Iran, Persian Empire, 1290
Rumi found Hafiz in the garden pavilion. He paused a moment to drink in the scene. The garden was his friend’s lifelong obsession. The trees, growing just so, the elegant drape of the heavy tapestry sides and roof of the open fronted caravanserai, the inner curtains of gauze, sunset coloured and embroidered with golden flowers, the heaped cushions covered with blue and green silk, sea-coloured. The table laid with dainties, rare fruits and sherbets, and the wine cups and iced wine jug, Ciracassian work, gold and silver.
And on a heap of soft fabrics with a look of utter despair on his face, his friend. His turban was unravelling, his hair dishevelled, his soft silken robe open and flapping, revealing his pale bare chest.
Rumi did not speak but sat down next to him, putting a hand on Hafiz’s silk-clad knee. The sad face turned to him, eyes brimming with tears.
‘What is it?’ asked Rumi, gently.
‘It is all complete,’ wailed Hafiz. ‘The garden is prefect, perfect! There is nothing else to do!’
And he burst into tears and buried his face in Rumi’s shoulder. Rumi embraced him, carefully. He knew Hafiz’s moods. They changed very quickly.
‘How did this revelation come to you?’ asked Rumi.
‘It began last night. My first wife quarrelled with me, so I slept alone. My last catamite lost patience with me and went home to his mother, taking all my gifts. My cat came to keep me company, then decided to sleep on my hair: I could not close an eye, but I lay in a doze, too lazy to get up and put her out, too uncomfortable to dream. At dawn I heard an awful crash and got up, only to find my second wife had thrown a wine cup at my first wife and they were both packing up to leave. And it was my favourite wine cup. The one you gave me, Rumi, when we were boys so long ago. I shouted at them and they shouted back and then they both decamped, so I came out here to lie in my garden, and I lay here and the nightingale sang, the scent of jasmine was heavy on the air, the trees were blooming, the grass like velvet, and I realised… he burst into tears again… ‘that the garden was perfect, finished, and so was I’.
‘Oh, my soul,’ soothed Rumi. ‘No garden is ever finished. New leaves grow, old ones fall and mar the turf. Birds come and go. It is a living thing, not a painting. And you are not finished.’
‘But they all leave me,’ mourned Hafiz.
‘You were more concerned about the wine cup,’ observed Rumi.
Hafiz thought about this, nodded, and sat up, still leaning on his friend’s shoulder.
‘What then, am I? A heartless man?’ he asked plaintively.
‘No, light of my eyes, you have a heart. You just haven’t been indulging it.’
Hafiz sat entirely up and poured them both a cup of wine. He gulped.
He looked at Rumi. His old friend looked tired, but he still had the merry lines, the bright eyes and the curly hair of his youth. Hafiz ran a hand through his own hair, took off the turban, wiped his face on it and dropped it, and drank more wine.
‘Expound, my poet,’ he commanded.
‘It is like this,’ Rumi sat cross legged like a market storyteller, one finger raised in exposition. ‘You became wealthy, and you felt you needed to have all the trappings of wealth. You bought this estate and began your garden. I was with you. I remember how much joy you took in planning it. What you would plant where, what sort of tree or bush, what rare flowers to attract coloured butterflies or singing birds. And you have done it. This is the most beautiful garden in all Iran.’
‘Finished,’ murmured Hafiz, and Rumi tapped his cheek reprovingly.
‘Then you thought you needed wives and lovers, so you bought them. You didn’t actually like either of your wives, though their beauty was legendary. They, consequently, didn’t like you; or each other. Is this not the case?’
‘You speak harshly,’ said Hafiz.
‘But truly?’
‘Yes,’ agreed Hafiz.
‘You purchased boys, not for their character or for their learning, but because everyone has boys, and you thought you had to have them, too. And they knew that you didn’t love them, so they extorted as much as they could from you, and left you. Do I speak truly?’
‘You do,’ sighed Hafiz. ‘Did you come here just to talk me into suicide?’
‘For such a clever man you are sometimes an errant fool,’ scolded Rumi. ‘I came tonight to make you a present.’
‘Of what?’ asked Hafiz, starting to smile. He loved presents.
‘Of myself,’ said Rumi.
Hafiz boggled. He stared at Rumi for a full minute on the water clock, which chimed sweetly every minute. It had been designed for him especially in Alexandria. Rumi. His oldest friend. Of all the lovers in the world, he had never thought of Rumi. The idea was strange and strangely attractive. But he wasn’t going to surrender a good solid sulk that easily.
‘What would you give me?’ he asked, pouring more wine for both of them.
‘I would stay with you,’ said Rumi, still in his storyteller’s pose. ‘I would love you. I would sit with you like this and drink wine and nibble dates. I would listen to you talk about your garden and you would listen to me talk about my poetry. I would laugh at your jokes...’ he raised a finger, ‘but only if they were funny. I would sleep close to you in your silken bed and sing you to sleep, and you would comfort me when I have nightmares. If your cat decided to sleep on your hair, I would remove her to lie in another place. We would study and play music and discuss mathematics and taste new wines and listen to birdsong and walk to the bazaar and listen to the gossip together, and then come home and drink mint tea and laugh over the follies of mankind. That is what I have to offer you, Hafiz, light of my eyes.’ He quoted his own poem of unrequited love. ‘Give me a cup from your wine flask, give me a handful of blossom from your branch.’
‘Have you always wanted this?’ asked Hafiz.
‘No. I wanted to roam the empire, hear new songs, meet new people, see new sights. Now I have come home, my Hafiz. My feet are scarred with travel and I am tired of the road and I want to lie down with you and make love to you, so that you cry my name into the darkness.’
‘And I have tried all the other things,’ sighed Hafiz, drawing his friend into his lap. ‘I have eaten it all, tasted and gulped and wallowed in the fleshly delights, boys and men and girls and women and all combinations in between. And I never loved any of them, and they never loved me.’
‘I love you,’ said Rumi, kissing him on the neck.
‘I love you,’ replied Hafiz. ‘I accept your present. Will you accept mine?’
‘And what have you to offer me?’ asked Rumi, smiling.
‘I will feed you delicate fruits and perfect concoctions, I will pour you fine wines and teas from Hind. I will listen to you as you speak your poetry, and I will wreath you in jasmine from my garden. I will tell you funny jokes, so that you will laugh. I will lie with you all night and nudge you when you snore, as you will nudge me, and I will never leave you even when we are lying in the Fields of Paradise, and we shall be buried in the same grave.’
‘I accept my present,’ said Rumi. They kissed, beard to beard.
When Hafiz’s servants came out to the garden, on tiptoe, fearing that the master might have made use of that sharp knife he had been waving around this morning, they found him asleep in Rumi the Poet’s arms; and Rumi asleep with him, naked and strangely beautiful. No one had ever seen that look of contentment on the master’s face before. They replenished the table and tiptoed away, letting down the gauze curtains.
When the nightingale began to sing Rumi woke and spoke a poem in the form he had invented
‘My soul that drank of your passion is floating
From the water of your life I drink ecstasy.
Death sniffed me, and scented your fragrance on me,
From now on, Death has lost all hope of me.’
‘My sweet heart,’ murmured Hafiz, half asleep. ‘For me your love will always be the scent of jasmine and the song of the nightingale.’
They wreathed their arms around each other again, and fell asleep to the song of the nightingale, and the scent of jasmine lay all about them like a benison from the garden.