Mar 27 | Majnun on fire (Radical Love Journal #5)

On Sunday I found myself seated and prepared for my first online service. The atmosphere was muted if stoic. Priest, deacon, and liturgical assistant kept social distancing behind the altar. The Archbishop preached from her home. The organ hummed its way through the melodies that had been chosen. I sang without much hesitation. Why not?

We came to the Eucharistic prayer. I beheld my love in bread and wine, behind this odd little window of lights and electrons. And suddenly, I was broken open.

I started wailing immediately. My husband came in. “What’s wrong?”

Like a toddler I howled, “I c-can’t t-t-take the Eucharist!”

He just stood there, hands on my shoulders, while I bent in half. The deacon gathered up the vested chalice and began to move it away with the kind of solemn proficiency one usually sees employed by paramedics. I was looking through the window into Holy Week for one teetering moment. Mary Magdalene and Mary the Blessed Virgin held me in their arms. They understood.

Later, I pored over Omid-jan’s book again, and found such solace I wrote a new song. He gave me the tools I needed to put a container around my grief.

Several passages of the book made reference to Majnun and Layla. I had not heard of these, and became curious.

Fakhr al-DÄ«n IbrahÄ«m ‘IrāqÄ« writes:

This radical love

is a fire

When it enters a heart

it consumes everything

in the heart

even the Beloved’s image

is effaced away

from the heart

Majnun was burning in this love

They told him:

“Layla is coming”

He said:

“I am Layla”

and lowered his head

Awed by this, I scribbled “Who is Layla?” in my book.

I discovered that Majnun and Layla were lovers in an epic tale of unrequited passion which is known across the Eastern world, from the Middle East through Central and South Asia. Lord Byron referred to the story as “the Romeo and Juliet of the East.” Colonialist, but helpful in the sense that similarly to Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers their lives were destined to never be together. The story is an old Arabic one, likely referring to the Najdi Bedouin poet Qays ibn al-Mullawah and Layla bint Mahdi, his beloved. “Majnun” is actually a nickname he received which alludes to madness, for he was apparently so wildly in love with Layla that others believed him insane.

The most popular version of the story is probably Nezami Ganjavi’s 12th century Persian masterwork, but it’s spread wide across the Eastern world, and Sufis in particular began to use the pair as a symbol of the love between dervish and divine. Layla becomes the image of the Beloved, always pursued, always bringing the dervish to the edge of madness in their desire.

One piece of poetry attributed to Majnun runs thus:

“I pass by these walls, the walls of Layla

And I kiss this wall and that wall

It’s not Love of the walls that has enraptured my heart

But of the One who dwells within them.”

I felt myself bewitched by these words, by this concept that felt so very close to me. I sat down and wrote. It was tentative at first; a lot of my sacred songs actually come out quite easily, and I barely remember writing them later. Usually this is when I feel I’ve tapped into something outside myself. But this wasn’t quite so simple, and perhaps that’s because the longing, the desire, the despair, was all mine. God wanted and deserved my love letter.

My heart read Nezami’s words and cried them out anew:

Unleash upon me the saga

of being in love

O friend

Be my Layla

For

I am

Majnun

I couldn’t stop playing the piece. I still can’t. And I can still barely comprehend the truth that waited for me in Omid-jan’s pages just a bit further along, again in the words of ‘IrāqÄ«:

The Beloved is jealous in love

He demands that the lover

love no one

other than Him

need no one

other than Him

Therefore He made Himself into everything

so that whatever the lover loves

Whatever the lover needs

is Him

All this is Him

but is manifest through me

There’s no doubt!

It’s me

But through Him

And so of course, of course I, Majnun, am also Layla. I, the mad lover, am also the one that I seek, especially in my deepest, most unbearable longing.

Perhaps indeed only in the depths of that longing can I fully know.

Praise the Lord of the worlds for showing me this truth. Alhamdullillah.