February 2019 - The Debates

The story of the novel tells about Asmani’s quest for her mother and her lover’s whereabouts who have been disappeared for years. After every discovery and information about their death, she gives herself a new hope of their being alive and keeps searching. The hunt takes her to the circles of literati, journalists, poets, media persons and writers. Asmaani comes across various mysterious signs and symbols which increase her curiosity and gives a new ray of hope to continue her search.

The novel makes mention of the Pakistan’s experience with democracy and martial law, and the dictator’s use of various tools for suppressing the voice of dissension and civil society in his reign and the draconian laws against women apparently engineered to woo the conservatives’ support for dictators’ regime. The novel shows how the feminist voices arose in Pakistan and were persecuted and suppressed by the regime. The search for Poet leads Asmani to the vast treasure of verses Poet had left behind.

Asmani’s quest paints a sympathetic picture of a bereaved child after its mother’s departure. she finds Shehnaz Saeed to help and soothe her, and comes across Ed who is a safety-valve for Asmani to release her frustration and they end up in close attachment.

The novel, though a good piece of fiction has its plot loosely knit, and opens so many threads, some of which are rarely woven together, and indicate a somewhat lack of unity in the overall structure of the novel.

Read also:

A Thousand Splendid Suns

Burnt Shadows.

On the face of it, it may seem odd that love has a rule let alone forty, however, delved deep into the novel one may find that the rules are not meant to create distance, make the lovers observe formalities and be polite and sophisticated in their contact with the ‘one’ they love, rather the other way round, “ love blurs boundaries”. The novel narrates a twofold story, a search for love and God, an adventure by Shamsi Tabriz and his working relationship with Rumi at Konya and the consequences of the dearth of love on human beings in the person of Ella. Love indeed makes an unusual combination of people and places very much diverse and strangers in their outer form, like wandering dervish, beggars and scholars, dervish in brothel with harlots, prostitute in the mosque and Rumi with wine in tavern. The novel explores how the extreme form of Sufis’ love of God transcends the boundaries of the conventional religious practices to the extent which may amount to blasphemy in the traditional order of religion. The action of the novel mainly takes place at Baghdad and Konya.

Ella reviews the novel, Sweet Blasphemy, a novel by A.Z. Zahara which deals with Shams of Tabriz’s, the itinerant deverish, adventure of search for God and love at the various places who finally meets Rumi at Konya and transforms Rumi. The experience has given Tabriz ultra- wisdom which he exhibits in the form of his The Forty Rules. On his arrival in Konya the first thing the wandering dervish does is to visit a brothel and encounter a harlot, Desert Rose, who later shuns her profession and becomes an avid mystic in Rumi’s court.

Tabriz encounters Rumi in public who is on horseback crowded by pupils and admirers outside his mosque . Tabriz asks him to get off and answer his question, “which one of the two is great: the prophet Muhammad or the Sufi Bistami?.. Didn’t the prophet say, ‘forgive me, God, I couldn’t know thee as I should have’, while Bistami pronounced, ‘ Glory be to me, I carry God inside my cloak’. The question on its face may amount to blasphemy but in fact its Sufi’s way of love. The question indeed befuddles Rumi and Tabriz answers it based on his wisdom and knowledge. The interaction leads to forty days retirement in Rumi’s library ends up in Rumi’s transformation and keen attachment to Tabriz and sufis’ way of love. The attachment grows to such an extent that it arouses the jealousy of Rumi’s followers, family members and pupils, which ends up in Tabriz’s assassination.

The novel gives an insight into Sufi Islam and the underlying rationale of the Sufis’ modus operandi. The whole universe and its creatures are part of the one great entity, the Almighy, and abound in love. Humans need to understand the scheme of things in the universe which demonstrates love and affection. Humans need to contribute to the repository of love and shun hatred and negative feelings, religion is not a sum of few formulaic worships rather a source which augments and disseminates the love.

Religious freedom and the interconnectivity of religions is the underlying theme of Tabriz’s teachings, as all religions are in fact the different routes leading to one single destination, the love. The novel also shows that how the concept of Sema, the Sufi dance, and Ney, the Sufi musical instrument came into existence in order to strengthen the bond of love.

Tabriz’s recurrent power of prophecies shows a somewhat unrealistic picture of incidents, overall a superb work, beautifully written, the plot is closely knit, and keeps the readers engaged and fascinating from start to the end.

By:

Ullah, Inam Gul. iukhan233@gmail.com

The Debates

Broken Verses: A critical review

The Forty Rules of Love: A critical Review