31 May - 6 June 2001
Issue No.536
|
Al-Ahram Weekly Online 31 May - 6 June 2001 Issue No.536 |
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
Au revoir dear friend
Mulid Al-Nabi (the Prophet Mohamed's birthday) is four days away. Before turning the corner, Nur Elmessiri watches Rumi, The Wings of Love and attends the Mulid of Omar Ibn Al-Farid
"Sometimes during the samaa, it feels as if Mevlana is holding my hand. I begin to smile and my heart feels warm and later it is as if what my eyes see is different from before."
Cairo, July 1998: The turning (or "whirling") Mevlevi dervishes gave Cairo Opera House goers a glimpse of their samaa. "Their rituals," David Blake wrote, "are founded on profound love and respect [...] They are as white as arum lilies and as firmly placed on their feet as oak trees. Their steps are unhurried, but the pattern is complex [...] These dancers know their Plato."
Cairo, May 2001: In the Southern Cemetery hundreds, if not thousands, men, women, old, young, rich, poor, have come from all over Egypt to attend a friend's birthday party. Some sit on straw carpets eating rice pudding and mouloukhiya; others on chairs drink tea or smoke shisha. Most eventually make it into the courtyard from which blares the party music (courtesy of the brilliant munshid El-Sheikh Yassin El-Tohami), are happy to stand for hours in what little space they are fortunate enough to find, sway to the song and cheer at the mention of ala beit al-nabi (members of the Prophet's household). Everyone at some point or other gives salams to the Mulid host: Sidi Omar Ibn Al-Farid (d. 1235), Egyptian Muslim scholar who wrote Sufi poetry without compare in the Arabic language, contemporary of Jalal Al-Din Rumi (1207-1273), the Sufi poet of the Persian language, one of the awliyaa (friends of God).
It is the birthday of one departed to his Maker. Even from the tomb, he can host those who have found in him a friend. "The lover," to quote Rumi, "visible, the beloved invisible: who ever saw such a love in the world?"
Konya, whenever: From all over the world they have come to visit him: Sidi Jalal Al-Din, Mawlana, Mevlana, Rumi. They have to purchase tickets because under the repressive secularising policies bequeathed by Ataturk to the people of Turkey, friends' tombs and dervish lodges go by the name of "national museums." Having passed the ticket booth, visitors take off their shoes, stepping through the doorway of a structure crowned by a green turret. They greet their friend, some weeping, and, now, in hadrat Mawlana (Mawlana's presence), they read the opening (fatiha) sura of the Quran. And then it's photo time: a row of family members, a reunion, except the one at the centre bears the silhouette of a tomb crowned by a turban. No one bats a lid. Some things do not call for explanation.
A black and white photograph, and the shades of light in between, taken by Shems Friedlander of something that was moving, of someone who was breathing. A still. Silence. And then, in Friedlander's beautiful half-hour film Rumi, The Wings of Love premiered this month at Oriental Hall, words: Rumi's poetry in a voice over the stilled image of the turbaned turning dervishes -- "Everyone in the world has chosen a friend and ours is Love" -- and the camera gaze, panning the image, brings movement while the voice continues: "Through love all that is bitter will be sweet. Through love all that is copper will be gold. Through love all dregs will turn into purest wine. Through love all pain will turn into medicine. Through love the dead will all become alive" -- a burst of white, a photo of a row of dervishes -- "Through love the king is turned into a slave": another photograph, darker, a head crowned by the tall Mevlevi turban, emblem of the tombstone. A still. Silence. Black out. And then the words "The Konya Semaa" appear -- and sound returns: the sound of water and birds flapping their wings, intimations of the scene about to unfold, of a man like any other ordinary Muslim man, performing ablutions, praying, preparing himself, then -- transformed into a white fledgling, a bird, something embryonic with rudimentary wings or petals emerging through cocoon or pod into open air and sunlight.
"In your body," Mevlana counsels, "lies a priceless treasure: seek that." "Allah," the Prophet Mohamed said, "who cannot fit into the entire universe can fit into the heart of a believer." These, and many other sayings from mystical Islamic (Sufi) discourse are cited in Friedlander's film which circles -- as elegantly as the dervish "dance" it shows and attempts to explain -- around such concepts as "the heart."
And "friendship." A voice-over to an image of a tomb, not Rumi's, but that of his friend Shams, tells us: "The presence of the friend of God is a book and even more. The book of the Sufi is not written with ink and letters -- it is only a heart white like snow." The predominantly unlettered guests of Sidi Omar on his 766th post-death birthday understand this kind of friendship. As they do the verses from the Quran that speak of God as a "wali" (protecting friend) "of those who believe, taking them from darkness into light" and of the "awliyaa" (protected friends) of God as having "no fear nor do they grieve."
Witness Rumi's joy.
A university professor, a Muslim scholar, a father of three, when Rumi was 37, a stranger, Shams El-Din El-Tabrizi, a lover of the Prophet, appeared in his life as if out of nowhere and became for Rumi the most beloved friend. Three years later a group of Rumi's disciples, jealous of the Socrates whom their Socrates had found, murdered Shams. While still in the white mourning attire that would become the model for what a Mevlevi dervish wears at a samaa ceremony Rumi started to dance. He was passing the shop of the goldsmith Salah El-Din (who would soon become Rumi's closest friend) when he heard Al-lah Al-lah Al-lah sound in the hammering of gold. He began to turn to the rhythm. His poetry, initiated by the encounter with Shams, continued long after Shams' sudden death, as did his love for the Creator and His creation. He lived his life. After Rumi's death -- the "wedding night" as he called it -- his disciples turned, and still turn, in remembrance (zikr) of his turning in remembrance of the beloved friend.
"The Prophet Mohamed" -- a voice-over tells us during a particularly moving sequence in Friedlander's film, that of the Halveti zikr ceremony during which the Divine Names are repeated by people in a circle, flowering into a spiral, and then a circle the centre of which could be anywhere and everywhere -- "said: when you pass by the meadows of the garden graze. They asked: O Messenger of God what are the meadows of the garden? And he replied: the circles of remembrance."
Friedlander's half-hour film does not allow the viewer easily to forget that Rumi was a Muslim. "Shams," a voice over to a sequence showing us a Muslim man reading the fatiha at Shams's tomb tells us: "was for Mevlana a door to the Prophet and this appears throughout his work." The love permeating Rumi's poetry is of a far more complex, fugue-like and theologically nuanced nature than the new age crowd listening to Material Girl Madonna reciting Rumi's poetry might be aware. Jalal Al-Din loved Shams El-Din who loved the Prophet who is habibullah, the beloved of Allah, Allah Himself being the source and origin of love: a chain or rosary of love, a series of concentric circles of remembrance, with Allah as the origin, centre, heart. Each heartbeat, some would say, testifies to His presence.
Friedlander's film, both brilliantly and with tactful subtlety, translates the shape of Rumi's love into image and sound. Pitch black; black and white; black, white, honey, a touch of green, Sheikh's turban, Mevlana's tomb, a touch of red -- and blue, the sky. White skirts twirling; delicately lit profiles of beautiful faces that time shall not wither; the nape of the neck; old men, explorers, meditating behind closed doors in a candlelit room; a tightly wound turban removed; feet turning; the extended arms of a little boy flying, mirrored by the repetition of the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, alif, in a calligraphic band, a belt at the waist of a dome. Elegant, studied bowing forms -- and the sheer joy of a congregation made up of ordinary people: a variety of faces and body shapes from different walks of life.
"Round the body of man [is the circle formed by the outward flow of the dervish skirt]. And the arms eloquently bear witness to a feature of man as he was created, man's function as mediator between heaven and earth, the right palm turned upwards to receive graces from heaven; the left down to transmit graces to earth. And so we see that this dance is the most eloquent image of what man was and what he must again become." A face focused on the Face. A voice, in English, Sheikh Abu Bakr Siraj Al-Din's (aka writer Martin Linz). In Turkish, with intermittent English voice-over, Sheikh Omer Tugrul Inançer explains how the nayy's (reed flute's) openings correspond to the openings in the human face. The mouth should not always be open, for this exposes ignorance and immaturity. To hear good advice the ears should be open.
The sound of Friedlander's film is amazing. A blind person can get the gist, follow the movement of The Wings of Love. Silence; something flapping (birds in the daylight, nocturnal moths); waves; a wheel turning; a breath repeating Allah, percussive, gold being hammered, a heart beating; a piercing sound ("listen to the reed flute telling you a story and lamenting the separation"), the chanting of the Quran, the kettle drum -- a melody composed by Mevlana in praise of habibullah.
Meanwhile back at the Mulid...
photo: Shems FriedlanderMulids in Egypt are many. Mulid Al-Nabi is this Monday. Celebrations take place throughout Egypt near the shrines of the local awliyya. To name but two Mulid Al-Nabi celebration venues: the Sayedna Al-Hussein area in Cairo; and, in Luxor, most probably in the Sidi Abul-Haggag area, El-Sheikh Yassin El-Tohami will be singing madih (religious love poems praising the Beloved), most probably those composed by Omar Ibn Al-Farid. Madih is best heard live. There are also casette tapes of munshidin like El-Sheikh Yassin El-Tohami and El-Sheikh Amin El-Dishnawi, both of whom will be singing between 15 and 18 July at the Mulid of Sayedna Al-Hussein.
Further reading:
Rumi's poetry and prose have been translated from Persian into English by, among others, A J Arberry, R A Nicholson and Coleman Barks. Arberry has also translated Omar Ibn Al-Farid's poetry from Arabic into English. Ibn Al-Farid is not an easy read, whether in translation or in the original. El-Tohami's brilliance as a singer turns Ibn Al-Farid's poetry into something the comprehension of which does not require literacy.
There are many books in English available about Rumi and Sufism; far fewer on Ibn Al-Farid. The following, besides providing an introduction, contain useful bibliographies for further reading:
William Chittick's The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi (State U of NY Pr: Albany, 1983), Shems Friedlander's Rumi: The Hidden Treasure (Safina Books, 1998), Th. Emil Homerin's From Arab Poet to Muslim Saint: Ibn al-Farid, His Verse and His Shrine (U of South Carolina Pr, 1994), Mark J Sedgwick's Sufism: The Essentials (The American University in Cairo Pr, 2000) and Eva de Vitray-Meyerovitch's Rumi and Sufism, translated from French by Simone Fattal (Post-Apollo Pr: California, 1987). In addition, coffee table books about mulids are available including AUC Press's Mulid with text by Tarek Atia and photographs by Sherif Sonbol.
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
Recommend this page