Elif Shafak is one of Turkey’s most acclaimed and outspoken novelists

Rumi 
KONYA, OCTOBER 31, 1260
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. Today is the sixteenth anniversary of 
the day Shams and I met in front of the Inn of Sugar Vendors. Every year on the last day of 
October, I retreat into a solitude that grows in weight day by day. I spend forty days in chilla, 
thinking of the forty rules. I remember and review each of them, but there in the far reaches of 
my mind there is only Shams of Tabriz, glittering. 
You think you cannot live anymore. You think that the light of your soul has been put out and 
that you will stay in the dark forever. But when you are engulfed by such solid darkness, when 
you have both eyes closed to the world, a third eye opens in your heart. And only then do you 
come to realize that 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. 
You see him in the drop of water that falls into the ocean, in the high tide that follows the waxing 
of the moon, or in the morning wind that spreads its fresh smell; you see him in the geomancy 
symbols in the sand, in the tiny particles of rock glittering under the sun, in the smile of a 
newborn baby, or in your throbbing vein. How can you say Shams is gone when he is 
everywhere and in everything? 
Deep in the slow whirling of sorrow and longing, I am with Shams every day, every minute. My 
chest is a cave where Shams is resting. Just as a mountain keeps an echo inside itself, I hold the 
voice of Shams within. Of the scholar and preacher I once was, not even the smallest speck 
remains. Love has taken away all of my practices and habits. Instead it has filled me with poetry. 
And though I know that there are no words that can express this inner journey of mine, I believe 
in words. I am a believer of words. 

---

Two people have helped me through my hardest days: my elder son and a saint named Saladin, 
the goldbeater. It was while listening to him work in his small store, beating leaves of gold to 
perfection, that I had the most wonderful inspiration to put the final touches to the dance of the 
whirling dervishes. The rhythm emanating from Saladin’s store was the same as the pulse of the 
universe, the divine rhythm Shams had talked and cared so much about. 
In time my elder son married Saladin’s daughter, Fatima. Bright and inquisitive, she reminded 
me of Kimya. I taught her the Qur’an. She became so dear to me that I started referring to her as 
my right eye and her sister Hediyya as my left eye. That is the one thing dear Kimya proved to 
me long ago: that girls are just as good students as boys, if not even better. I arrange sema 
sessions for women and advise Sufi sisters to continue this tradition. 
Four years ago I began to recite The Mathnawi. The first line came to me one day at dawn 
apropos of nothing, while I was watching the sunlight slice the dark. Ever since then the poems 
spill out of my lips as if by a force of their own. I do not write them down. It was Saladin who 
painstakingly wrote out those early poems. And my son made copies of each. It is thanks to them 
that the poems survived, because the truth is, if asked to repeat any one of them today, I don’t 
think I could. Prose or poetry, the words come to me in flocks and then leave just as suddenly, 
like migrating birds. I am only the bed of water where they stop and rest on their way to warmer 
lands. 
When I start a poem, I never know beforehand what I’m going to say. It could be long or it could 
be short. I don’t plan it. And when the poem is over, I’m quiet again. I live in silence. And 
“Silence,” Khamush, is one of the two signatures I use in my 
ghazals
. The other one is Shams of 
Tabriz. 
The world has been moving and changing at a speed we human beings can neither control nor 
comprehend. In 1258, Baghdad fell to the Mongols. The one city that prided itself on its fortitude 
and glamour and claimed to be the center of the world suffered defeat. That same year Saladin 
died. My dervishes and I had a huge celebration, passing through the streets with drums and 
flutes, dancing and singing in joy, because that is how a saint should be buried. 
In 1260 it was the Mongols’ turn to lose. The Mamelukes of Egypt defeated them. 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. 
After the death of Saladin, Husam the Student, who has matured so fast and so well along the 
spiritual path that he is now called Husam Chelebi by everyone, helped me to write down the 
poems. He is the scribe to whom I dictated the entire Mathnawi. Modest and generous, if anyone 
asks Husam who he is or what he does, without missing a beat he says, “I am a humble follower 
of Shams of Tabriz. That’s who I am.” 
Little by little, one turns forty, fifty, and sixty and, with each major decade, feels more complete. 
You need to keep walking, though there’s no place to arrive at. The universe is turning, 
constantly and relentlessly, and so are the earth and the moon, but it is nothing other than a secret 

---

embedded within us human beings that makes it all move. With that knowledge we dervishes 
will dance our way through love and heartbreak even if no one understands what we are doing. 
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. There is a perfect harmony and subtle balance in all that is and was in the 
universe. The dots change constantly and replace one another, but the circle remains intact. Rule 
Number Thirty-nine: 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.
Our religion is the religion of love. And we are all connected in a chain of hearts. If and when 
one of the links is broken, another one is added elsewhere. For every Shams of Tabriz who has 
passed away, there will emerge a new one in a different age, under a different name. 
Names change, they come and go, but the essence remains the same.