Forty Rules of Love(11)
Then Ella opened a bottle of red wine and poured herself a glass. It was good wine, light and lively, with an underlying hint of bittersweetness that she liked. Only when she was filling the second glass did it occur to her she might have opened one of David’s expensive Bordeaux. She checked the label—Château Margaux 1996. Not knowing what to make of that, she frowned at the bottle.
She was too tired and too sleepy to read anymore. So she decided to check her e-mail. There, among half a dozen junk e-mails and a message from Michelle inquiring about how the manuscript was going, she found an e-mail from Aziz Z. Zahara.
Dear Ella (if I may),
Your e-mail found me in a village in Guatemala called Momostenango. It’s one of the few places left where they still use a Mayan calendar. Right across from my hostel, there is a wish tree bedecked with hundreds of pieces of fabric of every color and pattern you can imagine. They call it The Tree of the Brokenhearted. Those with broken hearts write down their names on pieces of paper and tie these to the branches, praying for their hearts to be healed.
I hope you won’t find this too presumptuous, but after reading your e-mail I went to the wish tree and prayed that you and your daughter solve this misunderstanding. Even a speck of love should not go unappreciated, because, as Rumi said, love is the water of life.
One thing that has helped me personally in the past was to stop interfering with the people around me and getting frustrated when I couldn’t change them. Instead of intrusion or passivity, may I suggest submission?
Some people make the mistake of confusing “submission” with “weakness,” whereas it is anything but. Submission is a form of peaceful acceptance of the terms of the universe, including the things we are currently unable to change or comprehend.
According to the Mayan calendar, today is an auspicious day. A major astrological shift is on its way, ushering in a new human consciousness. I need to hurry to send you this e-mail before the sun sets and the day is over.
May love find you when you least expect, where you least expect.
Yours sincerely,
Aziz
Ella shut off the laptop, moved to learn that a complete stranger in a remote corner of the world had prayed for her well-being. She closed her eyes and imagined her name written on a piece of paper tied to a wish tree, dangling like a kite in the air, free and happy.
A few minutes later, she opened the kitchen door and stepped out into the backyard, enjoying the unsettling coolness of the breeze. Spirit stood beside her, uneasy and growling, constantly sniffing the air. The dog’s eyes grew small, then big and anxious, and his ears kept perking up, as if he had recognized in the distance something scary. Ella and her dog stood side by side under the late-spring moon, staring into the thick, vast darkness, similarly frightened of the things moving in the dark, frightened of the unknown.
The Novice
BAGHDAD, APRIL 1242
Bowing and scraping, I showed the judge to the door and quickly returned to the main room to collect the dirty bowls. I was surprised to find Baba Zaman and the wandering dervish in the same position as when I left them, neither one saying a word. Out of the corner of my eye, I checked them, wondering if it could be possible to carry on a conversation without talking. I lingered there as long as I could, arranging the cushions, tidying up the room, picking up the crumbs on the carpet, but after a while I ran out of reasons to stay.
Halfheartedly, I dragged my feet back to the kitchen. As soon as he saw me, the cook started to rain orders. “Wipe the counter, mop the floor! Wash the dishes! Scrub the stove and the walls around the grill! And when you are done, don’t forget to check the mousetraps!” Ever since I’d come to this lodge some six months ago, the cook had been riding roughshod over me. Every day he made me work like a dog and called this torture part of my spiritual training, as if washing greasy dishes could be spiritual in any way.
A man of few words, the cook had one favorite mantra: “Cleaning is praying, praying is cleaning!”
“If that were true, all the housewives in Baghdad would have become spiritual masters,” I once dared to say.
He threw a wooden spoon at my head and yelled at the top of his lungs, “Such back talk will get you nowhere, son. If you want to become a dervish, be as mute as that wooden spoon. Rebelliousness is not a good quality in a novice. Speak less, mature quicker!”
I hated the cook, but, more than that, I feared him. I had never disobeyed his orders. That is, until this evening.
As soon as the cook turned his back, I sneaked out of the kitchen and tiptoed to the main room again, dying to learn more about the wandering dervish. Who was he? What was he doing here? He wasn’t like the dervishes in the lodge. His eyes looked fierce and unruly, even when he bowed his head in modesty. There was something so unusual and unpredictable about him that it was almost frightening.