Forty Rules of Love(41)

“Just walking,” I mumbled.

We stood face-to-face, anchored in an awkward silence pierced only by the howling of dogs far away. One of the men took a step toward me and sniffed the air. “It stinks around here,” he blurted out.

“Yeah, it reeks of wine,” the other guard confirmed.

I decided to treat the situation lightly. “Don’t worry yourselves. The stench is only metaphorical. Since it is only metaphorical wine that we Muslims are allowed to drink, the smell must also be metaphorical.”

“What the hell is he raving about?” the first guard grumbled.

Just then the moon came out from behind the cloud, covering us with its soft, pallid light. I could now see the man facing me. He had a square face with a protruding chin, ice blue eyes, and a sharp nose. He could have been handsome were it not for his lazy eye and the permanent scowl on his face.

“What are you doing on the streets at this hour?” the man repeated. “Where are you coming from, and where are you going?”

I couldn’t help it. “These are profound questions, son. If I knew the answers, I would have solved the mystery of our purpose in this world.”

“Are you making fun of me, you filth?” the guard demanded, frowning, and before I knew what was happening, he took out a whip, cracking it in the air.

His gestures were so dramatically exaggerated that I chuckled. The next thing he did was to bring the whip down on my chest. The strike was so sudden that I lost my balance and fell.

“Perhaps this will teach you some manners,” the guard retorted as he passed his whip from one hand to the other. “Don’t you know drinking is a major sin?”

Even when I felt the warmth of my own blood, even as my head swirled in a sea of pain, I still couldn’t believe I had been lashed in the middle of the street by a man young enough to be my son.

“Then go ahead and punish me,” I retorted. “If God’s paradise is reserved for people of your kind, I’d rather burn in hell anyhow.”

In a fit of rage, the young guard started to whip me with all his might. I covered my face with my hands, but it didn’t help much. A merry old song popped into my mind, forcing its way past my bloodied lips. Determined not to show my misery, I sang louder and louder with every crack of the whip:


“Kiss me, my beloved, peel my heart down to the core,

Your lips are as sweet as cherry wine, pour me some more.”


My sarcasm drove the guard into a deeper rage. The louder I sang, the harder he hit. I would never have guessed there could be so much anger piled up inside one man.

“That’s enough, Baybars!” I heard the other guard yell in panic. “Stop it, man!”

As suddenly as it had started, the lashing stopped. I wanted to have the last word, say something powerful and blunt, but the blood in my mouth muffled my voice. My stomach churned, and before I knew it, I vomited.

“You are a wreck,” Baybars reprimanded. “You have only yourself to blame for what I did to you.”

They turned their backs on me and strode off into the night.

I don’t know how long I lay there. It could have been no more than a few minutes or the whole night. Time lost its weight, and so did everything else. The moon hid behind the clouds, leaving me not only without its light but also without a sense of who I was. Soon I was floating in limbo between life and death and not caring where I would end up. Then the numbness started to wear off, and every bruise, every welt, every cut on my body ached madly, washing me with wave after wave of pain. My head was wobbly, my limbs sore. In that state I moaned like a wounded animal.

I must have blacked out. When I opened my eyes, my salwar was drenched in urine and every limb of my body ached dreadfully. I was praying to God either to numb me or to provide me with drink when I heard footsteps approaching. My heart skipped a beat. It could be a street urchin or a robber, even a murderer. But then I thought, what did I have to fear? I had reached a point where nothing the night could bring was scary anymore.

Out of the shadows walked a tall, slender dervish with no hair. He knelt down beside me and helped me sit up. He introduced himself as Shams of Tabriz and asked my name.

“Suleiman the drunk of Konya at your service,” I said as I plucked a loose tooth from my mouth. “Nice to meet you.”

“You are bleeding,” Shams murmured as he started to wipe the blood off my face. “Not only on the outside, but inside as well.”

Upon saying that, he took out a silver flask from the pocket of his robe. “Apply this ointment to your wounds,” he said. “A good man in Baghdad gave it to me, but you need it more than I do. However, you should know that the wound inside you is deeper, and that is the one you should worry about. This will remind you that you bear God within you.”