The Forty Rules of Love (13 page)

Shams

KONYA, OCTOBER 17, 1244

Beholden to the peasant who dropped me off at the town center, I found myself and my horse a place to stay. The Inn of Sugar Vendors seemed just what I needed. Of the four rooms I was shown, I chose the one with the fewest possessions, which consisted of a sleeping mat with a moldy blanket, an oil lamp that was sputtering its last, a sun-dried brick that I could use as a pillow, and a good view of the whole town up to the base of the surrounding hills.

Having thus settled down, I roamed the streets, amazed at the mixture of religions, customs, and languages permeating the air. I ran into Gypsy musicians, Arab travelers, Christian pilgrims, Jewish merchants, Buddhist priests, Frankish troubadours, Persian artists, Chinese acrobats, Indian snake charmers, Zoroastrian magicians, and Greek philosophers. In the slave market, I saw concubines with skin white as milk and hefty, dark eunuchs who had seen such atrocities that they had lost their ability to speak. In the bazaar I came across traveling barbers with bloodletting devices, fortune-tellers with crystal balls, and magicians who swallowed fire. There were pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem and vagrants who I suspected were runaway soldiers from the last Crusades. I heard people speak Venetian, Frankish, Saxon, Greek, Persian, Turkish, Kurdish, Armenian, Hebrew, and several other dialects I couldn’t even distinguish. Despite their seemingly endless differences, all of these people gave off a similar air of incompleteness, of the works in progress that they were, each an unfinished masterwork.

The whole city was a Tower of Babel. Everything was constantly shifting, splitting, coming to light, transpiring, thriving, dissolving, decomposing, and dying. Amid this chaos I stood in a place of unperturbed silence and serenity, utterly indifferent to the world and yet at the same time feeling a burning love for all the people struggling and suffering in it. As I watched the people around me, I recalled another golden rule:
It’s easy to love a perfect God, unblemished and infallible that He is. What is far more difficult is to love fellow human beings with all their imperfections and defects. Remember, one can only know what one is capable of loving. There is no wisdom without love. Unless we learn to love God’s creation, we can neither truly love nor truly know God.

I roamed the narrow alleys where artisans of all ages toiled in their small, dingy stores. In every place I visited, I overheard the townspeople talk about Rumi. How did it feel, I wondered, to be this popular? How did it affect his ego? My mind busy with these questions, I strolled in the opposite direction from the mosque where Rumi was preaching. Gradually the surroundings began to change. As I moved northward, the houses became more dilapidated, the garden walls falling down, and the children more raucous and unruly. The smells changed, too, getting heavier, more garlicky and spicy. Finally I stepped into a street where three odors loomed in the air: sweat, perfume, and lust. I had reached the seamy side of town.

There was a ramshackle house atop the steep cobbled street, the walls supported by bamboo pillars, the roof of thatched grass. In front of the house, a group of women sat chatting. When they saw me approach, they eyed me curiously, looking half amused. Beside them was a garden with roses of every color and shade imaginable and the most amazing smell. I wondered who tended to them.

I didn’t have to wait too long to learn the answer. No sooner had I reached the garden than the entrance door of the house was flung open and a woman dashed out. She was heavy-jowled, tall, and enormously fat. When she squinted, the way she did now, her eyes were lost in rolls of flesh. She had a thin, dark mustache and thick sideburns. It took me a while to comprehend that she was both man and woman.

“What do you want?” the hermaphrodite asked suspiciously. Her face was in constant flux: One moment it looked like the face of a woman; then the tide came back, replacing it with the face of a man.

I introduced myself and asked her name, but she ignored my question.

“This is no place for you,” she said, waving her hands as if I were a fly she’d like to chase away.

“Why not?”

“Don’t you see this place is a brothel? Don’t you dervishes take an oath to stay away from lust? People think I wallow in sin here, but I give my alms and close my doors in the month of Ramadan. And now I’m saving you. Stay away from us. This is the filthiest corner in town.”

“Filth is inside, not outside,” I objected. “Thus says the rule.”

“What are you talking about?” she croaked.

“
It is one of the forty rules,” I tried to explain.
“Real filth is the one inside. The rest simply washes off. There is only one type of dirt that cannot be cleansed with pure waters, and that is the stain of hatred and bigotry contaminating the soul. You can purify your body through abstinence and fasting, but only love will purify your heart.”

The hermaphrodite was having none of it. “You dervishes are out of your minds. I’ve got all sorts of customers here. But a dervish? When frogs grow beards! If I let you linger, God will raze this place to the ground and put a curse on us for seducing a man of faith.”

I couldn’t help chuckling. “Where do you get these ridiculous ideas? Do you think God is an angry, moody patriarch watching us from the skies above so that He can rain stones and frogs on our heads the moment we err?”

The patron pulled at the ends of her thin mustache, giving me an annoyed look that verged on meanness.

“Don’t worry, I’m not here to visit your brothel,” I assured her. “I was just admiring your rose garden.”

“Oh, that”—the hermaphrodite shrugged dismissively—“is the creation of one of my girls, Desert Rose.”

With that, the patron gestured to a young woman sitting among the harlots ahead of us. Delicate chin, pearl-luster skin, and dark almond eyes clouded with worry. She was heartbreakingly beautiful. As I looked at her, I had a sense she was someone in the process of a big transformation.

I dropped my voice to a whisper so that only the patron could hear me. “That girl is a good girl. One day soon she’ll embark on a spiritual journey to find God. She’ll abandon this place forever. When that day comes, do not try to stop her.”

The hermaphrodite looked at me flabbergasted before she burst out, “What the hell are you talking about? Nobody is telling me what to do with my girls! You better get the hell out of here. Or else I’m calling Jackal Head!”

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“Believe me, you wouldn’t want to know,” the hermaphrodite said, shaking her finger to emphasize her point.

Hearing the name of this stranger made me shiver slightly, but I didn’t dwell on it. “Anyway, I’m leaving,” I said. “But I’ll come back, so don’t be surprised next time you see me around. I’m not one of those pious types who spend their whole lives hunched on prayer rugs while their eyes and hearts remain closed to the outside world. They read the Qur’an only on the surface. But I read the Qur’an in the budding flowers and migrating birds. I read the Breathing Qur’an secreted in human beings.”

“You mean you read people?” The patron laughed a halfhearted laugh. “What kind of nonsense is that?”

“Every man is an open book, each and every one of us a walking Qur’an. The quest for God is ingrained in the hearts of all, be it a prostitute or a saint. Love exists within each of us from the moment we are born and waits to be discovered from then on. That is what one of the forty rules is all about:
The whole universe is contained within a single human being—you. Everything that you see around, including the things you might not be fond of and even the people you despise or abhor, is present within you in varying degrees. Therefore, do not look for Sheitan outside yourself either. The devil is not an extraordinary force that attacks from without. It is an ordinary voice within. If you get to know yourself fully, facing with honesty and hardness both your dark and bright sides, you will arrive at a supreme form of consciousness. When a person knows himself or herself, he or she knows God.”

Crossing her arms above her chest, the hermaphrodite leaned forward and squinted at me menacingly.

“A dervish who preaches to harlots!” she grunted. “I warn you, I’m not going to let you badger anyone around here with your silly ideas. You better stay away from my brothel! Because if you don’t, I swear to God, Jackal Head will cut off that sharp tongue of yours and I’ll eat it with pleasure.”

Ella

NORTHAMPTON, MAY 28, 2008

Befitting her general mood, Ella woke up sad. But not sad as in weepy and unhappy, only sad as in unwilling to smile and take things lightly. She felt as though she had reached a milestone she was not prepared for. As she was brewing coffee in the kitchen, she took her list of resolutions out of the drawer and scanned through it.

Ten Things to Do Before Turning Forty

1. Improve your time management, be better organized, and be determined to make the most of your time. Buy a new day planner. (Accomplished)
   
2. Add mineral supplements and antioxidants to your diet. (Accomplished)
   
3. Take action for fewer wrinkles. Try alpha hydroxy products, and start using the new L’Oréal cream. (Accomplished)
   
4. Change the upholstery, buy new plants, get new cushions. (Accomplished)
   
5. Evaluate your life, values, and beliefs. (Half accomplished)
   
6. Eliminate meat from your diet, make a healthy menu every week, and start giving your body the respect it deserves. (Half accomplished)
   
7. Start reading Rumi’s poems. (Accomplished)
   
8. Take the kids to a Broadway musical. (Accomplished)
   
9. Start writing a cookbook. ( Unaccomplished)
   
10. Open your heart to love!!!
    

Ella stood still, her eyes fixed on the tenth item on her list, not knowing whether to put a check next to it or not. She didn’t even know what she’d meant when she wrote that. What was she thinking? “It must be the effect of
Sweet Blasphemy,
” she murmured to herself. Lately she found herself frequently thinking about love.

Dear Aziz,

Today is my birthday! I feel like I have reached a milestone in my life. They say turning forty is a defining moment, especially for women. They also say that forty is the new thirty (and sixty is the new forty), but as much as I’d like to believe all that, it sounds too far-fetched to me. I mean, who are we kidding? Forty is forty! I guess now I’ll have “more” of everything—more knowledge, more wisdom, and of course more wrinkles and gray hair.

Birthdays have always made me happy, but this morning I woke up with heaviness in my chest, asking questions too large for someone who hadn’t even had her morning coffee yet. I kept wondering, is the way I’ve lived my life the way I want to continue from now on?

And then a fearful feeling came over me. What if both a yes and a no might generate equally disastrous consequences? So I found another answer: maybe!

Warm wishes,

Ella

P.S. Sorry I couldn’t write a more cheerful e-mail. I don’t know why I’m down in the dumps today. I can’t give you a reason. (That is, other than turning forty. I guess this is what they call midlife crisis.)

Dear Ella,

Happy birthday! Forty is a most beautiful age for both men and women. Did you know that in mystic thought forty symbolizes the ascent from one level to a higher one and spiritual awakening? When we mourn we mourn for forty days. When a baby is born it takes forty days for him to get ready to start life on earth. And when we are in love we need to wait for forty days to be sure of our feelings.

The Flood of Noah lasted forty days, and while the waters destroyed life, they also washed all impurity away and enabled human beings to make a new, fresh start. In Islamic mysticism there are forty degrees between man and God. Likewise, there are four basic stages of consciousness and ten degrees in each, making forty levels in total. Jesus went into the wilderness for forty days and nights. Muhammad was forty years old when he received the call to become a prophet. Buddha meditated under a linden tree for forty days. Not to mention the forty rules of Shams.

You receive a new mission at forty, a new lease on life! You have reached a most auspicious number. Congratulations! And don’t worry about getting old. There are no wrinkles or gray hair strong enough to defy the power of forty!

Warmly,

Aziz

Desert Rose the Harlot

KONYA, OCTOBER 17, 1244

Brothels have existed since the beginning of time. And so have women like me. But there is something that amazes me: Why is it that although people say they hate seeing women prostitute themselves, the same people make life hard for a prostitute who wants to repent and start life anew? It is as if they are telling us they are sorry that we have fallen so low, but now that we are where we are, we should stay there forever. I don’t know why this is. All I know is, some people feed on the miseries of others and they don’t like it when there is one less miserable person on the face of the earth. But no matter what they say or do, I am going to walk out of this place one day.

This morning I woke up bursting with a desire to listen to the great Rumi preach. Had I told the patron the truth and asked permission, she would have made fun of me. “Since when do whores go to mosques?” she would have said, laughing so hard her round face would have turned crimson.

That’s why I lied. After that hairless dervish left, the patron looked so preoccupied I sensed it was the right time to go and talk. She is always more approachable when distracted. I told her I needed to go to the bazaar to run some errands. She believed me. After nine years of my working like a dog for her, she does.

“Only on one condition,” she said. “Sesame is coming with you.”

That wasn’t a problem. I liked Sesame. A big, hefty man with the mind of a child, he was reliable and honest to the point of simplicity. How he survived in such a cruel world was a mystery to me. Nobody knew what his real name was, perhaps not even himself. We had named him so because of his infatuation with sesame halva. When a harlot from the brothel needed to go out, Sesame accompanied her like a silent shadow. He was the best guard I could have wished for.

The two of us took the dusty road winding through the orchards. When we reached the first intersection, I asked Sesame to wait for me, and I disappeared behind a bush where I had hidden a bag full of men’s clothes.

It was harder than I thought to dress up as a man. Wrapping long scarves around my breasts, I flattened my chest. Then I put on baggy trousers, a cotton vest, a long maroon robe, and a turban. Finally I covered half my face with a scarf, hoping to resemble an Arab traveler.

When I walked back toward him, Sesame flinched, looking puzzled.

“Let’s go,” I urged him, and when he didn’t budge, I uncovered my face. “My dear, haven’t you recognized me?”

“Desert Rose, is that you?” Sesame exclaimed, putting one hand on his mouth like a child in awe. “Why did you dress up like that?”

“Can you keep a secret?”

Sesame nodded, his eyes widening with excitement.

“All right,” I whispered. “We are going to a mosque. But don’t tell the patron.”

Sesame’s bottom lip quivered. “No, no. We were going to the bazaar.”

“Yes, dear, later. First we are going to listen to the great Rumi.”

Sesame panicked slightly, as I knew he would. The change in plans was unsettling to him. “Please, this means a lot to me,” I begged. “If you agree and promise not to tell anyone about it, I’ll buy you a huge chunk of halva.”

“Halva.” Sesame clucked his tongue with delight, as if the word alone had left a sweet taste in his mouth.

And with sweet expectation, we set off toward the mosque where Rumi was going to speak.

I was born in a small village near Nicaea. My mother always said to me, “You were born in the right place, but I am afraid it was under the wrong star.” The times were bad, unpredictable. From one year to the next, nothing remained the same. First there were rumors of the Crusaders coming back. We heard terrible stories about the atrocities they committed in Constantinople, ransacking the mansions, demolishing the icons inside chapels and churches. Next we heard about Seljuk attacks. And before the tales of terror of the Seljuk army faded, those of the ruthless Mongols started. The name and the face of the enemy changed, but the fear of being destroyed by outsiders remained as steady as snow on Mount Ida.

My parents were bakers and good Christians. One of my earliest memories is the smell of bread out of the oven. We weren’t rich. Even as a child, I knew that. But we weren’t poor either. I had seen the stare in the eyes of the poor when they came to the bakery begging for crumbs. Every night before going to sleep, I thanked the Lord for not sending me to bed hungry. It felt like talking to a friend. For back then God was my friend.

When I was seven, my mother became pregnant. Looking back today, I suspect she might have had several miscarriages before that, but I didn’t know anything about such things. I was so innocent that if anyone asked me how babies were made, I would have said God kneaded them out of soft, sweet dough.

But the bread baby that God kneaded for my mother must have been enormous, because before long her belly swelled up, big and tight. Mother had become so huge she could barely move. The midwife said her body was retaining water, but that didn’t sound like a bad thing to me.

What neither my mother nor the midwife knew was, there wasn’t one baby but three. All were boys. My brothers had waged a war inside my mother’s body. One of the triplets had strangled his brother with his umbilical cord, and as if to take revenge, the dead baby had blocked the passage, thus preventing the others from coming out. For four days my mother remained in labor. Night and day we listened to her screams until we heard her no more.

Unable to save my mother, the midwife did her best to save my brothers. Taking a pair of scissors, she cut my mom’s belly open, but in the end only one baby survived. This is how my brother was born. My father never forgave him, and when the baby was baptized, he did not attend the ceremony.

With my mother gone and my father turned into a sullen, bitter man, life was never the same. Things rapidly deteriorated at the bakery. We lost our customers. Afraid of becoming poor and having to beg someday, I started to hide bread rolls under my bed, where they would get dry and stale. But it was my brother who really suffered. I at least had been loved and taken good care of in the past. He never had any of that. It broke my heart to see him being mistreated, and yet a part of me was relieved, even grateful, that it wasn’t I who had become the target of my father’s fury. I wish I had protected my brother. Everything would be different then, and I wouldn’t be in a brothel in Konya today. Life is so strange.

A year later my father remarried. The only difference in my brother’s life was that whereas before it was my father who ill-treated him, now it was my father and his new wife who did so. He started to run away from home, only to come back with the worst habits and the wrong friends. One day my father beat him so badly he almost killed him. After that, the boy changed. There was a cold, cruel stare in his eyes that wasn’t there before. I knew he had something in mind, but it never occurred to me what a horrible plan he was brewing. I wish I had known. I wish I could have prevented the tragedy.

Then, one morning in spring, my father and stepmother were found dead, killed with rat poison. As soon as the incident became public, everyone suspected my brother. When the guards started asking questions, he ran away in panic. I never saw him again. And just like that, I was alone in the world. Unable to stay at home where I still sensed my mother’s smell, unable to work at the bakery where disturbing memories hovered in the air, I decided to go to Constantinople to stay with an old spinster aunt who had now become my closest relative. I was thirteen.

I took a carriage to Constantinople. I was the youngest passenger on board and the only one traveling alone. A few hours on the road, we were stopped by a gang of robbers. They took everything—suitcases, clothes, boots, belts, and jewelry, even the driver’s sausages. Having nothing to give them, I stood aside quietly, certain that they would do me no harm. But just when they were about to leave, the gang leader turned to me and asked, “Are you a virgin, dainty thing?”

I blushed and refused to answer such an improper question. Little did I know that my blushing was the answer he wanted.

“Let’s go!” the gang leader shouted. “Take the horses and the girl!”

While I resisted them in tears, none of the other passengers even tried to help me. The robbers took me to a thick, dense forest, where I was surprised to see they had created a whole village. There were women and children. Ducks, goats, and pigs were all over the place. It looked like an idyllic village, except it was inhabited by criminals.

Soon I understood why the gang leader had asked me if I was a virgin. The chief of the village was severely ill with nervous fever. He had been in bed for a long time, with red spots all over his body, trying countless treatments to no avail. Recently someone had convinced him that if he slept with a virgin, his illness would be transmitted to her and he would be clean and cured.

There are things in my life I don’t want to remember. My time in the forest is one of them. Even today, whenever the forest comes to my mind, I think of the pine trees and only the pine trees. I preferred sitting alone under those trees to the company of the women in the village, most of whom were the wives or daughters of the robbers. There were also a number of harlots who had come there on their own. I couldn’t understand for the life of me why they didn’t run away. I was determined to do so.

There were carriages crossing the forest, most of them belonging to the nobility. It was a mystery to me why they were not robbed, until I realized that some carriage drivers bribed the robbers before passing through the forest and in return got the right to travel safely. Once I figured out how things worked, I cut my own deal. After stopping a carriage heading to the big city, I pleaded with the driver to take me with him. He asked too much money, although he knew I had none. I paid him the only way I knew how.

Only long after I arrived in Constantinople would I comprehend why the harlots in the forest would never run away. The city was worse. It was ruthless. I never looked for my old aunt. Now that I was fallen, I knew a proper lady like her wouldn’t want me. I was on my own. It didn’t take the city long to crush my spirits and ruin my body. Suddenly I was in another world altogether—a world of malice, rape, brutality, and disease. I had successive abortions until I was damaged so badly that I stopped having periods and could no longer conceive.

I saw things on those streets for which I have no words. After I left the city, I traveled with soldiers, performers, and Gypsies, serving the needs of all. Then a man called Jackal Head found me and brought me to this brothel in Konya. The patron wasn’t interested in where I came from as long as I was in good shape. She was delighted to learn I couldn’t have babies and would not cause her any problems in that respect. To refer to my barrenness, she named me “Desert,” and to embellish that name somewhat, she added “Rose,” which was fine with me, as I adored roses.

Which is how I think of faith—like a hidden rose garden where I once roamed and inhaled its perfumed smells but can no longer enter. I want God to be my friend again. With that longing I am circling that garden, searching for an entrance, hoping to find a gate that will let me in.

When Sesame and I reached the mosque, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Men of all ages and professions occupied every corner, even the place in the back that would normally be reserved for women. I was about to give up and leave when I noticed a beggar relinquish his seat and inch his way out. Thanking my lucky stars, I wriggled into his space, leaving Sesame outside.

This is how I found myself listening to the great Rumi in a mosque full of men. I didn’t even want to think what could happen if they found out there was a woman amid them, let alone a harlot. Chasing off all dark thoughts, I gave my full attention to the sermon.

“God created suffering so that joy might appear through its opposite,” Rumi said. “Things become manifest through opposites. Since God has no opposite, He remains hidden.”

As the preacher talked, his voice rose and swelled like a mountain stream fed by the melting snow. “Look at the abasement of the earth and the exaltation of the heavens. Know that all the states of the world are like this: flooding and drought, peace and war. Whatever happens, do not forget, nothing God has created is in vain, whether wrath or forbearance, honesty or guile.”