The lake will never be the same again

Review of Elif Shafak's The Forty Rules of Love

Between your fingers you hold a stone and throw it into flowing water… If a stone hits a river, the river will treat it as yet another commotion in its tumultuous course. Nothing unusual. Nothing unmanageable. If a stone hits a lake, however, the lake will never be the same again.

The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak will disturb your sense of Islam, your comfort zones, what you thought you understood about spirituality and your sense of self. After all, this was the mission that Shams of Tabriz had when he sought out the great Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi of Konya.

I grew up on the stories of Rumi from when I was a teenager and my late father would share with me what he had read about the founder of the whirling dervishes. It baffled me even then as to what the impact Shamsi Tabrizi had when he dumped Rumi’s book and manuscripts into the pond. Already then my mind developed an image of Shams as a sort of villain, a most unorthodox teacher, a disturber of the peace.

Why did Rumi have to go mad with yearning for Shams (assassinated by Rumi’s followers) before he could write his Mathnawi (perhaps his best work), I pondered? Why would someone go mad because another dies? Did he not have proper faith? Since my father passed I had my own arguments in defence of the sufi master. These questions drew me closer to the sufi path in my later years and nourished my own grasp of the quest for a better relationship with Allah.

Then along comes Elif Shafak with her take on the story and dumps most of my notions Rumi, the Whirling Dervishes, Shamsi Tabrizi, the tethering of the ego, understanding the Qur’an and my late father (Ebrahim Jacobs, may his grave be forever bathed in light), into the pond. 

A story within a story (actually: stories within a story), Shafak tells of how a housewife, Ella Rubinstein’s apparently tranquil existence is shattered when she is asked to evaluate a manuscript, Sweet Blasphemy. Shafak’s storytelling reminded me of a Rumi poem I had once read:

You are in love with me, I shall make you perplexed.
Do not build much, for I intend to have you in ruins.
If you build two hundred houses in a manner that the bees do;
I shall make you as homeless as a fly.
If you are the mount Qaf in stability.
I shall make you whirl like a millstone.

What Shafak has successfully done is take the ideas of Rumi and Shams, the twin suns of sufism, breathe new life into a story that has been retold so many times, and transposed it into a modern context for all lovers of the Sublime. The Forty Rules is an exquisite piece of tapestry, weaving together stories of a remorseful drunk, a prostitute who dresses up as a man, an arrogant Muslim scholar, a revengeful bitter son and a wife grappling with her love for Mary and her new found Islam.

Sufi mystics say the secret of the Qur’an lies
in the verse of Al-Fatiha,
And the secret of Al-Fatiha lies in
Bismillahirrahmanirrahim
And the quintessence of Bismillah is the letter ba,
And there is a dot below that letter…
The dot underneath the B embodies the entire
universe…

The InSufferables: a new family of superheroes

This is of course Gorillaz but we like them and they offend!

It started as a WhatsApp conversation between my youngest daughter and I, but then our imaginations got the better of us...

Ganu got a slight shock from the metal hot water tap. Initially she thought that she had shocking powers. So I said, "But you do..." And she says, "Haha totes. But what will my superhero name be?" "Well," I say innocently, "Shabab [the Arabic for youth] means spark which is Iskra in Russian." She combines the two words and says, "Al Shabiskra! I will strike fear into the hearts of everyone. Not just bad guys coz good people can be annoying as well."

A few lines later we had:

1. Silver Fox for me (because of the grey hair) and I am sly, see? I am supposed to be Al Shabiskra's side-kick!
2. And Sadia, my better half? Well, her super power is to swear at IPL players that can't hit the bloody ball. So: Profanity. I thought it had a nice ring to it. There are many people who need to be sworn at because they just don't listen. 
3. For Sara-Nida we thought of Conundrum because she is a riddle that would baffle her enemies. She doesn't like people much. Conundrum obviously wears a hoody as her costume. And she does not come out of her room unless it's very necessary.
4. And Bilqis? Well, initially we thought of IQ [you know, the five distinctions and all] but on closer examination we figured Exuberance because she often has no need for Red Bull. It's also a parody on the days when she can be quite the couch potato.
5. Jauzi was also somewhat of a dilemma. Ganu thought that Poof! would be just spot-on because he is "a small fart". I thought that was just nasty. Shame, his Mom (Profanity) is not home at the moment. Then we settled on Stick Boy. Because, you know, you can buy him all the toys in the world but he just goes gaga when he sees a stick (twig, branch, plank). Go figure.

Ganu loves this, "We will be like The Incredibles, only better, ruder and that makes us funnier!" And then she asks, "What is our ultimate goal? World domination?" This appealed to me because of Pinky and the Brain.

• Pinky: "Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?"

• The Brain: "The same thing we do every night, Pinky—take over the world!"

But no. We had to be more original than that. So I foolishly said, "How about Eat the Worldor Sushi." Then Al Shabiskra got nasty again and changed my name, "Your name has been changed: Silver Fatty." Then she continues, "Before we eat the world we need to educate them first because I refuse to eat stupid people!" She is very finicky about her food.

I would have none of this, "Fatty?" I thought I was an Artful Dodger at least... "Ok," I say, trying to rescue my name, "How about our purpose is to offend people!" I figured that there were already a growing number of people who are already offended by us. So we are ahead of the game, right? Then, in a moment of pure genius, Conundrum, pipes up, "How about we call ourselves: The Insufferables! With the slogan: Move out of our way, we intend to offend!"

There. You have been warned! The InSufferables, coming to a neighbourhood near you. Are you offended yet?