It was Shams. Staring into my face without so much as a blink, he said, “That is no way to talk to your father. I’m the one who asked him to go to the tavern.”
“Why am I not surprised?” I couldn’t help smirking.
If Shams was offended by my words, he didn’t show it. “Aladdin, we can talk about this,” he said flatly. “That is, if you don’t let your anger blur your vision.”
Then he cocked his head to one side and told me I had to soften my heart.
“It’s one of the rules,” he said. “If you want to strengthen your faith, you will need to soften inside. For your faith to be rock solid, your heart needs to be as soft as a feather. Through an illness, accident, loss, or fright, one way or another, we all are faced with incidents that teach us how to become less selfish and judgmental, and more compassionate and generous. Yet some of us learn the lesson and manage to become milder, while some others end up becoming even harsher than before. The only way to get closer to Truth is to expand your heart so that it will encompass all humanity and still have room for more Love.”
“You stay out of this,” I said. “I’m not taking orders from drunken dervishes. Unlike my father, that is.”
“Aladdin, shame on you,” my father broke in.
I felt an instant and potent pang of guilt, but it was too late. So many resentments I thought I had left behind came flooding back to me.
“I have no doubt you hate me as much as you say you do,” Shams proclaimed, “but I don’t think you have stopped loving your father even for a minute. Don’t you see you are hurting him?”
“Don’t you see you are ruining our lives?” I shot back.
That was when my father lunged forward, his mouth set in a grim line, his right hand raised above his head. I thought he was going to slap me, but when he didn’t, when he wouldn’t, I felt even more uneasy.
“You shame me,” my father said without looking at my face.
My eyes welled with tears. I turned my head aside and suddenly came face-to-face with Kimya. How long had she been standing there watching us from a corner with fearful eyes? How much of this squabble had she heard?
The shame of being humiliated by my father in front of the girl I wanted to marry churned in my stomach, leaving a bad taste in my mouth. It felt like the room was spinning all around me, threatening to collapse.
Unable to stay there a moment longer, I grabbed my coat, pushed Shams aside, and dashed out of the house, away from Kimya, away from all of them.
Shams
KONYA, FEBRUARY 1246
Bottles of wine stood between us, loaded with the smells of hot earth, wild herbs, and dark berries. After Aladdin was gone, Rumi was so sad he couldn’t talk for a while. He and I stepped out into the snow-covered courtyard. It was one of those bleak February evenings when the air felt heavy with a peculiar stillness. We stood there watching the clouds move, listening to a world that offered us nothing but silence. The wind brought us a whiff of the forests from afar, fragrant and musky, and for a moment I believe we both wanted to leave this town for good.
Then I took one of the bottles of wine. I knelt beside a climbing rose tree that stood thorny and bare in the snow, and I started to pour the wine on the soil beneath it. Rumi’s face brightened as he smiled his half-thoughtful, half-excited smile.
Slowly, stunningly, the bare rose tree came alive, its bark softening like human skin. It produced a single rose in front of our eyes. As I kept pouring the wine under the tree, the rose revealed a lovely warm shade of orange.
Next I took the second bottle and poured it in the same way. The rose’s orangey color turned into a bright crimson tone, glowing with life. Now there remained only a glassful of wine at the bottom of the bottle. I poured that into a glass, drank half of it, and the remaining half I offered to Rumi.
He took the glass with trembling hands, responding to my gesture with a beaming reciprocity of kindness and equanimity, this man who had never touched alcohol in his life.
“Religious rules and prohibitions are important,” he said. “But they should not be turned into unquestionable taboos. It is with such awareness that I drink the wine you offer me today, believing with all my heart that there is a sobriety beyond the drunkenness of love.”
Just as Rumi was about to take the glass to his lips, I snatched it back and flung it to the ground. The wine spilled on the snow, like drops of blood.
“Don’t drink it,” I said, no longer feeling the need to continue with this trial.
“If you weren’t going to ask me to drink this wine, why did you send me to the tavern in the first place?” Rumi asked, his tone not so much curious as compassionate.