In the first year of our marriage, I used to sneak into Rumi’s library at every opportunity. I would sit there amid the books he loved so much, breathing in their dusty, moldy smells, wondering what mysteries they hid inside. I knew how much Rumi adored his books, most of which had been handed down to him by his late father, Baha’ al-Din. Of those, he was particularly fond of the Ma’arif. Many nights he would stay awake until dawn reading it, although I suspected he knew the whole text by heart.
“Even if they paid me sacks of gold, I would never exchange my father’s books,” Rumi used to say. “Each of these books is a priceless legacy from my ancestors. I took them from my father, and I will pass them on to my sons.”
I learned the hard way just how much his books meant to him. Still in our first year of marriage, while I was alone at home one day, it occurred to me to dust the library. I took out all the books from the shelves and wiped their covers with a piece of velvet dabbed in rosewater. The locals believe that there is a kind of juvenile djinn by the name of Kebikec who takes a twisted pleasure in destroying books. In order to ward him off, it is the custom to write a note of warning inside each book: “Stand thou still, Kebikec, stay away from this book!” How was I to know that it wasn’t only Kebikec who was supposed to stay away from my husband’s books, but me as well?
That afternoon I dusted and cleaned every book in the library. As I kept working, I read from Ghazzali’s Vivification of the Religious Sciences. Only when I heard a dry, distant voice behind me did I realize how much time I had spent there.
“Kerra, what do you think you are doing here?”
It was Rumi, or someone who resembled him—the voice was harsher in tone, sterner in expression. In all our eight years of marriage, that was the only time he’d spoken to me like that.
“I am cleaning,” I muttered, my voice weak. “I wanted to make it a surprise.”
Rumi responded, “I understand, but please do not touch my books again. In fact, I’d rather you did not enter this room at all.”
After that day I stayed away from the library even when there was no one at home. I understood and accepted that the world of books was not and never had been, nor ever would be, for me.
But when Shams of Tabriz came to our house, and he and my husband locked themselves in the library for forty days, I felt an old resentment boil up inside me. A wound that I didn’t even know I had began to bleed.
Kimya
KONYA, DECEMBER 20, 1244
Born to simple peasants in a valley by the Taurus Mountains, I was twelve the year Rumi adopted me. My real parents were people who worked hard and aged before their time. We lived in a small house, and my sister and I shared the same room with the ghosts of our dead siblings, five children all lost to simple diseases. I was the only one in the house who could see the ghosts. It frightened my sister and made my mother cry each time I mentioned what the little spirits were doing. I tried to explain, to no avail, that they didn’t need to be frightened or worried, since none of my dead siblings looked scary or unhappy. This I could never make my family understand.
One day a hermit passed by our village. Seeing how exhausted he was, my father invited him to spend the night in our house. That evening, as we all sat by the fireplace and grilled goat cheese, the hermit told us enchanting stories from faraway lands. While his voice droned on, I closed my eyes, traveling with him to the deserts of Arabia, Bedouin tents in North Africa, and a sea of the bluest water, called the Mediterranean. I found a seashell there on the beach, big and coiled, and put it in my pocket. I was planning to walk the beach from one end to the other, but a sharp, repulsive smell stopped me midway.
When I opened my eyes, I found myself lying on the floor with everyone in the house around me, looking worried. My mother was holding my head with one hand, and in her other hand was half an onion, which she was forcing me to smell.
“She is back!” My sister clapped her hands with glee.
“Thank God!” My mother heaved a sigh. Then she turned to the hermit, explaining, “Ever since she was a little girl, Kimya has been having fainting spells. It happens all the time.”
In the morning the hermit thanked us for our hospitality and bade us farewell.
Before he left, however, he said to my father, “Your daughter Kimya is an unusual child. She is very gifted. It would be a pity if such gifts went unappreciated. You should send her to a school—”
“What would a girl need an education for?” my mother exclaimed. “Where did you hear such a thing? She should stay by my side and weave carpets until she gets married. She’s a talented carpet weaver, you know.”
But the hermit didn’t waver. “Well, she could make an even better scholar someday. Obviously, God has not disfavored your daughter for being a girl and has bestowed many gifts upon her. Do you claim to know better than God?” he asked. “If there are no schools available, send her to a scholar to receive the education she deserves.”
My mother shook her head. But I could see that my father was of a different mind. Knowing his love for education and knowledge, and his appreciation of my abilities, it didn’t surprise me to hear him ask, “We don’t know of any scholars. Where am I going to find one?”
It was then that the hermit uttered the name that would change my life. He said, “I know a wonderful scholar in Konya named Mawlana Jalal ad-Din Rumi. He might be glad to teach a girl like Kimya. Take her to him. You won’t regret it.”
When the hermit was gone, my mother threw her arms up. “I am pregnant. Soon there will be another mouth to feed in this house. I need help. A girl doesn’t need books. She needs to learn housework and child care.”
I would have much preferred it if my mother had opposed my going away for other reasons. Had she said she would miss me and couldn’t bear to give me to another family, even if for a temporary period, I might have chosen to stay. But she said none of this. In any case, my father was convinced that the hermit had a point, and within a few days so was I.
Shortly after, my father and I traveled to Konya. We waited for Rumi outside the madrassa where he taught. When he walked out, I was too embarrassed to look up at him. Instead I looked at his hands. His fingers were long, supple, and slender, more like an artisan’s than a scholar’s. My father shoved me toward him.
“My daughter is very gifted. But I am a simple man, and so is my wife. We have been told you are the most learned man in the region. Would you be willing to teach her?”
Even without looking at his face, I could sense that Rumi wasn’t surprised. He must have been used to such requests. While he and my father engaged in a conversation, I walked toward the yard, where I saw several boys but no girls. But on the way back, I was pleasantly surprised when I spotted a young woman standing in a corner by herself, her round face still and white as if carved of marble. I waved at her. She looked stunned, but after a brief hesitation she returned my wave.
“Hello, little girl, can you see me?” she asked.
When I nodded, the woman broke into a smile, clapping her hands. “That’s wonderful! No one else can.”
We walked back toward my father and Rumi. I thought they would stop talking when they noticed her, but she was right—they couldn’t see her.
“Come here, Kimya,” said Rumi. “Your father informs me you love to study. Tell me, what is it in books that you like so much?”
I swallowed hard, unable to answer, paralyzed.
“Come on, sweetheart,” my father said, sounding disappointed.
I wanted to answer correctly, with a response that would make my father proud of me, except I didn’t know what that was. In my anxiety the only sound that came out of my mouth was a desperate gasp.
My father and I would have gone back to our village empty-handed had the young woman not intervened then. She held my hand and said, “Just tell the truth about yourself. It’s going to be fine, I promise.”
Feeling better, I turned to Rumi and said, “I’d be honored to study the Qur’an with
you, Master. I’m not afraid of hard work.”
Rumi’s face brightened up. “That’s very good,” he said, yet then he paused as if he had just remembered a nasty detail. “But you are a girl. Even if we study intensely and make good progress, you’ll soon get married and have children. Years of education will be of no use.”
Now I didn’t know what to say and felt disheartened, almost guilty. My father, too, seemed troubled, suddenly inspecting his shoes. Once again it was the young woman who came to my help. “Tell him his wife always wanted to have a little girl and now she would be happy to see him educate one.”
Rumi laughed when I conveyed the message. “So I see you have visited my house and talked to my wife. But let me assure you, Kerra doesn’t get involved in my teaching responsibilities.”
Slowly, forlornly, the young woman shook her head and whispered in my ear, “Tell him you were not talking about Kerra, his second wife. You were talking about Gevher, the mother of his two sons.”
“I was talking about Gevher,” I said, pronouncing the name carefully. “The mother of your sons.”
Rumi’s face turned pale. “Gevher is dead, my child,” he said dryly. “But what do you know about my late wife? Is this a tasteless joke?”
My father stepped in. “I’m sure she didn’t mean ill, Master. I can assure you Kimya is a serious child. She never disrespects her elders.”
I realized I had to tell the truth. “Your late wife is here. She is holding my hand and encouraging me to speak. She has dark brown almond eyes, pretty freckles, and she wears a long yellow robe.… ”
I paused as I noticed the young woman gesture to her slippers. “She wants me to tell you about her slippers. They are made of bright orange silk and embroidered with small red flowers. They are very pretty.”
“I brought her those slippers from Damascus,” Rumi said, his eyes filling with tears. “She loved them.”
Upon saying that, the scholar lapsed into silence, scratching his beard, his expression solemn and distant. But when he spoke again, his voice was gentle and friendly, without a trace of gloom.
“Now I understand why everyone thinks your daughter is gifted,” Rumi said to my father. “Let’s go to my house. We can talk about her future over dinner. I’m sure she’ll make an excellent student. Better than many boys.”
Rumi then turned to me and asked, “Will you tell this to Gevher?”
“There is no need, Master. She has heard you,” I said. “She says she needs to go now. But she is always watching you with love.”
Rumi smiled warmly. So did my father. There was now an easiness hanging in the air that hadn’t been there before. At that moment, I knew my encounter with Rumi was going to have far-reaching consequences. I had never been close to my mother, but as if to compensate for her lack, God was giving me two fathers, my real father and my adopted father.
That is how I arrived in Rumi’s house eight years ago, a timid child hungry for knowledge. Kerra was loving and compassionate, more so than my own mother, and Rumi’s sons were welcoming, especially his elder son, who in time became a big brother to me.
In the end the hermit was right. As much as I missed my father and siblings, there hasn’t been a single moment when I regretted coming to Konya and joining Rumi’s family. I spent many happy days under this roof.
That is, until Shams of Tabriz came. His presence changed everything.
Ella
NORTHAMPTON, JUNE 9, 2008
Being one who had never enjoyed solitude, Ella found she preferred it lately. Immersed in putting the final touches to her editorial report on Sweet Blasphemy, she had asked Michelle for another week to turn it in. She could have finished earlier, but she did not want to. The task gave her an excuse to retreat into her mind and shun family duties and long-awaited marital confrontations. This week, for the first time, she skipped the Fusion Cooking Club, unwilling to cook and chat with fifteen women who had similar lives at a time when she wasn’t sure what to do with hers. She called in sick at the last minute.
Ella treated her communication with Aziz as a secret, of which suddenly she had way too many. Aziz didn’t know she was not only reading his novel but also writing a report on it; the literary agency didn’t know she was secretly flirting with the author of the book she was assigned to report on; and her children and husband did not know anything regarding what the novel was about, the author, or the flirtation. In the span of a few weeks, she had converted from a woman whose life was as transparent as the skin of a newborn baby into a woman wallowing in secrets and lies. What surprised her even more than this change was seeing that it did not disturb her in the least. It was as if she were waiting, confidently and patiently, for something momentous to happen. This irrational expectation was part of the charm of her new mood, for despite all the secrets, charming it was.
By this time e-mails weren’t enough. It was Ella who first called Aziz. Now, despite the five-hour time difference, they talked on the phone almost every day. Aziz had told her that her voice was soft and fragile. When she laughed, her laughter came in ripples, punctuated by short gasps, as if she weren’t sure how much more to laugh. It was the laughter of a woman who had never learned not to pay too much attention to the judgments of others.
“Just go with the flow,” he said. “Let go!”
But the flow around her was unsteady and disruptive as several things were happening in her house at this time. Avi had started taking private classes in mathematics, and Orly was now seeing a counselor for her eating disorder. This morning she had eaten half an omelet—her first substantial food in months—and though she had instantly inquired how many calories there were in it, it was a small miracle that she hadn’t felt guilty and punished herself by throwing up afterward. Meanwhile Jeannette had set off a bombshell by announcing her breakup with Scott. She had offered no explanation other than the fact that they both needed space. Ella wondered if “space” was a code for a new love, given that neither Jeannette nor Scott had lost any time in finding someone new.
The speed with which human relations materialized and dissipated amazed Ella more than ever, and yet she tried not to pass judgment on other people anymore. If there was one thing she had learned from her correspondence with Aziz, it was that the more she remained calm and composed, the more her children shared with her. Once she had stopped running after them, they had stopped running away from her. Somehow things were working more smoothly and closer to her liking than in the times when she had tirelessly tried to help and repair.
And to think she was doing nothing to achieve this result! Instead of seeing her role in the house as some sort of glue, the invisible yet central bond that held everyone together, she had become a silent spectator. She watched events unfold and days waft by, not necessarily coldly or indifferently but with visible detachment. She had discovered that once she accepted that she didn’t have to stress herself about things she had no control over, another self emerged from inside—one who was wiser, calmer, and far more sensible.
“The fifth element,” she muttered to herself several times during the day. “Just accept the void!”
It didn’t take long for her husband to notice there was something strange about her, something so not Ella. Was this why all of a sudden he wanted to spend more time with her? He came home earlier these days, and Ella suspected he had not been seeing other women for a while.
“Honey, are you all right?” David asked repeatedly.
“I am right as rain,” she answered, smiling back each time. It was as if her withdrawal into a calm, private space of her own stripped away the polite decorum behind which her marriage had slept undisturbed for many years. Now that the pretenses between them were gone, she could see their defects and mistakes in all their nakedness. She had stopped pretending. And she had a feeling David was about to do the same.
Over breakfasts and dinners, they talked about the day’s events in composed, adult voices, as though discussing the annual return on their stock in
vestments. Then they remained silent, acknowledging the blunt fact that they didn’t have much else to talk about. Not anymore.
Sometimes she caught her husband looking at her intently, waiting for her to say something, almost anything. Ella sensed if she asked him about his affairs, he would gladly have come clean. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
In the past she used to feign ignorance in order not to rock the boat of her marriage. Now, however, she stopped acting as if she didn’t know what he’d been doing when he was away. She made it clear that she did know and that she was uninterested. It was precisely this new aloofness that scared her husband. Ella could understand him, because deep inside it scared her, too.
A month ago if David had taken even a tiny step to improve their marriage, she would have felt grateful. Any attempt on his part would have delighted her. Not anymore. Now she suspected that her life wasn’t real enough. How had she arrived at this point? How had the fulfilled mother of three discovered her own despondency? More important, if she was unhappy, as she once told Jeannette she was, why was she not doing the things unhappy people did all the time? No crying on the bathroom floor, no sobbing into the kitchen sink, no melancholic long walks away from the house, no throwing things at the walls … nothing.
A strange calm had descended upon Ella. She felt more stable than she’d ever been, even as she was swiftly gliding away from the life she’d known. In the morning she looked into the mirror long and hard to see if there was a visible change in her face. Did she look younger? Prettier? Or perhaps more full of life? She couldn’t see any difference. Nothing had changed, and yet nothing was the same anymore.
Kerra
KONYA, MAY 5, 1245
Branches that once sagged under the weight of snow are now blossoming outside our window, and still Shams of Tabriz is with us. During this time I have watched my husband turn into a different man, every day drifting a bit further from me and his family. In the beginning I thought they would soon get bored with each other, but no such thing occurred. If anything, they have become more attached. When together, either they are strangely silent or they talk in an incessant murmur interspersed with peals of laughter, making me wonder why they never run out of words. After each conversation with Shams, Rumi walks around a transformed man, detached and absorbed, as if intoxicated by a substance I can neither taste nor see.