There was one and there was none,
Except for God there was no one.
~the “once upon a time” of Persian fairly tales
The day was gray and dank. Heavy drops came down with a splat in the old, worn courtyard… little streams flowing to somewhere between the pattern of stones and overflowing puddles widening to nowhere. You can see his back from the narrow door of the monastery. You have to look closely. He is an image barely seen… but there is a kind of light, and there is a shadow that reveals this man. He is wearing an old brown, tweed overcoat… the fashion of some fifty odd years ago… padded shoulders… belted at the wrist… handmade buttons covered in leather… collar pulled up around his ears. It is the one coat. It is the only coat… and there is a certain light there… and there is a shadow… this man in the coat carrying a broad-brimmed, brown fedora in his hand… even though the rain causes little streams that flow between the pattern of stones… even though the rain fills the puddles widening to nowhere.
He stands there in silence unhurried before he takes the next step. His brown wing-tips, carefully polished, are beaded with tiny drops of water. She knows that they are stretched around ankles that sometimes swell… something she could see plainly if he were to take off his shoes. She remembers the shoes… how they would sit there in the kitchen next to the radiator as if they contained invisible feet… the soft camel lining… the tiny handcrafted stitches.
He turns slightly. She sees him in profile. He carries the hat in his hand as a sign of respect… a style of manners learned in the early years of a century departed. The wisps of white hair, a halo of small clouds around the bald spot… the bulbous, pocked nose… the full, Slavic lips in an otherwise Romanian face. His eyes would betray the fact of his lips if she could only see them. But, instead the breeze picks up the silk, ivory scarf around his neck. For a moment it is suspended on the rainy breeze and, then, settles again on the soft wool of the coat, the beginning of dark stains from the heavy drops across the broad back. She comes closer.
He is looking at the damask roses, the thick branches hanging heavily over the wrought iron fence. The roses are white softened by tinges of apricot… the edges of the petals turned back brown from the winter cold. The rain drips from the petals as they hang their sodden heads. It is as if they are weeping onto the stones of the courtyard for splendor long gone. He climbs the steps with the recognizable crick in his back for a closer look… and then, he is among the Ottoman graves. She follows him there. The graves are elegant as if they have grown, carved gray stone, from the unruly clumps of grass. Neither needs to know the words to understand that the calligraphy is a poetry of flowing images one into the other along into him and along into her… tiny scripts of Sun letters and Moon letters carved into stone… fluid streams coalescing into a kind of emptiness that travels along with each as they have turned to a separate path. He looks at each stone, this man of a certain light and a shadow. He considers each grave. Is he looking for her grave covered in moss? Or is he looking for his own?
… and, then, the doors of the tekke open. He does not leave the graves quickly… but he leaves them nonetheless… down the stone steps… around the puddles of the courtyard widening to nowhere and through the door. She runs behind him and catches his mottled hand. She wraps her small fingers around the stump of his right forefinger… the one he has told her he has lost as a young man in a knife fight over cards in the Romanian Hall. They sit together on hard, varnished chairs divided from the soft glow of the polished wooden floor. It is cold in the tekke, and she feels as if he is warming her hand in his. She wishes he would speak in his heavy accent like baroque music. She longs for just one word from him… but he does not speak. He sits there in silence waiting. She can feel herself shivering.
The door opens and closes as people come. Musicians with covered instruments stumble up the steps to the gallery. There are curiosity seekers… worshippers… the picture takers with shutters that click and whirr… the uncomfortable who whisper… those who wish to be entertained… the one who comes to say that he has come… the harried latecomer. The noise contends with the silence as if it can drown it out, but there is silence in this place waiting beneath the clamor.
The musicians begin to play above in the wooden gallery… a wail of Sufi music… clarinets and old string instruments… drums and a familiar voice with the howl of the wolf and the bleat of the lamb… the theme of the ney, this sound of the wood flute weaving its way through the other sounds until the music is all of a piece… this music known in the cathedral of the gut where the silence rests and the candles flicker.
The dervishes enter… hands crossed over chests. They are tall in their camel hair hats like tombstones. Their dark cloaks are tied over the white tunics and skirts that will never touch the ground as they whirl… the white leggings ending at soft leather slippers that will noiselessly revolve on the glowing wooden floor. The fragrance of them… they smell of laurel. Their closeness… she might reach out to touch them… take fragrance from them… live in it forever. She feels his look. She turns to him… to his watery, gray eyes. His eyes warn her, “Honey Child, nothing is forever.” She looks at him. She looks at them. She wants the fragrance. She wants everything to go on and on. She is still young enough that the world is a new thing. The flowers in the grass are still new… the sun and the sky freshly minted in her mind’s eye. Running… jumping… tastes… smells… shiny hair… skinned knees… plaid, woolen jumpers worn with black patent leather shoes and frilly socks… picture books. All new. Nothing will change. Of course, things will be forever.
Of course, things can never be forever except in the patterns of her childish mind. How can she know the twists and turns of forever… the mystery of this dance… a gamut of perceptions and memory oscllating between emptiness and fulfillment?
The dervishes make their way around the circular floor three times in a solemn Sultan Veled. She can feel that he is still looking at her. She wills herself not to look at him. She does not want to hear what his eyes say… watches the dervishes instead. They remove their cloaks… kiss the place that covers the base of the neck… fold them away. They are a bright, white presence on the floor. The movements of whirling begin and, soon beyond the picture takers’ clicking shutters and the whisperers, she is lost in the turning… the consciousness in their faces. They are suspended in this moment of whirling… arms and hands upraised… heads turned like bows strung to a fixed point. This letting go… this humility they have allowed by whirling around the center of love. She looks at him again. He is looking at her still as if she needs patience and time. His eyes warn her again, “Honey Child, things are never as they seem.” But, she is taken up in the fourth selam… the final movement of the sema.
There is a moment in the final whirling when something in her moves with the skirts… something that hears the ruffle of the white cloth suspended in the space of their own breeze. She turns to tell him that indeed things really are never as they seem… that she has seen something about love in this whirling… this letting go…this revolving as the earth moves around the sun… taking a turn around the stars at night. She feels the circulating rivers of blood in her own body moving toward, and then away from her heart that beats steadily. She wants to tell him that he has whirled back toward her just as he had so many times when she was a child… and that she loves him… but the chair is empty. He has left her alone with his warnings as the dervishes cease their whirling… put on their cloaks with solemn care… make the final procession around the floor… and away.
She is left to wander the Istiklal Caddesi in the rain in this other moment, the one after the letting go… the one she isn’t sure of. The Istanbulus are all out in the rain some with umbrellas… some without. They are laughing with each other on this rainy Sunday of shopping and eating… this day of visiting and spending time with each other.
She is silent. She is all grown up now. He has long been gone, this man of a certain light and a shadow. She is alone.
There had been that moment of the certainty of love in the tekke… there had been this moment of doubt on the Istiklal Caddesi. There had been other moments when she had asked herself this same question, “Do you let go for love or do you love and, then, let go?” The acquisition of love had seemed so simple when she had been young… a gift with no need for questions. But, many things had happened… the deaths… the losses… things that had burnt into the core of her blisteringly hot… a brand of remembrance she carried with her.
She takes a taxi across the Attaturk bridge. Both of them are gone from the space they had occupied only a short while ago.
She walks the cobbled streets of the Sultanahmet in the cold evening after a supper of bread and lentil soup… a glass of hot tea… a bit of raki. It is a winter’s damp evening. The rain has begun to turn into fat snowflakes that float on the air and spot the sidewalks. The pale light of the shops cast shadows in the street. There are people laughing and talking inside in the warmth. A jeweler leans over a watch with intricate tools. A bookseller dusts books with a feather duster a few doorways over. She stands in front of the Aya Sofia. She remembers a picture of him there… one he had sent on a postcard long lost now. There are no photographers that remain to take a picture of her. It is a modern travel age where everyone comes and goes… clicks and whirrs their own images. Only rug sellers accost her as she purposely speaks a language that they don’t understand to escape into her own silence.
All of her life he had come… then gone… then come again. He had lived. He had died. His wracked body had been planted like a turnip under the green grass in a cemetery. She had visited his grave when she came that way… put flowers on the tombstone with the inscription, “Under his wings.” But he had never come there. She had waited… but the wind was an empty presence all its own without him.
Only his body was planted beneath that green, green grass. She found him walking in the alleys of the world instead still seeking out the odd thing… puzzle pieces found here and there… a dear one she had loved, not only because he was just who he was, but discerning… a shrewd man of many strange languages who had offered an enigma to carry her through the humdrum of childhood days sullied with dread.
She will leave this place in several days… this Istanbul she is drawn to. She will be sad about leaving. She will move on to a sunny Spain of blue sea and wildflowers in the hills. Will she see him cutting peppers at her kitchen table or standing with his hat made of a paper bag in front of the stove? Will he sit alone at the table until morning with his sorrows drowned in a level of whiskey in the glass that decreases over and over and over again?
Will she leave from wherever the wind may take her on its wings and return to that place of cobbled streets… whirling dervishes and blue Marmara that whisper a paradox into her ear as he stands in front of the Aya Sofia considering her in that moment that the picture was taken? His look is filled with his own journey and hers as well. Is he sad for her? Is that love in his eyes? Will she hear his voice tell her in words of love… a gentle compassion that nothing is ever as it seems?
Who is this man who told her these things… this man of a certain light and a shadow? Is he merely a man joined to her by lineage and blood… a wandering storyteller just like her… a speck in an eternal constellation that travels across the sky that sometimes meets her in the stars… a circle dance of brief words… then silence.
Will she rejoice at those words coming down through the labyrinth of years? Will she suffer at the hand of them? Will she merely whirl around them in quiet wonder and joy… just let them be as they are?
we came whirling
out of nothingness
scattering stars
like dust
the stars made a circle
and in the middle
we dance
the wheel of heaven
circles God
like a mill
if you grab a spoke
it will tear your hand off
turning and turning
it sunders
all attachment
were that wheel not in love
it would cry
“enough! how long this turning?”
every atom
turns bewildered
beggars circle tables
dogs circle carrion
the lover circles
his own heart
ashamed,
I circle shame
a ruined water wheel
whichever way I turn
is the river
if that rusty old sky
creaks to a stop
still, still I turn
and it is only God
circling Himself
~Rumi