Emily O'Dell studying Sufi shrines in Karakalpakstan
Today, while writing about my travels on the Silk Road in Karakalpakstan (yes, that’s really a place), I had to review photographs of the Sufi shrines I visited there–like the one to the left, taken in front of the tomb of a venerated medieval Sufi sheikh. Remembering my time alone in that faraway cemetery–in between sweet sips of Arabic coffee this morning–I was reminded of the following poem by Rumi.
When I am asleep and crumbling in the tomb,
should you come to visit me–
I will come forth with speed.
You are for me the blast of the trumpet and the resurrection,
so what shall I do?
Dead or living–wherever you are–there I am too.
Without your lip, I am a frozen and silent reed;
what melodies I play like a flute the moment you breathe on my reed!
Your wretched reed has become accustomed to your sugar lip;
remember wretched me, for I am seeking you.
When I do not find the moon of your countenance,
I bind up my head (veil myself in your mourning);
when I do not find your sweet lip,
I gnaw on my own hand.
This morning, before picking up my pen, I had brunch on the sea with a Sufi. While filling up on fatteh–a delicious mix of chickpeas, tahini-yogurt, toasted pita and lentils–my friend told me about a doctor whose office was in a building ripped apart by the recent car bomb in Beirut. On the morning of the bombing, when the doctor went to park in the underground parking lot of his building, the attendants told him it was full. Aggravated, he went to park in another underground parking lot.
When he returned to his car later that day, he started arguing with the parking attendant about why all of the parking garages in the neighborhood are always full. Moments into their argument–which kept him in the basement longer than he’d planned–the car bomb in his building detonated–and they both got rocked to the floor by the powerful blast. Had the doctor parked in the first parking lot that morning–in his own office building–he would have died instantly, like so many of his patients did that night.
“See, when it is your time, you are there,” my Sufi friend said, “and when it is not, you are not.”
When for the last time you close your mouth–
Your words and soul will belong to the world of
no place and no time.
–Rumi
Emily O'Dell doing research in Karakalpakstan
