I tell myself, here we go again; the same threat, the same fear tactic! When is he going to understand that making his child live in constant fear doesn’t work? I don’t know. Maybe frightening their children is one of the duties of all fathers.
My teacher steps forward and faces my father. I see so much discomfort in his eyes. He shakes his head bitterly and, knowing him, that gesture tells me he is enraged. He points the tip of his cane at my father’s face and speaks his mind with a quivering threatening voice, “As the teacher of this child, I need to say this to you. If it wasn’t because of him, the love I hold in my heart for him, and if I was a little younger, I’d punish you for insulting this boy, and never speak to you again.” He then walks to me, hesitates for several seconds, changes his tone of voice, and tells me affectionately, “Let your life now and all the time to come in your long life be joyous and happy, son.” He then bows to me, to a naive child like me, and walks away. I’m stunned with his manner and the threatening words with which he responded to my father, and equally surprised at the way he expressed his affection with those kind words to me.
My heart sinks even lower when my father rises, walks to me, grabs my wrist and abruptly drags me into the house. Once we’re in the living room, where my mother is occupied with household chores, he releases my wrist. It’s clear to me that he doesn’t have the heart to punish me, so he delivers me to my mother.
“See what kind of child you raised ... a conceited, self-centered little brat!” he sounds as if he didn’t have anything to do with my making and upbringing.
Staring at his face, I clearly can see now that the annoyance on his face has yielded to puzzlement.
“Talk to your son! Teach him manners! He’s a confused kid, totally lost! Show him the right way,” he orders my mother with a tone of voice that has lost much of its harshness and then walks away leaving us alone.
I feel the warm palm of my mother’s hand on my face. It doesn’t take more than one touch of her hand on my face to erase the dust of hurt father had left there. I hold her hand to my lips and she kisses my forehead. Everything is wiped clean; all my mischievous deeds that appeared so unforgivable to my father’s eyes a minute ago are not only forgiven by my mother, but they’re even considered virtuous. I’m as happy as I can be, and I go my way continuing to love this book I’m reading.
How can I not love my life and everything else on this earth?
As I said, my father doesn’t understand me at all. Worst of all, I’m a stranger in my own home, among my friends, and in my town. Father is a stranger to me; my heart recoils from him. I think he might attack me at any time. Most of the time, he speaks kindly to me, but I think he is capable of beating me and expelling me from his house if he gets angry enough. I must confess that if there’s any tenderness in me, it’s from my mother. She has a heart as soft as the petal of a rose.
I always tell my father, “We’re not cut from the same fabric.”
It’s not only my father who doesn’t understand me. There are times that I feel no one in this world understands me. That includes, sometimes, even my own teacher, the Shaykh. I often whisper these words to myself, “You have difficulty to express your thoughts as eloquently as others do. You walk around as if you’re sleepwalking. Of course, the others are all walking deaf mutes. You’re unable to explain your inner thoughts, but even when you do, the others act as if they are not able to hear you.”
See, I can speak to myself, or one who is like me. But, recently a strange notion began invading me, abruptly and unexpectedly brewing in me – a seed of premonition. I’m certain about this notion, that there will be one person in this wide world who will understand me. He will become my hamdam [soul mate]. Perhaps, he’s not born yet, but he’ll come onto this earth – a beautiful soul, an extraordinary person, with an immaculate spirit of a saint. I’ve had this notion for a while. When I express it to others, they laugh at me. They think I’m crazy. I’ve decided not to mention it to anyone anymore, to just keep it a secret. When the time is ripe, I’ll search the earth for that one person. He will be the only soul in whose presence I’ll feel comfortable and whose company I’ll enjoy. I’m sure he will love me more than I’ve ever been loved.
I’m beginning to realize that the Shaykh Abu Bakr, with all his knowledge, has nothing else to say to me. I mean, I’ve learned from him all he knows, and that’s almost saying, all there is to know. But I don’t dare to mention this fact to my teacher or to my father.
I firmly believe in the existence of God, but I’m tormented by the sorrows of the human condition around me. Maybe the way I feel at this early age causes people to think that my way of thinking is absurdly wild and crazy. How can I blame them?
Incredibly, the older I get the more I realize I’ve two distinct personalities. In one personality, I see myself raw, inferior, a person who knows nothing of the complexity of this world, who is humble before the disenfranchised and oppressed. And in the other personality, I see myself as superior to others, and I look down on those who possess power over the poor. Because of these two conflicting thoughts in me, these two characters within me, I must search for the absolute truth, find it, acquire it, and convey it to the people. And if the people react to me the way they are doing now, I would seek the world over to find the one who would understand me. Maybe, through his voice, I’ll be understood by others.
Chapter Two
The dance of men of God is exquisitely delicate and weightless.
A weightless leaf floating on the ripples of a stream;
Within, like a mountain, and outwardly, like a fresh leaf,
Separated from a branch of a giant tree,
Floating towards an ocean of wisdom,
With its purity and beauty,
Visible in the entire spectrum of nature’s gifts.
Shams-e Tabrizi
It’s late afternoon, August 16, 1204. There’s no breeze in the air. I look through the opened window of my bedroom and see the leaves of the tall aspen in our backyard. Caressed by the yellow light of the late afternoon, I find them motionless. They look awfully thirsty against the cloudless blue sky as they lazily hang from the branches. The outside air is hot and humid, thick and stagnant, making the inside of our house unbearably stuffy and hot.
Since my teacher informed me that there’s nothing else he can teach me, I no longer attend any of his classes. Instead, I read profusely, a variety of books in the fields of spirituality, philosophy, religious law, history, and mystic power. Also, I spend many hours of my days and sleepless nights in seclusion, contemplating and struggling hard to surrender my earthly needs in order to empower myself to attain unity with the deity and reach truths beyond human understanding. In spite of all the time I need to spend by myself, deep down it makes me sad that I have to live my life mostly in the absence of my father, whose company, despite his abusive personality, I sometimes crave in my lonely hours.
Like today, I go out and sit quietly in the shade on the platform outside our house’s gate, where it’s slightly cooler than inside, and read my book. The boys are not playing in the street, nor do I feel the presence of their ghosts. They have grown up, maybe they have chosen their fathers’ professions, perhaps married, and now have children of their own. But I wonder why their children are not here, chasing a worthless ball?
This interesting book that I hold on my lap is a detailed narrative of another great Sufi’s thoughts, his mystic powers, and a man who lived an enigmatic life. I’m so deeply submerged in the book that I don’t see my father approaching me from the street. He startles me when he looks at me with those eyes that are so intensely full of contempt or worries. I always wonder which. A new emotion overtakes me: a sort of mild panic.
“Did you find a job?” he asks the same question that he has been asking since I stopped going to school.
“Well,