled his mind. Unsettling urges fevered his blood. And nowhere was the chemistry more maddening than in the constantly distended flesh between his legs. Nouri had always been fond of his penis. It flapped like a catkin when he ran naked through the rain. It bobbed like a glowworm in his bath. But when Vishpar arrived, it sprang up like a lamb sausage toward some voluptuous banquet in the sky, and refused to go down.
He was mesmerized by the youth. Whether Vishpar was toiling in the garden or practicing calligraphy or sitting in zikr, Nouri could not take his eyes off him. So he was grateful that the rigors of his life kept him busy. And that his loose cotton shift helped to conceal his tumescent state. And he prayed that the incessant racket his heart made when he was near him could not be perceived by those with only two ears.
* * *
ONE MORNING, AROUND THE TIME of Nouri’s thirteenth birthday, Sheikh Bailiri received a visit from the seyhulislam of the Darni Sunim. A gaunt fellow with a piping voice, he explained to the Sufi master that a wealthy merchant named Abdul Husayn al-Bashir had just died and that his last deed—to secure his place in heaven—had been to donate a new fountain to the gardens of the mosque. The old fountain was about to be removed and the seyhulislam had decided to offer it to the dervishes.
“It’s beautifully carved,” he said, as he raked his fingers through his long white beard. “Though not so ornate that it would offend your simple tastes.”
Although the Sufi order was under the jurisdiction of the mosque, the mosque’s leaders felt threatened by its autonomy. In their mysticism and purity of practice, the Sufis were hard to pin down. Sheikh Bailiri therefore knew that the offer of the fountain was a way of reminding him that he and the brothers were still a part of the church. So he thanked the seyhulislam and said the brothers would be grateful for the gift.
A Poet of the Invisible World Page 5