Yet even I could not escape the excitement and sense of well-being that arose as we made our way. The farther south we went, the higher we climbed, the more time turned backwards into the most delightful days of spring, fresh with plum and apricot bloom, and carpets of red anemones and wild hyacinths. And time turned backward, too, into a carefree sort of childhood for both my lady and me.
Pilgrims from three continents could be met upon the road, increasing in numbers and anticipation as we drew ever closer. They made interesting company, and their devotion was in part infectious.
One man in particular caught my attention. Any dervish, since our escape from the brigands, did, of course, but this one even more so. Yet how can this he Husayn, my old family friend? I thought. Is it possible that this emaciated pile of bones was the man whose note had warned me of the hay-cart rebellion? At least the man who delivered us from the brigands had had a body that seemed as though it ought to belong to a merchant or a well-fed civil servant.
This man wore the patchwork cloak of his order—the begging or wandering dervishes—-with the crude stitches on the outside. The clothes of the previous fellow had been more like a costume thrown together to merely suggest “dervish” than anything of precise commitment. The brigand’s dervish had worn a beard only a week or so old, and of a youthful black. This man’s gray beard was long and dusty, and his mouth missed numerous teeth. Husayn had worn gold teeth in the place of those he lacked, for vanity. Taking on the humility of a dervish would require the gold’s removal as a very first step and I remembered having seen the gaps in the brigand dervish’s teeth—when, after the fact, I’d identified him as my friend. Was this the same man?
My master had once told me, “They all look alike, dervishes.” Yes, but sometimes they were subtly, annoyingly different, too. If this was Husayn, he had grown into the part during the past five years in ways that hardly seemed humanly possible. No, without a sign from the dervish—or from God—first, I could not claim him.
The dervish came to beg from our company just outside the town of Aksehir. “For the love of Allah. For the love of Allah,” he muttered quietly as he stumbled slowly among us.
I tossed half a loaf into his wooden bowl, for which he blessed me. He looked at me as he did so; the look, the mystical, demanding look, was the same as before. I gave him a bit of radish and onion from my shish kebab. His eyes pierced my heart like the skewer. But as he said nothing, I said nothing, and looked away.
After that, he turned up regularly among us like a stray dog one has thrown scraps to, and, though he would never take up our invitations to sit down among us. we came to think of him as “our” dervish. No doubt he was under some stern vow that prohibited any more socializing than necessary to win his bread. The more superstitious of us took his presence to be a good omen.
XXXV
Pilgrims like to spend their last night before reaching Konya in an old, tumbledown caravanserai called Baba Ahlam, which, it is said, gives dreams by which the pious can tell whether or not Rumi will be willing to answer their petitions. One poor, old woman of our acquaintance actually turned and went back home after that night, some dream having told her it was useless to continue on.
My lady, on the other hand, woke that morning blushing with delight. She had dreamed, she said, of a great field lull of beautiful children like so many spring flowers.
“Allah be praised,” she said. “It was so beautiful. I wished I could have slept forever, were it not that I must rise with haste to make it become reality.”
And I welcomed the flurry of activity to pack up and be on our way, driving my subordinates to greater haste than usual because I, too, had dreamed a dream in Baba Ahlam.
In the corner of the caravanserai by the gate where I had seen his shadow, curled up like a faithful dog, last thing the night before, and all along our route that day, I kept a sharp lookout for our dervish. The old man, you see, was the object of my dreams.
In this dream, I had seen time run backwards, faster, even, than it had seemed on our journey. The old man had lost his gray and wrinkles, put weight on over his monkish austerity, and gained vain golden teeth to replace those he had lost. The dervish was the same. Not only that, but as time went further back, I saw him again as my old friend, Husayn. At least, that seemed clear in my dream, though by daylight I told myself the eerie ruin of a caravanserai must have been playing tricks on me. Only actually seeing the man again could tell me for certain.
And if Husayn was making his presence known to me, it must be to impart some life-saving information.
But now, more eerily still, he seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth.
“Did you see...?” My lady drew the curtain of her sedan back ever so slightly and whispered to me.
“No, no sign of the old man,” I replied.
“Who? The dervish? No, I didn’t mean him. I meant...”
“Whom did you mean?” I asked, trying, but not succeeding very well to hide my distraction.
“Nothing.” She sighed and sank back into silence and invisibility.
It was only with this hint that I happened to notice that our party had been overtaken by a regiment of young spahis. I thought nothing of it, however.
