by Elif Shafak
I hope my aversion to religion won’t offend you. Please see it as a confession long overdue from someone who cares about you.
Warmly,
Ella
Dear guerrilla Ella,
Your e-mail found me as I was getting ready to leave Amsterdam for Malawi. I have been assigned to take pictures of the people in a village where AIDS is rampant and most children are orphans.
Now, if everything goes well, I’ll be back in four days. Can I hope so? Yes. Can I control it? No! All I can do is take my laptop with me, try to find a good Internet connection, and hope that I will live another day. The rest is not in my hands. And this is what the Sufis call the fifth element—the void. The inexplicable and uncontrollable divine element that we as human beings cannot comprehend and yet should always be aware of. I don’t believe in “inaction” if by that you mean doing nothing at all and showing no deep interest in life. But I do believe in respecting the fifth element.
I believe we each make a covenant with God. I know that I did. When I became a Sufi, I promised God to do my part to the best of my ability and leave the rest to Him and Him only. I accepted the fact that there are things beyond my limits. I can see only some parts, like floating fragments from a movie, but the bigger scheme is beyond my comprehension.
Now, you think I am a religious man. But I am not.
I am spiritual, which is different. Religiosity and spirituality are not the same thing, and I believe that the gap between the two has never been greater than it is today. When I look at the world, I see a deepening quandary. On the one hand, we believe in the freedom and power of the individual regardless of God, government, or society. In many ways human beings are becoming more self-centered and the world is becoming more materialistic. On the other hand, humanity as a whole is becoming more spiritual. After relying on reason for so long, we seem to have reached a point where we acknowledge the limits of the mind.
Today, just as in medieval times, there is an explosion of interest in spirituality. More and more people in the West are trying to carve out a space for spirituality in the midst of their busy lives. But though they intend well, their methods are often inadequate. Spirituality is not yet another dressing for the same old dish. It is not something we can add to our life without making major changes there.
I know you like to cook. Did you know that Shams says the world is a huge cauldron and something big is cooking in it? We don’t know what yet. Everything we do, feel, or think is an ingredient in that mixture. We need to ask ourselves what we are adding to the cauldron. Are we adding resentments, animosities, anger, and violence? Or are we adding love and harmony?
How about you, dear Ella? What ingredients do you think you are putting in the collective stew of humanity? Whenever I think about you, the ingredient I add is a big smile.
With love,
Aziz
PART THREE
Wind
THE THINGS THAT SHIFT, EVOLVE, AND CHALLENGE
The Zealot
KONYA, OCTOBER 19, 1244
Below my open window, dogs were barking and growling. I propped myself up in bed, suspecting they must have noticed a robber trying to break in to a house, or some dirty drunk passing by. Decent people cannot sleep in peace anymore. There is debauchery and lechery everywhere. It wasn’t always like this. This town was a safer place until a few years ago. Moral corruption is no different from a ghastly disease that comes without warning and spreads fast, infecting the rich and the poor, the old and the young alike. Such is the state of our town today. If it weren’t for my position at the madrassa, I would hardly leave my house.
Thank God there are people who put the interests of the community before their own and work day and night to enforce order. People like my young nephew, Baybars. My wife and I are proud of him. It is comforting to know that at this late hour, when villains, criminals, and drunks go on a rampage, Baybars and his fellow security guards patrol the town to protect us.
Upon my brother’s early death, I became the primary guardian for Baybars. Young, adamant, he started working as a security guard six months ago. Gossipmongers claimed that it was thanks to my position as a madrassa teacher that he was able to get the job. Nonsense! Baybars is strong and brave enough to qualify for the job. He would also have made an excellent soldier. He wanted to go to Jerusalem to fight against the Crusaders, but my wife and I thought it was time for him to settle down and start a family.
“We need you here, son,” I said. “There is so much to fight against here, too.”
Indeed there was. Just this morning I told my wife we were living in difficult times. It is no coincidence that every day we hear of a new tragedy. If the Mongols have been this victorious, if the Christians could succeed in furthering their cause, if town after town, village after village is sacked by the enemies of Islam, it is because of the people who are Muslims in name only. When people lose hold of the rope of God, they are bound to go astray. The Mongols were sent as a punishment for our sins. If not the Mongols, it would have been an earthquake, a famine, or a flood. How many more calamities do we have to experience for the sinners in this town to get the message and repent their ways? Next I fear stones will rain down from above. One day soon we might all be wiped out, walking in the footsteps of the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah.
And these Sufis, they are such a bad influence. How dare they call themselves Muslims when they say things no Muslim should even think of? It boils my blood to hear them utter the name of the Prophet, peace be upon him, to promote their silly views. They claim that following a war campaign, the Prophet Muhammad had announced that his people were henceforth abandoning the small jihad for the greater jihad—the struggle against one’s own ego. Sufis argue that ever since then the ego is the only adversary a Muslim should be warring against. Sounds nice, but how is that going to help to fight the enemies of Islam? I wonder.
The Sufis go as far as claiming that the sharia is merely a stage on the way. What stage, I say, what are they speaking of? As if that weren’t alarming enough, they argue that an enlightened person cannot be bound by the rules of early stages. And since they like to think of themselves as having already reached a supreme level, they use this as a poor excuse to disregard the rules of the sharia. Drinking, dancing, music, poetry, and painting seem more vital to them than religious duties. They keep preaching that since there is no hierarchy in Islam, everyone is entitled to his own personal quest for God. It all sounds inoffensive and harmless, but after one wades through the boring verbosity, one discovers that there is a sinister side to their message: that there is no need to pay attention to religious authorities!
As far as the Sufis are concerned, the holy Qur’an is replete with obscure symbols and layered allusions, each of which ought to be interpreted in a mystic way. So they examine how every word vibrates to a number, study the hidden meaning of numbers, and look out for veiled references in the text, doing everything in their power to avoid reading God’s message, plain and clear.
Some Sufis even say that human beings are the Speaking Qur’an. If this isn’t sheer blasphemy, I don’t know what is. Then there are the wandering dervishes, another troubled category of misfits. Qalandaris, Haydaris, Camiis—they’re known under all sorts of names. I’d say they are the worst. What good could come out of a man who cannot settle down? If a man has no sense of belonging, he can drift in every direction, like a dry leaf in the wind. The perfect victim for Sheitan.
Philosophers are no better than the Sufis. They ruminate and ruminate as if their limited minds could grasp the incomprehensibility of the universe! There is a story that is indicative of the conspiracy between the philosophers and the Sufis.
A philosopher met a dervish one day, and they instantly hit it off. The two talked for days on end, completing each other’s sentences.
Finally, when they parted company, the philosopher reported of the conversation, “All that I know, he sees.”
Next the Sufi gave his account: “All that
I see, he knows.”
So the Sufi thinks he sees, and the philosopher thinks he knows. In my opinion they see nothing and know nothing. Don’t they realize that as simple, limited, and ultimately mortal human beings, we are not expected to know more than we should? The most a human being is capable of attaining is a mere smattering of information about the Almighty. That’s all. Our task is not to interpret God’s teachings but to obey them.
When Baybars comes home, we will talk about these matters. It has become a habit, our small ritual. Every night after his shift, he eats the soup and flatbread that my wife serves him, and we engage in conversation about the state of things. It pleases me to see what a good appetite he has. He needs to be strong. A young, principled guy like him has much work to do in this ungodly town.
Shams
KONYA, OCTOBER 30, 1244
Before I met Rumi, just one night prior, I sat on my balcony at the Inn of Sugar Vendors. My heart rejoiced at the magnificence of the universe God had created in His image, so that everywhere we turned, we could both seek and find Him. And yet human beings rarely did that.
I recalled the individuals I had met—the beggar, the prostitute, and the drunk. Ordinary people who suffered from a common malady: separation from the One. These were the kind of people that the scholars failed to see while sitting in their ivory towers. I wondered if Rumi was any different. If not, I made a note to myself that I should be a conduit between him and the underbelly of society.
The town had finally gone to sleep. It was that time of night when even the nocturnal animals are reluctant to disturb the reigning peace. It always made me both immensely sad and elated to listen to a town sleep, wondering what sorts of stories were being lived behind closed doors, what sorts of stories I could have lived had I chosen another path. But I hadn’t made any choice. If anything, the path had chosen me.
I remembered a tale. A wandering dervish arrived in a town where the natives didn’t trust strangers. “Go away!” they shouted at him. “No one knows you here!”
The dervish calmly responded, “Yes, but I know myself, and believe me, it would have been much worse if it were the other way round.”
As long as I knew myself, I would be all right. Whosoever knows himself, knows the One.
The moon showered me with its warm glow. A light rain, as delicate as a silk scarf, began to fall on the town. I thanked God for this blessed moment and left myself in His hands. The fragility and brevity of life struck me once again, and I recalled another rule: Life is a temporary loan, and this world is nothing but a sketchy imitation of Reality. Only children would mistake a toy for the real thing. And yet human beings either become infatuated with the toy or disrespectfully break it and throw it aside. In this life stay away from all kinds of extremities, for they will destroy your inner balance.
Sufis do not go to extremes. A Sufi always remains mild and moderate.
Tomorrow morning I will go to the big mosque and listen to Rumi. He can be as great a preacher as everyone says, but in the end the breadth and scope of every speaker are determined by those of his audience. Rumi’s words might be like a wild garden, full of teasels, herbs, spruces, and shrubs, but it is always up to the visitor to pick his fancy. While pretty flowers are instantly plucked, few people pay attention to plants with thorns and prickles. But the truth is, great medicines are often made from these.
Isn’t it the same with the garden of love? How can love be worthy of its name if one selects solely the pretty things and leaves out the hardships? It is easy to enjoy the good and dislike the bad. Anybody can do that. The real challenge is to love the good and the bad together, not because you need to take the rough with the smooth but because you need to go beyond such descriptions and accept love in its entirety.
There is only one more day before I meet my companion. I cannot sleep.
Oh, Rumi! The king of the realm of words and meanings!
Will you know me when you see me?
See me!
Rumi
KONYA, OCTOBER 31, 1244
Blessed is this day, for I have met Shams of Tabriz. On this last day of October, the air has a new chill and the winds blow stronger, announcing the departure of autumn.
This afternoon the mosque was packed, as usual. While preaching to large crowds, I always take care to neither forget nor remember my audience. And there is only one way of doing this: to imagine the crowd as one single person. Hundreds of people listen to me every week, but I always talk to one person alone—the one who hears my words echo in his heart and who knows me like no other.
When I walked out of the mosque afterward, I found my horse readied for me. The animal’s mane had been braided with strands of gold and tiny silver bells. I enjoyed listening to the tinkling of the bells at every step, but with so many people blocking the way it was impossible to proceed very fast. In a measured pace, we passed by shabby stores and houses with thatched roofs. The calls of the petitioners mingled with the cries of children and the shouts of beggars eager to earn a few coins. Most of these people wanted me to pray for them; some simply wished to walk close to me. But there were others who had come with bigger expectations, asking me to heal them of a terminal illness or an evil spell. These were the ones who worried me. How could they not see that, neither a prophet nor a sage, I was incapable of performing miracles?
As we turned a corner and approached the Inn of Sugar Vendors, I noticed a wandering dervish push his way through the crowd, strutting directly toward me and regarding me with piercing eyes. His movements were deft and focused, and he exuded an aura of self-sufficient competence. He had no hair. No beard. No eyebrows. And though his face was as open as a man’s face could ever be, his expression was inscrutable.
But it wasn’t his appearance that intrigued me. Over the years I had seen wandering dervishes of all sorts pass through Konya in their quest for God. With striking tattoos, multiple earrings and nose rings, most of these people enjoyed having “unruly” written all over them. They either wore their hair very long or shaved it off completely. Some Qalandaris even had their tongues and nipples pierced. So when I saw the dervish for the first time, it wasn’t his outer shell that startled me. It was, I dare to say, his gaze.
His black eyes blazing at me sharper than daggers, he stood in the middle of the street and raised his arms high and wide, as if he wanted to halt not only the procession but also the flow of time. I felt a jolt run through my body, like a sudden intuition. My horse got nervous and started to snort loudly, jerking its head up and down. I tried to calm it, but it got so skittish that I, too, felt nervous.
Before my eyes the dervish approached my horse, which was shying and dancing about, and whispered something inaudible to it. The animal started to breathe heavily, but when the dervish waved his hand in a final gesture, it instantly quieted down. A wave of excitement rippled through the crowd, and I heard someone mutter, “That’s black magic!”
Oblivious to his surroundings, the dervish eyed me curiously. “O great scholar of East and West, I have heard so much about you. I came here today to ask you a question, if I may?”
“Go ahead,” I said under my breath.
“Well, you need to get down from your horse first and be on the same level with me.”
I was so stunned to hear this that I couldn’t speak for a moment. The people around me seemed equally taken aback. No one had ever dared to address me like this before.
I felt my face burn and my stomach turn with irritation, but I managed to control my ego and dismounted my horse. The dervish had already turned his back and was walking away.
“Hey, wait, please!” I yelled as I caught up with him. “I want to hear your question.”
He stopped and turned around, smiling at me for the first time. “All right, do tell me, please, which of the two is greater, do you think: the Prophet Muhammad or the Sufi Bistami?”
“What kind of a question is that?” I said. “How can you compare our venerated Prophet, may peace be upo
n him, the last in the line of prophets, with an infamous mystic?”
A curious crowd had gathered around us, but the dervish didn’t seem to mind the audience. Still studying my face carefully, he insisted, “Please think about it. Didn’t the Prophet say, ‘Forgive me, God, I couldn’t know Thee as I should have,’ while Bistami pronounced, ‘Glory be to me, I carry God inside my cloak’? If one man feels so small in relation to God while another man claims to carry God inside, which of the two is greater?”
My heart pulsed in my throat. The question didn’t seem so absurd anymore. In fact, it felt as if a veil had been lifted and what awaited me underneath was an intriguing puzzle. A furtive smile, like a passing breeze, crossed the lips of the dervish. Now I knew he was not some crazy lunatic. He was a man with a question—a question I hadn’t thought about before.
“I see what you are trying to say,” I began, not wanting him to hear so much as a quaver in my voice. “I’ll compare the two statements and tell you why, even though Bistami’s statement sounds higher, it is in fact the other way round.”
“I am all ears,” the dervish said.
“You see, God’s love is an endless ocean, and human beings strive to get as much water as they can out of it. But at the end of the day, how much water we each get depends on the size of our cups. Some people have barrels, some buckets, while some others have only got bowls.”
As I spoke, I watched the dervish’s expression change from subtle scorn to open acknowledgment and from there into the soft smile of someone recognizing his own thoughts in the words of another.