Forty Rules of Love(103)

Nonetheless, one way or the other, it didn’t matter anymore. I was neither angry nor cross with him. How could I be, when I was flowing in a stream of pure awareness?

There was so much kindness and compassion in God and an explanation for everything. A perfect system of love behind it all. Ten days after I visited Shams’s room clad in silk and perfumed tulles, ten days after I fell ill, I plunged into a river of pure nonexistence. There I swam to my heart’s content, finally sensing that this must be what the deepest reading of the Qur’an feels like—a drop in infinity!

And it was flowing waters that carried me from life to death.





Ella





BOSTON, JULY 3, 2008

Boston had never been this colorful and vibrant, Ella thought. Had she been blind to the city’s beauty all this time? Aziz spent five days in Boston. Every day Ella drove from Northampton to Boston to see him. They had tasty, modest lunches in Little Italy, visited the Museum of Fine Arts, took long walks on Boston Common and the Waterfront, watched the whales in the aquarium, and had coffee after coffee in the busy, small cafés of Harvard Square. They talked endlessly on subjects as diverse as the curiosities of local cuisines, different meditation techniques, aboriginal art, gothic novels, bird-watching, gardening, growing perfect tomatoes, and the interpretation of dreams, constantly interrupting and completing each other’s sentences. Ella didn’t remember ever talking so much with anyone.

When they were outside on the street, they took care not to touch each other, but that proved to get increasingly difficult. Small peccadilloes became exciting, and Ella started looking forward to a brush of their hands. Goaded by a strange courage she never knew she had in her, in restaurants and on the streets Ella held Aziz’s hand, kissed his lips. Not only did she not mind being seen, it felt as if a part of her longed to be seen. Several times they returned to the hotel together, and on each occasion they came very close to making love, but they never did.

The morning of the day Aziz was going to fly back to Amsterdam, they were in his room, his suitcase standing between them like a nasty reminder of the parting to come.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” Ella said. “I’ve been thinking about this for too long.”

Aziz raised one eyebrow, acknowledging the sudden shift in Ella’s tone. Then he said carefully, “There’s something I need to tell you, too.”

“Okay, you go first.”

“No, you go first.”

Still smiling her half smile, Ella lowered her gaze, contemplating what to say and how to say it. Finally she started. “Before you came to Boston, David and I went out one evening and had a long talk. He asked me about you. Apparently he read our e-mails without my knowledge. I was incredibly angry at him for that, but I didn’t deny the truth. About us, I mean.”

Now Ella raised her eyes with apprehension to see how Aziz would react to what she was about to reveal. “To make a long story short, I told my husband that I loved another man.”

Outside on the street, the sirens of several fire trucks broke the usual sounds of the city. Ella was distracted momentarily, but then she was able to finish. “It sounds crazy, I know, but I’ve been thinking this over very carefully. I want to come with you to Amsterdam.”

Aziz walked to the window and looked down at the hurrying and bustle outside. There was smoke coming out of one of the buildings in the distance—a thick black cloud hovering in the air. He silently prayed for the people who lived there. When he started to speak, it sounded as if he were addressing the entire city.

“I would love to take you to Amsterdam with me, but I cannot promise you a future there.”

“What do you mean?” Ella asked nervously.

At this, Aziz walked back, sat by her side, put his hand on hers, and as he caressed it absentmindedly, said, “When you first wrote to me, it happened to be a very strange time in my life.”

“You mean there is someone else in your life …?”

“No, sweetheart, no.” Aziz smiled a little, and then the smile faded. “It’s nothing like that. I once wrote to you about the three stages in my life, remember? Those were the first three letters in the word ‘Sufi.’ You never asked me about the fourth stage, and hard as I tried, I couldn’t bring myself to tell you. My encounter with the letter i. Would you like to listen to it now?”

“Yes,” Ella said, although she feared anything and everything that could disrupt this moment. “Yes, I would.”



In a hotel room on that day in July, a few hours prior to his flight back to Amsterdam, Aziz told Ella how he had become a Sufi in 1977, adopting a new name for himself and also, as he had hoped, a new destiny. Ever since then he had traveled the world as a photographer by profession, a wandering dervish at heart. He had made close friends on six continents, people who saw him as part of their family. Though he hadn’t married again, he had become the foster father of two orphans in Eastern Europe. Never taking off the necklace in the shape of the sun that he wore to remind him of Shams of Tabriz, Aziz had lived life by traveling, reading, and teaching in the footsteps of Sufi dervishes, encountering signs of God everywhere and in everything.