Death and the Dervish (Writings From An Unbound Europe) (3 page)

I am the sheikh of a tekke of the Mevlevi
³
order, the most widespread and purest of orders. The tekke in which I live stands at the edge of the
kasaba,*
between black, gloomy cliffs that block out most of the sky and leave only a blue fissure above me, like a meager act of mercy or a remembrance of the endless expanse of the sky in my childhood. But I do not like that distant recollection—it torments me more and more, like a missed opportunity, though I do not know which. I make a vague comparison between the lush woods above my father’s house, the fields and orchards around the lake there, and the rocky gorge where the tekke and I are trapped, and it seems that there are many similarities between the narrow confines inside me and those around me.

The tekke, pleasant and spacious, overlooks a river that makes its way down from the mountains and through the rocks of the gorge. There is a garden, a plot for roses, and a veranda covered by an arbor. Upstairs there is also a long porch where the silence is as soft as cotton, and seems all the more silent because of the soft gurgling of the river below. This building was formerly the
harem*
of the ancestors of the wealthy Ali-
aga*
Janich, who donated it to the order to serve as a meeting place for dervishes and a shelter for the poor, “since they are brokenhearted.” Through prayer and incense we cleansed the house of its sin and the tekke acquired the fame of a holy place, although we never rid it entirely of the shadows of young women. At times it seems that they pass through the rooms, leaving their fragrances to linger behind.

The tekke, its fame and holiness—that was me. I was its foundation and roof. Everyone knew this, and therefore I make no effort to hide it. Otherwise these lines would contain a conscious lie (no one is to blame for lying unwittingly and thereby inadvertently misleading himself). Without me the tekke would have been just another five-room house, but with me it became a bastion of faith. Since there were no houses beyond it, the tekke seemed like the defense of the kasaba against all evil, known and unknown. Thick wooden lattices over the windows and a massive wall around the garden made our seclusion more impenetrable and secure. But the gate was always open, so that those who needed comfort or purification from sin could enter. We received them with kind words, although our words were scantier than their troubles, scantier still than their sins. I am not proud of my service, that was just how one really serves his faith—sincerely and wholeheartedly. I considered it a duty and a blessing to shield myself and others from sin. Yes, myself as well; there is no point in hiding that. Sinful thoughts are like the wind—who can hold them back? And I do not think this is a great evil. What is the purpose of piety if there are no temptations to resist? Man is not God, his strength is the ability to restrain his own nature, so I thought, and if he has nothing to restrain, then what are his merits? Now I think somewhat differently about this, but I should not bring up anything before I need to. There will be time for everything. The paper rests on my knee and waits quietly to accept my burden, although without taking it from me, without feeling its weight. There is a long, sleepless night ahead of me, many long nights—I will come to everything. I will do everything I must, I will accuse and defend myself; there is no need to hurry, although I see that there are things that I can write about now and maybe never again. When the time comes, when I wish to talk of other things, they will also have their turn. I can feel how they are piled up in the stores of my brain, all connected, all pulling
at one another. None of them exists independently, and still there is a sort of order in that turmoil, and one of them always leaps out from among the others, I do not know how, and comes to light either to hurt or comfort me. At times they jostle and assail each other, impatient, as if afraid of remaining untold. No hurry, there will be time for everything; I have allotted it to myself. A trial consists of confrontations and testimonies; I will not circumvent them, and in the end I will be able to pass a verdict on myself, since this is about me and no one else. The world has suddenly become a secret to me, and I a secret to it. We have come face to face and look at each other in amazement. We no longer recognize each other, no longer understand each other.

Let me return again to myself and the tekke. I loved it, and still love it. It is quiet, clean, mine. It smells of tansy in the summer, and of harsh wind and snow in the winter. I also love it because I made it what it is, and because it knows secrets that I have never revealed to anyone, that I have hidden even from myself. It is warm and peaceful; in the early morning pigeons coo on the rooftop, and rain drums lightly on the tiles. It is raining now as well, persistently, perpetually, even though it is summer. The rainwater drains away through wooden gutters into a night that has descended ominously on the world. I fear that this night might never be lifted; at the same time I hope that the sun will soon rise. I love the tekke because it protects me with the peace of my two rooms, where I can be alone when I wish to rest from people.

The river resembles me: sometimes turbulent and foaming, more often calm and inaudible. I was sorry when they dammed it up below the tekke and diverted it into a trench to make it obedient and useful, so it would run through a trough and drive a mill wheel. And I was happy when it swelled, destroyed the dam, and flowed free. I knew all the while that only tamed waters can mill wheat.

But the rain is still pouring down, as it has for days, and the pigeons coo in the attic, since they cannot go out from under the eaves. They announce a day that has not yet come. My hand has become stiff from holding the pen, the candle spits and sparks a little to stave off its death. I look at these long rows of words, the tombstones of my thoughts, and I do not know whether I have killed them, or given them life.

2

      
If God were to punish every evil deed, not a single living creature would remain on earth.
¹

EVERYTHING BEGAN TO GET COMPLICATED TWO MONTHS AND three days ago. It seems I should count time from the night before Saint George’s Day,
²
because this has been my time, the only time that matters to me. My brother had already sat imprisoned in the fortress for ten days.

Toward dusk on Saint George’s Eve I walked the streets, embittered and upset beyond words. Yet I appeared calm (one gets used to doing that) and my gait did not betray any agitation. My body attended to my disguise by itself, leaving me free to be as I wanted in the unseen darkness of my thoughts. I would have gladly left the kasaba in that quiet, late afternoon hour, so that night might find me alone, but my duties led me in the opposite direction, among people. I was taking the place of the ill
Hafiz*
-Muhammed, who had been summoned by Janich, our aging benefactor. I knew that Janich had lain sick for months, and that maybe he would ask one of us to come to him before his death. I also knew that his son-in-law was the
kadi*
Aini-
effendi,*
who had signed the order for my brother’s arrest. For that reason I had gladly agreed to go, filled with a vague sense of hope.

As I was led through the courtyard and house I walked as always, used to not seeing what did not concern me—I kept
closer to myself that way. Then I was left alone in a long corridor, where I waited for the news of my arrival to reach wherever necessary, and I listened to the silence. It was absolute, as if no one lived in that great edifice, as if no one moved through its corridors and rooms. In the quiet of that muffled life, beside the dying man who still breathed there somewhere, in the silence of steps fading on the carpets and in soft, whispered conversations, the old wood of the ceilings and window frames split with a faint, creaking noise. As I watched evening surround the house with silken shadows and the last reflections of daylight quiver on the window-panes, I thought about the old man and what I would say to him at this last meeting. I had spoken with the sick more than once; I had sent a dying man on that long journey more than once. Experience had taught me, if any experience were necessary, that every man feels fear at what awaits him, at the unknown that already knocks, unrevealed, in a terror-stricken heart.

To comfort them I would often say:

Death is a certainty, an inevitable realization, the only thing that we know will befall us. There are no exceptions, no surprises: all paths lead to it. Everything we do is a preparation for it, a preparation that we begin at birth, whimpering with our foreheads against the ground. We never move farther away from death, only closer. But if it is a certainty, then why are we surprised when it comes? If this life is a short passage that lasts only an hour or a day, then why do we fight to prolong it one more day or hour? Worldly life is treacherous, eternity is better.
³

I would often say:

Why do your hearts tremble with fear when in your death-agony your legs twitch and squirm? Death is a move from one house to another. It is not a disappearance, but a rebirth. Just as an eggshell bursts when the chick inside is fully developed, there comes a time for the soul and body to
part. Death is a necessity in the inevitable passage to the other world, where man makes his full ascent.

I would often say:

Death is the decay of matter, but not of the soul.

I would often say:

Death is a change of state. The soul begins to live by itself.

Until it parted from the body, it held with hands, saw with

eyes, heard with ears, but it knew the heart of the matter on its own.

I would often say:

      
On the day of my death, when they carry my coffin,

      
do not think that I will feel pain for this world.

      
Do not cry and say: it is a great loss!

      
When milk sours, the loss is greater.

      
I shall not vanish when you see them lay me in the grave.

      
Do the sun and moon vanish when they set?

      
This seems like a death to you, but it is a birth.

      
The grave seems like a prison to you, but the soul has been freed.

      
What grain does not sprout when it is put into the ground?

      
So why do you not believe in the grain of men?

I would often say:

Be thankful, O House of Dawud,
⁴
and say: the truth has come. The hour has come. Because every man travels his path until the appointed time. God creates you in the womb of your mother and he changes you from one form to another in a threefold impenetrable darkness. Do not grieve, but rejoice at the paradise that has been promised to you. O my slaves, do not fear for yourselves today, you will not be sorrowful. O peaceful soul, return to your master satisfied, because He is satisfied with you. Join my servants, come into my paradise.
⁵

I had said these things countless times.

But now I was not sure that I should say them to the old man who was waiting for me. Not for his sake, but for mine. For the first time (how many times these days will I say: for the first time?) death did not seem as simple as I had believed or had made others believe. It happened that I had a terrible dream. I stood in an empty space above my dead brother; at my feet his long coffin was covered with a piece of blue broadcloth, and around me there was a distant circle of people. I saw no one, recognized no one, the only thing I knew was that they formed a ring around us and left me alone, above the corpse, in a painful silence. Above a corpse to whom I could not say: Why does your heart tremble? because my heart also trembled, and I was afraid of the dead silence. A secret pained me, one that I did not see any purpose for. There is a purpose, I said, shielding myself from terror, yet I could not find it. Arise, I said, arise. But my brother was hidden in darkness, vanishing in mist, in a greenish gloom, as if underwater, a man drowned in an unknown void.

How could I now tell the dying man: follow the path of your Lord obediently, when I shuddered at that hidden path, of which my minute knowledge did not have the slightest notion?

I believed in the Last Judgment and in eternal life, but I also began to believe in the horror of death, in the fear of its opaque blackness.

I had not yet made a decision when I was led into one of the rooms. A young maidservant showed me the way. I walked with my eyes lowered, so I would not see her face and could think up something, anything. I’ll lie to you old man, God will forgive me; I’ll tell you what you expect to hear, and not these muddled thoughts of mine.

He was not there. Without raising my eyes I noticed that the room was free from the heavy odor of the sick, which, after a prolonged illness, cannot be removed by cleaning or airing, nor by the burning of incense.

When I looked up and searched for this man who had long been ill but did not smell of death, I beheld a beautiful woman on a divan, a reminder of life more powerful than could be good for me.

Maybe it is strange for me to say this, but it is true: I felt uncomfortable. There could have been a number of reasons. I had prepared for a meeting with an old, dying man, and was oppressed by dark thoughts myself, but I came before his daughter (although I had never seen her, I knew who she was). I am unskilled in conversations with women, especially with women of her beauty and age. Around thirty, it seemed to me. Young women merely imagine life and believe words. Old women fear death and listen to tales of paradise with a sigh. But women like her know the value of everything they gain and lose, and they always have their own reasons for what they do, reasons that might be strange, but are rarely naive. Their mature eyes are free even when lowered, and unpleasantly open even when hidden behind their eyelashes. Most unpleasant of all is our awareness that they know more than they show and measure us by their own strange standards, which are beyond our understanding. Their undeceivable curiosity, which emanates even when concealed, is protected by their inviolability, if only they want it. And as we stand before them we are protected by nothing. They are certain of their strength, which they do not use but keep like a saber in its sheath, always with a hand on the hilt, and they see in us potential slaves or despicable creatures who are proud of our useless strength without reason. Their foolish self-confidence is so convincing that it affects us even as we detest it. We remain fearful despite our faith in some unknown possibility, some spell, some secret power of the devil.