Forty Rules of Love(108)

“Of course he did,” another said. “How could he not?”

They were panicking. So was I.

“Maybe he got caught on a hook on the wall,” the third man suggested.

The suggestion made sense. It took the burden of finding an explanation off our shoulders, and we gladly embraced it, though we all knew there were no hooks on the walls of wells.

I don’t know how long we waited there, avoiding one another’s eyes. A cool breeze crossed the courtyard, sprinkling thin, brown willow leaves around our feet. High in the sky above, the dark blue of the morning was just beginning to break into violet. We might have stayed there until long into the day had the back door of the house not opened and a man walked out. I recognized him instantly. It was Mawlana.

“Where are you?” he yelled, his voice heavy with concern. “Are you there, Shams?”

At the mention of his name, all seven of us took to our heels. The six men jumped over the garden walls and disappeared into the night. I remained behind, searching for my dagger, which I found under a bush, covered with mud. I knew I should not linger there, not even a second, but I couldn’t resist the temptation of looking back.

And when I did, I saw Rumi stagger into the courtyard and then suddenly lurch to his left, toward the well, as if guided by an intuition. He leaned forward, peered down, and stood like that for a moment, his eyes adjusting to the semidarkness inside the well. Then he pulled back, fell to his knees, pounded his chest, and let out a terrifying scream.

“They killed him! They killed my Shams!”

I jumped over the wall and, leaving behind the dagger with the blood of the dervish on it, ran as I had never run before.





Ella





NORTHAMPTON, AUGUST 12, 2008

Balmy and sunny, it was an ordinary day in August. A day like any other. Ella woke up early in the morning, prepared breakfast for her husband and children, watched them leave for work and chess and tennis clubs, went back to her kitchen, opened her cookbook, and chose the day’s menu:


Spinach Soup with Creamy Mushroom Mash

Mussels with Mustard Mayonnaise

Seared Scallops with Tarragon-Butter Sauce

Garden Salad with Cranberries

Zucchini Rice Gratin

Rhubarb and Vanilla Cream Lattice Pie


It took her all afternoon to cook the dishes. When she was done, she took out her best china. She set the table, folded the napkins, and arranged the flowers. She set the oven timer for forty minutes, so that the gratin could be warm by seven o’clock. She prepared the croutons, put the dressing in the salad, thick and fatty, just as Avi preferred. It occurred to her to light the candles, but she changed her mind upon second thought. It was better to leave the table like this. Like an immaculate picture. Untouched. Unmoving.

Then she grabbed the suitcase she had earlier prepared and left her house. As she walked out, she murmured one of Shams’s rules. “It is never too late to ask yourself, ‘Am I ready to change the life I am living? Am I ready to change within?’

“Even if a single day in your life is the same as the day before, it surely is a pity. At every moment and with each new breath, one should be renewed and renewed again. There is only one way to be born into a new life: to die before death.”





Aladdin





KONYA, APRIL 1248

Blowing hot and cold, changing my mind every passing minute as to how I should behave toward others, three weeks after Shams’s death, I finally mustered the courage to go and talk to my father. I found him in the library, sitting alone by the firelight, as still as an alabaster statue, shadows leaping across his face.

“Father, can I talk to you?” I asked.

Slowly, hazily, as if swimming back to the shore from a sea of reveries, he looked at me and said nothing.

“Father, I know you think I have a role in Shams’s death, but let me assure you—”

All of a sudden, my father raised his finger, interrupting my words. “Between you and me, son of mine, words have dried up. I have nothing to hear from you and nothing to tell you in return,” he pronounced.

“Please don’t say that. Let me explain,” I begged, my voice shaking. “I swear to God. It wasn’t me. I know the people who did it, but it wasn’t me.”

“My son,” my father interjected again, the sorrow draining out of him, replaced by the chilling calmness of someone who has finally accepted a terrible truth, “you say it wasn’t you, but there is blood on your hem.”

I flinched and instantly checked the ends of my robe. Could it be true? Was there blood on me from that evening? I inspected my hem, and then my sleeves, hands, and fingernails. It all seemed clean. When I raised my head again, I came eye to eye with my father and only then understood the little trap that he had set for me.