Huu …

 

In what feels like a fortress of rainbow kilims, pillows, and throes, I am resting on a snow-white dervish pelt in the Sufi Brothers Lodge. Now that the heavy rains have ceased, there is a full-bodied silence in the loft where I have made my home. I have been living with my Sufi brothers and sisters for a few days now, and must say, they are as beautiful, as eccentric, and as endearing as I imagined they would be. I have fallen in love with our cook (and community mother), Zenib, whose energy grounds and sweetens the entire place. She feeds us brown bread, hard cheese, and raw honey in the mornings (among other things), and stuns us with gorgeous gorge-fests in the evenings. Zenib is always around—chopping cucumbers and parsley in the kitchen, ironing pillow cases and baby clothes in the drawing room—and smiles a deep, sincere smile at me each time I pass. The way she says “not at all” in response to my “’thank you” makes me melt. In her, I see the beauty of Islam and Sufism, the beauty of conscious, heartfelt surrender. I must confess that I not only admire her one-pointed devotion to house and home; I also envy it. I sometimes wish I had the luxury to spend my day making spinach borek and yoghurt soup, tidying the kilims, pillows, and throes and making sure that everyone is well-fed, warm, and happy. Maybe that is the mama in me speaking. The individualist in me knows this would get old after awhile—at least in America. I would not be supported by a close-knit family of mystic saints and singers, balama and ney players, and blind muezzins, and I would likely be bored stiff and lonely as an old, abandoned dog. My friend Stella, who lives in Oxford and travels far and wide for work, recently shared a funny anecdote with me: after a day of running around Istanbul, trying to locate the proper venue for a conference on water issues, she called her sister to complain about the ills of international travel. Her sister replied quite plainly: “Stella, I am watching Regis & Kathy Lee right now, and the most exciting thing I plan to do today is go to Target. Get over it.” I have thought of this more than once since she shared it, and laugh each time I do. I know that I am incredibly fortunate to be living the life I’m living, and I give thanks for it on a daily basis.

 

Life in Konya has been particularly full and resonant. We’re privileged to be staying and studying with Uzeyir, who has a whole lot of strings and knows how to pull them. Since arriving last Thursday, we’ve taken part in a number of amazing activities: we’ve enjoyed impromptu concerts put on by world-class musicians in the lodge’s “living room;” visited the tomb of Shems i Tabriz; paid homage to Rumi at the Mevlana Museum; attended a breathtaking sema (the dance of the whirling dervishes); and participated in a zikr, a chanting ceremony dedicated to the remembrance of Allah, that rearranged the molecules of my being. The concert put on by Ali, a blind flautist, Ahmet, a chocolate-eyed balama player, and a white-bearded sea-captain singer moved me greatly, as did the sema, but the zikr blew me away. I was not expecting to have my heart broken open by a crowd of Muslim men chanting “Allah,” but that is what happened …

 

Due to the fact that we stayed at the sema as long as we could, we entered the zikr house quite late. The males in our group were led into the first room on our left, and we, the females, were shuffled into the second. We draped scarves over our heads, lowered ourselves to our knees, and began swaying with the other ladies behind the thatched screen. I felt clumsy and sad, and I felt somehow jilted—especially after the opening of the sema. Why couldn’t we get in on the action, why couldn’t we take part in the ecstacy? Through the tiny openings in the screen, I could see that the men were rocking back and forth wildly. They appeared to be in a state of full-on rapture, and I wanted to join them. When I finally resigned myself to chanting quietly and pounding on my knee like the woman beside me, someone tapped me on my left shoulder and pulled me to my feet. As a group, we were led inside the men’s quarters. Breathless and red-faced, they motioned for us to sit at the front of the room beside our friend Daryoosh, who plays the frame drum like a possessed god, and the other musicians. They gave us water and lemon mints. They invited us to join them in chanting the name of God—ardently, passionately, and with immediacy—and in entering an altered state. They didn’t care that we were wearing sneakers and slightly off-the-shoulder tops, nor did they care that our scarves were not fastened correctly; they cared that we, too, needed to voice our longing for connection, for God. We started off shy, but by the end of it, we were as tousled and tuned as the best of them.

 

I was near tears by the end of the zikr. For me, the men’s invitation and openness was even more affecting than the chanting. As a woman on this trip, I’ve had to sit behind a screen or two, let me tell you. While I stopped complaining about it months ago, it has always bothered me and made me feel estranged from male worshippers (and from organized worship, for that matter). Bearing witness to the communal emotive and spiritual life of men—and taking part in it—had quite an impact on me. It was very healing, and will stick with me. More than anything else, the zikr taught me about forgiveness.

 

At one in the morning, when we finally got up to leave, I and the others said goodbye to the father of the zikr. “You’ve been here before, haven’t you?” he asked matter-of-factly. I nodded my head “no.” The next day, when the same comment was made by the aforementioned sea captain, I laughed and looked at Camille. She nodded her head “yes.” Uzeyir tells us that according to Sufi mythology, God created each of us by pinching a bit of dust from China, a bit of dust from Turkey, and a bit of dust from the US (you get the point), mixing us with water, molding us into clay figures, and then blowing breath into us, giving us life. “Travelers are composed of various dust, you see. They travel to remember themselves, just as those whose dust comes from one place like to stay put.” Later that day I told him that I think God threw a little Konyan dust and honey in my mix; I was drawn by the dust and the baklava, the mingling of the earthy and the sweet. He laughed a grand laugh and exhaled: “Huu!”