A Poet of the Invisible World (7 page)

“There are a thousand veils that cover the Self. You must dissolve them. Anything that separates you from God is a veil.”

As Nouri's tenth birthday approached, Sheikh Bailiri taught him about the need to develop the heart.

“You must bypass the intellect. The mind will always obscure the truth. But the heart is a mirror. If you polish away the rust, you can reflect the truth back to itself.”

As Nouri's eleventh birthday approached, Sheikh Bailiri taught him about love.

“All service, all prayer, must come from love. The Sufi would give everything he has—even his life—for a friend on the path.”

Sheikh Bailiri taught Nouri about the chart of virtues. The science of letters. The magic of numbers. He outlined the Degrees of Ascent and the Seven Stations of the Soul. But most of all, he encouraged the boy to study himself.

“Who are you, Nouri? Are you this creature that eats and sleeps and shits? This vessel of desires? This sack of contradictions? Or are you a particle of God, waiting to reunite with your source?”

As the years passed, Nouri learned how to adapt his head cloth to his spurts in growth. Sometimes he simply needed to add a new strip of cloth to the tail. Other times he had to fashion an entirely new head garment. But he always saw the process of unwinding it—and washing it—and keeping the four ears clean—as a ritual. Whatever the ears meant, they were his, and he vowed to treat them with respect.

Nouri's life might have continued on this way indefinitely had Vishpar not arrived. It was on a sultry morning toward the end of the month of Rajab, just a few weeks before Nouri's twelfth birthday. He was sitting in Sheikh Bailiri's cell, waiting for the day's instruction to begin, when Jamal al-Jani appeared at the door.

“There's a youth at the front gate,” said Jamal al-Jani. “He says that he wants to become a dervish.”

It had been a long while since anyone had appeared at the front gate wishing to join the order. The process of initiation was rigorous, and Sheikh Bailiri knew that this youth—like most of the young men who had tried—was not likely to make it past the first few days. He was happy to offer him the chance, however. So he told Nouri to rise and they followed Jamal al-Jani to the front gate to meet him.

As they moved down the hall, Nouri pictured the other youths who'd appeared on the doorstep over the years wishing to devote themselves to Allah. Some had been tall and some had been small, but they'd all been pale and enveloped in thick clouds of thought. So when they reached the gate, he was surprised to see the strapping youth who stood before them.

“Praise be to Allah!” said the youth, bowing his head down low as they approached.

Sheikh Bailiri took a step toward him. “What is your name?”

“Vishpar Izad al-Hassan al-Ibrahim.”

The Sufi master nodded. “You may raise your head.”

The youth raised his eyes to the Sufi master's.

“And what is your purpose?”

“I wish,” said the youth, “to know God.”

“That is a large aim,” said Sheikh Bailiri.

“It is the only real aim that a man can have.”

Sheikh Bailiri was silent, and in the space of that silence Nouri studied the youth: his strong body, his hair like spun gold, his face both angelic and fierce. He'd never seen anything like him and he might have kept staring at him forever had Sheikh Bailiri not instructed Jamal al-Jani to lead him away. “Take him to the initiate's pelt,” he said, “and explain what he must do.”

The youth bowed again. Then he started off into the lodge after Jamal al-Jani.

For the first three days, while Vishpar knelt in silence on the worn pelt that lay beside the door to the refectory, Sheikh Bailiri made a thorough investigation of his past. Everyone he spoke to said the same thing, however: despite his odd coloring—which some said was due to the salt baths his mother had taken while she was carrying him and others said was due to a tryst with a passing infidel—they had never met anyone as loyal or selfless or true as Vishpar Izad al-Hassan al-Ibrahim. On the fourth day, the Sufi master told him that he could still change his mind before embarking upon the penitential retreat. The youth, however, could not be dissuaded from his goal. So Sheikh Bailiri led him to the kitchen and for the next eighteen days he washed lentils, sliced eggplants, and chopped onions while the brothers shouted things like “You numbskull!” and “You're doing it all wrong!” The youth took the barrage of insults in stride. So on the twenty-second day, Sheikh Bailiri handed him the plain muslin shift of the
murid
. Then he set about to complete the long months of service required to become a full-fledged dervish.

The work was hard. Cleaning the tiles on the roof of the chapel. Mending the mortar along the southern wall. Mucking out the sludge and slime from the bottom of the well. But whatever was asked of him, Vishpar responded to it with ardor and good cheer. So when the last of his tasks—scrubbing out the latrines—had been completed, he was ordered to prepare for the ceremony of full confession, which would be followed by his induction into the order.

This was what Vishpar had longed for for years. For from the time he was a child, nothing could dim the fervent gleam of the warrior in his eyes. He was stronger and smarter than the other boys, yet he did not show the least interest in the games they played or the jokes they told or the girls they vied for. Instead, he spent hours roaming the woods beyond the River Tolna on the lookout for thieves. When he was ten, he challenged the other boys to a wrestling match and barely exerted himself as he pinned each one to the ground. When he was twelve, one of the town's wealthy merchants, who bought his saddles from his father, offered to teach him to ride, and Vishpar spent the next several years thundering down the open roads that skirted the city of Tan-Arzhan.

When he was fourteen, something changed. Perhaps it was the perfection of a rose that grew in his mother's garden. Perhaps it was the sight of Sheikh Bailiri moving silently down the street. Whatever it was, Vishpar suddenly knew that not only was he a warrior, he was a warrior of God. He received no visitation from a pear tree like Sharoud had. But his morning walks always wound up at the lodge. And the books he read always paled beside the blazing fire of the Qur'an. So on his sixteenth birthday, he announced his intention to become a Sufi. And the following year, he arrived at the door to the lodge.

On the morning of his induction into the order, the sun rose fat into a pristine sky. Piran Nazuder brought him a
khirqa
and a
sikke.
Then he led him to the courtyard, where Sheikh Bailiri and the others were waiting.

“May your heart flourish,” said the Sufi master. “May you draw ever nearer to God.”

He placed the
sikke
upon Vishpar's head. Then he escorted him to an empty cell to begin his new life.

Just as he'd knelt for three days outside the refectory, Vishpar knelt in prayer for three more. The door to his cell remained open, however, and the brothers went in and out, bringing him his food and offering gifts of supplication. On the third day, Jamal al-Jani led him to Sheikh Bailiri's cell, where he took an oath of allegiance. Then Sheikh Bailiri invested him with the mantle of the order and pronounced him a dervish.

As was the custom in all orders, the new initiate was to be given a particular area of study to focus upon. And it was here that a competition rose up between the brothers. Piran Nazuder felt that Vishpar should be given to him to train for the
sema.

“With a body so lithe and graceful,” he said, “he was born to whirl!”

Salim Rasa felt that the youth should be given to him to train as a cook.

“With a spirit so forceful, he'll evoke God with a simple stew!”

Hajid al-Hallal felt that he should be given to him to train in languages.

“Imagine the sound of Urdu flowing from his lips!”

Sheikh Bailiri understood the brothers' interest in the boy. His arrival was like an invigorating wind blowing through the lodge. He saw that for all his many gifts, however, Vishpar had the most expressive hands. So he gave him to Jamal al-Jani to train as a calligrapher.

“You won't regret it!” cried Jamal al-Jani. “In no time at all, he'll make the scriptures sing!”

As for Vishpar, he did not really care what he studied or which activities filled his days. All that mattered was that he was now a Sufi. And one step closer to God.

*   *   *

IT WOULD HAVE BEEN NATURAL
for Nouri to be jealous of Vishpar. He was so righteous—so radiant—so robust—it was as if he'd stepped out of one of Habbib's bedtime tales. The truth, however, was that Nouri was relieved to have the attention of the brothers drawn away from himself for a little while. So while they hovered like honeybees around the new aspirant, he took long walks along the shaded pathways of the woods and delved more deeply into his studies, grateful for the delicious quiet his solitude brought. He committed the entire Qur'an to memory. Each
sura.
Each verse. And, guided by Sheikh Bailiri, he attempted to grasp the meaning beneath the words. He studied jurisprudence and the Hadith. Astronomy. Arabic grammar. No matter how intently he focused, however—no matter how he tried to remain apart—it soon became clear that he could not stop thinking about Vishpar. If the youth was filling buckets at the well, Nouri would find himself seized by a sudden thirst. If the youth was in the chapel, Nouri would feel the sudden need to pray. He tried not to call attention to himself. He tried not to make eye contact. He tried not to smile. But whenever he found himself near the golden youth his heart swelled.

The truth was, his heart wasn't the only thing that swelled. For Vishpar's arrival coincided with the strange upheaval in Nouri's body called puberty. Dark thoughts tangled his mind. Unsettling urges fevered his blood. And nowhere was the chemistry more maddening than in the constantly distended flesh between his legs. Nouri had always been fond of his penis. It flapped like a catkin when he ran naked through the rain. It bobbed like a glowworm in his bath. But when Vishpar arrived, it sprang up like a lamb sausage toward some voluptuous banquet in the sky, and refused to go down.

He was mesmerized by the youth. Whether Vishpar was toiling in the garden or practicing calligraphy or sitting in
zikr,
Nouri could not take his eyes off him. So he was grateful that the rigors of his life kept him busy. And that his loose cotton shift helped to conceal his tumescent state. And he prayed that the incessant racket his heart made when he was near him could not be perceived by those with only two ears.

*   *   *

ONE MORNING, AROUND THE TIME
of Nouri's thirteenth birthday, Sheikh Bailiri received a visit from the
seyhulislam
of the Darni Sunim. A gaunt fellow with a piping voice, he explained to the Sufi master that a wealthy merchant named Abdul Husayn al-Bashir had just died and that his last deed—to secure his place in heaven—had been to donate a new fountain to the gardens of the mosque. The old fountain was about to be removed and the
seyhulislam
had decided to offer it to the dervishes.

“It's beautifully carved,” he said, as he raked his fingers through his long white beard. “Though not so ornate that it would offend your simple tastes.”

Although the Sufi order was under the jurisdiction of the mosque, the mosque's leaders felt threatened by its autonomy. In their mysticism and purity of practice, the Sufis were hard to pin down. Sheikh Bailiri therefore knew that the offer of the fountain was a way of reminding him that he and the brothers were still a part of the church. So he thanked the
seyhulislam
and said the brothers would be grateful for the gift.

“It's quite heavy,” said the
seyhulislam.
“But a pair of strong lads should be able to manage it fine.”

Sheikh Bailiri knew that the obvious candidates for this task were Vishpar and Ali Majid. Yet he could not help but notice Nouri's interest in Vishpar, and he felt that they could only profit from a friendship with each other. So he decided that the fountain was the perfect way to bring them together.

Nouri was elated when Sheikh Bailiri informed him about the task. For despite his intense attraction to the youth—or, indeed, because of it—he and Vishpar had hardly exchanged a word since he'd arrived at the lodge. That night, Nouri barely slept a wink. But when dawn came, he was at the front gate, waiting for Vishpar to appear. When he did, the two youths nodded to each other. Then they started off together down the dusty road.

For a while they were silent, their attention drawn to the cries of the fruit sellers, the smell of baking bread, the light beginning to widen in the sky. Eventually, however, Nouri summoned his courage and spoke.

“It will be nice to have a fountain.”

He waited for Vishpar to respond, but the youth said nothing.

“We haven't had a fountain before. It should be refreshing.”

Vishpar remained silent, so Nouri said no more. A few moments later, however, he tried again.

“I suppose it will attract birds. Don't you think?”

Vishpar turned now and gazed at the slender boy. He was not really sure what he was doing at the lodge. He was too young to be a member of the order. And though Piran Nazuder had mumbled something about an itchy scalp when Vishpar had asked about the boy's strange head cloth, Vishpar was not entirely convinced by the explanation. He saw, however, how Sheikh Bailiri doted on the youth. So he shrugged his broad shoulders and said, “I suppose.”

“And frogs,” added Nouri.

“Perhaps.”

“And someone will have to clear it of leaves.”

Vishpar nodded. “That seems likely.”

Nouri could not think of what to say next, so he said no more. But he was delighted to have finally broken the ice.