The role of books in our lives is no different from that of our soul mates. Whenever they enter our lives, we are never the same.
To channel my restlessness into a meaningful search, I entered a bookstore and started looking at latest best sellers titles. The best sellers’ table was mushrooming with several copies of “The Secret of the Nagas”, as well as the first book of Shiva Trilogy. I want to read both these books for a couple of reasons — recently added cause to the list of my reasons is a nomadic’s interesting thought about them on his Facebook wall. As soon as I picked the two books, a strong urge to look behind made me turn about and see what was “calling” me. It was like a dense energy which I felt at the back of my neck. To honor its presence and purpose, I turned in the opposite direction, and so did my mind; my decision.
“The Forty Rules of Love” is what kept me still for a few seconds then, and I’m still drunk on the slightest realization (yes, I mean “slightest”!) of Rumi’s love for Shams Tabriz. Shams prayed to find a companion through whom he could communicate the forty rules of love to the world, and in Konya (in the present day Turkey), Rumi started seeing predictive dreams about his master; companion; lover. Both of them felt the painful absence of their alter ego, but neither of them knew the worldly face or whereabouts of who they were yearning for. They were guided to each other in a synchronistic way.
With their union began the course of Rumi’s annihilation. All that Rumi possessed, he had to let go of. The great scholar unlearned what his books taught him, and he did so for his Love for Shams. He let Shams burn his dearest books which Rumi had refrained his wife from cleaning, and once even reprimanded her for touching them. A man who never sniffed wine went to a Jewish tavern to bring two bottles — one for Shams and one for himself, and this wine washed away Rumi’s reputation in public and some of his scholarly beliefs along with it. Rumi gave shelter to a prostitute; spent time with drunkards, lepers – all in the name of love. All that Rumi didn’t know of, or abstained from experiencing, he joyously lived through out of Love for Shams. Rumi disliked poetry and Shams’ absence from his life made him the world’s greatest mystic poet. Together Rumi and Shams gave birth to Dervish dances (Sufi whirling).
Their story, so well told by Elif Shafak, is full of love and Self-examination. It tells us that we let go of our attachments, including our reputations, beliefs, wealth when we experience divine love. This reminds me of what Rumi said, “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.”
This novel is Rumi and Shams’ divine love story told by one of the main characters who is, perhaps, Shams reincarnated. To experience love with THIS Shams, the novel’s protagonist leaves her well-settled family life at the age of 40. The absence and presence of love in our lives can cause catastrophes of inconceivable nature.
40 is an auspicious number in both Hinduism and Islam. Google should serve lots of valuable information on platter if one is interested in knowing the significance of 40.
Elif Shafak is the second Turkish author I have read and I am not exaggerating when I say the stories Turkish authors tell and the way they tell them can touch hearts and souls at a deeper level which some best selling self-help books can’t reach. Serder Rozkon’s “The Missing Rose” keeps me spellbound even today.
So I have got one more reason to visit Turkey – to experience the energies of divine love at the tomb of Shams-i-Tabrizi in Konya.
