A Poet of the Invisible World (8 page)

As Nouri and Vishpar approached the city, the streets began to fill with people. A woman hurled the contents of a slop pot from her window. A wagon came clattering down the road, forcing them to step aside. Eventually, however, Vishpar's curiosity about the boy kicked in.

“You're rather young to be living in a Sufi order.”

“The town where I was born was consumed by flames,” said Nouri. “Or something like that.”

“Do you wish to become a Sufi yourself?”

“Sheikh Bailiri says I already am a Sufi.”

“That's impossible! You're what? Eleven? Twelve?”

“I'm thirteen! And besides, Sheikh Bailiri says a Sufi is born, not made. His training only reminds him of what he was already aware of before birth.”

Vishpar was silent. He did not wish to contradict Sheikh Bailiri. But this upstart? This stripling? How could he be a Sufi?

“Have you read the Qur'an?”

“Of course!”

“What are the ninety-nine names of Allah?”

“Allah the Compassionate, Allah the Merciful, Allah the King, Allah the Most Holy…”

Vishpar cut him off. “What does complete faith consist of?”

“Confirmation by the tongue, belief within the heart, and performance of the basic duties of submission.”

“What are the various forms of divine inspiration?”

“Signs, appearances of light, and graces. All of which are ineffable.”

Vishpar was silent again. “You know a lot,” he said. Then he turned to Nouri. “But what do you
think
about it?”

“What do you mean?”

“There's a great difference between knowledge and understanding. Anyone can memorize rules, laws, articles of behavior. You have to think about them—wrestle them to the ground—if you want to make them your own.”

Nouri considered what Vishpar was saying. “Hajid al-Hallal likes to say, ‘Allah prefers a strong
murid
to a weak one
.
' But I think he only says that because he's strong himself. And I don't think the expression is really referring to strength of the body.”

Vishpar's eyes widened. “How do you understand the difference between traveling to God and traveling in God?”

“Well, that,” said Nouri, “is an important distinction!”

The two youths talked feverishly all the way to the Darni Sunim. And when they got there, and were shown the fountain—a carved basin in the shape of an open lotus with eight petals—they carried it back to the lodge, talking some more. To Vishpar it was like finding the younger brother he'd never had. And to Nouri it was like springtime, a warm bath, and a large bowl of
yakh dar behesht
rolled into one.

It was his first real friendship, outside of Habbib.

And whether he knew it or not, his first love.

 

Six

Once the new fountain had been installed in the courtyard it became the principal meeting ground for Nouri and Vishpar, the place where they came to discuss the Arc of Ascent or the Conditions of Rapture or the Illusion of the Self. In the morning, after their studies, they would sit by the cool stone basin and discuss the proper conduct of the
murid
toward his sheikh. In the evening, before they retired to their separate cells, they would linger beside it and argue about the state of
hal.
It was a rule of Sufi discipline that a novice should not speak on any question unless he is asked about it. So since Vishpar was a novice, and Nouri not even that, they shared their deepest questions with each other.

“What are the first signs of spiritual intoxication?”

“To what degree does the Shadow of the Absolute reflect His true Being?”

“Why must one pass beyond knowledge, if knowledge leads to truth?”

Such questions were based on the divine possibilities they'd glimpsed more than on anything they'd actually experienced. But they fueled each other's spiritual hunger. And though their natures were different—the poet and the warrior—the rose and the flame—they created a closed circuit between themselves that even Habbib, to his regret, was unable to enter.

At times, Vishpar's spiritual passion threatened to shatter the balance of life at the lodge. For though he always remained respectful toward the brothers, he could not help but notice the gap between what they said and what they actually did. Jamal al-Jani, for example, often spoke about the Sufi's need to divest himself of personal possessions.

“The Angel Gabriel,” he liked to say, “strictly warned the Prophet not to accept the treasures of the earth.”

When the dervish became ill, however, and Vishpar was sent to his cell with a bowl of
khoresht baadenjaan,
he found a brass candle trimmer and a pearl-studded pouch beside his bed.

Hajid al-Hallal often preached that a true dervish should never reduce himself to begging for alms.

“The Sufi,” he liked to say, “must learn to make do with what God provides.”

One morning, however, when Vishpar was out walking, he found the old fellow sitting by the side of the road, with his eyes closed, beside a bowl filled with coins.

Salim Rasa would often speak about the Sufi's need for self-sufficiency.

“A dervish must eat only food that he has prepared himself,” he liked to say, “or that has been prepared for him by a member of his order.”

One day, however, when Vishpar was heading to market, he saw the plump brother munching on a pastry that he'd just purchased from one of the stalls.

When Vishpar attempted to show the members of the order their contradictions, they made feeble justifications or quoted passages from the Qur'an. But this only made the youth more indignant than he already was.

“Sheikh Bailiri is a great man,” he said to Nouri. “But the others are so lazy! How can they expect to reach God if they can't harness their own appetites?”

When he went to Sheikh Bailiri to express his concerns, the Sufi master counseled him to be patient.

“Even the strongest spiritual aspirant is filled with contradictions. It takes years to gain mastery over oneself.”

Vishpar did his best to do as Sheikh Bailiri advised. He knew that the other brothers were sincere. He wished to become patient. Compassionate. Wise. But his heart remained torn between the need to be submissive to his elders and the need to speak the truth.

For Nouri's part, he had little to say in response to Vishpar's criticism of the brothers. For one thing, he was only thirteen and the impulse to assail the generation above him had not yet fired his blood. For another, he'd grown up at the lodge and the brothers were the only real family he'd ever known. But mostly he remained silent because he could barely contain the feelings that coursed through him when Vishpar was near.

When a friendship took root between himself and the older youth, Nouri felt that he'd found a true
suhba
. Their conversations about remembrance and faith changed his thinking. Their discussions of the Qur'an stirred his heart. Yet all the while—whether they were in the chapel or the garden—whether they were talking by the fountain or sitting together in prayer—Nouri was overwhelmed by a longing for Vishpar that went beyond their intellectual accord. It made his heart pound. It made his head spin. And no matter what he tried—late-night walks around the perimeter of the lodge—plunging into the icy waters of the River Tolna—he could not make that feeling go away.

It never occurred to Nouri that what he felt for Vishpar might be thought of as wrong. But it reminded him, once again, that he was not like anyone else in Tan-Arzhan, and that he never would be. For the first time in a long while, he thought about his ears. Sheikh Bailiri had insisted that they were a benediction. A miracle. Yet Nouri could not forget how Sharoud had looked at him when his head garment had been removed. Like a bird without a beak. Like a puppy with two tails that should have been drowned in the river at birth.

Nouri told himself that he was not his ears. That he was a servant of Allah. That he was Nouri. But there were so many Nouris whirling about inside: the Nouri who studied, the Nouri who prayed, the Nouri who yearned for Vishpar to hold him.

Who am I?
he wondered.

Why am I here?

Which of the Nouris is really me?

The only thing that offered Nouri escape from his dizzying feelings was channeling them into words. By now, of course, he had learned how to write. And his thoughts—previously brief and aphoristic—had developed into verse. The brothers had grown accustomed to seeing him frozen in the garden or in the courtyard or on the path, coaxing a few lines into being. He wrote about the sunset and the spiders and the smell of the lamb roasting on the spit and the look on Habbib's face while he was sleeping and the silence during prayer. He learned how to make words skip, crawl, soar, sing. He learned how to make words bow. When he turned his pen to Vishpar, however, he found his friend's virtues too numerous to extol. He would have to focus on something specific. And after he'd been searching for it for months, one hot summer morning, out by the woodshed, it finally appeared.

He'd spent the morning in Sheikh Bailiri's cell, where the Sufi master was explaining that God keeps the hearts of the faithful moving between contraction and expansion.

“When the heart contracts, the aspirant's sensual experiences are extracted from it. Then, when it expands, the veil lifts and he flashes with light.”

As Nouri sat on the blue-and-gold kilim, he tried to fathom the Sufi master's words. But with the heat bearing down, and no breeze blowing through the open window, the only thing that he could feel contracting was his throat and the only thing that he could feel expanding was his head and he began to worry that he might pass out. Fortunately, Sheikh Bailiri could see this. So he reached for the clay pitcher on his desk and suggested that Nouri fetch some water from the well.

As Nouri left the cell, his head began to lighten, and as he crossed the courtyard to the well, the tightness in his throat began to release. But when he reached the woodshed, he saw Vishpar chopping wood. He'd removed his tunic, and his torso, covered in sweat, glistened in the blazing sun. Nouri was spellbound by the play of the muscles across his back and the tautness of his skin. When Vishpar raised the ax up into the air, however, the morning light brought his sculpted arms into relief. And as he felt his heart both contract and expand, Nouri knew that he'd found the theme of his poem.

*   *   *

WHILE NOURI COMMENCED WORK
on his ode to Vishpar's arms, Habbib began having violent dreams. He'd be walking through the streets of Tan-Arzhan when there'd be an explosion and bodies would start flying through the air. He'd be sitting in his cell when the roof would suddenly cave in. It was strange, for Habbib generally slept like a newborn babe. So when he dreamed that a large bearded man removed Piran Nazuder's head with a gleaming blade, he knew that it was time to pay a visit to Sheikh Bailiri.

In all the time he'd lived at the lodge, Habbib had hardly spoken to Sheikh Bailiri. Except for the warm “hello” he received when he swept his cell and the occasional “good morning,” they'd barely exchanged a word. So it was not without a trace of fear that he made his way to his cell on that late-summer morning.

He knocked on the door. There was a brief silence. Then the door opened and the Sufi master stood before him.

“I'm sorry to disturb you,” said Habbib. “But I need to speak with you.”

Sheikh Bailiri gazed at the small, kind-faced man standing in the doorway, and he realized that it had been years since he'd really noticed him. He always remained in the background, never complaining, never asking for a thing. So Sheikh Bailiri knew that there must be a good reason for him to come knocking at his door.

“Come in,” he said.

Habbib entered the simple room he'd swept thousands of times and waited for Sheikh Bailiri to close the door. Sheikh Bailiri gestured to him to sit on one of the pillows that lay strewn across the floor. Then the Sufi master lifted his woolen robe and sat down beside him.

“I've been having dreams.”

“What kind of dreams?”

Habbib shuddered. “Terrible dreams.” Then he described the shouts and the blasts and the blood that filled his head each night when he relinquished himself to sleep. “Last night all I could see was a pair of eyes peering through the smoke. And the air was filled with groans.”

Sheikh Bailiri was silent as he listened to Habbib speak. For the most part, he considered the dream life to be meaningless—a catch pot of random impressions, a tale stitched together from the fragments of the day. Yet he knew that sometimes a dream was a chalice into which a message from a higher world was poured. And he could not help but wonder if the things that Habbib described were a portent of the future.

“I've never had dreams like this before,” said Habbib. “So I'd be most grateful if you could tell me what they mean.”

Sheikh Bailiri looked deeply into the fellow's watery eyes. He knew that it would only trouble him if he said that his dreams might be an omen. So he did his best to assuage his fears. “It's probably just a confluence of the stars. Or some geological occurrence. I wouldn't worry about it.”

Habbib knew that the Sufi master's words could not prevent his awful dreams from coming. But they reassured him. So he thanked him, rose to his feet, and headed back to his cell. Sheikh Bailiri, however, would not forget the gruesome images he'd described. Or shake the feeling that something was on its way.

*   *   *

BY THE TIME THE MONTH
of Ramadan arrived and the brothers began their daily fasting, Nouri was well into the writing of his poem. He'd studied the great panegyrics of Asjadi, the epics of Ferdowsi, the quatrains of Rudaki, but after reading the works of Sistani and Salman, he developed a passion for the rhythmic form known as the
qasidah.
He knew that to write one would be a tremendous labor. It would take weeks to map out the
nasib
, in which he would present his subject, the
takhallus
, in which he would describe its effect, and the
madih,
in which he would sing its praise. But it would be worth every effort if he could somehow convey the beauty—the power—the perfection—of Vishpar's arms.