Feb 06 | And yet, somehow (Letters from the Coast)

Their focus is on the universal values of love and service, deserting the illusions of the ego to reach God. Dervishes try to approach God by virtues and individual experience, rather than religious scholarship.

“Dervish,” Wikipedia

“Knife knows only to
Cut, not its long sleep as ore
Nor rust’s slow embrace”

Hamza Peter Weismiller

The year dawned gloomy for me.

New Year’s Eve rained buckets and I had such a scintillating conversation with a colleague about his ministry plans, and yet by the time night fell I was frustrated and tired by so many things.

The regular gig at St. Paul’s labyrinth was lackluster and I felt my performance was embarrassing. I returned home and went to a party in my apartment complex and felt like I dragged the whole thing down.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I went into the living room, crushed by the weight of mortality, climate crisis, and fascism. My husband came and we talked at length, which helped, but I still didn’t get to bed until about 3am.

I arrived late for work feeling like a black and white image moving through a coloured world. Thankfully the day was quiet.

I told myself that I was being held up by the conviction that human beings are resilient, and can weather any storm. And it was mostly true.

Everything seemed muted and insignificant.

And yet, somehow, God remains.

Recently I’ve been noticing her more among my dervish family – among these poets and mystics and musicians, among those who pierce me with their lingering, loving gazes and beatific smiles, their giggling and unabashed cuddles, their ecstasy in zhikr.

Ten days after my long night, I sat in on the strangest and most fascinating labyrinth gig. We called it “Boundless Love,” and it was a blend of traditional illahis (the sacred prayer songs of zhikr) and meditations on surf songs from the ‘60s, some of which have a definite Middle Eastern vibe, like the classic “Miserlou.” I sat in with Rafi (oud and guitar), Latif (guitar, oud, and bass), and Eda (daf), and Masa and Hamide walked.

In between woven braids of melody, Rafi would play several seconds of surf sounds, which crashed over my soul, slowly eroding the hard shell of fear.

We kept giving each other furtive smiles – can you believe we’re doing this? People would be entranced by the illahis, but then look over, confused, when we slipped into the familiar chords of the type of music you’d play around a fire with a couple of hits of LSD in your pocket and beers in a cooler. It was glorious.

Afterward, Seemi, Masa, Eda, and I adjourned to Seemi’s house, stopping at a Middle Eastern market for food along the way. The mood was reflective, loving, a bit heavy – two of Seemi’s students had been victims of the Iranian plane crash a few days before. She spoke with the woman behind the counter at the market, who had small paper cups of sweets available that had been prayed over, a traditional practice during times of tragedy.

We brought the mountain of food back to Seemi’s house and ate and talked and laughed and sang. We told stories of romance and love, of terror and flight and strength.

In the small single-room row house erected in the backyard for guests, I picked through the bookshelf as Masa set out her things.

“Oh!” I said, pulling out a book.

“What?”

“My mum used to read this to me,” I said, probably a bit wistfully. I had given her a copy some time ago, hoping I could read it to her as she wandered farther into the thicket of her illness. At Christmas, she gifted it back to me, still with the dedication I had written to her on the front page. I have no idea if she realized I had given it to her.

“Read it to me,” Masa said, and pulled me over to the couch, snuggling against me like a little girl.

Eda joined us on my other side.

I grinned. “Okay. The Runaway Bunny, by Margaret Wise Brown.”

My friends laughed in delight at the pictures. Rabbit as rock climber. Rabbit as sailboat, with one huge ear steering it through a choppy ocean. Rabbit as little boy in striped Tshirt and shorts running into a house. Rabbit as stamen in a crocus.

“What is a crocus?” asked Masa. Her English is excellent, but her first language is Arabic, and there are many words she is still discovering.

I pointed. “This flower. You’ll see them poking their heads out in the spring, inshallah.”

We came to the end. I talked about how this book had always reminded me of the persistence of Allah in seeking our hearts, despite all our best attempts at fleeing it. We shared and compared the story of Jonah, Yunus in the Qur’an, who has always been such an inspiring figure to me in his reticence.

Masa, Eda, Seemi, and I stayed up all night talking. Finally, Seemi went back across the yard and the rest of us all fell asleep in the same bed.

The sky was already getting light.

So was my heart.