It had taken me years to finish working on these rules. All forty of them. And now that I was done, I knew I was nearing the final stage of my time in this world. Lately I had been having many visions in this direction. It wasn’t death that worried me, for I didn’t see it as an end, but dying without leaving a legacy behind. There were many words piled up inside my chest, stories waiting to be told. I wanted to hand all this knowledge to one other person, neither a master nor a disciple. I sought an equal—a companion.
“God,” I whispered into the dark, damp room, “all my life I traveled the world and followed Thy path. I saw every person as an open book, a walking Qur’an. I stayed away from the ivory towers of scholars, preferring to spend time with outcasts, expatriates, and exiles. Now I am bursting. Help me to hand Thy wisdom to the right person. Then Thou can do with me as Thou wish.”
Before my eyes the room was showered with a light so bright that the faces of the travelers in their beds turned lurid blue. The air inside smelled fresh and alive, as if all the windows had been pushed open and a gusty wind brought in the scent of lilies and jasmine from faraway gardens.
“Go to Baghdad,” fluted my guardian angel in a singsong voice.
“What is awaiting me in Baghdad?” I asked.
“You prayed for a companion, and a companion you will be given. In Baghdad you will find the master who will point you in the right direction.”
Tears of gratitude welled up in my eyes. Now I knew that the man in my vision was no other than my spiritual companion. Sooner or later we were destined to meet. And when we did, I would learn why his kind hazel eyes were eternally sad and how I came to be murdered on an early-spring night.
Ella
NORTHAMPTON, MAY 19, 2008
Before the sun had set and the children had come back home, Ella placed a bookmark in the manuscript and put Sweet Blasphemy aside. Curious about the man who had written the novel, she went online and Googled “A. Z. Zahara,” wondering what would pop up but not expecting much.
To her surprise, a personal blog appeared. The colors on the page were predominantly amethyst and turquoise, and on top of the page a male figure with a long white skirt whirled slowly. Having never seen a whirling dervish before, Ella took a careful look at the picture. The blog was titled An Eggshell Named Life, and beneath it there was a poem with the same title:
Let us choose one another as companions!
Let us sit at each other’s feet!
Inwardly we have many harmonies—think not
That we are only what we see.
The page was full of postcards from cities and sites all around the world. Underneath each postcard there were comments about that particular place. It was while reading these that Ella came across three pieces of information that immediately drew her attention: First, that the A in A. Z. Zahara stood for Aziz. Second, that Aziz regarded himself as a Sufi. Third, that at the moment he was traveling somewhere in Guatemala.
In another section there were samples of the photos he had taken. Most were portraits of people of all colors and stripes. Despite their stark differences, they resembled one another in one curious respect: All the people in all the portraits had something visibly missing. For some the missing element was a simple thing, like an earring, a shoe, or a button, while for others it was much more substantial, like a tooth, a finger, or sometimes a leg. Underneath the photos it read:
No matter who we are or where we live, deep inside we all feel incomplete. It’s like we have lost something and need to get it back. Just what that something is, most of us never find out. And of those who do, even fewer manage to go out and look for it.
Ella scrolled up and down the Web page, clicked on every postcard to enlarge it, and read every comment Aziz had made. At the bottom of the page, there was an e-mail address,
[email protected], which she wrote down on a piece of paper. Next to that she found a poem by Rumi:
Choose Love, Love! Without the sweet life of
Love, living is a burden—as you have seen.
It was while reading this poem that a most peculiar thought flashed across her mind. For a fleeting moment, it felt as if everything Aziz Z. Zahara included in his personal blog—the pictures, the comments, the quotations, and the poems—were written for her eyes only. It was a strange and slightly supercilious thought, but one that made perfect sense to her.
Later in the afternoon, Ella sat by the window, feeling tired and slightly down, the sun heavy on her back and the air in the kitchen filled with the smells of the brownies she was baking. She had Sweet Blasphemy open in front of her, but her mind was so preoccupied she couldn’t concentrate on the manuscript. It occurred to her that perhaps she, too, should write her own set of ground rules. She could name it The Forty Rules of the Deeply Settled, Earthy Housewife.