Archives: Literatures

The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence.

If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.

Of course, somebody had seduced Buddy, Buddy hadn't started it and it wasn't really his fault.

What a man wants is a mate and what a woman wants is infinite security.

What a man is is an arrow into the future and what a woman is is the place the arrow shoots off from.

I thought how strange it had never occurred to me before that I was only purely happy until I was nine years old. I had never been really happy again.

The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters.

Ever since Buddy Willard had told me about that waitress I had been thinking I ought to go out and sleep with somebody myself. Sleeping with Buddy wouldn't count, though, because he would still be one person ahead of me, it would have to be with somebody else.

Eric said it would be spoiled by thinking this woman too was just an animal like the rest, so if he loved anybody he would never go to bed with her. He'd go to a whore if he had to and keep the woman he loved free of all that dirty business.

This woman lawyer said the best men wanted to be pure for their wives, and even if they weren't pure, they wanted to be the ones to teach their wives about sex. Of course they would try to persuade a girl to have sex and say they would marry her later, but as soon as she gave in, they would lose all respect for her and start saying that if she did that with them she would do that with other men and they would end up by making her life miserable.

I couldn't stand the idea of a woman having to have a single pure life and a man being able to have a double life, one pure and one not.

Finally, I decided that if it was so difficult to find a red-blooded intelligent man who was still pure by the time he was twenty-one I might as well forget about staying pure myself and marry somebody who wasn't pure either. Then when he started to make my life miserable I could make his miserable as well.

Instead of the world being divided up into Catholics and Protestants or Republicans and Democrats or white men and black men or even men and women, I saw the world divided into people who had slept with somebody and people who hadn't, and this seemed the only really significant difference between one person and another.

If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.

I'm so glad they're going to die.

The silence between us was so profound I thought part of it must be my fault.

It doesn't take two to dance, it only takes one.

"If you love her," I said, "you'll love somebody else someday."

How could I write about life when I'd never had a love affair or a baby or even seen anybody die?

I would never learn a word of shorthand. If I never learned shorthand I would never have to use it.

I hated the very idea of the eighteenth century, with all those smug men writing tight little couplets and being so dead keen on reason.

I had always looked down on my mother's college, as it was coed, and filled with people who couldn't get scholarships to the big eastern colleges. Now I saw that the stupidest person at my mother's college knew more than I did.

It made me tired just to think of it. I wanted to do everything once and for all and be through with it.

The trouble about jumping was that if you didn't pick the right number of stories, you might still be alive when you hit bottom. I thought seven stories must be a safe distance.

You know, Esther, you've got the perfect setup of a true neurotic.

Only my case was incurable.

I hate saying anything to a group of people. When I talk to a group of people I always have to single out one and talk to him, and all the while I am talking I feel the others are peering at me and taking unfair advantage.

It wouldn't have made one scrap of difference to me, because wherever I sat -- on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok -- I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.

All the heat and fear purged itself. I felt surprisingly at peace. The bell jar hung, suspended, a few feet above my head. I was open to the circulating air.

I wondered if all women did with other women was lie and hug.

"I like you." "That's tough, Joan," I said, picking up my book. "Because I don't like you. You make me puke, if you want to know."

Then the stories of blood-stained bridal sheets and capsules of red ink bestowed on already deflowered brides floated back to me.

"Do you think there's something in me that drives women crazy?"

I am, I am, I am.

For the few little outward successes I may seem to have, there are acres of misgivings and self-doubt.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again.

Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing.

Although Pir Sain’s duties had been reduced to sending messages of blessings to supplicants, people believed that even from this action, he could clear the debts, heal their illness, enliven their barren wombs and grow their crops. This, twelve decades of not a single sign of improvement in their lives. Poverty prevailed whichever way they turned. Tattered souls lived in empty hovels like dark graves, no different from their final burial place. But they flocked and crawled and groveled to his empty charpai at the Shrine, losing something more every time they turned to leave.
Contemplating the murder of religious leader of thousands of illiterate people needed supernatural courage. Transforming myself from a slave to master of my own destiny needed a miracle.
Pir Sain was a symbol of munafiqat.
I was a soldier.
This was Jehad.
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… but He did not listen. I prayed and prayed, until I turned away from His Almighty’s silence. Allah, who had been everywhere was suddenly nowhere. There is no God, I thought. The entire world is misinformed like Gori, I concluded.
The night, I changed into my red costume free of Islam. God had been a moral hindrance. Religious guilt was blackmail. No God meant no sin.
As Allah had not stopped the crimes against me or would not or could not stop them, then it was clear that at least for me He was not there. I could swoop down on the young and preserve myself until doomsday, only then, Allah might appear. According to me, He still might not.
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Facing Allah on prayer mat, I begged to know, 
‘Whose sin is this? Mine?’
‘Whose world is this? Yours?’
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I recalled hearing about the urs of the great Sufi poet Bulleh Shah. There was joyous singing and ecstatic dancing at the celebration of revolt and freedom. There was happiness, not gloom. Here, everyone was dead, and yet, the dead were alive and the living were dead.
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Amma Sain had told me, ‘When a wife has secured a hold over her husband’s bed, she can use it on everyone. It’s an art.’
Oppressed women mastered and excelled in this art; so too had Amma Sain. It was whispered that she had catered to her husband’s needs like a professional seductress whose enticing powers in the dark of night converted into administrative ones in the day.
Amma Sain confirmed the rumor when she said, ‘All women know that nothing except sex can hold a man, and yet most fail in keeping him.’
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I realized that the suppressed deprived strength from suppressing others. It helped them to accept their own imprisonment and was an easy occupation for the trapped.
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I looked around the dark and deathly room and noticed that the bed was like a wide grave. A high headboard rose like a tombstone.
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• One more martyr in heaven, one less hero on earth.
• Opinions are opinions but you see what a good nice fellow I am.
• If everyone made war only according to his own convictions, there would be no war.
• Never, never marry, my friend. Here’s my advice to you: don’t marry until you can tell yourself that you’ve done all you could, and until you’ve stopped loving the woman you’ve chosen, until you see her clearly, otherwise you’ll be cruelly and irremediably mistaken. Marry when you’re old and good for nothing…Otherwise all that’s good and lofty in you will be lost. It will all go on trifles. Yes, yes, yes! Don’t look at me with such astonishment. If you expect something from yourself in the future, then at every step you’ll feel that it’s all over for you, it’s all closed, except the drawing room, where you’ll stand on the same level as a court flunkey and an idiot…Ah, well!…
• My wife is a wonderful woman. She’s one of those rare women with whom one can be at ease regarding one’s own honor; but, my God, what wouldn’t I give now not to be married! You’re the first and only one I’m saying this to, because I love you.
• Egoism, vanity, dull-wittedness, triviality in everything—that’s women, when they show themselves as they are. Looking at them in society, it seems there’s something there, but there’s nothing, nothing, nothing! No, don’t marry, dear heart, don’t marry.
• … Was at that sweet age when a girl is no longer a child, but the child is not yet a young lady.
• Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood.
• I make it a rule to say everything directly.
• After-dinner nap was silver, but a before-dinner nap was gold.
• Bonaparte was born lucky. He has excellent soldiers. And the Germans were the first he attacked. You’d have to be a do-nothing not to beat the Germans. Ever since the world began, everybody’s beaten the Germans. And they’ve beaten nobody. Except each other. It was on them he earned his glory.
• I cannot, have not, and never will reproach my wife for anything, nor can I reproach myself for anything in relation to her; and that will always be so, whatever circumstances I find myself in. But if you want to know the truth…if you want to know whether I’m happy? No. Is she happy? No. Why is that? I don’t know…
• If you’re are killed, I, your father will be pained. But if I learn that you have not behaved like Nikolai Bolkonsky’s son, I will be ashamed!
• General, I am duty-bound to obey orders, but I am not duty-bound to put up with insults.
• One could see that he fulfilled his duties as a subordinate with still greater pleasure than his duties as a superior.
• He so constantly heard the words: “With your extraordinary kindness,” or “With your excellent heart,” or “You yourself, Count, are so pure…,” or “If he were as intelligent as you are,” and so on, that he was sincerely beginning to believe in his extraordinary kindness and his extraordinary intelligence, the more so because, deep in his heart, it had always seemed to him that he really was very kind and very intelligent.
• She was so plain that the thought of rivalry with her did not occur to either of them; they therefore undertook to dress her up in all sincerity, with that naïve and firm conviction of women that clothes can make a face beautiful.
• He told them about his Schöngraben (battle) action in just the way that those who take part in battles usually tell about them, that is, in the way they would like it to have been, the way they have heard others tell it, the way it could be told more beautifully, but not at all the way it had been.
• Ah, my dear general, I’m involved in rice and cutlets, involve yourself in matters of war.
• And I shot at Dolokhov because I considered myself insulted. And Louis XVI was executed because he was considered a criminal, and a year later those who executed him were also killed for something. What is bad? What is good? What should one love, what hate? Why live, and what am I? What is life, what is death? What power rules over everything?
• You will die—and everything will end. You will die and learn everything—or stop asking. But to die was also frightening.
• We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.
• Can I receive this pure liquid in an impure vessel and then judge its purity? Only by purifying myself inwardly can I keep the liquid I receive pure to some degree.
• The supreme wisdom is based not on reason alone, not on the secular sciences of physics, history, chemistry, and so on, into which rational knowledge is divided. The higher knowledge has one science—the science of the all, the science that explains the whole universe and the place man occupies in it. To contain this science, it is necessary to purify and renew one’s inner man, and thus before one can know, one must believe and perfect oneself. And to achieve that, a divine light, called conscience, has been put in our soul.
• To transmit to the seeker the seven virtues, corresponding to the seven steps of Solomon’s temple, which every Mason was supposed to cultivate in himself. These virtues were: (1) discretion, keeping the secrets of the order; (2) obedience to the higher ranks of the order; (3) good morals; (4) love of mankind; (5) courage; (6) generosity; and (7) love of death.
• I lived for myself, and I ruined my life. And only now, when I live, or at least try to live for others, only now have I understood all the happiness of life.
• You lived for yourself and you say with that you almost ruined your life, and knew happiness only when you began to live for others. But I experienced the opposite. I used to live for glory. (What is glory? The same as love for others, the desire to do something for them, the desire for their praise.) So I lived for others and ruined my life—and not almost, but completely. And I’ve been at peace since I began living for myself alone.
• Isn’t everything I think and believe sheer nonsense?
• Talking about the legislative commission, Speransky told Prince Andrei ironically that this commission had existed for a hundred and fifty years, had cost millions, and had done nothing, except that Rosenkampf had glued little labels to all the articles of comparative legislation.
• One must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and I now believe in it. Let the dead bury their dead, but while I’m alive, I must live and be happy.
• I’ve observed that the less attractive the woman, the more constant she is.
• And what is justice? The princess never thought about this proud word justice. All the complicated laws of mankind were concentrated for her in one simple and clear law—the law of love and self-denial taught us by Him who suffered for mankind with love, though He Himself was God. What did the justice or injustice of other people matter to her? She herself had to suffer and to love, and that she did.
• However, a great number of monasteries and churches is always a sign of a nation’s backwardness. (said Napoleon)
• Only Germans can be, and precisely because only Germans can be self-assured on the basis of an abstract idea—science, that is, an imaginary knowledge of the perfect truth. A Frenchman is self-assured because he considers himself personally, in mind as well as body, irresistibly enchanting for men as well as women. An Englishman is self-assured on the grounds that he is a citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and therefore, as an Englishman, he always knows what he must do, and knows that everything he does as an Englishman is unquestionably good. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and others. A Russian is self-assured precisely because he does not know anything and does not want to know anything, because he does not believe it possible to know anything fully. A German is self-assured worst of all, and most firmly of all, and most disgustingly of all, because he imagines that he knows the truth, science, which he has invented himself, but which for him is the absolute truth.
• The thoughts he often used to have long ago, during the time of his military activity, that there was not and could not be any military science, and therefore there could not be any so-called military genius, now acquired for him the perfect evidence of truth. What theory and what science could there be in a matter of which the conditions and circumstances are unknown and cannot be determined, in which the strength of those active in war can still less be determined? No one could or can know what position our own and the enemy army will be in a day later, and no one can know the strength of this or that detachment. Sometimes, when there’s no coward at the head who shouts ‘We’re cut off!’ and runs away, but a cheerful, bold man who shouts ‘Hurrah!’—a detachment of five thousand is worth thirty thousand, as at Schöngraben, and sometimes fifty thousand flee in the face of eight, as at Austerlitz. What science can there be in a matter in which, as in any practical matter, nothing can be determined and everything depends on countless circumstances, the significance of which is determined at a certain moment, and no one knows when that moment will come?
• And why do they all talk about military genius? Is that man a genius who manages to order a timely delivery of biscuits and tells this one to go right and that one to go left? It is only because military men are clothed in splendor and power, and masses of scoundrels’ flatter power, endowing it with qualities of genius it does not have, that they are called geniuses. On the contrary, the best generals I knew were stupid or absentminded people. Bagration was the best—Napoleon himself recognized that. And Bonaparte himself! I remember his self-satisfied and limited face on the battlefield at Austerlitz. A good commander not only does not need genius or any special qualities, but, on the contrary, he needs the absence of the best and highest human qualities—love, poetry, tenderness, a searching philosophical doubt. He should be limited, firmly convinced that what he is doing is very important (otherwise he would not have patience enough), and only then will he be a brave commander. God forbid he should be a human being and come to love or pity someone, or start thinking about hat is just and what isn’t. Understandably, the theory of genius was cut to fit them of old, because they are—power. The merit of success in military affairs does not depend on them, but on the man in the ranks who shouts ‘We’re lost!’ or shouts ‘Hurrah!’ And it is only in the ranks that one can serve with the assurance of being useful!”
• When a child hurts himself, he runs at once to his mother’s or nanny’s arms, to have the hurt place kissed and rubbed, and he feels better once the hurt place is kissed or rubbed. The child does not believe that those who are stronger and wiser than he have no means to help his pain. And the hope of relief and the show of compassion comfort him, while his mother rubs his bump.
• Laughter and singing especially seemed to her a blasphemy against her grief.
• Yet one had to live.
• The higher they stand in the human hierarchy, the less free they are.
• And tomorrow I’ll be killed—not even by a Frenchman, but by one of our soldiers, like the one yesterday who fired his gun just next to my ear—and the French will come, take me by the feet and head, and fling me into a pit, so as not to have me stink under their noses, and new conditions of life will take shape, which will become habitual for other people, and I won’t know about them, and I won’t be there.
• It’s like the magnanimity and sentimentality of the lady who swoons when she sees a calf slaughtered; she’s so kind, she can’t bear the sight of blood, but she eats the same calf in sauce with great appetite.
• As it is, war is the favorite pastime of idle and light-minded people…The military estate is the most honored. But what is war, what is needed for success in military affairs, what are the morals of military society? The aim of war is killing, the instruments of war are espionage, treason and the encouragement of it, the ruin of the inhabitants, robbing them or stealing to supply the army; deception and lying are called military stratagems; the morals of the military estate are absence of freedom, that is, discipline, idleness, ignorance, cruelty, depravity, and drunkenness. And in spite of that, it is the highest estate, respected by all. All kings except the Chinese wear military uniforms, and the one who has killed the most people gets the greatest reward…They come together, like tomorrow, to kill each other, they slaughter and maim tens of thousands of men, and then they say prayers of thanksgiving for having slaughtered so many people (inflating the numbers), and proclaim victory, supposing that the more people slaughtered, the greater the merit. How does God look down and listen to them!
• I see that I’ve begun to understand too much. And it’s not good for man to taste of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil…Well, it won’t be for long!
• The sergeant ran up to the senior officer and in a frightened whisper (the way a butler reports to his master at dinner that they have run out of the wine he requested) said that they had run out of charges.
• And the terrible thing continued to be accomplished, which was accomplished not by the will of men, but by the will of Him who governs people and worlds.
• That’s for me to know and not for you to ask.
• You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love.
• It was too late to go anywhere, but still too early to go to bed.
• You suffer an hour, you live an age!
• Where there’s law, there’s lies.
• A wife for advice, a mother-in-law for welcome, but no one’s dearer than your own mother!
• And he felt that the previously destroyed world was now arising in his soul with a new beauty, on some new and unshakeable foundations.
• Being listened to, but as birds do, apparently because it was necessary for him to utter sounds,
• Yes, that was death. I died – I woke up. Yes, death is an awakening.
• For nowhere is a man more free than in a battle, where it is a question of life and death.
• And, without thinking, he had received that peace and harmony with himself only through the horror of death, through privation.
• His anger with his wife and his anxiety about his name being disgraced now seemed to him not only insignificant, but amusing.
• Happiness can only be negative.
• The satisfaction of his needs – for good food, cleanliness, freedom – now that he was deprived of them all, seemed perfect happiness.
• When a man finds himself in motion, he always thinks up a goal for that motion. In order to walk a thousand miles, a man needs to think that there is something good at the end of those thousand miles. One needs a vision of the promised land in order to have the strength to move. The promised land for the advancing French was Moscow; for the retreat it was their native land.
• As there is no situation in the world in which a man can be happy and perfectly free, so there is no situation in which he can be perfectly unhappy and unfree.
• There is a limit to suffering and a limit to freedom, and that those limits are very close.
• That the man who suffers because one leaf is askew in his bed of roses, suffers as much as he now suffered falling asleep on the bare, damp ground, one side getting cold as the other warmed up; that when he used to put on his tight ballroom shoes, he suffered just as much as now, when he walked quite barefoot (his shoes had long since worn out) and his feet were covered with sores.
• Lament for your sickness, and God won’t grant you death.
• Am suffering for my own and other people’s sins.
• One thing is terrible, it is to bind yourself forever to a suffering man.
• People invite me and tell me about myself.
• Once we’re thrown off our habitual paths, we think all is lost; but it’s only here that the new and the good begins. As long as there’s life, there’s happiness. There’s much, much still to come.
• If the purpose of the European wars at the beginning of the present century was the greatness of Russia, that purpose could have been achieved without any of the preceding wars and without the invasion. If the purpose was the greatness of France, it could have been achieved without the revolution and without the empire. If the purpose was the spreading of ideas, printing would have carried it out far better than soldiers. If the purpose was the progress of civilization, it is quite easy to suppose that, besides the destruction of people and their wealth, there are other more expedient ways to spread civilization.
• Chance made the situation; genius profited from it.
• Yielding to that irresistible impulse that makes us judge the nearest and dearest people.
• When I’m taken up with a thought, all the rest is an amusement.
• All the ancient historians used one and the same method to describe and grasp the seemingly ungraspable – the life of a people. They described the activity of individual men who ruled the people; and this activity expressed for them the activity of the whole people.

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Modern history, in answer to these questions, says: you want to know what this movement means, why it occurred, and what force produced these events? Listen:

“Louis XIV was a very proud and presumptuous man; he had such-and-such mistresses and such-and-such ministers, and he ruled France badly. Louis’s heirs were also weak men and also ruled France badly. They, too, had such-and-such favorites and such-and-such mistresses. Besides, certain men were writing books at that time. At the end of the eighteenth century, some two dozen men got together in Paris and started talking about all men being equal and free. That led people all over France to start slaughtering and drowning each other. These people killed the king and many others. At the same time there was in France a man of genius—Napoleon. He defeated everybody everywhere—that is, he killed a lot of people—because he was a great genius. And he went off for some reason to kill Africans, and he killed them so well, and was so cunning and clever, that, on coming back to France, he ordered everybody to obey him. And everybody obeyed him. Having become emperor, he again went to kill people in Italy, Austria, and Prussia. And there he killed a lot. In Russia there was the emperor Alexander, who decided to restore order in Europe and therefore made war with Napoleon. But in the year seven, he suddenly made friends with him, then in the year eleven quarreled again, and again they started killing a lot of people. And Napoleon brought six hundred thousand men to Russia and captured Moscow; then he suddenly ran away from Moscow, and then the emperor Alexander, helped by the advice of Stein and others, united Europe to take up arms against the disturber of its peace. All Napoleon’s allies suddenly became his enemies; and this armed force marched against Napoleon, who had gathered new forces. The allies defeated Napoleon, entered Paris, made Napoleon abdicate, and exiled him to the island of Elba, not depriving him of the dignity of emperor and showing him every respect, though five years earlier and one year later everybody considered him a bandit and outlaw. And so began the reign of Louis XVIII, whom until then both the French and the allies had only laughed at. Napoleon, pouring out tears before his old guard, abdicated and went into exile. Then skillful statesmen and diplomats (in particular Talleyrand, who managed to sit in a certain chair before anyone else and thereby extended the borders of France) talked in Vienna, and with these talks made people happy or unhappy. Suddenly the diplomats and monarchs nearly quarreled; they were already prepared to order their troops to kill each other again; but at that moment Napoleon arrived in France with a battalion, and the French, who hated him, all submitted to him at once. But the allied monarchs were angered by that and again went to war with the French. And the genius Napoleon was defeated and taken to the island of St. Helena, having suddenly been recognized as a bandit. And there the exile, separated from those dear to his heart and from his beloved France, died a slow death on the rock and bequeathed his great deeds to posterity. But in Europe there was the reaction, and the sovereigns all started mistreating their own people again.”

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I loved you the moment I saw you. May I hope?”

He glanced at her, and the serious passion in the expression of her face struck him. Her face said: “Why ask? Why doubt what you cannot help knowing? Why speak when it’s impossible to put everything you feel into words?”

She came closer to him and stopped. He took her hand and kissed it.

“Do you love me?”

“Yes, yes,” Natasha said as if with vexation, sighed loudly, then again and again, and burst into sobs.

“Why? What’s the matter?”

“Ah, I’m so happy,” she replied, smiling through her tears, leaned closer to him, thought for a second, as if asking herself whether she could, and kissed him.

Prince Andrei held her hand, looked into her eyes, and did not find the former love for her in his soul. Something suddenly turned over in his soul: the former poetic and mysterious delight of desire was not there, but there was pity for her woman’s and child’s weakness, there was fear before her devotion and trust, a heavy but at the same time joyful consciousness of duty that bound him to her forever. The actual feeling, though not as bright and poetic as the former one, was more serious and strong. (Page 479)

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It was a story about an old merchant, who lived a seemly and God-fearing life with his family, and went once with a comrade, a rich merchant, to the Makary.

Having stopped at an inn, the two merchants went to bed, and the next day the comrade was found murdered and robbed. The bloody knife was found under the old merchant’s pillow. The merchant was tried, punished with the knout, and, having had his nostrils slit, was—in due order, as Karataev said—sent to hard labor.

“And so, brother mine” (Pierre arrived at this point in Karataev’s story), “ten years or more go by after this affair. The old man lives at hard labor. Duly submits, does nothing bad. Only asks God for death. Good. And the convicts got together, a nightly thing, like you and me here, and the old man was with them. They started talking about who suffers for what, and what he’s guilty of before God. They began telling: this one killed a man, that one killed two, another set a fire, another was a runaway, so he did nothing. They started asking the old man: ‘What are you suffering for, grandpa?’ ‘I, my dear brothers,’ he says, ‘am suffering for my own and other people’s sins. I didn’t kill anybody, or take anything that wasn’t mine, but even gave to beggars. I, my dear brothers, was a merchant; I had great wealth.’ Thus and so, he says. That is, he told them how the whole thing went, in proper order. ‘I don’t grieve over myself,’ he says. ‘God, that is, has found me. I only pity my old woman and children.’ And so the old man wept. In their company there happened to be the very man who had killed the merchant. ‘Where did it happen, grandpa?’ he says. ‘When, in what month?’—he asked everything. His heart ached inside him. He goes up to the old man and—plop at his feet. ‘You’re perishing because of me, old man. It’s the real truth. This man is suffering, lads,’ he says, ‘guiltlessly and needlessly. I did that deed,’ he says, ‘and put the knife under your head while you slept. Forgive me, grandpa,’ he says, ‘for Christ’s sake.’”

Karataev fell silent, smiling joyfully, gazing at the fire, and he adjusted the logs.

“And the old man says: ‘God will forgive you, and we’re all sinful before God, I’m suffering for my own sins.’ And he wept bitter tears. And what do you think, little falcon?” Karataev was speaking with a rapturous smile that beamed brighter and brighter, as if what he was about to tell contained the chief delight and the whole meaning of the story, “what do you think, little falcon, this same murderer denounced himself to the authorities. ‘I killed six men,’ he says (he was a great villain), ‘but I’m sorriest for this old man. Let him not lament on account of me.’ He declared it: they wrote it down, duly sent a letter. This was a far-off place, it was a while before everything got done, all the papers filled out as they ought, to the authorities, that is. It went all the way to the tsar. Time passed, the tsar’s ukase came: release the merchant, give him a reward, as much as they decided. The paper came, they started searching for the old man. Where’s that old man who has suffered guiltlessly and needlessly? A paper has come from the tsar. They started searching.” Karataev’s lower jaw quivered. “But God had already forgiven him—he was dead. There it is, little falcon,” Karataev concluded and for a long time, smiling silently, he looked straight in front of him. (Page 1062)

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‘Sometimes there’s politics behind it, not God.’
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Doors were broken down in the dead of night, men were kidnapped from their streets, women were widowed and children were orphaned to teach the town its most important lesson: there was no match for the ruthlessness of the state.
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Aman Erum was the eldest son, the one who would set the way for his brothers to follow, a way out of the carpet business the family had struggled in for decades – and which was now endangered because of the halting of trade routes and the army’s insistence on being given a share in the transportation of rugs across the Northern Frontiers.
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The army didn’t want men from these parts; they didn’t even have a recruitment office in Mir Ali then. The officer Aman Erum had spoken to, the lone man in khaki green on duty at the base, had laughed in his face.
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‘He counts my defeats.’
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Most Pakistanis thought of Mir Ali with the same hostility they reserved for India or Bangladesh; insiders – traitors – who fought their way out of the body and somehow made it on their own without the glory of the crescent moon and star shining overhead.
==========
‘I don’t go for Friday munz any more. It’s better not to. Allah will exempt us. He has already exempted us. He has exempted and misplaced and forgotten everything that came to Him from Mir Ali, from the frontiers of this country within a country.’
==========
They all knew, those men who lived out their youth in mud bunkers drinking murky rainwater and tea leaves, what would come of their struggle. The state would begin to fight its own.
==========
Town by town, civil wars were lit by the wide-scale violence of the army – a violence that spanned decades and finally reached its zenith in the War on Terror. Swat, Bajaur, Deer, Bannu … one by one they all rose up against the state.
==========
You don’t cry for a man in hiding. You don’t mourn for a man you have not buried.
==========
Islamabad’s checkpoints were different from Mir Ali’s – there were no tanks here, no camouflaged shooters posted at significant angles so that anyone who tried to bulldoze their way through a checkpoint would be taken out with a clean shot to the head. There was no hostility in the soldiers. Here they picked their teeth with matchsticks and folded their arms behind their backs as they paced up and down pavements until a car honked, proclaiming itself ready for inspection.
==========
These people in the capital, the bus drivers and the ticket collectors and the peons, the girls with the hooded sweaters and blue jeans, they were anxious trespassers in the heart of their own country.
==========
Pakistan had opened its air space to the empire, closed Quetta airport so that foreign soldiers could use it as a makeshift base, allowed them access to their intelligence files, and put their invasive agencies at America’s beck and call.
==========
They heard that the men who flew the planes were from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, but that the empire was going to strike Afghanistan first. When it became known one October morning, via radio and the local television channels, that Afghanistan had been hit and was in the throes of a foreign occupation – even though, it was noted, none of the men on those furious aeroplanes were Afghans – the men of Mir Ali understood that the state, Pakistan, had aided the attack on their brothers.
==========
Funerals and burials and prayer evenings became the meeting ground for the resistance. Even the dead were enlisted in the battle against the state.
==========
She remembered how she had wished she too could place jasmine buds in her hair and sing of war and death as if they were earthly delights.
==========
Disappearances, there was a beautiful science to them. First, they allowed the foreigners to come in and choose who would be arrested with papers and who would be transported over the country’s borders. Young men from isolated frontier towns were taken to cells in nearby Afghan airbases and interrogated by young boys from Oklahoma. There was no need for the army to get involved then; it would only complicate matters. Then the Americans took elderly bearded men, the fellows who recited the prayers from the mosque’s minarets. But they weren’t dangerous in the way their captors had been hoping for. Suddenly, the army was eager to help out, to be a part of the process and to receive a School of the Americas training at home. You have to look outside the mosques, they whispered. You have to find them where they gather to speak of politics, of the war, of their allegiances. You can’t find them in the mosques; they talk only of God there. So the Americans let the Pakistani military in, wiped their hands clean and went back to fighting from the sky. While the Pakistani army kept going on the ground.
==========
Disappearances, there was a beautiful science to them. First, they allowed the foreigners to come in and choose who would be arrested with papers and who would be transported over the country’s borders. Young men from isolated frontier towns were taken to cells in nearby Afghan airbases and interrogated by young boys from Oklahoma. There was no need for the army to get involved then; it would only complicate matters. Then the Americans took elderly bearded men, the fellows who recited the prayers from the mosque’s minarets. But they weren’t dangerous in the way their captors had been hoping for. Suddenly, the army was eager to help out, to be a part of the process and to receive a School of the Americas training at home. You have to look outside the mosques, they whispered. You have to find them where they gather to speak of politics, of the war, of their allegiances. You can’t find them in the mosques; they talk only of God there. So the Americans let the Pakistani military in, wiped their hands clean and went back to fighting from the sky. While the Pakistani army kept going on the ground.
==========
When Balach did not return home to his family they assumed he had been buried under a deluge of work. When the next morning came and there was no sign, either professionally or personally, of the junior professor his father went to the local police thana and asked to file a First Information Report. The officer laughed. ‘Come back in a week’s time.’ In a week’s time the same officer acted as though he had never seen the old man before or heard of his missing junior professor son. His face registered no recognition of the case or of the time lapsed. ‘Nothing to do with us. Go sort out your personal issues on your own. We’re not a bloody complaint centre,’ he said this time. The police made no reports. They had no warrants out for the junior professor’s arrest. The military police suggested to the father, when he approached them timidly with stories of the dropped cigarette and the green jeep with the spacious trunk – stories that had slowly filtered back to the family – that his son had abandoned them to fight at the forefront of Al Qaeda’s jihad. ‘But he was a professor; he was not a fighter. He was not religious. He taught a class on the constitution.’ ‘Maybe he’s run off with his boyfriend, then, hain, kahkah? He doesn’t sound like a fighter, as you say. Maybe he’s not capable of getting along with women and escaped to live a life of – … You say he’s not religious, kahkah, look at what these fellows get up to when the fear of the Almighty leaves them.’ ‘Maybe he’s dead,’ one of them eventually said. If shame and fear did not work, not knowing would be their punishment. There was no final humiliation. It kept going. Maybe he’s dead. Maybe he’s dead. But he wasn’t.
==========
Azmaray, the philosophy student, became a hero then. He became the face of the disappeared. His photograph followed the article of the visiting journalist who told the country of these weekly vigils for the un-dead. Azmaray coined a language for them, after providing the country with an eerie visual. Laapata. That’s what they called people like his brother, the junior professor. The missing. The unknown. Three days later, Azmaray, the philosophy student, was found in the middle of the small university campus. His long hair, which was growing longer still and gave his wiry body the promise of a coming masculinity, was scorched off. His gut was bloated. His left arm, broken in five different places, was twisted above his shoulder. His right arm, the one that had been holding the photograph of his brother, the junior professor, lay several feet away from the place where Azmaray’s body was found. His teeth had all been removed from his jawbone.
==========
That afternoon the army came and fired into the crowds. The fighters among the students, those who were leading their own underground cadres of poets and engineers, fired back. They killed seven soldiers. The university was set ablaze, the applied sciences faculty building was burned to the ground. Who started the fire no one can remember now. But from that time onwards the university was subsumed into a superior army presence.
==========
None of the other men in the underground have this particular power. They look contorted by rage, made ugly by vengeance. Their hearts are too corroded to present any other face. But not Hayat. He lives in the camouflage of his belief and carries out his services to his homeland without question.
==========
I thought I could wake up this sleeping country with my cries, but still they sleep as if in a dream.
==========
Aman Erum was not nervous; he wanted it too badly. He wanted to be free, to move without notice, to study, to learn, to expand his life that had so far been restricted to a border town. He had been quarantined in Mir Ali too long. Everything – success, comfort, respect – felt out of reach in Mir Ali. He wanted to be a free man. He wanted a life that was bigger than his father’s, one that came with luxury and comfort and choices. He wanted something better than Mir Ali could offer. He wanted the milky tea and the still-warm patties, too, if he was being honest.
==========
The Colonel sat back in his pink sofa. His smile faded. He bared his teeth. ‘Look at what happened in seventy-one,’ he said, ‘when those bastards mutinied and joined the Mukti Bahini. Taking our weapons and ammunition. They killed us with our own hands. Before we could capture them, they took us prisoners.’ It had been the largest capture of soldiers since the Second World War.
==========
That the men in khaki from the central province absorbed the country as though it was only theirs. They took the water, the food, the electricity, the funds; they occupied all the top places – the only places – in the military and the bureaucracy so that their lopsided dominance would never be in danger of being contested, not now, not sixty more years from now. No one outside of Mir Ali had understood that. It had been as though the others simply did not know it.
==========
We are close, they said, we are so close you can feel our breath upon your neck.
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They were no one’s oppressors. They were everyone’s oppressors.
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Not so many years before, they’d read in the papers of women doctors and secretaries raped in Balochistan’s Sui gas fields because they had spoken too loudly of the state’s pilfering.
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‘I know that you are the ones who have sold everything in this country you defend so urgently. You sold its gold, its oil, its coal, its harbours. I know you are the first in these sixty-six years of your great country’s history to have sold its skies. What have you left untouched?’
==========
Tamarind seeds. Counted at funerals. The words of prayers said over them before they’re offered as petitions to God on the behalf of the deceased.
==========
Not for the generation that came after and saw their parents’ dreams diminished, methodically squashed by the creation of larger and larger military cantonments where the army could teach schoolchildren how to sing the national anthem and where a larger perimeter of land flew the jungle-green and white flag of Pakistan atop their roofs and gates. The army beat this generation down by being bigger and stronger and faster. They beat them down by being exactly what this generation aspired to.
==========
This generation wanted scholarships, they wanted to travel for business degrees and seminars, to work at petrol pumps wearing bright orange jumpsuits in Eurozone countries if it meant the chance of a different life, one not ruled by checkpoints and national identity cards and suspicion. They wanted the freedom to travel to Mecca, business class.
==========
Freedom meant nothing to this generation. It was easily bartered for convenience.
==========
‘We became them.’
==========
His limited exposure to the rest of the country has told him that the others live well enough. Mir Ali pays the price for the comfort of those strangers; Mir Ali and its men have paid for decades.
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Do you have any shame in the face of the mothers you have robbed of their boys?
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We have been fighting those men since before you grew beards, before you learned how to read the Koran backwards.
==========
There was no future, not for Hayat, not for anybody in Mir Ali, until those long agos could be righted.
==========
Zalan had not given his life. It had been taken from him.
==========

That’s where the surprise occurred, because among all the founders of the great world religions, Muhammad is the most like us. Muhammad saw himself as an ordinary man. His relatives and neighbors didn’t part and make way when he walked down the parched dirt streets of Mecca.
==========

But Muhammad sat on the periphery as a listener rather than a participant, and he remained mute, so far as history is concerned, up to the moment when Gabriel found him.
==========

The most remarkable fact about Muhammad is that he was so much like us, until destiny provided one of the greatest shocks in history.
==========

This phenomenon links Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad. Higher consciousness is universal. It is held out as the ultimate goal of life on earth. Without guides who reached higher consciousness, the world would be bereft of its greatest visionaries—fatally bereft, in fact.
==========

Muhammad sensed this aching gap in the world around him. He appeals to me most because he remade the world by going inward. That’s the kind of achievement only available on the spiritual path. In the light of what the Prophet achieved, he raises my hopes that all of us who lead everyday lives can be touched by the divine. The Koran deserves its place as a song of the soul, to be celebrated wherever the soul matters. CHRONOLOGY (Because of the lack of verified dates, the ones listed below are approximate.)
==========

Muhammad sensed this aching gap in the world around him. He appeals to me most because he remade the world by going inward. That’s the kind of achievement only available on the spiritual path. In the light of what the Prophet achieved, he raises my hopes that all of us who lead everyday lives can be touched by the divine. The Koran deserves its place as a song of the soul, to be celebrated wherever the soul matters.
==========

CHRONOLOGY (Because of the lack of verified dates, the ones listed below are approximate.)

570CE: Birth of Muhammad

590: Muhammad’s marriage to Khadijah, which produces four daughters, and two sons who die in infancy

610(or earlier): Muhammad’s first revelation

613: First public preaching

615: Immigration of some Muslims to Abyssinia

616–619: Muhammad’s clan, the Banu Hashim, boycotted by the Quraysh tribe 619: Deaths of Khadijah and Abu Talib

622: Hijra (migration) to Medina

624: Battle of Badr, Muslim victory against larger Qurayshi forces; Jewish tribes expelled from Medina

625: Battle of Uhud, a victory for the Quraysh that is not followed up on

627: Medina besieged by Meccan army (Battle of the Trench); Qurayza Jews of Medina massacred

628: Treaty of Hudaybiyah, calling a truce with the Quraysh

629: Peaceful pilgrimage to Mecca

630: Mecca occupied by Muslims; tribal enemies defeated in other campaigns

631: Islam accepted in many parts of Arabia

632: Death of Muhammad
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I will not turn my face from you, Lord, even if you kill everyone I love.
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The man who wished for God to notice him was terrified once he was noticed.
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Dear God, in your infinite mercy, make me who I was before. Make me ordinary again.
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“A thousand curses never tore a shirt.”
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Can God’s love be so intense that it feels like hate?”
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“I cannot find a single blessing from God that is not also a curse,” I said. “And no curse that is not also a blessing. Why is this so?”
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Now Ishmael’s mother, Hagar, had only been a slave out of Egypt, belonging to Abraham’s wife, Sarah. Because she was barren, Sarah told Abraham to take Hagar as his second wife in order to have children. Fourteen years later, a miracle came to pass, and Sarah became with child. She bore a son named Isaac.
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Can God’s love be so intense that it feels like hatred?”
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“The answer doesn’t lie with God. It lies with your own guilt.”
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“If you cheated on my mother, maybe she would find out, maybe she wouldn’t. But in your guilt, you could feel her love as disguised poison. And if a man kills his brother, as Cain killed Abel, his guilt might make God’s love feel like hate.”
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I thought that being rich is a blessing, but I was a fool.”
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“I swear, if I am ever made chief of chiefs throughout Arabia, you will be my ambassador. Such smooth diplomacy. Wait until the women hear you.”
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“I beseech the blessing hidden in the curse,”
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The young never understand the sadness of growing up.
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Growing up never stops a man from prowling the alleys.
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You hear those filthy jokes all over the world, and the same laughter. Indecency is how men know that they are men.
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City women have babies, but they don’t give them the breast. It’s not because they’re lazy and pampered and don’t want sore nipples. They’re worried. Living in a city like Mecca, where breathing the air is the same as breathing in contagion, they had to be careful. So every spring we came in from the desert to offer our breasts. That was the custom and still is, although it’s on the decline. It’s a wonder the air in the city doesn’t kill all the babies before they take their first step.
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Fate was a tease.
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beautiful, pure Arabic as these corrupt young dandies
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The best hiding place is inside your own heart. I’ve tried all the others.
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What does “the believer” believe?
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Allah, endow my heart with wings, so that I may fly to the garden of eternity.
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“The veil between God and his servant does not exist in heaven or on earth. It exists in himself.”
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I also have another ritual that I keep to myself, for good reason. When I am puzzled over a mystery, large or small, I pull a sheet out at random, and whatever my eye falls upon I take to be a message.
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I have no religion. I am hanif, a believer without a faith,
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What kind of patience does it take to wait twelve years before speaking to someone again?
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He began coming to my house for tea and God.
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“A man goes in and out among the people. He eats and sleeps with them. He buys and sells in the marketplace. This everyone can see. What they cannot see is that he never forgets God for a single instant.”
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“I am one who selects friends carefully.”
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confused. No matter. I was used to being unfathomable.
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– Your Highlight on Location 846-846 | Added on Wednesday, June 6, 2018 12:28:57 AM

No matter. I was used to being unfathomable.
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money. Mecca would have a second rich outcast.
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“Wisdom is like hot coals,” I said. “People enjoy the glow, but they’re not stupid enough to step in.”
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But I never took him to meet another hanif. It was contradictory. Two hanif make a congregation, three a tribe, and four a faith to be defended against other faiths with arrows and spears. Each hanif travels alone, I told him, and it seemed that Muhammad was satisfied with that explanation.
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Just as we accept life from Allah, so must we accept death, as a gift that is not ours to question.”
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Just as we accept life from Allah, so must we accept death, as a gift that is not ours to question.”
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All this cruelty is a kind of vanity,
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A man brags in the inns that he’s a bull in bed when his wife knows he’s a rabbit. So she has to pay.
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A crazy world, when one gets punished for another’s shame.
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“The dawn doesn’t come back to awaken us twice.”
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“‘Fate loves a rebel.’
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persuasion deserts a loose tongue.
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Today I’m a beggar, but I have ambitions. I hope to become a fool. People pity fools, and those who don’t are at least superstitious about them. The best fools have gone mad over God. They even think they speak with God’s voice, but it’s all babble. I think about that when I’m curled up in an alley on a cold night. Is it better to be pitied or despised? Those are my two choices.
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When fools speak of God, people are more likely to be superstitious about them.”
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it suited their mood to kick me, as if to prove that someone in this world was more miserable than they.
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Don’t be amazed that a rich man would waste so many words on a beggar. Waraqah’s God loves all men, which shows you how far this religious fever might spread.
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A woman can resist anything but attention.
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understand your despair. Bring it to me. Half your pain comes from keeping it a secret.”
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back that I married him just so I could emasculate
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“I don’t mind being hated, you know,” said Waraqah out of the blue. “A thousand curses never tore a shirt.”
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but gossip can pass through the tiniest crack in a fortress.
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‘I lost two sons before they even knew they had a father. I lost my father before he knew he had a son. Where are they now?’
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“Some things are worse than dying. There is also death in life.”
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ocean disappearing into a drop of water.
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He was only a listener, never a speaker, and listeners win no glory.
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Recite! In the name of your Lord, who created human life from congealed drops of blood. Recite, for your Lord is ever bountiful, he who teaches by the pen, who taught mankind what was not known before.
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“There is an inner man that nobody sees,” he replied. “Now he is on the outside, and the outer man, who is seen by everyone, he is gone forever.”
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Do you not see how he has lengthened the shadows? The One is He who made the night a garment for you. He gave you sleep so that you may rest, and the morning sky to be a resurrection.
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Who had ever seen the night as a garment and the morning as a resurrection? I marveled that God could combine beauty and a promise. It was magical.
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He has prepared a bonfire for those who reject the hour that is to come. They will cry out for death, and He will say, “Do not cry out this day for one death, but for many.”
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On the day that the sky is split open and the angels stream down in hosts, true authority will belong to the Lord of Mercy. On that day the unbelievers will tremble.
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They despised Muhammad’s message without even hearing it, like someone who turns his back on a feast because a rumor has spread that the food is poisoned.
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The doubters will say, “How can this be God’s messenger? He walks through the marketplace like any other man.” Tell them, all my messengers have walked through the marketplace like other men.
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“My words will mean nothing to a glutton, whose bloated belly makes him believe he will never need God.”
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“If you trusted in Allah as you should, He would sustain you in all things. In God there can be no loss.” The man, who was conscious of being the richest person in the room, had never been spoken to in this way.
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We few who believed in the new prophet began to write down his messages. Each sura came in a distinct way. If Muhammad was about to speak at God’s command, his face became shining and full of light. His voice grew higher and more intense. I swear on my soul that one could not mistake this voice for any but the holy Being reaching down from Paradise to this world of clay.
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The angel commanded Muhammad to recite, and now his followers would recite too, over and over.
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“Is this how we will change the world?” I asked. “One believer at a time?” Muhammad replied, “Has there ever been any other way?”
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He’s a madman because he doesn’t know he’s mad.”
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“A promise is a cloud. Fulfillment is the rain.”
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He will not enter hell who has faith equal to a mustard seed, and yet he will not enter heaven who has pride equal to a mustard seed.
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“A constant complainer died and was sent to hell. When he arrived, he looked around and frowned. ‘Is damp wood the best you can burn down here?’
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“The strongest wrestler has no strength compared to the man who can control his anger.”
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“The creation is like God’s family. Everything that sustains it comes from Him. Therefore, He loves most whoever shows kindness to His family.”
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After many months neither side could break the stalemate. One man of God with forty followers against every powerful family in the city. Muhammad had no choice but to ask God to bring him a solution.
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What strange creatures we are. If you beat a dog, he cringes. If you beat a horse, he runs away. But if you beat a man, he sometimes starts to dream. Such dreams may take him to places you cannot imagine.
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There is no longing when you are close to God.”
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“Because God tells me the secrets of life and death does not mean that I am the master of life and death. These are great mysteries. By God’s mercy I am closer to them than ordinary men. That is just as much a cause for grief as joy.”
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“You smudge the truth, and they pay you more,”
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would have given me a swift kick for my insolence.
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“First they persecute you. Then they need you. In the end, they convert to your religion.”
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“For three years I couldn’t even tell my uncles and cousins. Do you know what anxiety I felt? To know from God’s mouth that all sinners are damned. He sees everything. He marks every deed we do on earth, and at the last day the damned will testify against themselves out
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“For three years I couldn’t even tell my uncles and cousins. Do you know what anxiety I felt? To know from God’s mouth that all sinners are damned. He sees everything. He marks every deed we do on earth, and at the last day the damned will testify against themselves out of their own mouths. Can that day be far off?”
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“Then hear me. If we fight for justice, it isn’t violence. It’s a righteous act. When righteousness remains passive, the unjust show no mercy. The nature of evil is to spread, like a contagion.”
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“Angels are good for the troops,” he replied. “None of them ran, even when we were outnumbered. Only God can inspire a man to fight under those conditions. Allah has revealed how we’ll survive.” My heart sank. “Through war?” Ali shook his head. “Not just war. Holy war.” He was using a peculiar word new to my ears. Jihad.
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The God of Muhammad has cast down the gods of Arabia. They have crumbled to dust.
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I’m not the only hypocrite in this paradise.
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In any other war the Muslims would lose; in holy war they would prevail.
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“Allah taxes not one soul beyond its limits.”
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But ten thousand blind men cannot defeat a handful who can see.
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Lo, I swear by the afterglow of sunset, And by the night and all that it enshrouds, And by the moon when she is at the full, You will journey to higher and higher worlds.
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“A horse can be whipped into running faster. With discipline it can be made to fight in battle. But what God values is complete loyalty, and that appears only when a soul meets the sorest test.”
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But if peace is true today and war tomorrow, how are the faithful to live? The choice cannot be left up to each of us.
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Modesty is a luxury I couldn’t afford.
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“The wage of sin is desperation,”
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“When is God’s love so intense that it feels like hate?”
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“Every day. I take a journey to heaven, you see. That’s the treasure the Prophet gave us all. He opened the way so that we can follow him. We don’t need Buraq to reach God. Our steed is the soul.”
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Scholars divide the revelations, amounting to thousands of separate messages, into two main parts. The ones that came in Mecca focus on theology; the messages that came in Medina, after the Hijra, or migration, of 622 CE, mostly center on managing the new faith and the newly faithful.
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The Koran is about salvation and apocalypse—just as in Jesus’s lifetime, the early converts to Islam believed that the end of the world was at hand. But the Koran is also about war, politics, infighting, treaties, jealousies, and the everyday headaches of running the government in Medina, including the collection of taxes.
==========

The tale of Muhammad and the five mares is central here. As recounted in the novel, Muhammad had a string of horses that he loved. It was his habit to take them out into the desert for a run. One day he took them out so far from Medina that the animals became desperately thirsty. Up ahead they smelled an oasis and began to gallop toward it. Muhammad let them reach almost to the water hole, and then he gave a sharp whistle for them to return. Most of the horses kept running, but five mares turned around and returned to the Prophet’s hand. He used these five mares to breed the strain of Arabian horses that are most prized today.
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God favors loyalty above all other virtues.
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If this is exciting, the disturbing parts aren’t far behind. The Jews of Medina were the first to welcome Muhammad and his tiny band of followers into their midst. The young faith was quite fragile. No more than a dozen close followers, the companions, had developed over the twelve years since the first revelation. For the first three years Muhammad told no one about his calling outside his family. Under constant threats from the Quraysh, perhaps forty to a hundred converts emerged before the Hijra. It is remarkable that the Jews of Medina were willing to accept Muhammad as someone to judge their disputes and to draw up a plan for bringing peace to all the warring tribes in the city. Yet in the next few years, as the faithful grew in numbers, God told Muhammad to drive the Jewish tribes out of Medina, exiling them to marginal wastelands. Later, when Jewish resentment flared up and the last remaining tribe cooperated with the invading army from Mecca, Muhammad exercised violent retribution. All the men were beheaded, and the women and children divided as the spoils of war, many to be sold into slavery. This horrifying decision, because it came by revelation, has been praised by Islamic historians. Only in recent times have some revisionists considered it as the barbaric crime it is. Here we meet the dark underside of the Prophet’s mission. His every act and word has the force of God behind it (except perhaps only the “satanic verses” in the Koran, so called because they were inspired by demonic forces to delude and briefly mislead Muhammad—he soon saw through them and returned to Allah’s guidance). I don’t think Muhammad believed himself to be infallible. We have touching stories about his humility. He admitted his mistakes, and far from being the only one to give orders in times of crisis, he sat in council with his chieftains and listened to their voices.
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Islamic extremism is no exception, and unfortunately the loud minority have poisoned our view.
==========

In my childhood, I was taken to visit Sufishrines, usually the graves of saints who were prayed to for miracles. There were all-night poetry readings and dancing, truly ecstatic events. For me, these Sufis, with their extreme courtesy to one another and the ever present reminder of God’s love, stood for Islam—white domes against the sky, romantic tales of princes and princesses, and the hypnotic call of the muezzins from their minarets.
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Rumi, the greatest Sufimystic: You miracle-seekers are always looking for signs, You go to bed crying and wake up in tears. You plead for what doesn’t come Until it darkens your days. You sacrifice everything, even your mind, You sit down in the fire, wanting to become ashes, And when you meet with a sword, You throw yourself on it. Fall into the habit of such helpless mad things— You will have your sign.
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The beauty of union with the One was exquisite, but the seeker burned himself to ashes before reaching his Beloved.
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Muhammad can be judged by the worst of his followers or the best.
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Muhammad can be judged by the worst of his followers or the best. He can be blamed for planting the seeds of fanaticism and jihad or praised for bringing the word of God to a wasteland. In my walk with Muhammad I found that every preconception was unfair. What the Prophet bequeathed to the world is entangled with the best and worst in all of us.
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God didn’t make life easier for Muhammad. He made it far more difficult, and the wonder of his story is how he brought light out of darkness with all the fallibility of “a man among men.” The message he brought wasn’t pure; it never is. As long as our yearning for God exceeds our ability to live in holiness, the tangled mystery of the Prophet will be our own mystery too.
==========

She was not like the majority of the people in this city, who had forgotten how to listen, which was why the very idea of waiting had vanished from their lives.
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Be kind enough to call me any time you want I’m not the past which cannot come back.
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Why does time erase me thus, O Lord? I’m no redundant letter on the page of the world.
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‘There are two Ghalibs,’ you said once, ‘one of them is a Seljuq Turk, who consorts with badshahs, and the other is homeless and humiliated, weighed down by debt.’
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These ancestors of yours, their days go by just riding, riding. If they come across human habitation there’s killing and looting, and then pitching tent in the desert at night to rest. A fire has been lit, the meat is being roasted, the rabab or the dilruba is being played. Some of them are sitting at a distance, singing the songs of desert nomads to the infinite sky. In some of the tents, festivals of flesh are underway with plundered women. You were quite proud of your martial forefathers, Mirza sahib, even if you never picked up a sword yourself. But despite your pride you knew in your heart that taking other people’s lives and giving up their own was all there was to their existence. Interspersed by the company of women, wine, and the arrogance of power.
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I’m not the flowering of a song, nor the flow of melody I am the echo of the shattering sound of my defeat
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Sometimes I see you tossing and turning in your grave, groaning for your mother, ‘Ammi … meri ammijaan …’
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Two people living alongside each other for over fifty years, never conversing, never even getting to know one another. This is nikah, this is marriage, who needs mohabbat, who needs love?
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—Bad dream? I am a nightmare myself. Never in his life has Allah had as bad a dream as me.
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Hum hain mushtaq aur woh bazaar; Ya Illahi! yeh mazra kya hai? I am desirous, and she, disgusted. What sort of mess is this?
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Where is the sorrow of parting, the joy of love. Where are the nights, the days, the months and years?
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There are two worlds. One in which Allah lives with Gibrail and the angels. And the other is ours, this earth, this world of land and water. The master of both these worlds asked one day, ‘Whom will the world belong to on the day of the qayamat, on judgment day?’ Who was it that answered? The master himself. Who else but he could have answered anyway? The master said, ‘Everything, everything is Allah’s.’ And, how funny, only Allah talks to Allah. Who can talk to him, after all? Allah is very lonely.
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You’ll never understand, Kallu, what a punishment it is to have to keep writing all your life.
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That’s why Allah sent me to this world. After thirteen years in prison, Kallu, I was given a life sentence. Do you know when? The day I was married to Begum.
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Our love has just begun, and you’re weeping already? Just wait and watch all that happens now.
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The flow of time is halted in the depth of my sorrow When the day is black, how can morning and night be different?
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You shall write of love. You will never find love, Asad, but it is the same love that you’ll have to write about.
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Thinking of my mother made me realize that her entire life was actually a single word: waiting.
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Is this the Mir who stood at your door With moist eyes, dry lips, and ashen face?
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You love beautiful faces, Asad You should see yourself once
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That’s the best thing about a story, you can write, keep writing, what does it matter to you what some chutiya, some fucker of a critic says?
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Ghalib has long been dead, but we remember him Wondering, what if this had happened, or that?
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People say Goddesses were merciful once The Lord knows which era they’re referring to
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This beauty with the black mole on her cheek Touched my heart with her hands Bukhara is nothing, I could even Gift her Samarkand in sheer joy
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Hafiz sahib
Phir kuchh ek dil ko beqarari hai, sinh jua-e-zakhmkaari hai. My heart in turmoil again is looking for an assassin.
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I had set out in search of the very person who would break my heart once again. What option did I have but to seek her out?
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‘Tere naam se jee loon, tere naam se mar jaaoon …
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I had set out in search of the very person who would break my heart once again. What option did I have but to seek her out?
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I had tasted a woman’s body by then, Manto bhai, I knew what it was like. Each of their bodies was like a pashmina with a unique pattern.
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individual consciousness when you have transcended
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Look, Saki, the night is ending Fill my cup with wine They’re racing upwards there Be quick, time is flying
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Hafiz sahib
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Yeh na thi hamari kismat ke wisal-e-yaar hota, agar aur jeete rahte yehi intezaar hota. It was not in my destiny to meet you. Had I lived longer, I would have waited longer.
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Everyone referred to it as Dilli, but I liked using the name Shahjahanabad;
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I am now deprived even of cruelty, oh God Such enmity towards your devoted lover!
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Sauda
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‘It’s true I’m no flower in the garden, but then nor am I a thorn in anyone’s flesh.’
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Because, to build a city, it was necessary to find criminals to kill and bury without reason.
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My heart is so bereft that I cannot tell whether Anyone ever lived here, or whether it has long been empty
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Mir sahib’s sher, Mirza sahib? I couldn’t save my heart from the heat of separation I saw my home burn but I couldn’t put out the fire
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What medicine besides death for the agony of living, Asad? The lamp must burn in different hues till dawn
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We cannot decide who will be admitted and who will be turned away from our own jannat and jahannum, can we?
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Saadat Hasan could never confront Manto. Saadat Hasan was full of affectations—such elegance, the clothes must be just so, anything but Lahori shoes was out of the question, he had to possess at least a dozen pairs of sandals from the Karnal Boot Shop in Anarkali bazaar; there was no end to his fancies and demands. And Manto would grab him by his ear, shake him, and say, you fucking son of a bitch, you think you’re a fucking aristocrat, do you even know the fate of what you’re writing? They will blindfold you and gag you and throw you into a pit. All of Hindustan will reek with the stench of your stories. You bastard, you swine, you dare write Thanda Gosht? Is there no limit to your defiance of our religion? Have you heard what they say? All you write about are relationships of the flesh between men and women, is there anything besides red light areas in your stories?
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How would you understand, then, why the first thing I would look for in a woman was her feet?
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stories—all those men and women you see, on the streets, in the slums, at the whorehouses, in the movie studios of Bombay—you might just find Manto among them. Are these stories or shit, they would ask. For heaven’s sake, if you can’t understand the times we live in, read my stories, and if you cannot bear to read them you’ll know that you cannot bear to live in these times.
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passed the matriculation examination in the third
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I passed the matriculation examination in the third division on my third attempt, and you know the funniest thing—I failed in Urdu. Ha ha ha, just imagine, Mirza sahib, I failed in Urdu.
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All the arrangements on earth are for love Love makes the sky go round
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Even dead, I wouldn’t have been able to bear the punishment of heaven.
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But I often wondered whether anything beautiful has ever been crafted except through pain.
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We cannot give birth to anything beautiful without causing pain. Then how can God? All the games of creation and destruction in his world are played to give birth to new kinds of beauty.
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every love affair is death;
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Don’t forget, ours may be a romantic relationship, but you’re still my prisoner.
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There was no relationship between love and marriage in our lives. Love was a sin.
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Men were forced to visit brothels, and women had secret affairs. It’s human nature, Manto bhai, human nature—who can stop it?
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This is what society is good at, Manto bhai. When it cannot accept you, it can stamp you with the label of a mad man.
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Every step makes the distance to the destination palpable The desolate forest walks even faster, leaving me behind
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Our Captain Wahid was chasing some woman or the other at the time. Which is all very well, but is there any sense in being besotted with a woman all the time, Mirza sahib? The Captain was perpetually terrified that she would run off with another man. Let her if she wants to, for heaven’s sake, is the world running short of whores? Pardon me, Mirza sahib, I can never mind my tongue.
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I was always part of my stories.
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sometimes. He pretended not to recognize us. I met
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I met him at Zohra Chowk a couple of days before he died. He made me realize how a man could be destroyed in the process of making compromises.
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All he could do was discuss the condition of the country with the women at Hira Mandi after a couple of drinks.
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Hira Mandi was another name for the light of the walled city of old Lahore. This was where I had discovered Sultana and Saugandhi and Kanta, my brothers. If you thought Hira Mandi was nothing but mounds of flesh, you’d be wrong. Once upon a time the scions of nawabs and badshahs and kings and emperors used to visit the courtesans of Hira Mandi to learn etiquette and culture—the adab and the tahzeeb. It was the courtesans who were the best teachers of behaviour. Their tools were the song and the dance, the lingering glances and conversation. Those of you who have read Mirza Ruswa’s Umrao Jaan Ada will know exactly what I’m talking about. And our Mirza sahib knows everything too. He met so many famous courtesans in his lifetime. The kotha of the courtesan was not just a place you visited for pleasure. To be part of the gatherings you had to master the necessary social graces. It’s not as though you could pounce on anyone you liked. Wooing was necessary. Only if you managed to set a woman’s heart on fire did the question of going to bed with her arise. Else, listen to all the thumris and dadras and ghazals you want, watch the kathak, and then make your payment and go home.
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Do you know what Lahore used to be called before the Partition? The Paris of the East. And Hira Mandi was its heart. Many people used to call it Tibbi. Come to Tibbi to see God’s charisma You have to see it over and over again
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Although the glory of Hira Mandi had faded after the advent of the British, the glow of the sunset had not disappeared. But from the Second World War onwards, Hira Mandi turned into a prison of flesh. Who were the clients then? Freshly sprouted businessmen, contractors, scum who had cashed in on the war to make quick money. They didn’t even know the meaning of the word decorum. I have seen both the Hira Mandis, my brothers. I have seen the baijis of the kothas turn into call girls, ready to get into a hotel bed with you as soon as you paid them. But to me Hira Mandi was a gold-enamelled picture.
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People used to say it was he who made her a woman. You understand what that means, don’t you,
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I have seen a man become a pauper here, not for flesh but for love. I will not tell you his name, he was a landowner from Punjab. He fell in love with Zohra Jaan from Hira Mandi. He used to visit her frequently and stay with her. People used to say it was he who made her a woman. You understand what that means, don’t you, my brothers? Suddenly the landowner had a fancy for buying a car so that he could take Zohra around Lahore’s streets in it. He might have been a landowner, but he hadn’t been able to save much money; and he had spent extravagant amounts on Zohra’s family. But he had to buy a car. Eventually he bought one on loan. He had promised to return the money in two instalments a year, from the proceeds of selling the crops on his land. The loan should have been paid back in three years. The car company got its money on time only twice. After that the landowner disappeared. No one knew where he had vanished. All that could be discovered was that he had sold all his land and gone off to Calcutta with Zohra Jaan. The car was parked next to his country home, which was why the company at least got its vehicle back. About ten years passed. The manager of the car company was at Hira Mandi with his friends for a colourful evening. Standing before a kotha, he discovered the absconding landowner looking sickly with his eyes glazed over. — Would you like to hear Zohra Jaan sing, huzoor? The landowner approached the manager. — What’s happened to you? Where were you all this time? — It’s all fate, huzoor. I took Zohra to Calcutta. I tried very hard to get her into films. — And then? — Didn’t work. We ran out of whatever little money I had. They simply wouldn’t let Zohra work in films. — So you came back? — What else could I do? Zohra had to survive. How could I abandon her? So I have to get clients for her now. Just like all the light in Hira Mandi, darkness fell on some people’s lives too. But even in this darkness I have seen a glowworm, my brothers. The glow-worm of love. Even though he was a pauper, he had not abandoned Zohra Jaan. From her lover he had become her pimp. But his love hadn’t died.
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Peace comes from abandoning hope.
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I know I’m telling the story of my life in great detail, but if I had to tell it in just one word, I would only have to draw a question mark on a piece of paper.
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There’s music, float away on its currents There’s wine, forget everything There’s a beautiful girl, fall in love hopelessly Piety is for others
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The lord made all of us from dust, after all. Consider, then, what ancient dust from distant lands and its memories we hold. I’m perpetually amused by the fact that we exist somewhere or the other eternally, concealed in the dust.
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There were strong rumours that Ghalib would be massacred I went to see too, but the show was called off
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Love has snatched light out of the darkness Without love there would have been no flowers
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‘I have wine, mian, it can make me forget everything; why do I need to pray?’
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That was exactly how I felt. Complete union with her was not in my destiny. The longer I lived, the longer I would wait for her.
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It’s been long since my love was my guest Long since the wine warmed the parlour All these rigid rules choke my breath I long to wear my torn clothes once more Will my bleeding heart be mended, asks love They’re just waiting to rub salt in my wounds I want to be at my beloved’s doorstep again Pleading with the doorman to let me in My heart again seeks those easygoing days When hours were spent in thoughts of my love Don’t disturb me, Ghalib, my passion drives me on I am waiting now with stormy, reckless will
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If the fire of your love from your youth is still alive within you, place it now at God’s feet. Khuda is the last word, all else is a mirage.’
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Man derives the greatest pleasure from humiliating another man.
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Rafiq is fond of his fifth wife. That’s love.
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However ill-fated I may have been, I do wish to be born again in this world. Do you know why? We are the Asraf-ul-Makhlakat, the finest creatures of God, Adam; even the Gibrails had to bow before us. When Iblis refused, he was thrown out of paradise. Each of us is a mirror, my brothers, in which the lord sees himself. And love is the shadow hidden deep inside the mirror, which you will never see.
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Beauty does not last long in this world, my brothers; the fragrance of the rose, the song of the nightingale and our youth all dissipate in the wind—oh, so quickly. And youth in particular, the spring of this life, dies even quicker.
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It is she I am reminded of by the sky, Asad, Her cruelty was a copy of God’s ruthlessness
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He prefers the bitter fruit. Instead of being attracted to women in their homes, he wants to attain the seventh heaven of happiness with whores.
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Tolstoy had said that all happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
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Pimps of the Revolution.
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Without your love, I’ll accept exile Let my exile bring you fame
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Woh toh kal der talak dekhta idhar ko raha, humse hi hal-e-tabah apna dikhey nah gaya. Oh, he kept looking at me so long, it was I who couldn’t bear to see my plight.
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Have you not seen how Meera’s Giridharlal tends to Radha’s feet? We humans move downwards, kissing the lips first; but Mohan climbs upwards, kissing the feet to begin with. That is why our love dies eventually, while his love becomes a veritable festival of joy.
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There was a woman named Bhuran. Her whims and fancies were different from everyone else’s. One day she wrote a letter to Mirza Mazhar Jaan-e-Janna, ‘I am restless for your love. But you love four people at the same time. I can never be that way. It is not right for a woman to love four people.’ Can you tell me what Mirza sahib’s reply was? — It is far more religious to love four women rather than twelve. I was astonished by her response. —How did you know? The girl replied with a smile, ‘A Sunni loves four people—he honours the four Khalifas. And a Shia loves twelve—he is led by a dozen Imams.’
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laughed—What can a whore have to say? She can only take her clothes off so that you can do whatever you like with her. Some people ask me my real name; some ask why I’m in this business. Pardon me, janab, I feel like pissing on these dogs’ faces. You’re here to fuck me, so fuck me. Why do you want to know me? You’re here for an hour—feast your eyes on my body, do what you have to, get the hell
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laughed—What can a whore have to say? She can only take her clothes off so that you can do whatever you like with her. Some people ask me my real name; some ask why I’m in this business. Pardon me, janab, I feel like pissing on these dogs’ faces. You’re here to fuck me, so fuck me. Why do you want to know me? You’re here for an hour—feast your eyes on my body, do what you have to, get the hell out.
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These breasts will never give you a harvest Why do you keep sowing the seeds of desire in them?
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Men become helpless sometimes, Manto bhai; instead of seeking the hand of God they seek the company of a woman.
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Is a person who always judges the world only with logic any less mad?
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no matter how powerful our reasoning is, we will never be able to penetrate a lunatic’s mind.
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I can’t help it, Kanta. These one-second episodes don’t fulfil me. I want long stories, which will go on for a long time, robbing me of my sleep and rest.
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Do you know what the male ego is: I’m the last word, nothing can be greater.
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If you have to die like a worm, die that way, but complaining will not fetch you anything extra.
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How long can you converse with your servants? So you speak to yourself. And you know what talking to yourself means, my brothers. With each of your sentences you will deceive yourself, erecting towers of dreams that will crumble the very next moment.
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like the unfinished kisses that remain after every single kiss.
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Discard now, o temptress, Your beauty and maddening youth Learn, instead, with care the art Of stealing the lustful heart Malati told herself, ‘The singer is advising me as a friend should.
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I knew only too well that love always ran out when money did.
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‘There’s nothing as bloody annoying as guns, Vimto sahib. Even a child can fire a gun. Press the trigger, and you’re done. But a dagger … I swear on the lord … using a dagger is something else. What was it you said the other day? Yes, art. Listen, Vimto sahib, using a dagger is an art. And what’s a revolver? A bloody toy.’ He pulled his shining dagger out as he spoke. ‘Look at it, just look at it, look at the bloody edge on it. There’s no sound when you use it. Plunge it into someone’s stomach and give it a twist, that’s it, all over. Guns are rubbish.’
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ear does not flow from anything outside of ourselves, Mirza sahib, it lurks in the darkness within our own hearts.
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‘He took so much bloody time to die, Vimto sahib. It’s all my fault. I couldn’t stab him properly.’
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He had no regret for killing a man, only for not using his dagger properly.
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I’m a bundle of desire from head to toe, and so a mere man If my heart had been bereft of yearning I’d have been God
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Who will police this city? There’s so much flesh everywhere That vultures are the protectors The rat’s a boat which the cat rows The frog sleeps, the snake is on guard The bull gives birth, the cow is barren now So he suckles the calves every night The jackal fights the lion every day Who understands what the poet says?
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“This too shall pass.”
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I needed company even for solitude.
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This was what the film world was like. If you made it into the bed of the right person, you were bound to be successful.
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Do you know what chilled mango tastes like, Manto bhai? As though you’re running your tongue over the body of your favourite woman.
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Death can be endured, Shafia, but memory cannot.
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One day a Sufi saint told his disciples, no matter how much you try to help a man, there’s always something within him that prevents him from meeting his goals. Many of his followers did not accept this. A few days later, he told one of his disciples, take a sack of gold coins to the bridge over the river and leave it there. To another, he said, search the town for a person overburdened with debt. Bring him to the bridge and tell him to cross it. Then observe what happens. The disciples followed his instructions. As soon as the man chosen to cross the bridge arrived on the opposite bank, the saint asked, ‘What did you see in the middle of the bridge?’ — Why, nothing at all. — You didn’t see anything? — No. — How can that be possible? One of the disciples asked. — When I was crossing the bridge I wondered what it would be like to walk with my eyes shut. Would I still make it across the bridge? I did. The saint smiled at his followers.
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You will weep too every hour, just like me If your heart is trapped, just like me The more I became embroiled with the Dilli durbar, the more I realized that politics and poetry could never be friends.
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Momin sahib’s: You will weep too every hour, just like me If your heart is trapped, just like me
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It was like sitting before my own grave.
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Can’t you ever speak without sarcasm?
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Your Allah lives in the mosque, you read the namaz five times a day for him. Maulvis and mullahs show you the way. And my lord lives in the dargah, where Maula Rumi sings and dances the Sama. My way is not for you, Begum; I seek the lord through pleasure and celebration.
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Listen to me, Begum, this is for you: If I get the opportunity I will show you that each of the wounds in my heart is a seed that has sprouted
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As Mir sahib wrote in a sher: Everything’s indebted to the brightness of her beauty Whether it’s the flame at Kaba or the lamp at Somnath
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Who knows, maybe the history of civilization is nothing but the history of barbarity from another perspective.
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Collective opinion is inevitably a lie.
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The truth can only be spoken by individuals. Collective opinion is inevitably a lie.
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People never judge a person by their individuality but only by their creed.
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In his old age Alif Has had a beautiful son I name him Hamza As everyone knows All Alifs grow up to be Hamzas
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Isn’t that right, my brothers? Alif is a straight line and Hamza is a twisted one. Everyone’s body twists into a Hamza in old age.
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Misery vanishes when you get used to misery I suffered so much that it became easy
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I want to see the beauty of the garden, pluck the flowers too … My heart is sinful, O Creator of spring
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no matter how important your position, you’re nothing but a government servant. No one will spare you even a glance once you’ve lost your job.
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I would have taken this road after all, Ghalib, had I lived in another time
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marriage transforms the relationship between a man and a woman into a set of habits, and then the relationship begins to fade and finally turns utterly grey.
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‘The truth doesn’t sound entertaining unless lies are added to it.’
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A single lifetime isn’t enough for anyone,
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Compose some more poetry, Mir sahib Your words may survive on someone’s lips
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—Maula Darvish was reciting the sayings of Maula Rumi to initiates at the dargah. You know what Maula Rumi said, don’t you? Man has to pass through three phases in his life. In the first, he worships something or the other—men, women, money, children, this world, a rock … anything. In the next, he reads the namaz for Allah. And in the last phase, what he says is neither ‘Allah is all I have’ nor ‘There’s no such thing as Allah’.
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It was an astonishing world, my brothers. Love, murder, bloodshed—what good is life without these?
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What do I do, the heart is helpless The ground is hard, the sky distant
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A vital part of your life will be in perpetual darkness if you have not experienced love for your child.
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Only the lord knows what games he will play with us shadow puppets.
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fakir—all my prayers were ruled invalid.
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It seems you are by my side When no one else is
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wasn’t in my nature to praise someone’s work just out of friendship.
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It wasn’t in my nature to praise someone’s work just out of friendship.
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The rumours were rife—Ghalib would be torn apart I went to watch too, but the show was cancelled
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All I know is men and women. I don’t know any human beings.
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Those who have beautiful feet are very intelligent and sensitive.
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My lawyer asked, ‘Is this story of Manto sahib’s obscene?’ — Of course. This was the government’s reply. — Which word is obscene? — ‘Breast’. — Is ‘breast’ an obscene word, your honour? I don’t think it is. The government replied, ‘It isn’t. But in this case the reference is to a woman’s breasts.’ I couldn’t stay still anymore, Mirza sahib. Were court lawyers and clerks and government servants to determine the meaning of words? And would the man who lived with words in his waking hours and dreams and nightmares not be allowed to say anything? I leapt up, shouting, ‘Your Lordship, in my story the word “breast” is indeed used to refer to a woman’s breasts. Surely no one refers to them as “peanuts”.’ A wave of laughter ran around the court. I couldn’t stop laughing either, Mirza sahib. Had those who were sitting on judgment on me never seen breasts, never touched breasts, never pressed them or sucked them? Then why did they have all these objections to the word ‘breast’? I love breasts, Mirza sahib. How beautifully they are shaped, like a pair of seashells risen from the depths; the aroma of the desires of so many unknown and unnamed creatures is gathered in their bodies. I run my fingers over their warmth, I observe their loveliness. They are like two ornate temple towers. Sometimes they are transformed into two birds, and I discover a caressing touch in their feathers. I love the woman’s neck, her arms, the flower of her navel, her buttocks, her thighs. How dare you use the word ‘obscene’ for someone who has been endowed with such beauty by the Lord?
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Bringing her lips close to my ears, Ismat said, ‘If breasts are obscene, why not the knee or the elbow?’
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Did she know that I was actually weak and impotent? I had presented myself to others as a raging bull simply in order to survive.
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Amir Khusrau’s poetry inscribed on the walls of the Diwan-e-Khas of the Qila Mubarak—‘Agar firdaus bar rue zamin ast, hamin ast o hamin ast o hamin ast.’ If there is heaven on earth it is here, it is here, it is here.
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The harems of Mughal emperors were overseen by eunuchs. When the empire was on its way to disintegration, the eunuchs had grown so powerful that the Badshah followed the eunuch Mehboob’s instructions. Think about it, Manto bhai, when eunuchs wield influence, the downfall of an empire is inevitable.
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And our emperor? He was a eunuch too. Yes, Manto bhai, a mental eunuch. He never had to fight a war. He lived off his forefathers’ wealth, displayed royal airs, and wrote some worthless poetry. He had four legal wives: Begum Ashraf Mahal, Begum Akhtar Mahal, Begum Zeenat Mahal, and Begum Taj Mahal. And countless slave girls and concubines. He had fifty-four children—can you imagine? Twenty-two sons and thirty-two daughters. This was how emperors lived, Manto bhai.
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Power will merely use you, and when you are no longer useful, it will kick you into the drain.
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Do you know what a king does when he is handicapped or when he lacks the ability to rule? He writes annoying poems, organizes mushairas, flies kites, and leads parades perched on an elephant.
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I look longingly at the doors and the walls Be happy, my compatriots, I will be travelling
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turn—had the lord really brought me into the world only to be defeated at every step?
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You must succeed, Ghalib The situation is dire, and life, precious
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I cannot stand this pain of separation anymore This is injustice, there’s nothing to be said
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Now grief and I remain in a hopeful city The mirror you shattered held a thousand images
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Faith holds me back; disbelief pulls me away Kaaba lies behind me; the Church, in front
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Yes, Mirza sahib, even to these people, whores were worse than cockroaches in drains. And yet many of them had secretly visited red light areas.
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I never tried to conceal the fact that I had been there. Compared to the colourless people around me, those discarded, painted women, their pimps, the flower sellers and kebab-wallahs in those localities all appeared far more alive to me. Those girls could even kill to get someone whom they had loved. The red light world that lies beyond ours is like an epic poem. I didn’t make up the stories of Saugandhi and Sultana and Nesti and Bismillah and Mehmooda and Zeenat; they all lived in the brothels of Delhi and Lahore and Bombay once upon a time.
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I wrote about Sultana in my story ‘The Black Shalwar’, my brothers. A whore wants a black shalwar to wear for Muharram—where’s the obscenity in this insignificant wish?
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One day she was summoned by the municipal committee and informed that her carriage licence had been cancelled. Why? Women were not allowed to drive horse-drawn carriages. ‘I know how to drive, sir,’ said Nesti. ‘What’s the problem?’ — You cannot drive anymore. — Why not, sir? If women can do all other kinds of work, why can’t they drive carriages? This carriage and horse belonged to my husband. Why can’t I drive it? How will I survive if you don’t allow me to drive, sir? Do you know what the municipal officer said? —Go join a whorehouse. You’ll earn plenty.
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Those who accused me of obscenity sold themselves too, but they concealed their prostitution and floated balloons of personal greatness. I was a whore through and through; every brothel in the world was my address.
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Where the flames of Mir’s lament raged last night All I saw this morning was a handful of ashes
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In the terrible emptiness of this worldly gathering I considered the flame of love all I had
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Even if I were to die of starvation, I would never be able to burn down anyone’s art gallery.
==========
At the end of the day, soldiers can fight wars and raze cities, but they can never usher in freedom.
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Some say, a million Hindus were killed; others, that a million Muslims died. I tell them, say that two million people lost their lives.
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The old heart is gone, the mind too There’s life in the body, like a lamp burning down
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Do you know what you must do before making someone disappear? Brand him a criminal. It’s very easy after that.
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Don’t you realize the significance of the fact that the lord has now turned you into a beggar? The entire world is yours now.’
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You have been born in this world, you will leave it … such an effortless voyage, like a feather
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I have killed a man—his blood has drenched my body I am the brother of this slain brother on the road He considered me the younger one, but still he hardened His heart and was killed; in fear of a wave on the bloodied River I killed the flabbergasted older one, and now I sleep—when I rest my face on his insubstantial chest It seems that someone who had made a loving vow To spread the light to all of us went forward but, Finding no light anywhere, is sleeping. Sleeping. If I call out he will rise like a wave from the river Of blood and say, coming closer, ‘I am Yasin, Hanif, Muhammad, Maqbool, Karim, Aziz … And you are …?’ His hand on my chest, he will raise His eyes from his dead face—from the foaming river Of blood he will say, ‘Gagan, Bipin, Shashi … from Pathureghata, Shyambazaar, Galiff Street, Entally …’
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— Is it possible that the lord will never have mercy on his orphans? — Mercy? You call this the lord’s mercy? — Death is his best gift, bhai.
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You bemoan your own fate under the sky, Mir So many different worlds have burnt to ashes here
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In this terribly empty gathering of the world, I consider The flame of love, like a lamp, is all I have
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This shroudless corpse is indeed the heartbroken Asad’s May God forgive him, his will was far too free
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The price of one man’s survival was another’s death.
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I had come to Pakistan with such hope. Many questions were connected with this optimism. Would the new nation of Pakistan have a different literature of its own? If it did, what form would it take? Which of the two nations was the legitimate owner of the literature that had been composed in undivided India? Would this literature also be split into two? Would Urdu be utterly destroyed across the border? For that matter, what form would the language take in Pakistan? Would ours be an Islamic nation? Would we be able to remain faithful to the nation but still criticize the government? Would we have better lives than under the British? I did not get the answers to these questions, Mirza sahib.
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I had no wish to stay alive in a country that had heaped nothing but calumny and condemnation on me.
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Suddenly my belly churned and vomit gushed out. A stream of blood spread across the bluish-yellow water in the bathroom sink. And then there was nothing but blood. I was startled when I rinsed my mouth out and looked at myself in the mirror, Mirza sahib. Who was this? Was it Saadat Hasan Manto, or was it Death himself? I patted his back. ‘You’ve won this time, Manto. Just hang on by the skin of your teeth for a few days more.’
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The death of the tehzeeb that came with the death of Shahjahanabad also marked the end of Mirza Ghalib.
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There are more dreams than people on earth.
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‘How many people really know how to listen to stories, janab? Some scratch their ears, others finger their arse. Their eyes wander. There’s an etiquette to listening to a story. Just as you trust in the lord, so too must you trust in the story and keep listening. I wander about on the road, I look for an audience, but no one has the time these days for stories. The world has become far too violent, janab. No one understands that stories can restore peace to the heart.
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When people asked, how will you cross the desert on bleeding feet, Dakuki would say with a smile, that’s nothing.
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Reality? What is reality? Hunger and thirst and the strong sun?
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But I want to tell you about my dream last night before I go. I was strolling outside the Jama Masjid. Suddenly someone came up to me and grasped my arm. Looking up, I saw it was Kallu. — What are you doing here, Manto bhai? — Do you know me? — How could I not? Kallu smiled. ‘I’ve been hearing so many stories from you and Mirza sahib from my grave.’ — From your grave? — You were in your grave too, Manto bhai, don’t you remember? — But I’m not dead yet, Kallu. — Really? Kallu scratched his head. ‘I must have dreamt it then.’ — Dreamt? But you’re dead, Kallu … — So what, Manto bhai? — Do dead men dream? — You bet they do. Do you know how many dreams are floating about in this world? There are more dreams than people on earth. That’s why they possess dead men as well. Would you like to hear a story, Manto bhai? — A story? Who’s telling stories here? — Oh I come here every day. And I inevitably find a dastango. There he is … — Who? — That man there, wrapped in a blanket, he’s a wandering storyteller. — How do you know, Kallu? — See for yourself—he can’t stop laughing to himself. Do you know why? People who have stories bursting out of them just cannot stop laughing. Come, come with me. Going up to the man, Kallu sat down in front of him. — Mian … — Who is it? Glancing at Kallu, the man smiled. Oh, it’s Kallu mian … — You know who I am, mian? — Is there anyone in the whole wide world who doesn’t know you? Damned Kallu Qissakhor, Kallu the story addict. Kallu burst out laughing. Tugging at my arm, he said, ‘Sit down here, Manto bhai, sit down.’ — I see you’re famous, Kallu. I chuckled. Turning to me, the man in the blanket said, ‘How many people really know how to listen to stories, janab? Some scratch their ears, others finger their arse. Their eyes wander. There’s an etiquette to listening to a story. Just as you trust in the lord, so too must you trust in the story and keep listening. I wander about on the road, I look for an audience, but no one has the time these days for stories. The world has become far too violent, janab. No one understands that stories can restore peace to the heart. — Then start, mian. Kallu spoke excitedly. — Don’t rush me, Kallu mian. Give me time to turn over the pages of my heart. How will telling a story make me happy unless I’m fulfilled by it? For a long time the man sat with his head bowed, muttering to himself, and crooning softly. Then he said with a smile, ‘The story of the shaikh will go down well today. This is a story about the search for the eye that lies within the heart.’ He remained sitting with his eyes shut for a few moments, and then began his tale. A shaikh had lost both his sons to illness. But no one had ever seen him weep or grieve for his children. He went to work punctually every day, even hummed to himself at work, and laughed and joked with everyone when he returned home. The shaikh’s mother and wife grew increasingly surprised at this behaviour. One morning, when the shaikh was at breakfast, his mother exclaimed, ‘Can you imagine the state we’re in, beta, after losing two of our boys? Our hearts bleed constantly. Have you even looked at your wife lately? She’s wilting by the day. You go to work as usual every day, as though nothing has happened …’ The shaikh’s mother broke down in tears. His wife burst out in anger too. ‘Do you even have a heart? I haven’t seen you shed a single tear. How could you have behaved this way if you’d really loved your children? As though nothing has changed … as though they’re still alive …’ — Nothing has actually changed, bibijaan. The boys are alive within me. I see them all the time. — And I look for them everywhere. I cannot sleep nights. ‘We’re cold, ammi,’ they cry to me. ‘We’re so hungry. Take us inside.’ Why can’t I see them? — Look for them with the eye within your heart, bibijaan, you’re bound to find them. — You’re blind in that eye. You cannot see anything with it. — No, I’m not. We don’t see things properly with our eyes. We see them differently. To me it’s all the same. I see my children all the time. They play here, around me. — Where? Show me. I cannot see them. — They cannot be seen with our eyes. Have you ever seen the wild plants that lean over the water? Our senses are like those plants. You can see only if you move them aside. Shut your eyes and imagine what cannot be seen. Your sons will appear and hold you, bibijaan. — My heart is emptied out, janab. Your beautiful words cannot fill it again. The shaikh’s wife wept and beat her breast. The shaikh’s mother said, ‘We cannot understand the eye you’re talking about, beta, don’t try to comfort us with mere words.’ The shaikh was silent for a long time. His initial irritation with his wife and mother gave way to unhappiness. He was not capable of dispelling their grief. They had accepted the separation as the truth. The shaikh began to tell them a story. — Let me tell you about a woman. Each of her children died within a few months of birth. — But our boys lived for several years, his mother interjected. — And the woman? Asked the shaikh’s wife. —She must have died of grief. I want to die too, but death won’t take me. — The woman lost twenty children. Not two but twenty. She used to wander around the streets, cursing the lord. Then something strange happened one night. — What? — In her dream the woman was crossing a desert. Blood streamed from her stomach, soaking the sand. She arrived at a tiny door. Entering, she went into a narrow passage, like a womb, which brought her to an astounding new world. She saw the fountain of eternal life, with the river of heaven flowing through the garden. The plants in this garden never died. Not everyone had seen this garden. Only those who believed it existed could actually see it. All the world’s celebrations of joy took place in this garden. ‘It’s all your dream,’ screamed the shaikh’s wife. ‘There’s no such garden anywhere.’ — This garden has no name, its loveliness cannot even be described. But still, it does exist in this world, bibijaan. — Tell us what happened to the woman. What did she get in the garden after losing all her children? — She waded into the river of heaven. All her unhappiness and doubts were swept away at once like dirt. As she bathed in the river, she heard her children laugh. Truly, believe me, her children swam about her, laughing. A torrent of happiness coursed through the woman’s heart. — Take me to this place, then. Tell me how to get there. — Think of the fakirs of this world, bibijaan. They have no complaints about the things that happen in their lives. Allah will give them more than he has taken from them. They have to follow the path that he leads them to. — How will we take this difficult road? — It isn’t easy. Even Dakuki was beset by doubts. — Who’s Dakuki? — Then listen to the stories of the travellers who accept everything that happens on the way. — Tell us, my son, your stories are making our hearts lighter. The shaikh’s wife began to eat some bread. — Dakuki was a pilgrim. He was always on the move from one place to another. He would never settle down anywhere or with anyone. — How strange! Can anyone actually be this way? — But he did have one weakness. — For his children? The shaikh’s wife asked. — No, for fakirs. How he was drawn to them! Through them he could see the universe in a grain. It was the fakirs who had told him that the lord resides within human beings. There was no place Dakuki did not visit in his search for fakirs. His feet would bleed as he tramped along. When people asked, how will you cross the desert on bleeding feet, Dakuki would say with a smile, that’s nothing. — And then? — One evening Dakuki arrived at the seashore. He saw seven candles glowing in the distance, taller than even the palm trees. The whole place was full of light. Walking towards the candles, Dakuki arrived at a village. The villagers were wandering about on the roads with lamps without any oil in them. — What’s the matter? Dakuki asked one of them. — Can’t you see? Our lamps have no oil, no wicks. We don’t have food for our bellies either. — But just look around you. The sky is full of light. Can’t you see those seven candles there? The lord gives us light on his own. — What light? The sky is completely dark, where do you see any light? You’re mad. Dakuki looked at the man closely. Although his eyes were open, they were actually stitched up. It was the same with everyone else. Their eyes were open, but shut. As soon as the sun rose the seven candles turned into seven trees. When the desert grew hot, Dakuki sat in the shade of the trees, plucking their fruit to eat them. He saw that the villagers had made canopies with tattered clothes to protect themselves from the sun. Calling out to them, Dakuki said, ‘Why don’t you come and sit here in the shade of the trees? Can’t you see the fruits? They will quench your hunger and your thirst.’ — We can’t see anything. What trees? It’s all a desert here. Are you making fools of us? We shall leave this village at once. — Where will you go? — There’s a ship anchored in the sea, we’ll board it to go wherever we please. — Listen to me, my brothers. You’re all deceiving one another with lies. — Shut up. Don’t try to fool us with falsehoods. We have seen the trees too, but it’s all a dream. We do not believe in it. We want to return to reality. — Reality? What is reality? Hunger and thirst and the strong sun? The trees are full of fruits, can’t you see? — No. We’re sure of finding a better place on the other side of the sea. Dakuki was bewildered. He wondered, am I the one who’s mad, then? So many people cannot be wrong. He went up to one of the trees and put his arms around it. ‘I’m an imbecile, as you know,’ he whispered into its ears. ‘Don’t you prefer my moistened madness to dry intelligence?’ Suddenly six of the trees lined up in a row and the seventh began to pray before them like a priest. Gradually the seven trees were transformed into seven humans. ‘Dakuki!’ they addressed him in unison. — How did you know my name? — Nothing can be kept from the heart that seeks Allah, Dakuki. We have a single heart. The heart of Allah. Don’t search for a heart by yourself, Dakuki. Come, help us read the namaz now. — I know nothing, huzoor. I’m worse than an ass. — A pious ass like you is above everyone else. The shaikh’s wife had broken down in tears. ‘Tell me where I can meet my son.’ — Wait a little longer, bibijaan. — What happened to Dakuki, beta? The shaikh’s mother asked him. — As he read the namaz Dakuki could hear stricken wails in a multitude of voices. He opened his eyes to discover that the sea had turned turbulent in the moonlight. The ship was rolling and pitching like flotsam on the waves. All the villagers were on it. They were screaming … Save us … Have mercy, O Lord … Save us … Suddenly the ship was split into two. — Did they all die, beta? — Dakuki’s eyes were streaming with tears. Lifting his arms to the sky, he prayed, save them, Lord, forgive their ignorance, open their eyes, lead them to your heaven. The shaikh broke down in tears. Stroking his back, his mother asked, ‘They survived, didn’t they, son?’ — Yes. The sea grew calm. They swam ashore. For the first time in many weeks, the shaikh’s wife ate a piece of bread and drank some water. — And then? Asked the shaikh’s mother. — Looking at the sea, the seven men asked, ‘And who played God with God?’ Nobody but Dakuki, of course. With this, they disappeared into thin air. Dakuki continued wandering, now in search of his seven companions. One night he saw the reflection of the full moon in a well by the road. Delirious with joy, he began to sing and dance. Suddenly a cloud covered the moon. The reflection vanished. Dakuki lay down by the well, rising to his feet after a long time. ‘Idiot!’ he began to shout. ‘I’m an idiot! I am still taken in by reflections. Allah can give light even without a lamp. Why am I still searching for those seven men? How much longer will I remain distracted by external form? Give me the strength to think only of you, O Lord.’ Breaking the silence that the dastango had lapsed into, Kallu asked in excitement, ‘And then?’ — What do you suppose? — What happened to Dakuki? — Everyone in the shaikh’s family returned to their own tasks. Dakuki continued on his travels. — Where will Dakuki go now? — Where do you suppose? He was in my bag, and that’s where he’s returned. The dastango extracted a wooden puppet from the bag slung across his shoulder. —Look, mian, this is Dakuki. — Who else do you have in your bag, mian? — See for yourself, do you recognize who this is? — Mirza sahib, huzoor. — And this? — Jahanpanah Bahadur Shah. — This? Kallu leapt up. ‘Manto bhai … you … you … you have become a puppet too?’ Pulling out wooden puppets one after another from his bag, the dastango arranged them around the precincts of the mosque. In astonishment, I discovered that they were all characters from my novel Dozakhnama. The painted puppets glittered in the light. They had not been soiled by the heat and dust of history. Allow Manto to bid you farewell now, my reader, my companion. Khudahafiz.
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• I’ve Xeroxed

• You are a fucking ugly bitch. I want to stab you to death and play around with your blood.

• Men are only here to procreate, to carry on the species, you know?

• You should have the Diet Pepsi instead of the Diet Coke. It’s much better. It’s fizzier. It has a cleaner taste. It mixes better with rum and has a lower sodium content.

• I just want everyone to know that I’m pro-family and anti-drug. Excuse me.

• Mergers and acquisitions. Murders and executions.

• I… want… to… fit… in.

• Life is full of endless possibilities.

• I’m beginning to think that pornography is so much less complicated than actual sex and because of this lack of complication, so much more pleasurable.

• Sex happens.

• Must you insist on being so pathetic?

• I’m not at all happy about this.

• Die or adapt.

• Surface, surface, surface was all that anyone found meaning in… this was civilization as I saw it, colossal and jagged…

• Questions are routinely thrown my way, among them: Are the rules for wearing a pocket square the same as for a white dinner jacket? Is there any difference at all between boat shoes and Top-Siders? My futon has already flattened out and it’s uncomfortable to sleep on – what can I do? How does one judge the quality of compact discs before buying them? What tie knot is less bulky than a Windsor? How can one maintain a sweater’s elasticity? Any tips on buying a shearling coat? I am, of course, thinking about other things, asking myself my own questions: Am I a fitness junkie? Man vs. Conformity? Can I get date with Cindy Crawford? Does being a Libra signify anything and if so, can you prove it? Today I was obsessed with the idea of faxing Sarah’s blood drained from her vagina to her office in the mergers division at Chase Manhattan, and I didn’t work out this morning because I’d made a necklace from the bones of some girl’s vertebrae and wanted to stay home and wear it around my neck while I masturbated in the white marble tub in my bathroom, grunting and moaning like some kind of animal. Then I watched a movie about five lesbians and ten vibrators. Favorite group: Talking Heads. Drink: J&B or Absolut on the rocks. TV show: Late Night with David Letterman. Soda: Diet Pepsi. Water: Evian. Sport: Baseball.

She had always known that they did not connect on any deep level, but connecting emotionally need not be a priority on a married couple’s list, she thought, especially for a man and a woman who had been married for so long.

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“And how do you know your right thing is the right thing for me?”

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Ella conceded, hating Michelle for treating her as if she were the dullest person alive and hating herself for allowing this to happen.

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For despite what some people say, love is not only a sweet feeling bound to come and quickly go away.

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In many ways the twenty-first century is not that different from the thirteenth century. Both will be recorded in history as times of unprecedented religious clashes, cultural misunderstandings, and a general sense of insecurity and fear of the Other. At times like these, the need for love is greater than ever.

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Because love is the very essence and purpose of life. As Rumi reminds us, it hits everybody, including those who shun love—even those who use the word “romantic” as a sign of disapproval.

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It was a time of unprecedented chaos when Christians fought Christians, Christians fought Muslims, and Muslims fought Muslims.

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Beset with religious clashes, political disputes, and endless power struggles, the thirteenth century was a turbulent period in Anatolia. In the West, the Crusaders, on their way to Jerusalem, occupied and sacked Constantinople, leading to the partition of the Byzantine Empire. In the East, highly disciplined Mongol armies swiftly expanded under the military genius of Genghis Khan. In between, different Turkish tribes fought among themselves while the Byzantines tried to recover their lost land, wealth, and power. It was a time of unprecedented chaos when Christians fought Christians, Christians fought Muslims, and Muslims fought Muslims.

==========
In 1244, Rumi met Shams—a wandering dervish with unconventional ways and heretical proclamations.

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In an age of deeply embedded bigotries and clashes, he stood for a universal spirituality, opening his doors to people of all backgrounds. Instead of an outer-oriented jihad—defined as “the war against infidels” and carried out by many in those days just as in the present—Rumi stood up for an inner-oriented jihad where the aim was to struggle against and ultimately prevail over one’s ego, nafs.

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When you kill someone, something from that person passes to you—a sigh, a smell or a gesture. I call it “the curse of the victim.”

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People who see me on the street have no way of knowing this, but I carry with me the traces of all the men I have killed. I wear them around my neck like invisible necklaces, feeling their presence against my flesh, tight and heavy.

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Most folks I know have at least one person they want to get rid of.

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Everyone has it in him to kill someday.

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I did the dirty work of others. Even God recognized the need for someone like me in His holy scheme when He appointed Azrael the Archangel of Death to terminate lives. In this way human beings feared, cursed, and hated the angel while His hands remained clean and His name unblemished. It wasn’t fair to the angel.

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But then again, this world was not known for its justice, was it?

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How could I know in that moment that I was making the biggest mistake of my life and would spend the rest of my days regretting it?

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People who see me on the street have no way of knowing this, but I carry with me the traces of all the men I have killed. I wear them around my neck like invisible necklaces, feeling their presence against my flesh, tight and heavy.

==========
They say there is a thin line between losing yourself in God and losing your mind.

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“How we see God is a direct reflection of how we see ourselves. If God brings to mind mostly fear and blame, it means there is too much fear and blame welled inside us. If we see God as full of love and compassion, so are we.”

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So many people were ready to fight without any reason, and so many others fought for a reason.

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In this world of illusions, so many people were ready to fight without any reason, and so many others fought for a reason. But the Sufi was the one who wouldn’t fight even if he had a reason.

==========
Her breasts swollen with milk and her belly so huge it looks as if it could rip apart. She is stuck in a hut on fire. There are warriors around the house, riding horses with silver-gilded saddles. The thick smell of burning hay and human flesh. Mongol riders, their noses flat and wide, necks thick and short, and hearts as hard as rocks. The mighty army of Genghis Khan.

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It was always like this. When you spoke the truth, they hated you. The more you talked about love, the more they hated you.

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How could people be naïve enough to expect love to open every door for them? They looked at love as if it were a magic wand that could fix everything with one miraculous touch.

==========
“Guilt” was Ella Rubinstein’s middle name.

==========
Some days I ascended all the way up to the seventh sky as light as a whisper.

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Human beings tended to disparage what they couldn’t comprehend.

==========
From the coasts of the Black Sea to the cities of Persia, from the vast steppes of Central Asia to the sand dunes of Arabia, I have passed through thick forests, flat grasslands, and deserts; sojourned at caravansaries and hostels; consulted with the learned men in age-old libraries; listened to tutors teaching little children in maktabs; discussed tafsir and logic with students in madrassas; visited temples, monasteries, and shrines; meditated with hermits in their caves; performed zikr with dervishes; fasted with sages and dined with heretics; danced with shamans under the full moon; come to know people of all faiths, ages, and professions; and witnessed misfortunes and miracles alike. I have seen poverty-stricken villages, fields blackened by fire, and plundered towns where the rivers ran red

==========
I have seen the worst and the best in humanity. Nothing surprises me anymore.

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It wasn’t death that worried me, for I didn’t see it as an end, but dying without leaving a legacy behind.

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Let us choose one another as companions! Let us sit at each other’s feet! Inwardly we have many harmonies—think not That we are only what we see.

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No matter who we are or where we live, deep inside we all feel incomplete. It’s like we have lost something and need to get it back. Just what that something is, most of us never find out. And of those who do, even fewer manage to go out and look for it.

==========

Rumi: Choose Love, Love! Without the sweet life of Love, living is a burden—as you have seen.
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Was it possible to be depressed and not know it?
==========

Cities are like human beings. They are born, they go through childhood and adolescence, they grow old, and eventually they die.
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If God was with you all along, why did you rummage around this whole time in search of Him?”
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“What I meant to say, Judge, was that one could not find God if he stayed in the fur coat, silk garment, and pricey jewelry that you are wearing today.”
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“When something needs to be said, I’ll say it even if the whole world grabs me by the neck and tells me to keep quiet.”
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“There is no question Baghdad is a remarkable city, but no beauty on earth lasts forever. Cities are erected on spiritual columns. Like giant mirrors, they reflect the hearts of their residents. If those hearts darken and lose faith, cities will lose their glamour. It happens, and it happens all the time.”
==========

“The sharia is like a candle,” said Shams of Tabriz. “It provides us with much valuable light. But let us not forget that a candle helps us to go from one place to another in the dark. If we forget where we are headed and instead concentrate on the candle, what good is it?”
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“Each and every reader comprehends the Holy Qur’an on a different level in tandem with the depth of his understanding. There are four levels of insight. The first level is the outer meaning and it is the one that the majority of the people are content with. Next is the Batm—the inner level. Third, there is the inner of the inner. And the fourth level is so deep it cannot be put into words and is therefore bound to remain indescribable.”
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With glinting eyes Shams continued. “Scholars who focus on the sharia know the outer meaning. Sufis know the inner meaning. Saints know the inner of the inner. And as for the fourth level, that is known only by prophets and those closest to God.”
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One day Moses was walking in the mountains on his own when he saw a shepherd in the distance. The man was on his knees with his hands spread out to the sky, praying. Moses was delighted. But when he got closer, he was equally stunned to hear the shepherd’s prayer. “Oh, my beloved God, I love Thee more than Thou can know. I will do anything for Thee, just say the word. Even if Thou asked me to slaughter the fattest sheep in my flock in Thy name, I would do so without hesitation. Thou would roast it and put its tail fat in Thy rice to make it more tasty.” Moses inched toward the shepherd, listening attentively. “Afterward I would wash Thy feet and clean Thine ears and pick Thy lice for Thee. That is how much I love Thee.” Having heard enough, Moses interrupted the shepherd, yelling, “Stop, you ignorant man! What do you think you are doing? Do you think God eats rice? Do you think God has feet for you to wash? This is not prayer. It is sheer blasphemy.” Dazed and ashamed, the shepherd apologized repeatedly and promised to pray as decent people did. Moses taught him several prayers that afternoon. Then he went on his way, utterly pleased with himself. But that night Moses heard a voice. It was God’s. “Oh, Moses, what have you done? You scolded that poor shepherd and failed to realize how dear he was to Me. He might not be saying the right things in the right way, but he was sincere. His heart was pure and his intentions good. I was pleased with him. His words might have been blasphemy to your ears, but to Me they were sweet blasphemy.” Moses immediately understood his mistake. The next day, early in the morning, he went back to the mountains to see the shepherd. He found him praying again, except this time he was praying in the way he had been instructed. In his determination to get the prayer right, he was stammering, bereft of the excitement and passion of his earlier prayer. Regretting what he had done to him, Moses patted the shepherd’s back and said: “My friend, I was wrong. Please forgive me. Keep praying in your own way. That is more precious in God’s eyes.” The shepherd was astonished to hear this, but even deeper was his relief. Nevertheless, he did not want to go back to his old prayers. Neither did he abide by the formal prayers that Moses had taught him. He had now found a new way of communicating with God. Though satisfied and blessed in his naïve devotion, he was now past that stage—beyond his sweet blasphemy.
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“Oh, that is quite all right. I am used to people not liking me much.”
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One thing that has helped me personally in the past was to stop interfering with the people around me and getting frustrated when I couldn’t change them. Instead of intrusion or passivity, may I suggest submission?
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Some people make the mistake of confusing “submission” with “weakness,” whereas it is anything but. Submission is a form of peaceful acceptance of the terms of the universe, including the things we are currently unable to change or comprehend.
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May love find you when you least expect, where you least expect.
==========

Speak less, mature quicker!”
==========

Even when he bowed his head in modesty. There was something so unusual and unpredictable about him that it was almost frightening.
==========

You can study God through everything and everyone in the universe, because God is not confined in a mosque, synagogue, or church. But if you are still in need of knowing where exactly His abode is, there is only one place to look for Him: in the heart of a true lover.
==========

There is no one who has lived after seeing Him, just like there is no one who has died after seeing Him. Whoever finds Him will remain with Him forever.”
==========

And if they weren’t too tired or drunk or simply not in the mood when they came home, they would have sex. Brief kisses and tender moves that exuded less passion than compassion. Once their most reliable connection, sex had lost its allure quite a while ago. Sometimes they went for weeks without making love. Ella found it odd that sex had once been so important in her life, and now when it was gone, she felt relieved, almost liberated. By and large she was fine with the idea of a long-married couple gradually abandoning the plane of physical attraction
==========

By and large she was fine with the idea of a long-married couple gradually abandoning the plane of physical attraction for a more reliable and stable way of relating.
==========

However, infidelity had a smell.
==========

She understood with chilling clarity and calm that despite her inexperience and timidity, one day she would abandon it all: her kitchen, her dog, her children, her neighbors, her husband, her cookbooks and homemade-bread recipes.… She would simply walk out into the world where dangerous things happened all the time.
==========

“Intellect and love are made of different materials,” he said. “Intellect ties people in knots and risks nothing, but love dissolves all tangles and risks everything. Intellect is always cautious and advises, ‘Beware too much ecstasy,’ whereas love says, ‘Oh, never mind! Take the plunge!’ Intellect does not easily break down, whereas love can effortlessly reduce itself to rubble. But treasures are hidden among ruins. A broken heart hides treasures.”
==========

When it came to a routine, he got desperate, like a tiger trapped in a cage.
==========

Most of the problems of the world stem from linguistic mistakes and simple misunderstandings. Don’t ever take words at face value. When you step into the zone of love, language as we know it becomes obsolete. That which cannot be put into words can only be grasped through silence.
==========

We have seen it all. Christians killing Muslims, Christians killing Christians, Muslims killing Christians, Muslims killing Muslims. Warring religions, sects, tribes, even brothers.
==========

His name is Mawlana Jalal ad-Din but he often goes by the name Rumi. I have had the pleasure of meeting him, and not only that, of studying with him, first as his teacher, then, upon his father’s death, as his mentor, and, after years, as his student. Yes, my friend, I became a student of my student.
==========

After a point I had nothing else to teach him and started to learn from him instead.
==========

An ocean is walking behind a lake!”
==========

I spent many evenings in the praying room reciting the ninety-nine names of God for guidance. Each time one name stood out: al-Jabbar—the One in whose dominion nothing happens except that which He has willed.
==========

Loneliness and solitude are two different things. When you are lonely, it is easy to delude yourself into believing that you are on the right path. Solitude is better for us, as it means being alone without feeling lonely. But eventually it is best to find a person, the person who will be your mirror. Remember, only in another person’s heart can you truly see yourself and the presence of God within you.
==========

Whatever happens in your life, no matter how troubling things might seem, do not enter the neighborhood of despair. Even when all doors remain closed, God will open up a new path only for you. Be thankful! It is easy to be thankful when all is well. A Sufi is thankful not only for what he has been given but also for all that he has been denied.
==========

Patience does not mean to passively endure. It means to be farsighted enough to trust the end result of a process. What does patience mean? It means to look at the thorn and see the rose, to look at the night and see the dawn. Impatience means to be so shortsighted as to not be able to see the outcome. The lovers of God never run out of patience, for they know that time is needed for the crescent moon to become full.
==========

The powerful, lucid R; the velvety U; the intrepid and self-confident M; and the mysterious I, yet to be solved.
==========

“Your father and I have been married a long time. It’s difficult to remain in love after so many years.”
==========

Love was for those looking for some rhyme or reason in this wildly spinning world. But what about those who had long given up the quest?
==========

I constantly vacillate between two opposites: aggressive and passive.
==========

But it has been such a long time since I last knocked on God’s door that I’m not sure if He still lives in the same place.
==========

I’ve never experienced the kind of peaceful surrender.
==========

For the silk to survive, the silkworm had to die.
==========

But eventually, for the silk to survive, the silkworm had to die.
==========

It takes the lives of hundreds of silkworms to produce one silk scarf.
==========

East, west, south, or north makes little difference. No matter what your destination, just be sure to make every journey a journey within. If you travel within, you’ll travel the whole wide world and beyond.
==========

The midwife knows that when there is no pain, the way for the baby cannot be opened and the mother cannot give birth. Likewise, for a new Self to be born, hardship is necessary. Just as clay needs to go through intense heat to become strong, Love can only be perfected in pain.
==========

Without any hair my face was cleared of a name, age, or gender. It had no past or future, sealed forever in this moment.
==========

There are more fake gurus and false teachers in this world than the number of stars in the visible universe. Don’t confuse power-driven, self-centered people with true mentors. A genuine spiritual master will not direct your attention to himself or herself and will not expect absolute obedience or utter admiration from you, but instead will help you to appreciate and admire your inner self. True mentors are as transparent as glass. They let the Light of God pass through them.”
==========

You care too much about what other people think. But you know what? Because you are so desperate to win the approval of others, you’ll never get rid of their criticisms, no matter how hard you try.”
==========

Each time I say good-bye to a place I like, I feel like I am leaving a part of me behind.
==========

I Guess whether we choose to travel as much as Marco Polo did or stay in the same spot from cradle to grave, life is a sequence of births and deaths. Moments are born and moments die. For new experiences to come to light, old ones need to wither away. Don’t you think?
==========

Does it ever occur to you that our exchange might not be a result of coincidence?
==========

When I was a child, I saw God, I saw angels; I watched the mysteries of the higher and lower worlds. I thought all men saw the same. At last I realized that they did not see.… —SHAMS OF TABRIZ
==========

“And how do you know your right thing is the right thing for me?”
==========

For despite what some people say, love is not only a sweet feeling bound to come and quickly go away.
==========

In an age of deeply embedded bigotries and clashes, he stood for a universal spirituality, opening his doors to people of all backgrounds. Instead of an outer-oriented jihad—defined as “the war against infidels” and carried out by many in those days just as in the present—Rumi stood up for an inner-oriented jihad where the aim was to struggle against and ultimately prevail over one’s ego, nafs.
==========

At times like these, I feel a sudden wave of sadness take hold of me, though I can never tell why.
==========

Why, then, do I feel this void inside me, growing deeper and wider with each passing day? It gnaws at my soul like a disease and accompanies me wherever I go, as quiet as a mouse and just as ravenous.
==========

It makes no difference to me whether that place belongs to Muslims, Christians, or Jews. I believe that the saints are beyond such trivial nominal distinctions. A saint belongs to all humanity.
==========

Try not to resist the changes that come your way. Instead let life live through you. And do not worry that your life is turning upside down. How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come?
==========

“God is busy with the completion of your work, both outwardly and inwardly. He is fully occupied with you. Every human being is a work in progress that is slowly but inexorably moving toward perfection. We are each an unfinished work of art both waiting and striving to be completed. God deals with each of us separately because humanity is a fine art of skilled penmanship where every single dot is equally important for the entire picture.”
==========

Personally, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with sadness.
==========

Opposite—hypocrisy made people happy, and truth made them sad.
==========

I wanted to see him through foreign eyes, kind and unkind, loving and unloving, before I looked on him with my own.
==========

Believe it or not, they call this purgatory on earth “holy suffering.”
==========

I am a leper stuck in limbo. Neither the dead nor the living want me among them. Mothers point me out on the streets to scare their misbehaving toddlers, and children throw stones at me. Artisans chase me from their storefronts to ward off the bad luck that follows me everywhere, and pregnant women turn their faces away whenever they set eyes on me, fearing that their babies will be born defective. None of these people seem to realize that as keen as they are to avoid me, I am far keener to avoid them and their pitiful stares.
==========

Not because God pays special attention to lepers but because for some strange reason people think
==========

Begging is one of only two ways to survive. The other is praying. Not because God pays special attention to lepers but because for some strange reason people think He does.
==========

What I lost, I lost forever.
==========

What brought us even closer to God, he said, was none other than suffering.
==========

Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, raised in distinguished circles, tutored by the best scholars, and always loved, pampered, and admired—how dare he preach on suffering?
==========

Finally I stepped into a street where three odors loomed in the air: sweat, perfume, and lust. I had reached the seamy side of town.
==========

The quest for God is ingrained in the hearts of all, be it a prostitute or a saint.
==========

The whole universe is contained within a single human being—you.
==========

Everything that you see around, including the things you might not be fond of and even the people you despise or abhor, is present within you in varying degrees. Therefore, do not look for Sheitan outside yourself either. The devil is not an extraordinary force that attacks from without. It is an ordinary voice within.
==========

I kept wondering, is the way I’ve lived my life the way I want to continue from now on?
==========

Happy birthday! Forty is a most beautiful age for both men and women. Did you know that in mystic thought forty symbolizes the ascent from one level to a higher one and spiritual awakening? When we mourn we mourn for forty days. When a baby is born it takes forty days for him to get ready to start life on earth. And when we are in love we need to wait for forty days to be sure of our feelings.
==========

The Flood of Noah lasted forty days, and while the waters destroyed life, they also washed all impurity away and enabled human beings to make a new, fresh start. In Islamic mysticism there are forty degrees between man and God. Likewise, there are four basic stages of consciousness and ten degrees in each, making forty levels in total. Jesus went into the wilderness for forty days and nights. Muhammad was forty years old when he received the call to become a prophet. Buddha meditated under a linden tree for forty days. Not to mention the forty rules of Shams.
==========

Some people feed on the miseries of others and they don’t like it when there is one less miserable person on the face of the earth.
==========

“Since when do whores go to mosques?”
==========

We weren’t rich. Even as a child, I knew that. But we weren’t poor either.
==========

For back then God was my friend.
==========

“God created suffering so that joy might appear through its opposite,” Rumi said. “Things become manifest through opposites. Since God has no opposite, He remains hidden.”
==========

I had seen many lynchings before. It never ceased to amaze me how dramatically people changed when they joined a mob. Ordinary men with no history of violence—artisans, vendors, or peddlers—turned aggressive to the point of murder when they banded together. Lynchings were common and ended with the corpses put on display to deter others. “Poor woman,” I muttered to Shams of Tabriz, but when I turned to him for a response, there was no one standing there. I caught sight of the dervish darting toward the mob, like a flaming arrow shot straight up into the sky. I jumped to my feet and rushed to catch up with him. When he reached the head of the procession, Shams raised his staff like a flag and yelled at the top of his voice, “Stop it, people! Halt!” Baffled, and suddenly silent, the men stared at him in wonder. “You should all be ashamed of yourselves!” Shams of Tabriz shouted as he struck the ground with his staff. “Thirty
==========

I had seen many lynchings before. It never ceased to amaze me how dramatically people changed when they joined a mob. Ordinary men with no history of violence—artisans, vendors, or peddlers—turned aggressive to the point of murder when they banded together. Lynchings were common and ended with the corpses put on display to deter others.
==========

Worry, old drunk!” yelled Hristos, the tavern
==========

“You know, this is exactly why I abhor religion. All sorts of them! Religious people are so confident of having God by their side that they think they are superior to everyone else,”
==========

“Did God set grapes a-growing, do you think, And at the same time make it a sin to drink?”
==========

“Give thanks to Him who foreordained it thus— Surely He loves to hear the glasses clink!” Khayyám.
==========

“Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why; Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.”
==========

There is no such thing as ‘them,’ just as there is no ‘I.’
==========

If you want to change the way others treat you, you should first change the way you treat yourself. Unless you learn to love yourself, fully and sincerely, there is no way you can be loved. Once you achieve that stage, however, be thankful for every thorn that others might throw at you. It is a sign that you will soon be showered in roses.”
==========

“Fret not where the road will take you. Instead concentrate on the first step. That’s the hardest part and that’s what you are responsible for. Once you take that step let everything do what it naturally does and the rest will follow. Do not go with the flow. Be the flow.”
==========

“Kiss me, my beloved, peel my heart down to the core, Your lips are as sweet as cherry wine, pour me some more.”
==========

“If God’s paradise is reserved for people of your kind, I’d rather burn in hell anyhow.”
==========

No two people are alike. No two hearts beat to the same rhythm. If God had wanted everyone to be the same, He would have made it so. Therefore, disrespecting differences and imposing your thoughts on others is tantamount to disrespecting God’s holy scheme.”
==========

“Besides, one does not become a believer overnight. He thinks he is a believer; then something happens in his life and he becomes an unbeliever; after that, he becomes a believer again, and then an unbeliever again, and so on. Until we reach a certain stage, we constantly waver. This is the only way forward. At each new step, we come closer to the Truth.”
==========

When a true lover of God goes into a tavern, the tavern becomes his chamber of prayer, but when a wine bibber goes into the same chamber, it becomes his tavern. In everything we do, it is our hearts that make the difference, not our outer appearances.
==========

Aziz was that rare type of man a woman could love without losing her self-respect.
==========

Now, you think I am a religious man. But I am not. I am spiritual, which is different.
==========

A philosopher met a dervish one day, and they instantly hit it off. The two talked for days on end, completing each other’s sentences. Finally, when they parted company, the philosopher reported of the conversation, “All that I know, he sees.” Next the Sufi gave his account: “All that I see, he knows.”
==========

A wandering dervish arrived in a town where the natives didn’t trust strangers. “Go away!” they shouted at him. “No one knows you here!” The dervish calmly responded, “Yes, but I know myself, and believe me, it would have been much worse if it were the other way round.”
==========

In this life stay away from all kinds of extremities, for they will destroy your inner balance.
==========

He stopped and turned around, smiling at me for the first time. “All right, do tell me, please, which of the two is greater, do you think: the Prophet Muhammad or the Sufi Bistami?” “What kind of a question is that?” I said. “How can you compare our venerated Prophet, may peace be upon him, the last in the line of prophets, with an infamous mystic?” A curious crowd had gathered around us, but the dervish didn’t seem to mind the audience. Still studying my face carefully, he insisted, “Please think about it. Didn’t the Prophet say, ‘Forgive me, God, I couldn’t know Thee as I should have,’ while Bistami pronounced, ‘Glory be to me, I carry God inside my cloak’? If one man feels so small in relation to God while another man claims to carry God inside, which of the two is greater?” My heart pulsed in my throat. The question didn’t seem so absurd anymore. In fact, it felt as if a veil had been lifted and what awaited me underneath was an intriguing puzzle. A furtive smile, like a passing breeze, crossed the lips of the dervish. Now I knew he was not some crazy lunatic. He was a man with a question—a question I hadn’t thought about before. “I see what you are trying to say,” I began, not wanting him to hear so much as a quaver in my voice. “I’ll compare the two statements and tell you why, even though Bistami’s statement sounds higher, it is in fact the other way round.” “I am all ears,” the dervish said. “You see, God’s love is an endless ocean, and human beings strive to get as much water as they can out of it. But at the end of the day, how much water we each get depends on the size of our cups. Some people have barrels, some buckets, while some others have only got bowls.” As I spoke, I watched the dervish’s expression change from subtle scorn to open acknowledgment and from there into the soft smile of someone recognizing his own thoughts in the words of another. “Bistami’s container was relatively small, and his thirst was quenched after a mouthful. He was happy in the stage he was at. It was wonderful that he recognized the divine in himself, but even then there still remains a distinction between God and Self. Unity is not achieved. As for the Prophet, he was the Elect of God and had a much bigger cup to fill. This is why God asked him in the Qur’an, Have we not opened up your heart? His heart thus widened, his cup immense, it was thirst upon thirst for him. No wonder he said, ‘We do not know You as we should,’ although he certainly knew Him as no other did.”
==========

Ella thought Aziz was a gushing waterfall. Where she feared to step, he surged full blast. Where she hesitated and worried before acting, he acted first and worried later, if he ever worried at all. He had an animated personality, too much idealism and passion for one body. He wore many hats and he wore them well.
==========

For Aziz, on the other hand, time centered on this very moment, and anything other than now was an illusion. For the same reason, he believed that love had nothing to do with “plans for tomorrow” or “memories of yesterday.” Love could only be here and now.
==========

“What a bizarre thing to say,” Ella wrote him back, “to a woman who has always put too much thought into the past and even more thought into the future but somehow never even touched the present moment.”
==========

When Shams of Tabriz asked me that question about the Prophet Muhammad and the Sufi Bistami, I felt as though we were the only two people left on the face of the earth. In front of us extended the seven stages on the Path to Truth—seven maqamat every ego had to go through in order to attain Oneness.
==========

The first stage is the Depraved Nafs, the most primitive and common state of being, when the soul is entrapped in worldly pursuits.
==========

Instead of blaming other people all the time, the person who has reached this stage blames himself, sometimes to the point of self-effacement. Herein the ego becomes the Accusing Nafs and thus starts the journey toward inner purification.
==========

And the ego has evolved into the Inspired Nafs. It is only at this level, and not anytime before, that one can experience the true meaning of the word “surrender” and roam the Valley of Knowledge.
==========

Those who manage to go further reach the Valley of Wisdom and come to know the Serene Nafs. Here the ego is not what it used to be, having altered into a high level of consciousness.
==========

Beyond that lies the Valley of Unity. Those who are here will be pleased with whatever situation God places them in. Mundane matters make no difference to them, as they have achieved the Pleased Nafs.
==========

In the next stage, the Pleasing Nafs, one becomes a lantern to humanity, radiating energy to everyone who asks for it, teaching and illuminating like a true master. Sometimes such a person can also have healing powers. Wherever he goes, he will make a big difference in other people’s lives.
==========

Finally, in the seventh stage, one attains the Purified Nafs and becomes Insan-i Kâmil, a perfect human being. But nobody knows much about that state, and even if a few ever did, they wouldn’t speak of it.
==========

The route from the first to the last stage is by no means linear. There is always the danger of tumbling back into earlier stages, sometimes even from a superior stage all the way down to the first one.
==========

It was the laughter of a woman who had never learned not to pay too much attention to the judgments of others.
==========

The speed with which human relations materialized and dissipated amazed Ella more than ever, and yet she tried not to pass judgment on other people anymore.
==========

She had discovered that once she accepted that she didn’t have to stress herself about things she had no control over, another self emerged from inside—one who was wiser, calmer, and far more sensible.
==========

“Just accept the void!”
==========

Nothing had changed, and yet nothing was the same anymore.
==========

But patience doesn’t come easily, and it’s getting harder with each passing day.
==========

I have known Christian babies with Muslim names and Muslim babies fed by Christian milk mothers. Ours is an ever-liquid world where everything flows and mixes. If there is a frontier between Christianity and Islam, it has to be more flexible than scholars on both sides think it is.
==========

I never knew it was possible to live with someone under the same roof, sleep in the same bed, and still feel that he was not really there.
==========

Pity the ignorant who assume they can negotiate and settle debts with God. Do such people think God is a grocer who attempts to weigh our virtues and our wrongdoings on two separate scales? Is He a clerk meticulously writing down our sins in His accounting book so as to make us pay Him back someday? Is this their notion of Oneness?
==========

Al-Jamal, al-Kayyum, al-Rahman, al-Rahim. Through famine and flood, dry and athirst, I will sing and dance for Him till my knees buckle, my body collapses, and my heart stops pounding. I will smash my ego to smithereens, until I am no more than a particle of nothingness, the wayfarer of pure emptiness, the dust of the dust in His great architecture.
==========

Instead of searching for the essence of the Qur’an and embracing it as a whole, however, the bigots single out a specific verse or two, giving priority to the divine commands that they deem to be in tune with their fearful minds. They keep reminding everyone that on the Day of Judgment all human beings will be forced to walk the Bridge of Sirat, thinner than a hair, sharper than a razor. Unable to cross the bridge, the sinful will tumble into the pits of hell underneath, where they will suffer forever. Those who have led a virtuous life will make it to the other end of the bridge, where they will be rewarded with exotic fruits, sweet waters, and virgins. This, in a nutshell, is their notion of afterlife. So great is their obsession with horrors and rewards, flames and fruits, angels and demons, that in their itch to reach a future that will justify who they are today they forget about God!
==========

Hell is in the here and now. So is heaven. Quit worrying about hell or dreaming about heaven, as they are both present inside this very moment. Every time we fall in love, we ascend to heaven. Every time we hate, envy, or fight someone, we tumble straight into the fires of hell.
==========

Is there a worse hell than the torment a man suffers when he knows deep down in his conscience that he has done something wrong, awfully wrong? Ask that man. He will tell you what hell is.
==========

Is there a better paradise than the bliss that descends upon a man at those rare moments in life when the bolts of the universe fly open and he feels in possession of all the secrets of eternity and fully united with God? Ask that man. He will tell you what heaven is.
==========

Why worry so much about the aftermath, an imaginary future, when this very moment is the only time we can truly and fully experience both the presence and the absence of God in our lives?
==========

Motivated by neither the fear of punishment in hell nor the desire to be rewarded in heaven, Sufis love God simply because they love Him, pure and easy, untainted and nonnegotiable.
==========

“Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi or zen. Not any religion or cultural system. I am not of the East, nor of the West.… My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless.” Rumi
==========

As a writer, he might have wanted to create his central character in his own image, just as God had created human beings in His image.
==========

When surrounded by cold-blooded enemies on all sides, how can we afford to be peaceful? This is why people like Rumi get on my nerves. I don’t care how highly everyone thinks of him. For me he is a coward who spreads nothing but cowardice.
==========

Thus sheltered and privileged and always showered with attention and approval,
==========

It’s easy to preach tolerance when you have a history like that!
==========

Ali, the Prophet’s successor and companion, was fighting with an infidel on a battlefield. Ali was about to thrust his sword into the other man’s heart when all of a sudden the infidel raised his head and spit at him. Ali immediately dropped his sword, took a deep breath, and walked away. The infidel was stunned. He ran after Ali and asked him why he was letting him go. “Because I’m very angry at you,” said Ali. “Then why don’t you kill me?” the infidel asked. “I don’t understand.” Ali explained, “When you spit in my face, I got very angry. My ego was provoked, yearning for revenge. If I kill you now, I’ll be following my ego. And that would be a huge mistake.” So Ali set the man free. The infidel was so touched that he became Ali’s friend and follower, and in time he converted to Islam of his own free will.
==========

Shams is the person who was responsible for the transformation of Rumi from a local cleric to a world-famous poet and mystic. Master Sameed used to say to me, “Even if there might be a Shams equivalent in some people, what matters is, where are the Rumis to see it?”
==========

It’s as if for years on end you compile a personal dictionary. In it you give your definition of every concept that matters to you, such as “truth,” “happiness,” or “beauty.” At every major turning point in life, you refer to this dictionary, hardly ever feeling the need to question its premises. Then one day a stranger comes and snatches your precious dictionary and throws it away. “All your definitions need to be redefined,” he says. “It’s time for you to unlearn everything you know.” And you, for some reason unbeknownst to your mind but obvious to your heart, instead of raising objections or getting cross with him, gladly comply.
==========

But more than that, he has taught me to unlearn everything I knew.
==========

At the end of the day, those who ask this question are the ones who won’t understand it, and as for those who do understand, they don’t ask such things.
==========

When you love someone this much, you expect everyone around you to feel the same way, sharing your joy and euphoria. And when that doesn’t happen, you feel surprised, then offended and betrayed.
==========

Finally one day they brought Layla to the emperor’s palace. When she took off her veil, Harun ar-Rashid was disillusioned. Not that Layla was ugly, crippled, or old. But she wasn’t extraordinarily attractive either. She was a human being with ordinary human needs and several defects, a simple woman, like countless others. The emperor did not hide his disappointment. “Are you the one Majnun has been crazy about? Why, you look so ordinary. What is so special about you?” Layla broke into a smile. “Yes, I am Layla. But you are not Majnun,” she answered. “You have to see me with the eyes of Majnun. Otherwise you could never solve this mystery called love.”
==========

Is there a way to grasp what love means without becoming a lover first?
==========

Love cannot be explained. It can only be experienced. Love cannot be explained, yet it explains all.
==========

“Al-Nisa,” I said. “There are some parts in it where men are said to be superior to women. It even says men can beat their wives.… ” “Is that so?” Shams asked with such exaggerated interest that I couldn’t be sure whether he was serious or teasing me. After a momentary silence, he broke into a soft smile and out of memory recited the verse. “Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others and because they spend out of their property; the good women are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded; and (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them; then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them; surely Allah is High, Great.” When he finished, Shams closed his eyes and recited the same verse, this time in a different translation. “Men are the support of women as God gives some more means than others, and because they spend of their wealth (to provide for them). So women who are virtuous are obedient to God and guard the hidden as God has guarded it. As for women you feel are averse, talk to them suasively; then leave them alone in bed (without molesting them) and go to bed with them (when they are willing). If they open out to you, do not seek an excuse for blaming them. Surely God is sublime and great.
==========

“The Qur’an is a gushing river,” he said. “Those who look at it from a distance see only one river. But for those swimming in it, there are four currents. Like different types of fish, some of us swim closer to the surface while some others swim in deep waters down below.”
==========

“Those who like to swim close to the surface are content with the outer meaning of the Qur’an. Many people are like that. They take the verses too literally. No wonder when they read a verse like the Nisa, they arrive at the conclusion that men are held superior to women. Because that is exactly what they want to see.”
==========

“There are three more currents. The second one is deeper than the first, but still close to the surface. As your awareness expands, so does your grasp of the Qur’an. But for that to happen, you need to take the plunge.”
==========

“The third undercurrent is the esoteric, batini, reading. If you read the Nisa with your inner eye open, you’ll see that the verse is not about women and men but about womanhood and manhood. And each and every one of us, including you and me, has both femininity and masculinity in us, in varying degrees and shades. Only when we learn to embrace both can we attain harmonious Oneness.”
==========

“Every man has a degree of womanliness inside.”
“Even the ones who are manly men?”
“Especially those, my dear,”
==========

As a flame against my skin. I was flabbergasted.
==========

The boy who took the news of the death of his mother without shedding a tear. All he did was to look down at his feet as if suddenly ashamed of his shoes and purse his bottom lip until its color was gone. Neither a word nor a sob had come out of his mouth. I wish he would have cried.
==========

“If we can embrace the universe as a whole, with all its differences and contradictions, everything will melt into One.”
==========

Drunks, beggars, thieves, prostitutes, gamblers—the most inconsolable and the most downtrodden. Can we love all of God’s creatures? It is a difficult test, and one that only a few can pass.”
==========

“The universe is one being. Everything and everyone is interconnected through an invisible web of stories. Whether we are aware of it or not, we are all in a silent conversation. Do no harm. Practice compassion. And do not gossip behind anyone’s back—not even a seemingly innocent remark! The words that come out of our mouths do not vanish but are perpetually stored in infinite space, and they will come back to us in due time. One man’s pain will hurt us all. One man’s joy will make everyone smile,”
==========

Khidr said to Moses, “I am a lifelong traveler. God has assigned me to roam the world and do what needs to be done. You say you want to join me in my journeys, but if you follow me, you must not question anything I do. Can you bear to accompany me without questioning? Can you trust me fully?” “Yes, I can,” Moses assured him. “Let me come with you. I promise, I won’t ask you any questions.” So they set out on the road, visiting various towns on the way. But when he witnessed Khidr perform senseless actions, like killing a young boy or sinking a boat, Moses could not hold his tongue. “Why did you do those awful things?” he asked desperately. “What happened to your promise?” Khidr asked back. “Did I not tell you that you can ask me no questions?” Each time Moses apologized, promising not to ask anything, and each time he broke his promise. In the end, Khidr explained the reason behind each and every one of his actions. Slowly but surely, Moses understood that things that can seem malicious or unfortunate are often a blessing in disguise, whereas things that might seem pleasant can be harmful in the long run. His brief companionship with Khidr was to be the most eye-opening experience in his life.
==========

It is in the verse al-Kahf, clear and plain. Moses was an exemplary man, great enough to become a prophet someday, as well as a legendary commander and lawmaker. But there was a time when he sorely needed a spiritual companion to open his third eye. And that companion was no other than Khidr, the Comforter of the Distressed and Dejected. Khidr said to Moses, “I am a lifelong traveler. God has assigned me to roam the world and do what needs to be done. You say you want to join me in my journeys, but if you follow me, you must not question anything I do. Can you bear to accompany me without questioning? Can you trust me fully?” “Yes, I can,” Moses assured him. “Let me come with you. I promise, I won’t ask you any questions.” So they set out on the road, visiting various towns on the way. But when he witnessed Khidr perform senseless actions, like killing a young boy or sinking a boat, Moses could not hold his tongue. “Why did you do those awful things?” he asked desperately. “What happened to your promise?” Khidr asked back. “Did I not tell you that you can ask me no questions?” Each time Moses apologized, promising not to ask anything, and each time he broke his promise. In the end, Khidr explained the reason behind each and every one of his actions. Slowly but surely, Moses understood that things that can seem malicious or unfortunate are often a blessing in disguise, whereas things that might seem pleasant can be harmful in the long run. His brief companionship with Khidr was to be the most eye-opening experience in his life.
==========

“I don’t quarrel with them, I quarrel with their ego. That’s different.”
==========

This world is like a snowy mountain that echoes your voice. Whatever you speak, good or evil, will somehow come back to you. Therefore, if there is someone who harbors ill thoughts about you, saying similarly bad things about him will only make matters worse. You will be locked in a vicious circle of malevolent energy. Instead for forty days and nights say and think nice things about that person. Everything will be different at the end of forty days, because you will be different inside.”
==========

Two men were traveling from one town to another. They came to a stream that had risen due to heavy rainfall. Just when they were about to cross the water, they noticed a young, beautiful woman standing there all alone, in need of help. One of the men immediately went to her side. He picked the woman up and carried her in his arms across the stream. Then he dropped her there, waved good-bye, and the two men went their way. During the rest of the trip, the second traveler was unusually silent and sullen, not responding to his friend’s questions. After several hours of sulking, unable to keep silent anymore, he said, “Why did you touch that woman? She could have seduced you! Men and women cannot come into contact like that!” The first man responded calmly, “My friend, I carried the woman across the stream, and that is where I left her. It is you who have been carrying her ever since.”
==========

A pendulum woman. Capable of swinging from extreme joy to extreme depression in the span of a few minutes,
==========

Margot regarded herself as a bohemian, an idealist, a radical, a bisexual, a leftist, an individualist anarchist, a multiculturalist, a human-rights advocate, a counterculture activist, an ecofeminist—labels I couldn’t even define should one ask me what they meant.
==========

Did she ever love me as much as I loved her? I don’t think so. But I know she did love me in her own self-centered and self-destructive way.
==========

After I lost the woman I loved, I metamorphosed drastically. Neither a boy nor an adult, I became a trapped animal. This stage of my life I call my encounter with the letter S in the word “Sufi.”
==========

The past is an interpretation. The future is an illusion. The world does not move through time as if it were a straight line, proceeding from the past to the future. Instead time moves through and within us, in endless spirals. Eternity does not mean infinite time, but simply timelessness. If you want to experience eternal illumination, put the past and the future out of your mind and remain within the present moment.
==========

“The silence that follows a massive disaster is the most peaceful sound you can hear on the surface of the world,”
==========

And suddenly I realized I was living my fear and, to my surprise, it wasn’t frightful.
==========

The only filth was the filth inside.
==========

“The fourth level is unspeakable,” he said. “There is a stage after which language fails us. When you step into the zone of love, you won’t need language.”
==========

Next to him I felt both like a child learning life anew and like a woman ready to nurture life inside my womb.
==========

Destiny doesn’t mean that your life has been strictly predetermined. Therefore, to leave everything to fate and to not actively contribute to the music of the universe is a sign of sheer ignorance. “The music of the universe is all-pervading and it is composed on forty different levels. “Your destiny is the level where you will play your tune. You might not change your instrument but how well to play is entirely in your hands.”
==========

One day a young woman asked a dervish what fate was about. “Come with me,” the dervish said. “Let’s take a look at the world together.” Soon they ran into a procession. A killer was being taken to the plaza to be hanged. The dervish asked, “That man will be executed. But is that because somebody gave him the money with which he bought his murder weapon? Or is it because nobody stopped him while he was committing the crime? Or is it because someone caught him afterward? Where is the cause and effect in this case?”
==========

I felt a warm glow in the pit of my stomach and a wave of desire between my legs. How embarrassing it was—and yet, oddly, not embarrassing at all.
==========

For a passing moment, I stood frozen, inhaling his smell. It was a mixture of sandalwood and soft amber with a faint, crisp tang underneath, like the smell of earth after the rain. I felt a warm glow in the pit of my stomach and a wave of desire between my legs. How embarrassing it was—and yet, oddly, not embarrassing at all.
==========

“In love, boundaries are blurred,”
==========

“I don’t care about haram or halal. I’d rather extinguish the fire in hell and burn heaven, so that people could start loving God for no other reason than love.”
==========

But don’t you think that gives me all the more reason to speak my mind? Besides, narrow-minded people are deaf anyhow. To their sealed ears, whatever I say is sheer blasphemy.”
==========

They always condemn those who drink wine, or are on the lookout for adulterous women to stone, but when it comes to gossiping, which is a far more serious sin in the eyes of God, they take no notice of any wrongdoing.
==========

One day a man came running to a Sufi and said, panting, “Hey, they are carrying trays, look over there!” The Sufi answered calmly, “What is it to us? Is it any of my business?” “But they are taking those trays to your house!” the man exclaimed. “Then is it any of your business?” the Sufi said.
==========

If the whole world were swallowed by the sea, what would it matter to a duck?
==========

No wonder the Prophet Muhammad said, “In this world take pity on three kinds of people. The rich man who has lost his fortune, the well-respected man who has lost his respectability, and the wise man who is surrounded by ignorants.”
==========

As hurtful as it is, being slandered is ultimately good for one on the path.
==========

The true Sufi is such that even when he is unjustly accused, attacked, and condemned from all sides, he patiently endures, uttering not a single bad word about any of his critics. A Sufi never apportions blame. How can there be opponents or rivals or even “others” when there is no “self” in the first place? How can there be anyone to blame when there is only One?
==========

I looked for comfort and compassion in all the wrong places.
==========

We shared everything. Our songs, dreams, pocket money, drugs, food, beds… Everything but the pain.
==========

Whatever was earned in the brothel had to stay in the brothel.
==========

Shams of Tabriz had said that faith and love turned human beings into heroes because they removed all the fear and anxiety from their hearts.
==========

“Numbing the pain is not the same as healing it. When the anesthesia wears off, the pain is still there.”
==========

On the Sufi path, first you discover the art of being alone amid the crowd. Next you discover the crowd within your solitude—the voices inside you.
==========

I was sick and tired of always longing to be somewhere else, somewhere beyond, always in a rush despite myself.
==========

“No, because what I need is not in the kitchen. It is in the tavern. I am in the mood to get drunk, you see.” I pretended not to notice the shadow of incomprehension that crossed Rumi’s face, and I continued. “Instead of going to the kitchen for water, would you go to the tavern for wine?” “You mean, you want me to get you wine?” Rumi asked, pronouncing the last word cautiously, as if afraid of breaking it. “That’s right. I’d so much appreciate it if you would get us some wine. Two bottles would be enough, one for you, one for me. But do me a favor, please. When you go to the tavern, don’t just simply get the bottles and come back. Stay there for a while. Talk to the people. I’ll be waiting here for you. No need to rush.” Rumi gave me a look that was half irritated, half bewildered. I recalled the face of the novice in Baghdad who had wanted to accompany me but cared too much about his reputation to take the plunge. His concern for the opinions of others had held him back. Now I wondered if his reputation was going to hold Rumi back, too. But to my great relief, Rumi stood up and nodded. “I have never been to a tavern before and have never consumed wine. I don’t think drinking is the right thing to do. But I trust you fully, because I trust the love between us. There must be a reason you have asked me to do such a thing. I need to find out what that reason is. I’ll go and bring us wine.” With that, he said good-bye and walked out.
==========

“I’ve been sent here by Shams so that I could have my reputation ruined.” “And is that a good thing?” I asked. Rumi laughed. “Well, it depends on how you look at it. Sometimes it is necessary to destroy all attachments in order to win over your ego. If we are too attached to our family, our position in society, even our local school or mosque, to the extent that they stand in the way of Union with God, we need to tear those attachments down.”
==========

“If the wine drinker Has a deep gentleness in him, He will show that, When drunk. But if he has hidden anger and arrogance, Those appear, And since most people do, Wine is forbidden to everyone.” Rumi
==========

“If you want to strengthen your faith, you will need to soften inside. For your faith to be rock solid, your heart needs to be as soft as a feather. Through an illness, accident, loss, or fright, one way or another, we all are faced with incidents that teach us how to become less selfish and judgmental, and more compassionate and generous. Yet some of us learn the lesson and manage to become milder, while some others end up becoming even harsher than before. The only way to get closer to Truth is to expand your heart so that it will encompass all humanity and still have room for more Love.”
==========

“Religious rules and prohibitions are important,” he said. “But they should not be turned into unquestionable taboos. It is with such awareness that I drink the wine you offer me today, believing with all my heart that there is a sobriety beyond the drunkenness of love.”
==========

Nothing should stand between yourself and God. Not imams, priests, rabbis, or any other custodians of moral or religious leadership. Not spiritual masters, not even your faith. Believe in your values and your rules, but never lord them over others. If you keep breaking other people’s hearts, whatever religious duty you perform is no good. “Stay away from all sorts of idolatry, for they will blur your vision. Let God and only God be your guide. Learn the Truth, my friend, but be careful not to make a fetish out of your truths.”
==========

Then there was silence. Twenty years of marriage, twenty years of sleeping in the same bed, sharing the same shower, eating the same food, raising three kids … and what it all added up to was silence.
==========

Wasn’t it Bistami who pronounced, “Look at me! How great is my glory!” Wasn’t it he who then said, “I saw the Kaaba walking around me”? The man went as far as stating, “I am the smith of my own self.” If this is not blasphemy, then what is? Such is the level of the man Shams quotes with respect. For just like Bistami, he, too, is a heretic.
==========

Sometimes nasty encounters are not only inevitable, they are necessary,”
==========

The tension between the two men was so thick that the air in the classroom could be cut with a knife.
==========

“You say you won’t talk to me, but you have been talking about me,”
==========

“A man with many opinions but no questions! There’s something so wrong with that.”
==========

“One who thinks he has all the answers is the most ignorant,”
==========

Four merchants were praying in a mosque when they saw the muezzin enter. The first merchant stopped his prayer and asked, “Muezzin! Has the prayer been called? Or do we still have time?” The second merchant stopped praying and turned to his friend. “Hey, you spoke while you were praying. Your prayer is now void. You need to start anew!” Upon hearing this, the third merchant interjected, “Why do you blame him, you idiot? You should have minded your own prayer. Now yours is void, too.” The fourth merchant broke into a smile and said loudly, “Look at them! All three have messed up. Thank God I’m not one of the misguided.”
==========

“If these merchants made a mistake, it is not because they spoke during prayer,” I said, “but because instead of minding their own business and connecting with God, they were more interested in what was going on around them. However, if we pass judgment on them, I am afraid we’ll be making the same crucial mistake.”
==========

“My answer is, all four merchants have erred for a similar reason, and yet none of them can be said to be in the wrong, because at the end of the day, it is not up to us to judge them.”
==========

“The Sufi says, ‘I should mind my inner encounter with God rather than judging other people.’ An orthodox scholar, however, is always on the lookout for the mistakes of others. But don’t forget, students, most of the time he who complains about others is himself at fault.”
==========

I wouldn’t trade the dust off of the old shoes of a real lover of God for the heads of today’s sheikhs.
==========

“In the end, neither your teacher nor I can know more than God allows us to know. We all play our parts. Only one thing matters, though. That the light of the sun isn’t overshadowed by the blindness of the eye of the denier, the one who refuses to see.”
==========

It’s true that I look different, because I feel different.
==========

Not, I will have to tear it into a dozen bits. I will act as if there is nothing new in my life, nothing unusual. Yes, I could do what I always do and pretend that everything is normal.
==========

“Kings and beggars, virgins and harlots, all are under the same sky!”
==========

It is not the decorations outside but the emptiness inside that holds us straight. Just like that, it is not what we aspire to achieve but the consciousness of nothingness that keeps us going.”
==========

While everyone in this world strives to get somewhere and become someone, only to leave it all behind after death, you aim for the supreme stage of nothingness. Live this life as light and empty as the number zero. We are no different from a pot. It is not the decorations outside but the emptiness inside that holds us straight. Just like that, it is not what we aspire to achieve but the consciousness of nothingness that keeps us going.”
==========

We want to introduce the dance of the whirling dervishes. It is called the sema. Whoever yearns for Divine Love is more than welcome to join us.”
==========

“What if people don’t like it? Not everyone thinks highly of dance,” I said to Shams, hoping this would have the effect of stopping whatever he was about to say next. “At least consider postponing this performance.” “Not everyone thinks highly of God,” Shams said without missing a beat. “Are we going to postpone believing in Him, too?”
==========

“This, my friends, is called the sema—the dance of the whirling dervishes. From this day on, dervishes of every age will dance the sema. One hand pointed up to the sky, the other hand pointing down to earth, every speck of love we receive from God, we pledge to distribute to the people.”
==========

“A man who has no time for stories is a man who has no time for God,” he said. “Don’t you know that God is the best storyteller?”
==========

They think God gave us music—not only the music we make with our voices and instruments but the music underlying all forms of life, and then He forbade our listening to it. Don’t they see that all nature is singing? Everything in this universe moves with a rhythm—the pumping of the heart, the flaps of a bird’s wings, the wind on a stormy night, a blacksmith working iron, or the sounds an unborn baby is surrounded with inside the womb.… Everything partakes, passionately and spontaneously, in one magnificent melody.
==========

Whatever we received from the skies, we passed on to the earth, from God to people.
==========

Essential forces of the universe: fire, wind, earth, and water, and the fifth element, the void.
==========

We are the same person before and after we loved,
==========

As for me, I, too, have changed and am changing. I am moving from being into nothingness. From one season to another, one stage to the next, from life to death.
==========

For the silk to prosper, the silkworm had to die.
==========

Where there is love, there is bound to be heartache.
==========

In that long moment, his eyes were the eyes of a man who had neither the strength nor the emotion left in him to stop his wife from going to another man.
==========

If she was going to regret this evening, which she suspected she might, she could regret it later.
==========

I had never seen so much suffering in a man’s eyes.
==========

And this woman who had converted to Islam to marry my father, who had been a wonderful mother to me and my brother, and who loved her husband so much she memorized the poems he wrote for someone else, gave me a pained look and said nothing. Suddenly she had no more words inside her.
==========

Once there was a Sufi master who was so knowledgeable that he had been given the breath of Jesus. He had only one student, and he was quite happy with what he was given. But his disciple was of a different mind. In his desire to see everyone else marvel at the powers of his master, he kept begging him to take on more followers. “All right,” the master finally agreed. “If it will make you happy, I’ll do as you say.” They went to the market that day. In one of the stalls, there were bird-shaped candies. As soon as the master blew upon them, the birds came alive and flew away with the wind. Speechless, the townspeople immediately gathered around him with admiration. From that day on, everyone in town was singing the master’s praises. Soon there were so many followers and admirers around him that his old disciple couldn’t see him much anymore. “Oh, Master, I was wrong. It was much better in the old days,” the disciple moaned forlornly. “Do something. Make them all go away, please.” “All right. If it will make you happy, I’ll shoo them away.” The next day while he was preaching, the master broke wind. His followers were appalled. One by one, they turned and walked away from him. Only his old disciple remained. “Why didn’t you leave with the others?” the master asked. And the disciple answered, “I didn’t come to you because of the first wind, nor would I leave you because of the last.”
==========

Though he was a faqih, he acted as if he were a faqir.
==========

Whatever you see as profitable, flee from it! Drink poison and pour away the water of life! Abandon security and stay in frightful places! Throw away reputation, become disgraced and shameless!
==========

Submission does not mean being weak or passive. It leads to neither fatalism nor capitulation. Just the opposite. True power resides in submission—a power that comes from within. Those who submit to the divine essence of life will live in unperturbed tranquillity and peace even when the whole wide world goes through turbulence after turbulence.
==========

Little did I know that I was making the most common and the most painful mistake women have made all throughout the ages: to naïvely think that with their love they can change the men they love.
==========

“There is no such thing as early or late in life,” Aziz said. “Everything happens at the right time.”
==========

“I already love you.” Aziz smiled. “But you don’t even know me!” “I don’t have to know to love.” Ella sighed. “This is crazy.”
==========

Then he gently moved her onto the bed. Slowly, tenderly, and in ever-growing circles, he moved his palms up from her feet toward her ankles and from there toward her belly. All the while his lips muttered words that sounded like a secret ancient code to Ella. Suddenly she understood. He was praying. While his hands caressed every inch of her body, his eyes remained firmly closed and his lips prayed for her. It was the most spiritual thing she had ever experienced. And although she kept her clothes on, and so did he, and although there was nothing carnal about it, it was the sexiest feeling she had ever experienced.
==========

“You don’t want me?” Ella asked, amazed by the fragility of her voice. “I don’t want to do anything that would make you unhappy afterward.”
==========

Beautiful bride, don’t you cry Say bye to your mom, bye to dad You will hear the birds sing tomorrow Though it will never be the same.…
==========

Why was it that women always sang sad songs on wedding nights? Sufis associated death with weddings and celebrated the day they died as their union with God. Women, too, associated weddings with death, though for entirely different reasons. Even when they were happily getting married, a wave of sadness descended upon them. In every wedding celebration, there was mourning for the virgin who was soon to become a wife and a mother.
==========

I kissed her again. The warmth of her lips sent waves of desire across my entire body. She smelled of jasmine and wildflowers. Stretching out beside her, I inhaled her smell and touched her breasts, so small and firm. All I wanted was to enter her and get lost inside her. She offered herself to me the way a rosebud opens to the rain. I pulled away.
==========

I felt a strong need to run away from everything, not only from this house, this marriage, this town, but also from this body I had been given.
==========

In that moment I understood what a terrible mistake I had made by marrying her. My head throbbing with pain, I walked out of the room into the night. A man like me should never have gotten married. I wasn’t designed to perform marital duties. I saw this clearly. What saddened me was the cost of this knowledge.
==========

In this world, it is not similarities or regularities that take us a step forward, but blunt opposites. And all the opposites in the universe are present within each and every one of us. Therefore the believer needs to meet the unbeliever residing within. And the nonbeliever should get to know the silent faithful in him. Until the day one reaches the stage of Insan-i Kâmil, the perfect human being, faith is a gradual process and one that necessitates its seeming opposite: disbelief.
==========

Even jealousy can be used in a constructive way and serve a higher purpose. Even disbelief can be positive.
==========

Once he put his head on my lap as he was explaining a rule. He slowly closed his eyes, and as his voice trailed off into a whisper, he fell asleep. My fingers combed through his long hair, and my lips kissed his forehead. It seemed an eternity before he opened his eyes. Pulling me down toward himself, he kissed me softly. It was the most blissful moment we ever had together. But that was it. To this day his body is an unknown continent to me, as is my body to him.
==========

I have learned not to take any offense,
==========

Finally sensing that this must be what the deepest reading of the Qur’an feels like—a drop in infinity!
==========

Before long I drifted into a state of nothingness, where all colors melted into white and all sounds dissolved into a perpetual drone. I could not distinguish people’s faces anymore and could not hear spoken words beyond a distant hum in the background.
==========

Not only did she not mind being seen, it felt as if a part of her longed to be seen.
==========

You see, Ella, all I can give you is the present moment. That is all I have. But the truth is, no one has more than that. It is just that we like to pretend we do.”
==========

If you let love take hold of you and change you, at first through its presence, then through its absence—”
==========

This world is erected upon the principle of reciprocity. Neither a drop of kindness nor a speck of evil will remain unreciprocated. Fear not the plots, deceptions, or tricks of other people. If somebody is setting a trap, remember, so is God. He is the biggest plotter. Not even a leaf stirs outside God’s knowledge. Simply and fully believe in that. Whatever God does, He does beautifully.”
==========

“God is a meticulous clockmaker. So precise is His order that everything on earth happens in its own time. Neither a minute late nor a minute early. And for everyone without exception, the clock works accurately. For each there is a time to love and a time to die.”
==========

“It is never too late to ask yourself, ‘Am I ready to change the life I am living? Am I ready to change within?’ “Even if a single day in your life is the same as the day before, it surely is a pity. At every moment and with each new breath, one should be renewed and renewed again. There is only one way to be born into a new life: to die before death.”
==========

“Between you and me, son of mine, words have dried up. I have nothing to hear from you and nothing to tell you in return,”
==========

Here is my fana, herein my baqa.”
==========

I am the embodiment of nothingness. Here is my fana, herein my baqa.”
==========

By and large over time, pain turns into grief, grief turns into silence, and silence turns into lonesomeness, as vast and bottomless as the dark oceans.
==========

Eyesight conflicts with inner knowledge.
==========

After grief comes another season, another valley, another you. And the lover who is nowhere to be found, you start to see everywhere.
==========

No eye sees so clear and sharp as the eye of love. After grief comes another season, another valley, another you. And the lover who is nowhere to be found, you start to see everywhere.
==========

Eyesight conflicts with inner knowledge. No eye sees so clear and sharp as the eye of love. After grief comes another season, another valley, another you. And the lover who is nowhere to be found, you start to see everywhere.
==========

Prose or poetry, the words come to me in flocks and then leave just as suddenly, like migrating birds.
==========

Yesterday’s victors became today’s losers.
==========

Every winner is inclined to think he will be triumphant forever. Every loser tends to fear that he is going to be beaten forever. But both are wrong for the same reason: Everything changes except the face of God.
==========

Little by little, one turns forty, fifty, and sixty and, with each major decade, feels more complete.
==========

While the parts change, the whole always remains the same. For every thief who departs this world, a new one is born. And every decent person who passes away is replaced by a new one. In this way not only does nothing remain the same but also nothing ever really changes. For every Sufi who dies, another is born somewhere.
==========

We will dance in the middle of a brawl or a major war, all the same. We will dance in our hurt and grief, with joy and elation, alone and together, as slow and fast as the flow of water. We will dance in our blood.
==========

Ask anyone who has heard the call to morning prayer for the first time and he will tell you the same thing. That it is beautiful, rich, and mysterious. And yet at the same time there is something uncanny about it, almost eerie. Just like love.
==========

If there was anything worse in the eyes of society than a woman abandoning her husband for another man, it was a woman abandoning her future for the present moment.
==========

And at the same time silently and desperately quarreling with God for taking back so soon the love he had given her so late in life.
==========

Since then she’d been waiting here by his bedside, waiting without knowing what to expect, hoping against hope, and at the same time silently and desperately quarreling with God for taking back so soon the love he had given her so late in life.
==========
I’m going to try living one day at a time. I’ll see what my heart says. It is one of the rules, isn’t it?”
==========
“A life without love is of no account. Don’t ask yourself what kind of love you should seek, spiritual or material, divine or mundane, Eastern or Western.… Divisions only lead to more divisions. Love has no labels, no definitions. It is what it is, pure and simple. “Love is the water of life. And a lover is a soul of fire! “The universe turns differently when fire loves water.”
==========

With Shahida talking on, my gaze settled upon a tall, dark, handsome man in a black suit. His starched white shirt was set off by a burgundy tie and a matching handkerchief. My mind classified him as a rake, a bit devilish in an appealing sort of way. He had attracted a group of women around him, who seemed to hang on his every word. But the buzz of gentle conversation, the tinkle of ice cubes and well-manicured laughter made it impossible for me to hear. I asked my new friend who he was.
“Him? You mean you don’t know who he is?” Shahida sounded surprised.
My face must have registered curiosity because she quickly explained, “That is Mustafa Khar”.
“Oh,” I replied.
————————————-
After he [Shakirullah Durrani – father of Tehmina Durrani] left the army, during Field Marshal Ayub’s presidency, he had initiated and developed the first Investment Corporation of Pakistan (ICP). Then in 1967, he was appointed Managing Director of PIA. Later, when General Yahya Khan declared martial law and became President, my father was appointed Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan.
————————————-
His [father of Tehmina Durrani] demeanor turned serious as he reported the details of his day to mother in clipped, crisp English, as if looking for approval. If he ventured a joke, her lips tightened. Father had to live by my mother’s rules. He interfered with nothing in the house; my mother took all the decisions regarding our home.
————————————-
Bhutto was now committed to fighting for the supremacy of West Pakistan. He asked my father surreptitiously to withdraw state assets from the east. Although my father was sympathetic, he refused to undertake such an unethical action, and Bhutto took the rebuff poorly. In December of that year, India finally invaded East Pakistan. General Yahya Khan accepted responsibility for the defeat and break-up of Pakistan and resigned; and Bhutto became the undisputed leader of all that remained of our country – what had formerly been West Pakistan.
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I still did not love Anees [husband of Tehmina Durrani]. If I had, perhaps I would have found Mustafa Khar less intriguing, and less troubling.
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Khar means ‘ass’ in Persian.
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Democracy took hold in India and the feudal system collapsed. But in Pakistan, although lip-service was paid to democratic principles, feudal lords remained in control. It was they who decided who would sit in National Assembly and who would reside in the Prime Minister’s house.
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Shikar [hunt] taught Mustafa courage, endurance, and patience. And through hunting he grasped the importance of strategy and tactical maneuvering. He learned how to lure, entice and entrap.
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Mustafa told me later he had married his illiterate cousin, Wazir, who was many years older than him. She immediately became pregnant. Mustafa ran away from his village and his fate, fleeting first to Multan and then to the great city of Lahore. Here he fascinated by such mysteries as the sight of a woman with a stylish hair-do sitting cool and poised behind the steering wheel of a shiny car. He lacked the social grace necessary to approach such and ice-maiden; at the moment, he could only lust from distance.
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At the hillside resort of Murree, Mustafa met women who purveyed their charms for a price, and he discovered that he was comfortable with professional sex.
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Back home, Wazir suffered in silence. Her humiliation was compounded when the elders dissolved her marriage to Mustafa and gave her to her much younger brother-in-law. She bore Mustafa’s first son, Abdur Rehman.
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Meanwhile, in Murree, Mustafa befriended a man who had an attractive and somewhat educated sweetheart Firdaus. When Firdaus discovered that she was pregnant, the man fled and Mustafa provided a comfortable crying shoulder. To Mustafa, the faller Firdaus was a victim of society. He married her on impulse, and in the course of time Firdaus gave birth to a son, bearing Mustafa’s surname. And within a year a second son, Billoo, was born. All this responsibility proved too much for Mustafa, who now decided that he had confused sympathy with love. Even as Firdaus was in the hospital recuperating from Billoo’s birth, Mustafa sent her divorce papers.
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Somewhat chastened, Mustafa returned to his village and – in a typical feudal fashion – was forgiven by his elders.
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Jatoi introduced Mustafa to the dynamic foreign minister, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, and the two men began a complex relationship that was to vacillate between the extremes of love and hate. Like many young men at that time, Mustafa fell under the magnetic spell of Bhutto.
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Bhutto, believing that President Ayub Khan had won the war on the battlefield but lost it across the negotiating table, resigned his post as foreign minister. As he prepared to board a train to return home to Karachi no-one came to bid him farewell – except for Mustafa Khar. And this was an indication of the anti-establishment course of Mustafa’s political career.
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During one of his numerous flights to attend parliament sessions in East Pakistan, Mustafa was smitten by an apparition in green, the flight attendant who served him his meal. Her name was Safia and she was from a lower middle-class background, working to help and support her family. A feudal lord rarely met such a ‘liberated’ woman elsewhere; Safia exuded an aura of adventure. They spend the next two days together and married.
Mustafa immediately reverted to the dictates of his feudal heritage. He plucked Safia from the sky and locked her in a cage. His formerly modern bride went behind the veil, banished to the oblivion of his home village of Kot Addu, where her mission was to live in anticipation of his infrequent visits.
Here Safia bore Mustafa a son, named Bilal, and a daughter who, owing to a lack of medical facilities, died of diarrhea.
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One of Bhutto’s heroes was the Indonesian President, Sukarno, who understood the Third World peoples are emotional and illiterate, and require simple oratorical slogans to keep them loyal to their politicians.
Citing Sukarno, Bhutto often said that exceptional men needed extraordinary wives who were understanding and able to cope with their husbands’ eccentricities. As an example, he referred to Adolf Hitler’s liaison with Eva Braun.
Bhutto did, indeed, have an extraordinary wife, the Iranian-born Nusrat. For years she was forced to live with open secret that her husband was carrying on an affair with the beautiful and vivacious divorcee, Husna Shaikh.
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Bhutto’s library was one of the best in Asia, and here his most prized possession was his collection of books on Napoleon Bonaparte.
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Mustafa came to see the irony in their political quest, for in order to bring true democracy and equality – and thus progress – to the country, they had to find some way to destroy the archaic feudal system. If they were to realize their political ambitions they had to annihilate their very own power base.
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In 1967, Mustafa became one of the founding members of the Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party, committed to fighting for the liberal cause.
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At one of these events, Mustafa met Naubahar, a professional dancing girl who used her face and her body to ensnare the young politician. Mustafa rented a house in Lahore and installed Naubahar there as his mistress. Then he married her, despite the fact that he had a wife waiting for him in Kot Addu. He made Naubahar promise to keep the marriage a secret.
… As the garish car would its way into the red light district, Mustafa was mobbed by fans.
Hearing of this, Bhutto summoned Mustafa and warned that he must not flaunt his positon with impunity. The governor of the Punjab could not have a common dancer as his wife. Mustafa was told to correct the situation immediately. He divorced Naubahar. Safia was rescued from the exile of Kot Addu and installed in the Governor’s House as the legitimate and respectable wife, but his illusion was shattered almost immediately. Mustafa’s brothers came to him: ‘Now you are governor, your honor is at stake. Your wife had had an illicit relationship with your younger brother, Ghulam Murtaza. We cannot hide this fact from you any longer.
… so he simply divorced Safia and banished his offending younger brother to Britain. (It was at this time that I married Anees.)
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By the end of 1971, West Pakistan was simply and humbly Pakistan. It would be a while before we recognized Bangladesh as a country. In the meantime a coalition of military men determined that it was time for new leadership to overcome this setback and installed Bhutto as president and chief administrator of martial law. Operating from his centre of power in Islamabad, he proved his acumen with a series of swift, effective stroked that settled tensions between Pakistan and Bangladesh, and won the release of 93,000 Pakistani POWs held by the Indians. Then, knowing that he owed his new-found power to the military and would continue to be subject to the demands of the generals who had installed him, he coerced them into resigning and replaced them with men more loyal to him.
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Bhutto placed an arm around Mustafa’s shoulder and proposed drunkenly; ‘I think we should both resign. We should give up this government. There is nothing but pain and betrayal in life. If you resign, I will resign too. I cannot work alone. I’ve suffered your pain too. Let’s just go away somewhere, dammit – away from all this.
But in the sober light of morning, Bhutto chastised Mustafa and told him not to be a stupid and give away emotions.
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Mustafa crushed opposition with the fierce hand of a feudal lord. When the students of Punjab University went on strike, closing down the institution and resorting to hooliganism, Mustafa was alleged to have had them stripped naked and marched in the street. Some political leaders and opponents were said have been sodomized in prison. Mustafa was compared to the Nawab of Kalabagh, the previous governor, favorably for his administration abilities and negatively for his cruel tactics. On the other hand, the gates of the Governor’s House and, later, the Chief Minister’s House, were opened to the people of his constituency every Friday. He gave priority to the people he presented and precedence to their problems.
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Indeed, there was a reason to worry. Bhutto had many enemies. People with vested interests regarded his theories of Islamic socialism as anathema. They realized if the Punjab could be extricated from Bhutto’s control he would fall, and they started to form a wedge between the two men [Bhutto and Mustafa].
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It was no longer after Mustafa became chief minster that he and Bhutto began to disagree. At a Cabinet meeting in Karachi the tension finally erupted. At Mustafa’s instruction, a Punjabi bureaucrat presented a paper that argued in favor of protecting the Punjab’s water resources. Bhutto interrupted and raged, ‘Nobody can tell me how to allocated resources between the provinces of the country. If I wish I can divert everything to Larkana. I have the mandate of the people.’
‘That Sir, is not correct,’ Mustafa responded. ‘You have a mandate to serve the people of this country as a whole. Not only your village of Larkana. As long as I am Chief Minister of the Punjab, I will protect the interests of the Punjab.’
Bhutto threw his papers on to the table and stormed out of the room, muttering, ‘Either I stay Prime Minister of Pakistan, or you become the Prime Minister.’
Mustafa’s colleagues gathered around him and warned that he had overstepped the bounds of his authority and urged him to apologize. Mustafa immediately sought the apology, but noted, ‘You’re getting out of hand. I won’t tolerate such insolence in public again. Talk to me privately next time.’
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In 1974, an Islamic summit was held in the Punjab, attended by King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi, the PLO’s Yasser Arafat, Idi Amin, and many other important Arab leaders. Mustafa presided over the summit at Bhutto’s side. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, now President of Bangladesh, was also there. It was at this summit that Pakistan at last accepted the independence of East Pakistan. Following the meeting, Mustafa tendered his resignation and moved from the Chief Minister’s residence into a rented house.
And soon after that, met him at the Punjab Club in Lahore.
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Mustafa was at his most passionate whenever the conversation turned into politics. He was a socialist who wanted to do away with the feudal system that impeded progress in Pakistan – even though he was part of it himself.
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His actions broadcast the message: I’m not a lecher; I’m merely misunderstood.
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The more I learned, the more I came to understand his inability to maintain a stable marriage. I rationalized that, had he found the right woman at the right time, he would have settled down as a good husband. Bit his reasons for marriage were always wrong, based on expediency rather than love. He seemed to marry women in transit. His political life exposed him to a high-powered world’ he was changing and evolving all the time and he tended to outgrow his women.
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I became curious about his relationship with Sherry: it seemed to be in a state of disequilibrium. Her position as his wife should have given her status, yet his condescending treatment made her servile. Mustafa was the boss, the brain, the soul. Sherry was in awe of him, and rarely made a remark that was not drenched in his thoughts. He dared not differ from his views. She looked to him for constant approval. The strength of his personality diminished her to the point where she existed only in her reflection of his light. Sherry had surrendered her will to Mustafa and I saw this as her failure.
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‘I’ve made another mistake,’ he would say. ‘I’ll have to marry again.’
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I found myself thinking more and more about this misunderstood man who had become entangled with all the wrong women.
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Both of us [Tehmina and Mustafa] were searching for someone who could understand the turmoil in our hearts and minds.
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What amazed me and what I admired most about him was his total disregard for public opinion.
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Common sense vanished along with caution, morality and decency: my emotions overwhelmed me.
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He proved this statement with his actions. Mustafa was an indiscreet lover – it was almost as if he wanted Sherry, Anees, indeed the world, to found out about us. He called one day and said he wanted to see me at once, and was coming over. ‘But how?’ I asked. ‘Anees is at home.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he assured me.
Two minutes later the phone rang again. Anees took the call and listened carefully. After he hung up, he smiled at me and announced, ‘I have to go to the Governor’s House. Mustafa wants to see me. The Governor needs to talk to me!’ He left immediately.
When Anees arrived at the Governor’s House, Mustafa met him with the news that he had to rush off on urgent business, and told him to swim in the pool and awaits his return. Mustafa’s friend Rauf Khan provided a pair of bathing trunks and stayed with Anees in the pool, guarding the unsuspecting prey.
Mustafa and I were still together, when Rauf Khan called from the Governor’s House and reported, ‘Sir, we can’t keep him in the water any longer. He’ll pass out with exhaustion. He looks cold and bothered.’
‘Let him out in five minutes,’ Mustafa said. ‘Tell him I’ve just called. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.’ Mustafa hung up the phone and we collapsed in mirth.
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In our society, marriage may be purgatory, but divorce is hell.
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Mustafa was using his wife to court his lover.
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During a Mustafa rally in Taj Pura, Bhutto’s henchmen released poisonous snakes in the midst of a crowd of 100,000 people. A stampede resulted and many people were trampled. Gunshots were reported.
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Mustafa and I traveled to his home village of Kot Addu. On 25 July 1976, in complete secrecy, we married by a trusted Mullah.
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When he had discovered Safia’s infidelity, he had, apparently, beaten her without mercy and broken several of her ribs. But, even worse, he had ordered one of the maids to insert red chili powder into the vagina of poor Dai Ayesha, the nanny, for not informing him of the affair.
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I watched the evidence build.
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‘Never – ever – disobey me! You have to do what I tell you to do.’
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It did not seem to matter to Mustafa that his children were not born into stable marriages. Mustafa had children in various pockets of the country and he felt no sense of responsibility for them. In his view, a child was a victim of his own fate.
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The opposition leaders smelled a popular victory, and perhaps found a strong ally. Bhutto’s independent foreign policy and his pursuit of a controversial nuclear program made the US nervous; American was afraid that the so-called ‘Islamic bomb’ would fund its way into the hands of countries like Libya and Syria – not to mention terrorist organizations. Rumor held opposition to Bhutto was fueled by US dollars. The opposition also knew that Pakistan’s military leaders were waiting in the wings: they feared that a nuclear capability would result in massive cuts in conventional forces, thus eroding their personal power. Events snowballed. The strikes and demonstrations became so severe that in three large cities Bhutto had to call out the army.
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His attitudes were contradictory: he expected response, yet disallowed it. If he was satisfied, there was a chance that he would be in better humor. It was at these times that I realized prostitution must be a most difficult profession.
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‘I know what you’re thinking, Tehmina, believe me. You daren’t think of anything that I have forbidden you to think about.’
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‘General Zia suddenly seems to have opinions of his own. The man was disagreeing with some of the plans we were putting forward. His attitude change means the he is being manipulated by bigger powers. I warned Mr. Bhutto. Something’s brewing.’ [Mustafa Khar said to Tehmina Durrani]
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To my shock, I found Mustafa and the others living in conditions that would be the envy of the common man. The prisoners decided the menu and the food was served by uniformed waiters. The politicians who, only weeks before, had shuffled the fate of our nation, now sat around all day shuffling cards. Only the sound of marching boots outside their quarters shattered the illusion of tranquility.
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Bhutto was furious with Zia and, even now, arrogant. He charged that the generals had violated the constitution; Article 6 outlawed military intervention and marital law. He openly abused the generals and accused them of treason. He swore that he would make them accountable. Mustafa and others gently warned him against such reckless statements, but Bhutto persisted.
Bhutto clung to legalisms, ignoring the fact that the generals had the guns.
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These conversations were most certainly taped and, as the generals listened to them, their determination to rid themselves of Bhutto must have grown.
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Bhutto decided to take his case to the people. He arrived in Lahore [after the only time he was out of prison under Zia’s dictatorship], driven from the airport by Mustafa, and was greeted by a vibrant crowd. In his waning days as Prime Minister, the people had grown tired of his promises of bread, clothing, and shelter, but now he was the underdog and they wished to forget his mistakes. Bhutto was elated.
The motorcade moved at a snail’s pace toward the house where Bhutto would stay. Once he was inside, the crowd, trying to get closer, surged out of control. The pressure of people broke down the gates of the house. Excited spectators shattered the windows, climbed the walls, crowded into the lawns, nested in the tree-tops and clung precariously to utility poles. Everyone wanted a glimpse of the man. Everyone wanted to hear the stifled voice rise again.
Bhutto stepped out into the balcony, remarking that he felt ‘as tall as Himalayas’, and delivered a rousing speech: ‘General Zia has committed treason. He was tampered with the Constitution. The people of Pakistan will not spare the traitor. The army does not have the right usurp power by ousting the people’s representatives and deposing an elected Prime Minister.’
The listeners responded with wild cheers. In their enthusiasm, they did not realize that they were signing Bhutto’s death warrant.
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He [Bhutto] forgot that tanks and guns were more palpable than the mood of the people.
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Mustafa informed Bhutto that the generals wished to have a meeting with him, and Bhutto agreed that Mustafa should attend, since this would give him an opportunity to assess the military’s thinking. During Mustafa’s discussion with Zia and two of his compatriots, the three military leaders heaped praise and proclaimed that they needed people like him. But they were hostile toward Bhutto, and declared the he could survive only if he tempered his arrogance. The generals said that they were not opposed to the idea of Bhutto going into exile, if he would guarantee that he was retiring from politics forever. This, Mustafa thought, was like asking a human being to live without oxygen.
When he reported back to Bhutto, Mustafa tried to convince his leader to flee the country, and asked permission to do so himself, to ‘live to fight another day’.
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As for himself, Bhutto proclaimed that he understood the gravity of the situation, but he had no choice other than to stay and fight.
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Soon after this meeting, in September, Bhutto was re-arrested, on a charge of attempted murder, and a witch-hunt rounded up his key supporters. Mustafa was called into secret sessions with several generals.
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We boarded a 6:30 am flight from Islamabad. As the aircraft waited for clearance at the end of the runaway, I saw beads of perspiration form on Mustafa’s brow. The veins in his temples pounded. There was fear on his face. We both knew that the generals were capricious.
Finally the aircraft moved slowly into its take-off roll. The pilots pushed the engines up to full throttle and the craft picked up speed. It rose into the air, and Mustafa’s face showed reliefs, he had sidestepped the gallows.
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He [Mustafa Khar] did not tell me the details of the bargain he had struck with the generals, but by picking up shred of information and overhearing telephone conversations, it was not difficult to discern. He had won his life by promising to return to Pakistan the following month, November, brining documents from London that would incriminate Bhutto. What documents they were supposed to be I never discovered, and it was most probably a hoax, though I did not know so at the time. I could not understand the Brutus-like betrayal. When his leader was fighting for his life against an unscrupulous regime, Mustafa conspired with the executioners. I expressed my qualms to him, but he replied in philosophical tone, ‘Time will tell’.
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The only void was the absence of Tanya [Tehmina’s daughter from her first marriage with Anees], a topic that I dared not discuss with Mustafa. I filled the emptiness by becoming obsessed with five-month old Naseeba. I fussed with her constantly and found myself lying awake at night, meticulously planning her breakfast.
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Mother and father were – or at least pretended to be – unaware that this charming person [Mustafa Khar] had, the night before, battered their daughter.
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In March 1978, Bhutto was sentenced to death. Mustafa intensified his political efforts, joining forces with two of the former Prime Minister’s son, Mir Murtaza Bhutto and Shah Nawaz Bhutto. Mir has been studying at Oxford, but Mustafa convinced him to scrap his education in order to campaign for his father’s release. We moved from Jam Sadiq’s house to a shabby, claustrophobic flat in Hampstead, and Mustafa crowded it by inviting the Bhutto boys to live with us.
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Mir was a novice, but he learned fast. Younger brother Shah Nawaz exhibited the idealistic, faraway gaze of the revolutionary. They established a sort of headquarters of disgruntled Pakistanis in our flat, and plotted Zia’s overthrow.
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They received campaign funds from Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi and from Shaikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, Sultan of Abu Dhabi. Asad of Syria promised to keep pressure on the Zia regime.
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He grabbed her [Naseeba – daughter of Khar and Tehmina] and pushed her head under the water. I ran to them and begged him to let go, but he shoved me aside and held her under, with an expression on his face that said he was determined to teach us a lesson. My baby was drowning… when Naseeba’s struggles finally diminished, he released his grip… she coughed and spluttered.
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A prisoner ultimately settles into a monotonous routine. Anger recedes; senses dull. The spirit is crushed.
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Mir’s confidence, and he very quickly challenged the power and authority of his teacher [Khar]. He was, after all, a Bhutto, and the surname worked magic. It became unnecessary to share anything with Mustafa. Husna fed this. She warned Mir that his father had never completely trusted Mustafa, and advised him to strike out on his own. Both brothers moved out of our flat and into a suite.
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One of Mir’s longstanding companions was the glamourous – and much older – wife of a Mediterranean politician. To me, the Bhutto boys seemed like mixtures of Che Guevara and characters that had stepped out of Harold Robbins novel.
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Bhutto’s nephew, Tariq Islam, visited his uncle in prison and related the event to us in England. He said that his uncle weighed only six and half stone. His hands and feet were swollen. His chronic gum ailments had been exacerbated by neglect. Stomach cramps left him in permanent state of agony.
Even so, Tariq said, his uncle was mentally alert and eager to discuss politics.
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Bhutto grew more confused and depressed. He could not understand why the people had not stormed the prison gates to free him. Where was the spontaneous uprising that would sweep away the dictator?
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Zia made sure that Bhutto died many times before he was finally hanged. During his time in prison, he was constantly humiliated and insulted. The proud former Prime Minister was forced to use a noxious, open toilet in the present of a guard. A brigadier was placed in the opposite cell expressly to provoke him to a frenzy. The brigadier knew the pressure points; he used the most foul language to debase Bhutto’s mother, mocking and taunting until the former Prime Minster would lose his composure.
On 3 April 1979, Benazir was taken to see her father and informed that it would be the last visit. She was dismayed to find herself separated from him by iron bars and a large table, but when he pleaded with the guards to allow her to embrace him, he admonished, ‘Don’t ever beg them for anything.’ She had brought him his favorite perfume, Shalimar, and some books. He accepted the perfume but returned the books with a wry smile, explaining, ‘I don’t think I’ll have time to finish these.’ She handed him a razor and he said, ‘Good. I’ll shave this beard off. I do not want to die like a bloody mullah.’
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Here, accounts merge fact and fiction. What actually happened may never be known. It is said that the brigadier, Bhutto’s tormentor, walked into the cell at about one o’clock in the morning following Benazir’s visit. He handed Bhutto sheets of paper and a pen, and demanded his confession. Bhutto stated to write. His mind must have been clogged with memories – the triumphs, the adulation of adoring crowds. Where had it all fled? Here he was, terrifyingly alone, with a black sheet of paper in front of him. He knew that the proper words of compromise might save him. But, on a sudden impulse, he tore up the paper and flung away his life.
The brigadier rose and kicked Bhutto in the stomach. Some say that Bhutto was beaten unconscious, but that he regained his senses as he was carried off to the gallows – that he staggered, fell, stood up and walked the final steps with dignity and defiance. Others say that he was already dead when the body was hanged.
Whatever the truth, the outcome was the same. The People’s Party, and Pakistan, had a martyr.
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He [Khar] had a repertoire of abuses so vile that they would make a whore blush.
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Adila [Tehmina’s younger sister] was on the line. I heard my sister ask my husband, ‘Do you love me? Tell me. Do you love me?’
I heard my husband respond to my sister, ‘More than you will ever know.’
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‘take off your clothes,’ he [Khar] shouted. ‘Every stitch. Take… them… off.’
I trembled, clutching at the cloth of my baggy shirt, and when he saw that I could not respond he grabbed one arm and twisted it behind my back until I shrieked in pain and screamed that I would obey.
He backed off and sat in an armchair. He watched as I slowly began to remove my shirt.
Again I was aware of the emptiness of the room, but this time it looked unsafe. There was no placed to hide, nothing to which I could cling. I slipped out of my trousers. Clad only in a bra and panties, I stared at him, pleading, begging, crying for him to allow me to stop. But there was no reprieve. I felt blood drying on my swollen lips and nose. With trembling fingers, I pulled off my underclothes.
He sat in the chair with his arms extended on either side, like a king on his throne. His eyes ran up and down my naked body, invading. His expression was grim, his lips tightly pursed. His eyes narrowed, searching, glinting, gloating.
Never before had I felt so totally humiliated, so utterly controlled. I could see on his face the awareness of the importance of this moment. This episode would cripple my spirit – perhaps beyond salvation. From this moment forward, it would be nearly impossible for me to function as an individual. There was not one iota of self-esteem left. The shame had burned it down to ashes. I was exposed as nothing.
‘Please, Mustafa,’ I cried, ‘for the sake of the Prophet, let me wear my cloths.’
‘Pick up the phone. Make the call first. Then we’ll see’.
‘How can I call without my clothes? Please, let me put them on first.’
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Adila had finally confessed to mother and now, in measured words, she admitted to me, ‘I’ve been sleeping with him [Khar] for three years. I’m telling you this not as a sister but as a friend. Mustafa hates you, Tehmina. Everyone hates you. Mother hates you, too. There must be something wrong with you. I’d leave him before he leaves you. Have some respect for yourself.’
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Adila was graphic in details, disclosing that Mustafa’s son and Dai Ayesha were both in on the long-term deception. ‘Bilal arranges meetings,’ she said. ‘He is our go-between. He books the room in West Lodge Park Hotel. Dai Ayesha had known all along. Ask her. He had sex with me at the apartment that day when he dropped me at school, remember? There was no Iranian boy; it was always Mustafa. I was with him that day at the Hilton – all day. When he called you, I was there.’
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What this fifteen-year-old sister of mine was telling me was that Mustafa had been having an affair with her since she was thirteen years old!
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I told her that my husband was not to blame if my sister was a slut.
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He [Khar] had met Indira Gandhi. He dismissed this act of treason as easily as he discounted the crank phone calls. To him, Indira was the traditional enemy of Zia’s Pakistan, not of the new nation that he was fashioning. During the hour-long secret discussion at the Prime Minister’s residence in New Delhi, she was articulate and approachable. They spoke of Bhutto’s execution and the prospects for restoring democracy in Pakistan. The Prime Minister of India and the exiled Lion of the Punjab tried to analyze the reasons for the continued hostility between their two nations, and both concluded that the Pakistani army had a vested interested in maintaining border tensions; it made them necessary.
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A large segment of our population shared Mustafa’s belief that the Pakistani army has been the root cause of our problems. Proponents of this theory argue that the military, jealously guarding their power and budget, are always suspicious of democracy. Indeed, historically the military have played a visible, interventionist role in Pakistan’s politics. Mustafa theorized that Bhutto’s great mistake was that he attempted to coexist with the military. And, in fact, it was the army who toppled him, and General Zia who ordered his execution.
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The Economist printed Mustafa’s four-page article discussing Pakistan’s relations with India, wherein he expounded his thesis that military rule prevented progress and that he would re-enter Pakistan on Indian tanks, if necessary. This was a surprise to those who knew Mustafa as the Lion of the anti-Indian Punjab, and created a great deal of controversy.
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The concept of crime and punishment drove me to spending the nights crying over the Holy Koran for forgiveness – but only after I had completed my duties as a sexual object. When Mustafa slept I bathed and performed my ablutions, then drew away from him to the only One who still received me; Allah.
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Both of his selves – the angry one and the contrite one – were very convincing. I was afraid of the former and felt pity for the latter. One moment he punished me like a disobedient child; the next, I was a mother-figure who was supposed to forgive his transgressions.
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‘The next time you raise your hand to me I will pick up a knife and kill you!’ There was power and conviction in my voice, although my heart was beating madly. I had declared war.
Mustafa backed off.
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I kicked him in the belly with both feet, sending him reeling from the bed. He attacked once more and I scratched and shoved him as hard as I could. I clawed at his face and pulled his hair. No woman had dared do this to Mustafa Khar, and I could tell that his mind was devising new blueprints of terror.
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On 2 March 1981, hijackers took control of a PIA aircraft in Karachi and ordered it to fly to Kabul. The hijacking was an ISI plan created by Zia to malign and isolate Mir and Shah [sons of Bhutto].
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[In exile] we also received considerable financial support from a Pakistani named Seth Abid.
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Mustafa’s initial contacts with junior officers of the Pakistani army were tentative. The first meeting took place at the home of a mutual friend in London. The participants were young men who were disgruntled with Zia and who believed that the military had no business interfering in the politics of the country… the ‘boys’ as we came to call them.
A plot was hatched. The ‘boys’ would plant a bomb, timed to go off when Zia convened a meeting the top brass. Simultaneously, groups of rebel officers would take over the television and radio stations. With Zia’s death, all the exiles would return, and the will of the people would prevent yet another general from seizing power. Although she knew nothing of the developing drama, the conspirators planned to install Bhutto’s daughter Benazir, the leader of the People’s Part, as Prime Minister, and Mustafa would be number two man in the new government. All those involved in Zia’s 1977 coup would be tried for treason. The slogan was whispered quietly: ‘Generals will hang from every pole.’
————————————-
It was Mustafa’s task to arrange for the purchase of arms and ammunition, as well as their delivery. Over yet another rubbery burger, the Indian agent Joshi consented to handle the purchasing details; delivery was trickier.
————————————-
Sindis are stereotyped as docile and timid and the army was caught by surprise. For days Pakistan’s lifeline, the National Highway, was clogged by wave after wave of volatile demonstrators. The death toll mounted. Gaols were overflowing.
————————————-
As far as the Punjabis were concerned, this was a great blunder. They withdrew from the struggle and the Sind was isolated.
————————————-
Mustafa was aware that the MRD movement could not survive without the wholehearted participation of his home province, and he decided that action was necessary to revitalize Punjabi support. He chose seven exiles who had been tried in absentia by military courts, and sent them to Pakistan from London on 5 September. But in his somewhat garbled official, nine valiant People’s Party workers were on their way home to court arrest as a contribution to the MRD movement. The fact that the actual number was seven, rather than nine, took on aspects of black comedy.
The seven spent most of their flight spouting slogans in favor of democracy and its figurehead, Mustafa Khar – much to the annoyance of other, disinterested passengers. When the aircraft landed in Karachi, it was ordered to taxi to a position a great distance from the terminal, where it was surrounded by commandos and armored cars. The seven returning exiles disembarked into the hands of the police, who immediately wanted to know where the other two were. Choudhary Hanif (a Member of Parliament and a follower from the early days when Mustafa took on Bhutto) and Sajid tried to convince the authorities that only seven men had arrived. But the head of the police party was under instructions to bring back nine people from the plane. He arrested the apolitical brother of one of the group, as well as an innocent boy who was returning from a visit to his aunt in London and was, in fact, a Zia supporter. All nine were trucked off to Ojhri camp. (The two innocent boys spent twenty-two months in gaol, a longer term than any of the others.)
Choudhry Hanif later described for us his cell at the Ojhri prison camp as ‘worse than any conception of hell we may have in our mind…’
Each of the seven felt betrayed by Mustafa and cursed him for his callousness. Each had a common prayer; they pleaded for death.
————————————-
The ‘boys’ had driven in jeeps to the house, where they found two rooms full of crates, containing the promised arms. As they loaded the materiel into the jeeps, one of them said, ‘It serves the damn generals right. We’ll put this country back on its rails.’
They prepared to drive away. Keys turned in the ignitions. The jeeps were jammed into gear but as they hurtled forward, the ‘boys’ suddenly found themselves surrounded. The ambushers opened fire. The ‘boys’ returned fire, but all were wounded and captured.
… Move of supreme irony compensation was arranged for Seth Abid’s act of ‘patriotism’.
————————————-
At the prison camp in Ojhri, the ‘boys’ underwent constant torture. They were made to strip naked and lie on their stomachs. Then a steel roller was crushed against their thighs until the skin broke open. They were hung upside down and beaten.
The seven Punjabis whom Mustafa had sent off to prison four months earlier also came under the crossfire, subjected to increased torture and intimidation.
————————————-
He [Khar] soon visited India again, for a private audience with Indira Gandhi, and he returned with renewed fire in his eyes. ‘She said I was a great patriot,’ he beamed. The failed plot had, of course, greatly increased tension between Zia’s Pakistan and the Indian government, and Mustafa had worried that India would back off. But he was pleased that Indira Gandhi had reaffirmed her belief in the necessity of destroying Pakistan’s army. Mustafa prophesized, ‘A war is necessary to crush the people’s enemy once and for all.’ He said that it would be the miracle that were praying for.
————————————-
On 31 October 1984, Indira Gandhi had been gunned down by her own guards.
————————————-
He [Khar] picked up a jug that happened to be within reach and flung it at me, hitting me on the shoulder. I ran from the bathroom, slammed the door and locked him inside.
Mustafa banged on the door and screamed, ‘I’ll kill you!’
I ignored him and went downstairs to answer the doorbell and greet our guests. When they asked where Mustafa was, I muttered a vague excuse, I could hardly tell that the Lion of the Punjab was locked inside the bathroom!
————————————-
A fine marriage for Adila. The boy was Rais Matloob, the son of a very respected landowner from Bahawalpur. His father, Rais Ghazi, had been hailed as the builder of the most beautiful and elaborate mosque in the area.
————————————-
Benazir planned for an eventual return to Pakistan, and Mustafa was shocked to learn that she was not considering him for the post of Party President in the Punjab.
————————————-
Along with his old political friend, Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, he decided to form a new party, with a manifesto that claimed a return to the pure first principles of the People’s Party.
————————————-
Through Joshi, Mustafa had arranged a clandestine meeting with the new Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi. Mustafa spent six days and was treated with all the protocol of a visiting chief of state.
————————————-
Two men met me at the New Delhi airport, whisked me through customs and immigration – I did not have a visa – and drove me to the Taj Hotel. [Tehmina used Mustafa’s contacts to visit shrine of the great saint of Ajmer in India]
————————————-
Tanya [Tehmina’s daughter from first marriage] came to see me at my parents’ house on 29 July 1986, which happened to be Naseeba’s ninth birthday. She clung to me and we both wept. I stepped back to get a good look at this young thirteen-year-old. I hadn’t seen her for nine years.
————————————-
Nusrat Jamil – better known as Nuscie – is a journalist, working for the English-language daily The Nation. She phoned, introduced herself and asked for an interview; she wanted to write a human interest story about the travails of a politician’s estranged wife. I agreed to talk to her. Nuscie changed my life.
————————————-
[Celebrating the 1984 World Cup Cricket Tournament] I was again excited and apprehensive at the prospect of partying without a husband. The children and I left for Lahore to stay with my grandmother. I was determined to enjoy myself. In Nuscie’s crowd I met confident young girls who twirled on the dance floor in tight jeans and miniskirts, openly cavorting with men who were not their husbands! It shocked me that they exposed their legs – this was Pakistan, not London – and it shocked me further that no-one else was shocked. This was the generation that had grown up in Zia’s time. Their idols were not Che, Mao or Sukarno, but Madonna, Iacocca and Trump. Poverty meant a flat without air-conditioning. The deprived drove Suzukis. The effects of the Afghan war and the drug explosion had filtered in. The poppy fields on the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan had become more productive, the traffic quite legalized, and refugees unlimited. It was as if many centuries had been traversed in an instant. Modern women had moved so far ahead that their sisters in their hinterlands had been reduced to fictional characters.
————————————-
At the height of cricket fever, I walked into Yousaf Salahuddin’s haveli and found a few men sprawled in the central courtyard. None of them rose to greet us. How strange, I thought. In my world, a gentleman always rose when a lady entered. Yousaf reclined on a marble divan and surveyed, with a hint of royal disdain, the host of miniskirted women who flitted about, displaying punk hairstyles. Outside, the walls were plastered with posters calling for the restoration of democracy. Inside, Yousaf was a replica of a Mogul dynast, the epicure personified.
————————————-
Faiz:
Do not ask me for the same intensity
With which I loved you once…
I turn, I turn again and again to the pain.
You are stull beautiful, so beautiful –
But – the pain.
————————————-
Faiz:
I bequeath my life to the lanes and alleys of my land,
Where the ritual of silence stalks.
Where no one holds his head up high.
And fear takes nightly walks.
————————————-
I had seen women in prison who had been raped by the staff. Some were later taken away by frightened gaolers who forced them to abort their pregnancies in order to eliminate proof of the crime. Others bore the bastardized offspring of ‘justice’.
————————————-
The superintendent takes protection money from all the prisoners. The amounts are paid out weekly. Any prisoner who will not or cannot pay this extortion tax is punished. They’re either beaten mercilessly or placed in fetters. Many prisoners are deprived of their meals because of their inability to pay. Entire families have had to pay the price and groaning under the burden of debt.
————————————-
Mustafa shot like a lightning bolt toward the deputy superintendent with fire in his eyes. He grabbed the prison official by his collar and slapped him sharply, several times. The deputy was stunned, but dared not react. Mustafa Khar may have been a prisoner, but he was not a man to be taken lightly. In a voice like thunder Mustafa roared, ‘If I ever hear a scream again, I will be you to a pulp!’ Then he released his collar-hold and pushed the man so that he fell back upon his buttocks with his legs in the air. Mustafa turned and strode back to his cell. If the other prisoners had dared, they would have applauded, but they confined themselves to signaling silent admiration with their eyes.
————————————-
He [Khar] re-convinced me of the need to cut the size of the military establishment. ‘We have to direct our scarce resources away from this monster,’ he preached. ‘Our people need food, shelter, clothing, medical facilities, potable water and education. The army has gobbled up our national wealth. It is a waste of manpower. If I come to power I will use the army for construction of roads and bridges. It is also a constant threat to constitutional rule.’
————————————-
Gun culture and the drug trade are natural spin-offs of this conflict. The generals are myopic. They have been dazzled by the dollar diplomacy of the Americans. The Americans are unreliable allies. They’ll use us only until they’ve accomplished their own design.’
In fact Zia had made drug-trafficking legitimate. While Afghanistan was the major grower, the poppies were processed in Pakistan. It was said that labs had been set up US Mafia connections – no border, free movement, no control, quick money. Allegedly, the ISI had a hand; even the war financed through the sale of opium and heroin. When aid dwindled, the Mujahedeen used drugs as a source of funds.
————————————-
‘Look at China, look at India,’ he [Khar] said. ‘They are developing their own indigenous technologies. They don’t go around with a begging bowl in their hands. They have great national pride. We have taken the easy way out. Everything is imported – even our idea.’
————————————-
Mustafa, who had once sought to overthrow the military regime with violence, now sought a secret alliance.
Early in 1988, I was granted an appointment with General Akhtar Abdur Rehman, Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff. He was Zia’s right-hand man and had been the ISI chief during our coup attempt; he was also in charge of the Afghan Mujahedeen war strategy which was run entirely by the ISI. Mustafa coached me carefully. No-one was to know of our attempt to negotiate with the military junta.
————————————-
In May 1988, the Ojhri ammunition dump in Islamabad, the semi-secret staging front for supplying clandestine weapons to the Afghan rebels, was blown up. Missiles flew off in all directions, leaving hundreds of innocent civilians dead and injured. The city was paralyzed with grief and horror.
————————————-
Fearing an inquiry into what qualified as a sabotage attack on the Ojhri ammunition dump, Zia dismissed his hand-picked Prime Minister, Mohammad Khan Junejo, as well as the lower of Parliament, and installed a caretaker government.
————————————-
A week later, on 17 August, a C-130 military transport plane mysteriously exploded in the air over Bahawalpur. General Zia, who had presided over the nation’s destiny for eleven years, was on board. My first reaction was extreme happiness. The dictator was dead!
————————————-
The Chairman of the Senate, and Zia’s close ally, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, was sworn in as President.
————————————-
I had made the acquaintance of a new breed of well-educated journalists who were committed to the cause of justice in Pakistan. Although in this modern world they used word processors, someone had coined an appropriate term for them: ‘typewriter guerillas’. I knew they would be on my side.
————————————-
Without notice, our old friend Mustafa Jatoi joined IJI – the alliance of parties that had been bred by Zia and currently held power – and presented Mustafa with the same option.
IJI was headed by Nawaz Sharif, a man whom Mustafa had long portrayed to the public as political pygmy.
He [Khar] decided to reject Jatoi’s pragmatic offer.
————————————-
They were unanimously happy with Mustafa’s decision, but we knew that it left him without the backing of any major political force.
————————————-
Benazir did not expect Mustafa to be released and that she did not want to support a man whom the army was opposed.
————————————-
I contacted ISI, seeking meeting with its chief, General Hameed Gul; but his second-in-command, Brigadier Imtiaz, said that he would see me instead.
The brigadier had a comprehensive dossier on Mustafa and his ill-fated Indian connection. In the face of this evidence, he viewed my husband as a traitor.
————————————-
No-one was to know – not even Mustafa. I was driven to Adyala Jail by the brigadier at midnight. In the Superintendent’s Office, I met General Gul. Then a very surprised Mustafa was brought in to meet us.
The following day, the courts decreed Mustafa’s release, after more than two years’ confinement.
————————————-
Father was in love with another woman! Mother was distraught. The other woman was Sabiha Hasan. She had worked with my father when he was governor of the State Bank.
Mother was ready for me to return to the family fold, to help her through this terrible time.
————————————-
In the past this tank, the symbol of military rule in Pakistan, had intimidated me. Today it seemed powerless. The power of the people had prevailed over the dictate of the gun.
————————————-
Not so long ago these people were abstraction to me, the topics of endless drawing-room discussions. Today they were real; they mattered. They did not depend on us; we depended on them.
————————————-
Despite Mustafa’s tremendous victory as an independent, most of the Punjab supported Muslim Leafe, assuring that the Chief Minister’s post in Lahore would continue to be held by Nawaz Sharif who had filled the vacuum during Mustafa’s absence, and whom the People’s Party candidate had failed to dislodge.
————————————-
The elections made Benazir Bhutto the most powerful person in Pakistan. For many, it was as if Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto had been resurrected.
————————————-
After the general election, Mustafa had to vacate one of the two National Assembly seats that he had won, and he decided to offer Mustafa Jatoi as the by-election candidate for his seat from Kot Addu. I was shocked, because Jatoi was an IJI candidate. [And] a Sindi.
————————————-
At dinner I was suddenly aware of Mustafa’s voice: ‘Tehmina, really, you look like a nun in those white clothes.’ Did his use of the word ‘nun’ have sexual connotations? Was he saying to Adila: As far as Tehmina is concerned, I’m celibate?
————————————-
The drums began to beat and cheering rang in the air. Jatoi had won the election by 60,000 votes.
————————————-
He [Khar] sent for Adila. When she arrived, he sat at my feet and begged for forgiveness. Turning to Adila he said, ‘I owe everything to Tehmina. Nothing can make me forget that.’
What was I to do? Which Mustafa should I believe?
————————————-
In the short span of time that Adila and Mustafa were alone, something had happened. Shahida’s entry was met with an abrupt silence.
————————————-
Adila arrived and as we drove to see the ‘other woman’, I thought: How ironic that I’m going in the company of the ‘other woman’ in my life to plead Mother’s case. Nobody – certainly not mother – had ever pleaded mine.
————————————-
Our family, full of intrigue and deception, backbiting and backstabbing, was a microcosm of Pakistani society. The rule was simple: Do whatever you want to do, just blanket it.
————————————-
Presidential elections were held. The two candidates were Ghulam Ishaq Khan and Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan. The former was the acting president and reactionary bureaucrat with long ties to the Zia forces. The latter was a genuine progressive who believed in democratic ideals and had been extremely supportive during Mustafa’s incarceration. When Mustafa returned from voting, he assured me that he had cast his ballot for the Nawabzada.
The phone rang. The caller was Ghulam Ishaq Khan, thanking Mustafa for his vote. Mustafa had lied to me, but more important point was that he had compromised principle once again.
————————————-
Adila had no sense of occasion. Even as our grandmother’s life ebbed away, Adila primped and preened, making sure that all her accessories matched. Her presence bothered me but, for a time, I could find no specific objection.
One day, Mustafa was scheduled to collect me from Uncle Asad’s house at 5 pm, but he called to say that he had been delayed by important political business. It was only then that I noticed Adila had left an hour before in grandmother’s car. Zarmina [Tehmina’s sister] and I questioned the driver, who had returned without her. He said that Adila asked him not to wait; she would return on her own. This was very odd. Even those of us who lived in the city of Lahore would never move around without transport. Zarmina’s eyes met mine.
I disappeared into the bathroom and gulped down two tablets of the tranquilizer Lexotinal. Adila returned at about 7:30 pm and Mustafa arrived shortly after that. I could not face them.
————————————-
Mustafa Khar simply could not live with an adult woman who was capable of taking charge of her own life. He would reduce me once again to a neurotic, frightened girl. Adila was the perfect young and attractive instrument who could make me retreat into my old position. I had to be undone.
————————————-
‘It’s true,’ Zarmina at last confirmed, clutching at her stomach. ‘It was her. They [Khar and Adila] were making plans to meet this very evening, even as our grandmother is dying.’ The Zarmina rushed into the bathroom to vomit.
But their plans were disrupted. Sensing that her time had come, grandmother summoned the family and, in the presence of everyone, declared, ‘Whoever causes Tehmina pain, it is my prayer to God that He punish them with ulcers that will grow in their hearts. They will suffer like they cannot even imagine.’ She glanced up at the ceiling – beyond the ceiling – and cried out, ‘I am leaving Tehmina with you oh Allah. Don’t let me down. She has nobody left to protect her. Even I have been called away and I come to You willingly, but my soul begs an assurance that Tehmina will be protected by You.’
————————————-
I reconciled. I can’t do that, I thought. I’m not sixteen. I’m a mother of five. I’m thirty-six years old. How can I have romantic notions with a man who’s having an affair with my own sister? How?
————————————-
One night Mustafa wanted to make love, and I knew from his attitude that he would not accept a refusal. I had to let it happen. I controlled my hatred by alienating myself from the moment. I started over his should and begged to God to punish him. This is incest, God. You have forbidden a man to have a relationship with two sisters at the same time. It is in Your Koran. If You have made this rule, then You will never allow this to happen to me again. Never allow this man to touch me again. Never let him have the audacity to disobey You. I cannot do anything, but You can stop it.
————————————-
I followed him upstairs and walked into what had been our bedroom. When, behind me, I heard him quickly turn and bolt the door, I knew I was trapped.
… Soon word of my ‘imprisonment’ reached my lawyer, Asma Jahangir.
… Mustafa opened the bathroom door. I was sullen, wary and scared, but pretended not to be. He picked up a bottle of Valium 10, extracted two tablets and offered them to. I tried to resist, but he utilized the same method he had employed with his dogs.
————————————-
With tears streaming down his [Khar] cheeks, he said very intensely, ‘I want you, my children, to bear witness that I don’t want your mother to leave. I want her to be my wife. I love her. But she wants to leave me.’
I thought with a smile on my face: What a great actor you are, Mustafa.
————————————-
The public announcement that Mustafa was rejoining his old party was received with jubilation… Mustafa was not second most powerful leader in the party, next to Benazir herself. He had successfully moved to a position from where he could reach towards the very top.
————————————-
It was a pattern: apologize, be forgiven, and begin again with a clean slate.
————————————-
Spurred on by his wife’s suspicious behavior, Matloob [Adila’s husband] tapped his own telephone line and taped hours of explicit and incriminating conversations between Mustafa and Adila. Matloob then drove around Karachi in tears, listening to the tapes on his car cassette-player.
————————————-
Matloob was a feudal lord himself… He took a progressive stand, filing the first-ever court case in Pakistan wherein one influential feudal lord formally accused another of adultery.
————————————-
At the height of his political life… Mustafa suddenly announced his seventh marriage, to a twenty-two year old divorcee whom he had known for only a month. Taking the public relations offensive, he had the audacity to compare his many marriages with those of the Prophet.
————————————-
‘Tehmina, you are nothing any more. Once you were Begum Tehmina Mustafa Khar. Now you are just Tehmina Durrani. When you ring up people you have to introduce yourself as my ex-wife. You have no identity of your own. Nobody knows you…’
————————————-
Ghalib:
Your taunts chip away at my identity.
No-one speaks of me with such audacity.
————————————-
I was determined not to waste thirteen years of my life.
I decided to cast a stone at hypocrisy.
I decided to write this book and break the traditional silence.
————————————-
Benazir Bhutto’s elected government was dissolved on 8 August 1990 by Zia’s protégé, President Ghulam Ishaq Khan. Mustafa Jatoi was sworn in as the caretaker Prime Minister of Pakistan.
————————————-
Mustafa Khar was sworn in as the Federal Minister for Water and Power. This time he had stabbed the People’s Party in the back and somersaulted back to Jatoi and IJI.
————————————-
‘There will be a great imbalance in our strengths if we fight, became I am prepared to die and you are desperate to live.’ [Tehmina to Khar]
————————————-
Following publication [of the book], two criminal charges were registered against me. One charged me with treason… the other charged me with adultery.
————————————-
‘Well, Mustafa, now the world will soon know you only as Tehmina Durrani’s ex-husband.’ [Tehmina to Khar on asking about the book]
————————————-

• It was a truly happy village where no one was over thirty years of age and where no one had died.

• But in any case, he could not understand how people arrived at the extreme of waging war over things that could not be touched with the hand.

• She got to be so sincere in the deception that she ended up by consoling herself with her own lies.

• He thought about his people without sentimentality, with a strict dosing of his accounts with life, beginning to understand how much he really loved the people he hated most.

• In the shattered schoolhouse where for the first time he had felt the security of power, a few feet from the room where he had come to know the uncertainty of love, Arcadio found the formality of death ridiculous.

• Death really did not matter to him but life did, and therefore the sensation he felt when they gave their decision was not a feeling of fear but of nostalgia.

• On the contrary, like so many of his fellow party members, he was an antimilitarist. He considered military men unprincipled loafers, ambitious plotters, experts in facing down civilians in order to prosper during times of disorder.

• What worries me, he went on, is that out of so much hatred for the military, out of fighting them so much and thinking about them so much, you’ve ended up as bad as they are. And no ideal in life is worth that much baseness.

• They spend their lives fighting against priests and then give prayerbooks as gifts.

• You may be in command of your war, but I’m in command of my house.

• An inner coldness which shattered his bones and tortured him even in the heat of the sun would not let him sleep for several months, until it became a habit.

• The best friend a person has is one who has just died.

• Worn out by the tormented vigil.

• He did not know that it was easier to start a war than to end one.

• It took him almost a year of fierce and bloody effort to force the government to propose conditions of peace favorable to the rebels and another year to convince his own partisans of the convenience of accepting them.

• He went to inconceivable extremes of cruelty to put down the rebellion of his own officers, who resisted and called for victory, and he finally relied on enemy forces to make them submit.

• He was finally fighting for his own liberation and not for abstract ideals, for slogans that politicians could twist left and right according to the circumstances, filled him with an ardent enthusiasm.

• Dying is much more difficult than one imagines.

• Permitted him to win a defeat that was much more difficult, much more bloody and costly than victory.

• Then he made one last effort to search in his heart for the place where his affection had rotted away and he could not find it.

• And he saw that those damages did not even arouse a feeling of pity in him.

• Don’t worry. Queens run errands for me.

• Like a kitchen dragging a village behind it.

• With that discouraging explanation many felt that they had been the victims of some new and showy gypsy business and they decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings.

• She answered him sincerely that she would never marry a man who was so simple that he had wasted almost an hour and even went without lunch just to see a woman taking a bath.

• The only thing that she lamented was the fact that the idiots in the family lived so long.

• He did not have a feeling of sorrow but a blind and directionless rage, a broad feeling of impotence.

• A person doesn’t die when he should but when he can.

• She reached the conclusion that the son for whom she would have given her life was simply a man incapable of love.

• As if fate had reversed the situation and had made him the husband of his concubine and the lover of his wife.

• In the dream he remembered that he had dreamed the same thing the night before and on many nights over the past years and he knew that the image would be erased from his memory when he awakened because that recurrent dream had the quality of not being remembered except within the dream itself.

• And for the first time since his youth he knowingly fell into a trap of nostalgia and relived that prodigious afternoon of the gypsies when his father took him to see ice.

• As if time and harsh lessons had meant nothing.

• She worked out the plan with such hatred that it made her tremble to think about the scheme, which she would have carried out in exactly the same way if it had been done out of love.

• One minute of reconciliation is worth more than a whole life of friendship.

• What shocks me about you is that you always say exactly what you shouldn’t be saying.

• Love on one side was defeating love on the other, because it was characteristic of men to deny hunger once their appetites were satisfied.

• That’s all we need. An anarchist in the family.

• Fernanda viewed her as an undesirable witness of her shame and lamented the fact that they had abandoned the medieval custom of hanging a messenger who bore bad news.

• Although it took them over an hour to pass by, one might have thought that they were only a few squads marching in a circle, because they were all identical, sons of the same bitch, and with the same stolidity they all bore the weight of their packs and canteens, the shame of their rifles with fixed bayonets, and the chancre of blind obedience and a sense of honor.

• Martial law enabled the army to assume the functions of arbitrator in the controversy, but no effort at conciliation was made. As soon as they appeared in Macondo, the soldiers put aside their rifles and cut and loaded the bananas and started the trains running.

• The workers, who had been content to wait until then, went into the woods with no other weapons but their working machetes and they began to sabotage the sabotage.

• At night after taps, they knocked doors down with their rifle butts, hauled suspects out of their beds, and took them off on trips from which there was no return.

• The search for and extermination of the hoodlums, murderers, arsonists, and rebels of Decree No. 4 was still going on, but the military denied it even to the relatives of the victims who crowded the commandant’s offices in search of news.

• You must have been dreaming, the officers insisted. Nothing has happened in Macondo, nothing has ever happened, and nothing ever will happen. This is a happy town. In that way they were finally able to wipe out the union leaders.

• And they understood that it was the end of one anxiety and the beginning of another which would find relief only in resignation.

• He could not understand why he had needed so many words to explain what he felt in war because one was enough: fear.

• She felt that the calamities should not be used as a pretext for any relaxation in customs.

• They (prostitutes) at least had the honesty to put a red light at their door.

• By trying to make her love him he ended up falling in love with her.

• She began to believe once more in the youthful superstition that poverty was the servitude of love.

• Many years later, when Aureliano became part of the world, one would have thought that he was telling a hallucinated version, because it was radically opposed to the false one that historians had created and consecrated in the schoolbooks.

• And the way in which she said good-bye, without crying but without smiling either, revealed the same strength of character.

• The sad drunkards who carried them out of the house got the coffins mixed up and buried them in the wrong graves.

• The continuing charity was a way of humiliating the person who had humiliated her.

• She felt so old, so worn out, so far away from the best moments of her life that she even yearned for those that she remembered as the worst.

• Her heart of compressed ash, which had resisted the most telling blows of daily reality without strain, fell apart with the first waves of nostalgia.

• The need to feel sad was becoming a vice as the years eroded her.

• She became human in her solitude.

• He did not buy the books in order to learn but to verify the truth of his knowledge.

• He confided in her about his repressed passion for her, which he had not been able to cure with the substitution but which was twisting him inside all the more as experience broadened the horizons of love.

• Literature was the best plaything that had ever been invented to make fun of people.

• Until they both were conscious of being adversaries and accomplices at the same time.

• The world must be all fucked up when men travel first class and literature goes as freight.

• The past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.

• One winter night while the soup was boiling in the fireplace, he missed the heat of the back of his store, the buzzing of the sun on the dusty almond trees, the whistle of the train during the lethargy of siesta time, just as in Macondo he had missed the winter soup in the fireplace, the cries of the coffee vendor, and the fleeting larks of springtime. Upset by two nostalgias facing each other like two mirrors.

• Because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.