At one of the smaller houses on the hill just north of the old aqueduct, in an alley shared with a tomb of a long-dead—maybe even Christian—saint, I was quite surprised to find that my contact was none other than Andrea Barbarigo, now called Muslim, the renegade son of the late proveditore of Venice. He was not the sheikh, of course, but of such position that he was trusted as spokesman.
I had not meant my knowledge of his past to interfere with the business at hand but at last I could no longer conceal my astonishment from him. First I had to apologize for our last meeting, in the bazaar by the Jews’ shop.
“Your warning was that of a friend,” he said, a wave dismissing the dagger cut that had accompanied my words. “I did not take it—but it proved to be true.”
“I am surprised” I told him, “by your presence in a tekke. Not only that but by the sober knowledge of the Way you’ve exuded since my arrival.”
He spoke laconically. “I can no longer be a Christian, and now that Sokolli Pasha is dead—Allah give him rest—without the particular favor of the Sultan, I am unlikely to advance any further in the navy. It is winter now and I cannot be on the seas anyway. So I come here. Here in the tekke I have found friends and new things to strive for. It is simple.”
Though we spoke for several hours until a call for prayer interrupted us, nothing further of interest was divulged. This once-compatriot of mine quoted the same mystical poets with the same slick liberality as all the others I had spoken to and seemed only to go round in circles with his speech as the whirling dervishes do in their dance. But this was the first place the name Sokolli Pasha arose without my own conjuring and so, though I did not cease probing into any other tekke I came upon, I returned to this one near the aqueduct again and again.
In Constantinople, where they themselves do not reign, the dervishes are not quite the open hosts they are in the holy city of Konya. They cannot afford to be, standing a ways there in the shadow of the Porte. But as I continued to frequent the place, I found my presence more and more expected, even welcome, though I could not say with truthfulness that I, too, stood on Enlightenment’s doorstep. But, with Muslim’s and Allah’s help, I was able, on occasion, to find myself not too far removed from the feeling of perfect acceptance I’d enjoyed in Konya with my friend Hajji.
I like to say now it was some power of the spirit that kept me coming back. At the time I doubt very much whether I actually felt anything but very lost, confused, and angry. I certainly wasn’t conscious of spirit. But eventually that spirit—or mere persistence, the skeptic may say—rewarded me. I joined the tekke many nights of that Ramadhan, which began a few weeks later, as I had done in Konya and again I found myself among the brethren on the Night of Power.
We were praying shoulder to shoulder not only because that is the way one always prays in company, for the feeling of unity, but also because the hall was packed. It was always so on this night. Men for whom even Ramadhan is only an excuse for more materialism are religious this one night. They hope the watchful angels who write men’s fates for the coming year may be fooled into giving them better than they deserve.
Even though the hall was full, it was still cold and our unified breaths were visible like steam rising from a stew. It made the ranks beginning five or so men away from me on either side seem unreal, like mirror images, or rather, like the fog that condenses on a glass in the bath. One can rub the fog away with the hem of a sleeve. There was great energy there, however, like the intangible sun on gross stones on a summer’s day.
So ethereal did the edges of my vision seem that at first I thought nothing of it when one of the figures there took on the appearance of my friend Hajji. One of the angels, I imagined, come among us to observe our mortal faith with a critical eye. I remembered another Night of Power, so many years before, when Hajji had spoken to me, told me truthfully how he had come to be a dervish and what it meant for him. Perhaps this angel, then, was only allowed to be seen at times of crisis and only on this most holy of nights—and only by those who were worthy.
The clouds of steam I breathed in were full of faith of this sort and they intoxicated me—my mind seemed to rise to the dome of the roof with it—and so I humbly lowered my eyes before the vision. My master’s murder? It was a little thing in the eternal perspective.
We ate, then danced, and throughout these activities, the image of my friend appeared and disappeared at the corner of my vision. Like the reflection of a tree in a slow-moving pond, I thought. And because of humility and the effervescent nature of the thing, I did not stare or approach but waited upon his will. So as the night progressed, devotion, spurred on by his presence, came more and more to replace all other desire in my soul until not only was I content to wait, but it was my own
