Forty Rules of Love(40)

I understood what Shams of Tabriz was trying to tell me, but something inside me refused to believe him. So I said, “Let me assure you, even if I fed all the dogs in Konya, it wouldn’t be enough for my redemption.”

“You cannot know that; only God can. Besides, what makes you think any of those men who pushed you out of the mosque today are closer to God?”

“Even if they are not closer to God,” I replied, unconvinced, “who will tell them that? Will you?”

But the dervish shook his head. “No, that’s not the way the system works. It is you who needs to tell it to them.”

“Do you think they would listen to me? Those men hate me.”

“They will listen,” he said determinedly. “Because there is no such thing as ‘them,’ just as there is no ‘I.’ All you need to do is keep in mind how everything and everyone in this universe is interconnected. We are not hundreds and thousands of different beings. We are all One.”

I waited for him to explain, but instead he continued: “It’s one of the forty rules. If you want to change the way others treat you, you should first change the way you treat yourself. Unless you learn to love yourself, fully and sincerely, there is no way you can be loved. Once you achieve that stage, however, be thankful for every thorn that others might throw at you. It is a sign that you will soon be showered in roses.” He paused briefly and then added, “How can you blame others for disrespecting you when you think of yourself as unworthy of respect?”

I stood there unable to say a word as I felt my grip on what was real slip away. I thought about all the men I had slept with—the way they smelled, the way their callused hands felt, the way they cried when they came.… I had seen nice boys turn into monsters and monsters turn into nice boys. Once I had a customer who had the habit of spitting on prostitutes while he had sex with them. “Dirty,” he would say as he spit into my mouth and all over my face. “You dirty whore.”

And here was this dervish telling me I was cleaner than fresh springwater. It felt like a tasteless joke, but when I forced myself to laugh, the sound didn’t pass through my throat, and I ended up suppressing a sob.

“The past is a whirlpool. If you let it dominate your present moment, it will suck you in,” said Shams as if he had read my thoughts. “Time is just an illusion. What you need is to live this very moment. That is all that matters.”

Upon saying that, he took out a silk handkerchief from the inside pocket of his robe. “Keep it,” he said. “A good man in Baghdad gave it to me, but you need it more than I do. It will remind you that your heart is pure and that you bear God within you.”

With that, the dervish grabbed his staff and stood up, ready to go. “Just walk out of that brothel.”

“Where? How? I have no place to go.”

“That’s not a problem,” Shams said, his eyes gleaming. “Fret not where the road will take you. Instead concentrate on the first step. That’s the hardest part and that’s what you are responsible for. Once you take that step let everything do what it naturally does and the rest will follow. Do not go with the flow. Be the flow.”

I nodded. I didn’t need to ask in order to understand that this, too, was one of the rules.





Suleiman the Drunk





KONYA, OCTOBER 17, 1244

Before midnight I downed my last drink and left the tavern.

“Remember what I said. Watch your tongue,” Hristos cautioned as he waved good-bye.

I nodded, feeling fortunate to have a friend who cared about me. But as soon as I stepped into the dark, empty street, I was seized by a kind of exhaustion such as I had never felt before. I wished I had taken a bottle of wine with me. I could have used a drink.

As I tottered with my boots clacking on the broken cobblestones, the sight of the men in Rumi’s procession crossed my mind. It pained me to recall the flicker of loathing in their eyes. If there was one thing I hated most in the world, it was prudishness. I had been reprimanded by prim and proper people so many times that even the memory of them was enough to send a shiver down my spine.

Struggling with these thoughts, I turned a corner and entered a side street. It was darker here because of the massive trees towering above. As if that weren’t enough, the moon suddenly hid behind a cloud, shrouding me in thick, dense darkness. Otherwise I would have noticed the two security guards approaching me.

“Selamun aleykum,” I chimed, my voice coming out too merrily in the attempt to hide my anxiety.

But the guards didn’t return my greeting. Instead they asked me what I was doing out on the streets at this late hour.