Forty Rules of Love(21)
The evening was now coming to an end. A chilly wind blew in our direction, and I shivered. In my old age, I get cold easily, but I knew it wasn’t my age that caused this shiver. It was because I realized this was the last time Shams would stand in my garden. We will not see each other again. Not in this world. He, too, must have sensed it, for there was now sorrow in his eyes.
This morning at the crack of dawn, he came to kiss my hand and ask for my blessings. I was surprised to see he had cut his long dark hair and shaved his beard, but he didn’t offer an explanation and I didn’t ask. Before he left, he said his part in this story resembled the silkworm. He and Rumi would retreat into a cocoon of Divine Love, only to come out when the time was ripe and the precious silk woven. But eventually, for the silk to survive, the silkworm had to die.
Thus he left for Konya. May God protect him. I know I have done the right thing, and so have you, but my heart is heavy with sadness, and I already miss the most unusual and unruly dervish my lodge has ever welcomed.
In the end we all belong to God, and to Him we shall return.
May God suffice you,
Baba Zaman
The Novice
BAGHDAD, SEPTEMBER 29, 1243
Being a dervish is not easy. Everybody warned me so. What they forgot to mention was that I had to go through hell in order to become one. Ever since I came here, I have been working like a dog. Most days I work so hard that when I finally lie on my sleeping mat, I can’t sleep because of the pain in my muscles and the throbbing in my feet. I wonder if anybody notices how awfully I am being treated. Even if they do, they surely show no signs of empathy. And the harder I strive, the worse it seems to get. They don’t even know my name. “The new novice,” they call me, and behind my back they whisper, “that ginger-haired ignoramus.”
The worst by far is to work in the kitchen under the supervision of the cook. The man has a stone instead of a heart. He could have been a bloodthirsty commander in the Mongol army rather than a cook in a dervish lodge. I can’t recall ever hearing him say anything nice to anyone. I don’t think he even knows how to smile.
Once I asked a senior dervish if all the novices had to go through the trial of working with the cook in the kitchen. He smiled mysteriously and replied, “Not all novices, only some.”
Then why me? Why does the master want me to suffer more than the other novices? Is it because my nafs is bigger than theirs and needs harsher treatment to be disciplined?
Every day I am the first to wake up, to get water from the nearby creek. I then heat up the stove and bake the flat sesame bread. Preparing the soup to be served at breakfast is also my responsibility. It is not easy to feed fifty people. Everything needs to be cooked in cauldrons that are no smaller than bathtubs. And guess who scrubs and washes them afterward? From dawn to dusk, I mop the floors, clean the surfaces, wipe the stairs, sweep the courtyard, chop wood, and spend hours on my hands and knees to scrub the creaky old floorboards. I prepare marmalades and spicy relishes. I pickle carrots and squash, making sure there is just the right amount of salt, enough to float an egg. If I add too much or too little salt, the cook throws a fit and breaks all the jars, and I have to make everything anew.
To top it all off, I am expected to recite prayers in Arabic as I perform each and every task. The cook wants me to pray aloud so that he can check whether I skip or mispronounce a word. So I pray and work, work and pray. “The better you bear the hardships in the kitchen, the faster you will mature, son,” my tormentor claims. “While you learn to cook, your soul will simmer.”
“But how long is this trial going to last?” I asked him once.
“A thousand and one days” was his answer. “If Scheherazade the storyteller managed to come up with a new tale every night for that long, you, too, can endure.”
This is crazy! Do I resemble in the least bit that loudmouthed Scheherazade? Besides, all she did was lie on velvet cushions twiddling her toes and make up fancy stories while she fed the cruel prince sweet grapes and figments of her imagination. I don’t see any hard work there. She wouldn’t have survived a week if she were asked to accomplish half of my work. I don’t know if anyone is counting. But I surely am. And I have 624 more days to go.
The first forty days of my trial I spent in a cell so small and low that I could neither lie down nor stand up and had to sit on my knees all the time. If I longed for proper food or some comfort, was scared of the dark or the loneliness, or God forbid had wet dreams about a woman’s body, I was ordered to ring the silver bells dangling from the ceiling for spiritual help. I never did. This is not to say I never had any distracting thoughts. But what’s wrong with having a few distractions when you can’t even move?