The Lover

by Laury Silvers

  He looked at her, eyebrows raised, saying, “Zaytuna, dear one, I let you argue with me when you were young.” He laughed gently, “Well, I let you argue with me a lot longer than that. Maybe I shouldn’t have. If you were one of my companions and not family to me, I would have been harder on you.”

  As he spoke the tonal frequency of his voice transformed as each word moved around her, at first gently, then closing in on her little by little, until the words grabbed hold of her with their teeth by the back of her neck, “Listen now, this is no longer your Uncle Abu al-Qasim speaking to you. This is Abu al-Qasim al-Junayd ibn Muhammad al-Khazzaz al-Qawariri.”

  She was compelled to lift her head, to look into his eyes. Fear spread out from her heart, as tightly bound as she had ever felt it, crushing her so that she wondered if she might die. Her Uncle was gone. This was exactly what she had feared in coming to see him. She had seen and heard this side of him with his companions, and on those days she had moved across the courtyard, to another room to get away from it. He had never turned it on her. All shook from the force of it and she shook now.

  He released her neck. He said, “Listen! God’s love is pure water that takes on the colour, shape, and volume of each cup into which it is poured. No cup is the same as another. The love that God poured into your mother’s cup was your mother’s love. No other. She held her cup to your lips and you drank from it.”

  Zaytuna felt his words crash onto her. A thick ocean wave arose that turned her over and pushed her under. She tumbled through it, her wrap twisting around and tying up her legs. She could not breathe from the pressure of it. It held her under for a boundless moment and then she was gone: her awareness, her body, her existence. She dissolved into the Ocean and only the Ocean remained. Then, somehow a thread of her self returned to her, just enough to hear her mother’s voice calling out from each drop of water in the great expanse, “Smash the cup!”

  Then, just as suddenly, Junayd reached down, grasping her, and pulled her back up above the ocean’s surface. She felt the waves slapping around her, threatening to bring her back under, but he had her by the back of the neck again and dropped her gasping on the ground before him. Her senses sucked at the pieces of courtyard around her like desperately needed air. She felt for the cool ground underneath her. I’m still here. She examined the texture of each thread woven into her wrap. I’m still here. She tasted the salt of her tears. I’m still here. She heard the quiet around her. I’m still here. She felt around for the familiar pain she called her mother and found it slipping away from her. She scrambled, inwardly, on hands and knees, to pull it back to her. She’s still here.

  Then Zaytuna found her voice and said, exposing herself to herself, unable to deflect any longer, “I am not my mother’s daughter. I cannot love God the way she did. Who am I if I am not my pain?”

  She was a stubborn one. Junayd wondered if immersing her so, showing her a glimpse of the utter oneness of reality, had been an act of cruelty. Erased from herself, she had subsisted for one moment in God alone. Her awareness was piercing now. She could never turn away. She could never claim ignorance before God. If she would not allow this glimpse to widen into an all-encompassing view, she would be doomed. It all came to this. Before she was another human being lost in pain. Forgiven for her ignorance. But if she turned away from God’s love now, she would be a kafir, one who knows the truth and chooses to cover it over.

  He spoke quietly now, the tone of his voice gentle, soothing the shock of the experience, and said “You are our daughter. Blessed Muhammad advised us that we must worship God as if we see Him. But there is no ‘as if’ for you now. Let what you know now unfold and teach you.”

  Zaytuna sat silently, focusing on her breath, pulling herself back into herself, and he said no more. He gave her time to steady herself. She lifted her heavy head, Abu Muhammad moved slightly toward her, showing he was nearby to help if she needed it. She did not thank her Uncle as she should. She did not move to kiss his hand. She simply began to stand weakly. Abu Muhammad shifted to stand in order to steady her, but Mustafa gestured to him that it wasn’t necessary. Mustafa put his hand to his heart and bowed his head to his uncle. Mustafa took her by the arm and they moved away from the Shaykh and his companion to a far wall and sat with one another without speaking for a time.

  A black cat wandered in and out of the courtyard’s porticos, sniffing the air, then walked directly to Zaytuna, rubbing against her legs. She felt the softness of its fur through her sirwal. Zaytuna gave the cat her hand to smell, it rubbed its cheek against her, acknowledging her with its scent, and moved away again to lie in the shade of a pillar. Mustafa said, “One of your great grandchildren or great, great, great?”

  Zaytuna said, exhausted, “Who knows? They have so many litters.”

  “He knows you. They remember the one who kept their feline ancestors off the streets to be taken care of by the Lovers of God.”

  She dismissed it, “It was Uncle Nuri, really. Not me.”

  “No. It was you who fought for them after Old Bakr tried to throw them into the street. Mustafa insisted, “I remember how he yelled after finding the mother and her mewling kittens behind his flour sack.”

  Zaytuna sighed, “That gruff of an old man, he ran the kitchen like he was the caliph of its four walls. Poor Tein was so afraid of him.”

  “Was he?”

  Zaytuna turned to Mustafa, “You don’t remember? Tein tried to help him get rid of the kittens. They had them in a sack when I came in. He was trying to act tough in front of Old Bakr. Tein said the dogs in the street have to eat too.”

  Mustafa said, “I just remember seeing you standing in the doorway to the kitchen, legs apart, hands balled up into fists on your hips, your qamis and wrap blowing in the breeze behind you, quoting hadith after hadith about the Prophet’s love of cats. Who knew you knew so many!”

  The memory of it lifted her out of her state, “Only about cats!” She laughed lightly, smiling again, a little, “God forgive me. I told Old Bakr he was going to go to Hell just like the woman in the hadith who had tortured a kitten and so the Prophet said all her prayers and fasts were for nothing!”

  Mustafa looked at her, “You were glorious.”

  Zaytuna lowered her head and without thinking she leaned closer to Mustafa who felt it, as slight as it was, and fell into silence to hold it to him. As if she had said to him, finally, that she loved him, too.

  He shook his head at loving her so. He only ever wanted to do right by those God brought within his reach. He was never going to be a true seeker like the aunts and uncles and the people who came here to learn under them, yearning to pass away from themselves into God so completely. He was satisfied simply working at being good. They raised him with a simple teaching, one taught to them by al-Muhasibi, the “Accounter” himself. At the end of each day, he was to call himself to account for wherever he had gone wrong. Where had he shirked on kindness? Where had he let his anger slip out of his grasp? He wanted only to be a salve in this world, not a poison. Zaytuna was, for all her wild emotions, in her own way, the same. She wanted no one else to hurt like she hurt. It’s true she came at it without thinking sometimes, well most of the time. But he loved her for that, too. He loved her headlong desire that the suffering should be heard, that something, anything, should be done.

  She laughed quietly, breaking the moment, and sat up again, saying, “Uncle Nuri came running to see what was the matter, and let Old Bakr have it. Remember? He called me ‘Professor Zaytuna’ and told Old Bakr the kittens were a gift from the Beloved to His lovers. To throw them out would be to spit in God’s Face.”

  “Poor Old Bakr, what could he do?”

  She said, “And Tein, he was so angry. Stuck there, holding a bag of squirming, mewling kittens. He didn’t know what was right. Uncle Nuri came and took the bag from him and let the kittens go. Do you remember?” She looked toward the kitchen, as if she could still see Tein standing there, “Then Uncle took Tein in his arms. He
was almost as tall as Uncle even then. He held Tein and spoke to him so quietly until Tein was quiet too.” She turned back to Mustafa, “But Tein was right. The dogs on the street have to eat, too.”

  “Zay,” Mustafa said. “Why do you always see God’s will in such a harsh light?”

  “Who will be witness to the suffering?”

  “Us, but also God.”

  “Exactly. God wills the suffering and is witness to it. God wills all we do and punishes us for it.”

  “Quoting Uncle Abu Bakr now!”

  “Ha! I guess I am.” She asked, “Is he still here?”

  “He left last year. He was sent to find his own students to guide. Uncle Abu al-Qasim told him it was time for him to go. I don’t think it would be safe for him to teach here, anyway. He takes so much after Uncle Nuri, the way he speaks to people. He’d get hauled up himself before a judge.”

  Zaytuna nodded, “Insha'Allah, he landed well.”

  He paused and looked around the courtyard, “We got news of him. He’s in Marw. There’s a girl here with her father. Uncle Abu Bakr sent them here for her to study. They found him teaching there. They had travelled all the way from Taraz to him, then here, on his word.”

  She interrupted, “Taraz? Who?”

  He blushed and cut her off, “Oh, a student here.” Then he placed his hand on the soft reed mat between them, picking at the frayed fibres, “Look,” returning to his point. “There is one important difference between how you are quoting Uncle Abu Bakr and what he meant. He saw nothing but God’s care in all of that. He wasn’t naïve or bitter about it. He is in love with God, nothing else.”

  She didn’t respond directly, but said instead, “Remember that time your mother wouldn’t believe you had died? The schoolteacher said you had drowned, but she wouldn’t believe it. Uncle Nuri tried so hard to get her to accept it. But she trusted that she would know in her heart if you had. She trusted that God would deal straight with her. And then, there you were, running up from the river, so excited to tell everyone how far you had swum out, proving her trust in God.” She paused, weighing how to say it, then let it out, “Maybe I don’t trust God, Mustafa.”

  Mustafa shifted uncomfortably next to her, “You sound like Tein.”

  She looked at him sharply, “That’s not what I’m saying.”

  “What are you saying then?”

  “I don’t trust what God’s got coming next. How can I love God, if I don’t trust Him?”

  “I’ve heard you say that God’s will is wise. How can you not trust God’s wisdom?”

  “The dogs have to eat, too.”

  Mustafa sounding frustrated now, said, “That doesn’t help me.”

  “I’m trying, Mustafa. Look, with the kittens and Old Bakr, I had to choose between letting the dogs outside go hungry and saving the kittens in front of me. I chose to let the dogs go hungry. What did the dogs do? Maybe they died. Maybe they found other kittens to eat. But I didn’t see it. There’s no escape. I trust that much.” She paused to breathe, then said, “I trust that God has created a stone of a world for us to hone our selves on. There’s wisdom in that. This world isn’t about our comfort or pleasure.”

  Mustafa objected, “Zaytuna…”

  She cut him off, “I certainly don’t see how falling ecstatically into God’s arms…,” she felt the ocean wave coming at her again, she tried to turn and protect herself from it, but it overcame her. Instead of disappearing into it this time, pure, delirious joy surged through her. She saw it all for a slight of a moment. The pattern of existence always beyond her reach was before her. Her eyes filled with tears at its perfection, the justice done down to every atom, and she reached out to Mustafa and grasped his arm, holding on as if she were being swept away again, and tried to pull herself back. She sucked in the air around her, gasping.

  She turned to Mustafa, her eyes wild, tears streaming, and said, with every shred of herself she could find, “How does wallowing in the joy of seeing that our existence is a poet’s rendering…

  ...that we are words unwinding,

  written on fragments pulled fluttering

  from the folds of The Lover’s turban.

  The ink-black curve of each letter,

  the open-throated voicing of each sound,

  trembling with beauty….”

  She gasped for air again and shook her head to get these feelings out of her, reaching up and pushing her palms to her forehead, “How does wallowing in joy do justice to those who suffered once and suffer still. How does it do justice to me? To me, Mustafa? To what I’ve endured?”

  Mustafa took her hand on his arm and held it, searching her eyes, saying softly, “Zaytuna, my heart, I’m here.”

  She turned away from him, eyes cast down, exhausted again, and said, “Yes. You’re here. I’m here. We’re all still here. Nothing’s changed.”

  He sat quietly with her, holding her hand until she finally drew it back. He considered her, wondering, then asked, “Is this what the Prophet meant when he said, ‘Whoever loves and is restrained, concealing that love, then dies, is a martyr’?”

  She wouldn’t look at him, “How would I know, Mustafa?”

  “What you just said, Zay. It sounded like the poetry that used to come from your mother in her own moments of ecstasy. It sounds like you do know. It sounds like something has changed in you.”

  She became angry at the suggestion, “I don’t know a thing. No, that’s wrong. I do know a boy died. I know a girl is suffering.”

  Mustafa sat up, putting his hand on her shoulder, gently turning her towards him, “What do you mean a boy died?”

  Angry still, she said, “What Uncle Abu al-Qasim said about those ‘those children’. He wants me to leave them in God’s care. I don’t know what that means. Do nothing? Do something?” She laughed bitterly, “Wallow in joy and forget about them? These Sufi shaykhs, always so vague with their advice!”

  Mustafa tried to push past her emotion to find out what happened, “What children, Zay?”

  She sighed, harshly, trying to let her anger go, but it wouldn’t so easily. Then she asked, “Do you know Imam Ibrahim al-Silafi?”

  “Yes. Not personally. But I know his reputation.” She knew by the care of his answer he would not say more and that was enough for her.

  “One of his servants died. A boy, maybe ten years old.” She turned away from herself and focused on the boy. That helped. She stood witness to the boy’s existence. She gave his name its own breath. “Zayd.”

  Mustafa said under his breath, “We belong to God and we return to Him.”

  She waited a moment, breathing in his prayer, then said, quietly now, finding her footing in talking about it, “Another one of Imam Ibrahim’s servants came to me, a little one named Layla, no older than the boy, scared out of her wits. She thought that Imam Ibrahim killed Zayd.”

  “Are you alright? This is horrible. No wonder you are so upset today. Honestly, Zaytuna, you can be emotional sometimes, but today you’ve been acting so strangely.”

  Her anger came back and she snapped at him, “Yes, that’s right. I’m being emotional. It’s the children, Mustafa. It’s not about me.”

  He looked at her wide-eyed, unwilling to clarify, knowing it would get him nothing that he wanted in the end, saying instead, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

  She took a moment, then relented, as she usually did if left to herself to sort it out, “Uff, you’re right. I’m being...I don’t know what. I don’t know what’s happening.”

  “We don’t have to talk about it.” He reached out to hold her hand again.

  She pulled her hand back, “No. I want to talk about it.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Why, then, why would this girl, Layla, think that the Imam had killed him?”

  “She said that the Imam’s daughter, Zaynab, had fallen in love with Zayd and the Imam knew.”

  “I’m sorry, ‘Zayd and Zaynab’?”

  “I know. Those are actually
their names. Layla said Zayd was teasing the girl about it. Or leading her on, cruelly, maybe. I don’t know. This is Layla’s story about what happened. I don’t know anything else. Zayd told the Imam’s daughter that they were like the Prophet’s ‘Zayd and Zaynab’. Layla said Zaynab fell for it and thought it was romantic. They were meant to be together, but could not because she was promised to another.”

  He asked, “Did she see the boy get killed herself or hear someone testify to it?”

  “No.”

  Mustafa frowned in disagreement, his tone taking on a scholar’s authority, no longer old Mustafa, “It sounds like this is nothing but Layla’s fantasies and fears. Of course the Imam would not be the first man to kill to preserve his own reputation. But if this girl did not witness anything herself, why do you believe her? There must be witnesses, Zaytuna. You know that God has said, Why did the slanderers not bring four witnesses? Without those witnesses, they are liars.”

  She pulled her head back and looked at him sharply, “I didn’t say I believed her.”

  He took her tone, and the look, to heart, leaving the scholar’s frown aside. She softened when he did, continuing, “She was so afraid. And Mustafa, this boy. His nose was bent clear across his face. It must have been broken, but never fixed. He was a rough boy. You know, one of these boys hired to do all the heaviest work. Layla obviously loves him so she can’t see that a rich girl with everything would never fall in love with a boy like that.”

  Mustafa said, “The girl, Layla. She’s probably just afraid of Imam Ibrahim. You know. I remember how you were afraid sometimes when you came back from washing clothes at those houses.” His head dropped wishing he could have spared her that, but everyone had to work. He looked at her calloused hands from years of washing other people’s clothes and said, “Poor thing.”