Over the following days, Nouri kept waiting for the moment when Sharoud would suddenly announce to the others that Nouri was a freak—a slip of the hand of Allah—and once again he’d be forced to leave what he’d just begun to call home. For though he knew that Sheikh al-Khammas was as loving as Sheikh Bailiri, who’d taken Nouri’s ears as a sign of grace, he could not take the risk that if the murshid found out what was hidden beneath his head cloth, Sheikh al-Khammas would deem him unworthy to be a Sufi. Sharoud, however, did not say a word, and Nouri could only assume that he did not connect the young man he now was with the boy he’d been when they’d last parted ways. There were countless fellows named Nouri in the world. And the mountain retreat was a great distance from the simple Sufi lodge in Tan-Arzhan. So Nouri had hope that, against all odds, his secret was still safe.
The weeks passed and Nouri’s studies with Sheikh al-Khammas continued. They took long walks into the mountains, and though the Sufi master was nearly four times Nouri’s age, he seemed to have twice his stamina. At times he was playful. At times he was aloof. At times he brimmed with the kindness of Sheikh Bailiri and then suddenly cut deep with the directness of Ibn Arwani. The only thing that Nouri could be sure of was that whenever he thought he knew what Sheikh al-Khammas was about to say, he would say something else.
One morning, Sheikh al-Khammas asked Nouri to place new bulbs in the pots that bordered the entrance. So he fetched a spade and a small pail from the garden shed, went out to the entrance of the lodge, and began to work. It was a warm day, and as the sun beat down the sweat began to gather on his neck and brow. When he reached up to wipe away the drops with the back of his hand, he heard a voice.
“Would you like some water?”
Nouri paused. Then he turned around to find Sharoud standing behind him.
“No, thank you.”
He turned back to the pots and the bulbs and the dirt, but then Sharoud spoke again.
“Of course, you’d be a good deal cooler if you removed your head garment.”
Nouri froze. Then he lowered the spade to the ground and turned back to Sharoud. “How long have you known?”
“From the moment I first saw you.”
“But you haven’t said a word.”
Sharoud’s eyes glinted. “What’s there to say? Our paths are obviously destined to converge.”
Nouri stared at Sharoud. “Are you going to tell them?”
“I don’t see the point. If you’re some sort of demon, Allah will take care of you.” He shrugged. “I have my own demons to fight.”
Sharoud paused for a moment, his eyes fixed on Nouri’s. Then he turned and walked back into the lodge and Nouri returned to his planting.
It was clear that Sharoud had softened over the years. That his pride had diminished. That his righteousness had dimmed. Yet Nouri was not convinced he’d developed the strength not to reveal his secret. And no matter how much the dark dervish had changed, Nouri knew that it would be a long while before Brother Shadow would win his trust.
* * *
WHAT, THEN, IN THE DOZEN or so years since he’d been banished from the order in Tan-Arzhan, had Sharoud been through? What path had he traveled from the time his shoes were turned out at the lodge in Tan-Arzhan to the time when he was a respected member of the mountain order? To be sure, the journey had not been easy. And while it might have been less painful than Nouri’s, it was no less marked by twists and turns.
On that first morning, when he’d moved through the braided gates for the last time, Sharoud had been so filled with rage he’d kept walking until the city was far behind him. He slept by the side of the road, his mind teeming with schemes for revenge. All he could think of was how he’d been wronged. All he could see were those monstrous ears.
One day, he stopped at a small village to find water. When he reached the town square, he saw a fountain, but as he approached it he came face-to-face with a young woman whose child had climbed up to take a drink. When their eyes met, he saw fear in the woman’s face. Then she scooped up her child and hurried away. And in that moment Sharoud saw how far he had strayed from Allah.
His only choice was to head south into the desert, where he found an oasis that he proceeded to make his home. He remained there for nearly a year, trying to dissolve his rage. His skin darkened to the color of a sweet gum tree, and his body became as thin as a blade of grass. Only when he awoke one morning from a dream in which he was circling an enormous cube did he understand that the only way to cast the anger from his heart was to make his way to the Holy City.
He knew that it would not be an easy path, for Sharoud had no money for either a mount or provisions, and the journey would take many months. So he walked until he came to a city called Shariwaz, which, despite its heat and distance from the other cities of the region, was packed with the pious, and where there was a large Sufi order to take him in. He stayed there for several months, so impressing the head of the order with his zeal that he was given a camel and a small parcel of food so that he might join the hajj caravan when it was ready to depart.
The trek across the blazing terrain was grueling. Many turned back and many did not survive the trip. But the rapture that filled Sharoud’s heart when he finally entered the Holy City made the effort required to get there seem small. The streets were scattered with pilgrims from each corner of the realm and in the intensity of their fervor Sharoud could feel a collective shout thunder up to God.
On his first evening, Sharoud found lodging at a hospice and began to settle into his new life. He chose to remain in the white ihram he’d been given at one of the stations outside the city and—in accordance with the rules of the garment—to refrain from cutting his nails and hair. As a result, he became one of the city’s odd progeny, moving through the streets like a streak of white chalk or peering, like a holy specter, from the window of his room. He found that when the pilgrimage month had passed, the harshness of the climate grew worse. His decision to stay therefore symbolized his wish to place his worship above the comforts of his body.
As the months passed, however, Sharoud could not avoid the fact that his heart remained filled with pride. And one morning, as he passed a wizened Sufi leading his disciples through the streets, he saw that his anger at Sheikh Bailiri had kept him from finding another master, and that he could not progress any further without one. So he fastened his ihram a bit tighter around his ever-thinning body and set out to find his next teacher.
There were dozens of options scattered along the streets: stout sheikhs who beamed with the confidence of the righteous, gaunt sheikhs who burned with the flames of self-denial, sheiks so ancient they seemed as if they’d crossed over to the other side while still keeping residence in their crumbling bodies. They all appeared wise, and were surrounded by followers. Yet none inspired Sharoud to kneel down and abandon his will to theirs. One evening, however, as he ventured toward the well where the archangel Gabriel was said to have brought water to Abraham’s wife, he saw a man seated half-naked upon a wall, bathed in an aura of such peaceful transcendence he could not help but approach him and ask: “Do you know the way to the truth?”
The man gazed serenely into Sharoud’s dark eyes.
“I know nothing,” he said.
It was not what Sharoud was expecting to hear, but it so pleased him he begged the man to allow him to be his disciple. The man merely shrugged. So Sharoud stripped half-naked, and for the next several years they traveled together across desert and mountain—begging for alms, sleeping beneath the stars, emptying their hearts of all feeling and their minds of all thought. At times, Sharoud found the journey unbearable. But eventually he felt the anger inside him lift and a wonderful lightness take its place.
He might have continued on this way forever. But one day the half-naked saint suddenly spoke. “You’ve made progress,” he said. “Your spirit is stronger than it was. But now you need to be tested.”
He then explained that he would take Sharoud to Cairo, where he would be placed into service as a camel attendant in the court of the Sultan. The challenge would be to remain as empty in that teeming city as he was now, on the barren road, beneath the open sky. If he could achieve this, then Allah’s dominion over his heart would be secure.
Sharoud had no choice but to follow his master’s will. So in less than a fortnight he found himself in the sprawling metropolis along the Nile. To his purified senses, the city was a shock: like riding on the back of a wild stallion or drinking twelve cups of black koshary tea. He found, however, that he enjoyed the simple task of tending the camels. And nothing—from the bustle of the Bayn al-Qasrayn to the frenzied cries that rose up from the khans—seemed to threaten the inner quiet he’d attained.
He was therefore unfazed when it was announced one day that the Sultan would be traveling to a foreign court and that, as he would ride no camel but his own—a proud Bactrian the color of skimmed goat’s milk that he called the Pearl of Giza—Sharoud would be required to go along. So he prepared the noble beast for the journey and they set out through the gates of the palace and over the dusty roads to an elegant barge that took them downriver to the sea, where they boarded an enormous five-masted vessel that carried them safely across the water. When they reached the far shore, they disembarked. Then they traveled on until they arrived at the foreign palace, where the two potentates sat down to tea and tried to convince one another that each was wiser and wealthier and more filled with an inviolable love for Allah than the other.
The great men conferred for three days, during which time Sharoud was able to explore the grimy city that clung, like a canker, to the palace gates. He found a mosque where he could pray, and spent most of his time either there or in the small windowless room he’d been given to share with the other attendants, who were far too distracted by the city’s charms to pay heed to their unsociable companion. On the third morning, however, he decided to venture out to the palace gardens to practice zikr. His heart was light and as he settled himself on a marble bench he could feel Allah beckon from the fountains and the stones. Before he could dissolve in remembrance, however, he heard the sound of footsteps, and when he turned he saw a boy about the age of sixteen scurrying down the path. Sharoud would not have given him another thought had he not perceived, in a blinding flash, that it was none other than Nouri Ahmad Mohammad ibn Mahsoud al-Morad. For on that morning when Nouri had crept through the palace at dawn and had imagined he’d seen Sharoud, he hadn’t imagined it at all. And though the youth shook the thought from his mind the moment he moved through the palace gates, Sharoud was consumed by the thought of Nouri from that moment on.
In the mosque—on the street—as he moved through the glittering halls of the palace—all he could think of were the ears that lurked beneath the youth’s head cloth and the injustice of having been made to leave the order in Tan-Arzhan for bringing them to light. The thorn he’d tried for eight years to remove from his side was still deeply embedded. The poison he’d struggled to purge from his quarrelsome heart still flowed in his veins. And this was no more evident than when the three men with whom he shared the tiny room stumbled in, after an evening of carousing, and he sprang up in his bed and cried:
“For the sake of Allah, shut your polluted mouths and be still!”
A hush fell over the room as the revelers gaped at their seething bedfellow.
“He speaks!”
“It’s a miracle!”
“He’s actually human!”
Sharoud said nothing. But human was precisely what he did not wish to be. So when they returned to Cairo, he went to the seyhulislam of the palace mosque and asked for help.
“My heart is unclean. I need to remove myself from the world.” He paused for a moment. “Again.”
The seyhulislam was not a Sufi, yet he knew from the burnished glint in Sharoud’s eye what he needed. So he sent him to join the order in the clouds, where Sharoud began his life as Brother Shadow.
It had been five years now since the mountain retreat had become his home. And little by little the clean air and the daily prayer and the simple coexistence with the brothers restored the peace to his heart. He knew, though, that that peace would be tested. So when he returned that evening to find Nouri sitting at the table in the kitchen, he felt neither anger nor surprise. Only the keen understanding that—no matter where he traveled—no matter how deeply he prayed—this boy was a challenge that he could not avoid.
* * *
FOR NOURI, THE MAIN CHALLENGE was to prevent Sharoud’s reappearance from creating a veil between himself and God. For from the moment Sharoud revealed that he knew who he was, Nouri’s peace of mind was completely shattered. Resentment rose up. Insecurity. Fear. He tried to remove them with prayer, but the more that he looked within, the more flaws he observed. Obstinacy. Naïveté. Self-pity. Self-doubt. How could such a tainted vessel draw near to God?
He went to Sheikh al-Khammas to seek advice. But the Sufi master’s words only confused him.
“The Sufi Way is the way of self-knowledge. God knows himself. When you know yourself, you will know God.”
For the first time, Nouri began to contemplate making the long and arduous journey to the Holy City. Sharoud seemed to have been deeply affected by his trips and, despite it being one of the basic pillars of the faith to make the pilgrimage at least once, Nouri had never been. He’d observed that Sheikh al-Khammas never spoke about the hajj or gave any indication that he should go. When he told him of his wish to make the journey, however, the Sufi master’s response was immediate.
“The caravan leaves from Cairo in six weeks. Omar al-Hamid will accompany you until you reach the posting station. Then you’ll continue on with the others.”
The following day, Sheikh al-Khammas found a lay brother named Faraz al-Aziz who was willing to provide Nouri with a camel. So Nouri set about to gather his provisions—and his strength—for the journey.
On the morning of his departure, Nouri bid farewell to the other brothers. Then he and Omar al-Hamid started down the mountain path. They continued through the village, across the desert, for days and nights, until they reached the place, just east of the throbbing city, from which the caravan would depart. Nouri was amazed at how many pilgrims there were: thousands of men, women, and children, each determined to place his or her feet on the soil where the Prophet had been spoken to by God. When the last of them had gathered, they headed out in an orderly procession behind the Sultan’s mahmal, traveling eastward until they reached the oasis of Kuman. From there, they headed south, through the mountains, until they reached the city of Nadiz. They paused in Nadiz for several days to water their camels and rest. Then they continued on through the wretched terrain that stretched between there and Medina, the last stop before they reached the hallowed city of Mecca.
The journey from the posting station to Medina took forty-six days. Some pilgrims died of exposure along the way. Others of thirst. Some forgot the reason they’d made the trip. Others forgot their names. But when they reached Medina, their spirits rallied. They visited the Prophet’s tomb and the Prophet’s mosque and intoned their collective thanks to Allah. Then they loaded their camels with fresh provisions, rode to a station outside the city—where the men removed their clothes, bathed, and put on their ihrams—and set off on the final leg of the dusty journey.
It was a crisp autumn morning when Nouri finally entered the Holy City. He was struck by the power of the place, but whether that power was due to the fact that the Prophet had been born there, the fact that it was where he had received the Holy Book, or the sheer number of bodies that overflowed its narrow streets, he couldn’t say. He only knew that he was swept along on a sea of prayer to the center of the Haram, where he joined in the impassioned circling of the great stone cube.
Nouri spent fifteen days in the Holy City. The constant eruptions of sound—the donkeys, the bells, the booming calls to prayer—were overwhelming to his ever-sensitive ears. But he stuffed them with some wax he purchased from a candlemaker and soldiered on. He found lodging at a Sufi hospice not far from the Grand Mosque, which allowed him to go there whenever he liked. He also performed the other rites of the hajj: the prayers at the Maqam Ibrahim, the “Running” between the hills of al-Safa and al-Marwa, the “Standing” beneath the Mount of Mercy on the plain of Arafat. At the end of the visit, he joined the Feast of the Sacrifice. Then he removed his ihram and headed home.
The journey back was even longer than the journey there. When they reached Nadiz, an illness swept through their weary ranks and the caravan had to remain there for nearly a month before they could travel on. A windstorm impeded their progress to Cairo, and by the time Nouri reached the gates of the mountain lodge he was gaunt and sun-dazed and aching with fatigue. The brothers were eager to hear of his adventures and Nouri did not hold back. But only Sheikh al-Khammas knew the truth, which he conveyed in a single glance.
The journey was thrilling.
Inspiring.
Exalting.
And, in the end, it did not change a thing.
“You would never have believed me if I’d told you,” said Sheikh al-Khammas. “You had to learn the truth for yourself: the real Holy City is within.”
Nouri wasn’t sorry he’d made the trip. It had stirred his heart and strengthened his will. But he knew that Sheikh al-Khammas was right. So he focused his efforts on finding the Mecca within. He poured himself into the world of nature. He sat in the chapel mosque, trying to merge with a higher world. At times, the sharp line around things would melt and he would unite with a bird or a cloud or a tree. But the moment would always pass, and the feeling of separateness would return.
Perhaps he hadn’t suffered enough.
Or paid enough.
Or prayed enough.
“Who are you, Nouri?” Sheikh al-Khammas would say. “You must keep asking yourself. Over and over.”
So the members of the tiny order in the clouds fell to the ground and lowered their heads and extended their arms and tried to observe who they were and who they were not.
I am not this withered body, thought Sheikh al-Khammas.
I am not this resentment or this disdain, thought Sharoud.
I am not these yearnings or these fears, thought Nouri. Or these ears.
And the days passed. And Nouri’s connection with God flickered on and off, like a torch in a storm. And he prayed that he could find the strength to keep it from going out.