The Girl with Braided Hair

by Rasha Adly

  Borhan mopped his bald pate and forehead. “Wouldn’t you like to look at some other part of the house?”

  “No.”

  “Then let’s go,” Borhan gestured nervously, “and I’ll tell you all about the dervish over coffee.”

  Sherif reluctantly agreed. He didn’t really want to leave this place, filled with the spirit of a man who was no longer there. He wished the dervish would reappear, so that he could see and speak with him again. His presence had made Sherif feel at peace, and his conversation was a balm to his aching soul.

  Borhan glared silently throughout the drive, as though some catastrophe had struck him and rendered him dumb—a stark contrast to his garrulousness of before. Finally, they sat at a sidewalk café and he ordered them two cups of coffee. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to be honest with you: I’ll tell you everything.” He mopped his brow again. “Let’s start at the beginning.

  “One of my ancestors built this house to marry and start a family there. Then he joined a Sufi tariqa, or order, and became a prominent imam with his own followers and students, so he converted almost all of the house into a school and guest house for the dervishes. He and his family only lived in a small corner of it. As you know, these guesthouses open their doors to one and all, and dervishes from every corner of the globe are welcome to stay there for days, weeks, even months. On a cold December day, this man came knocking at the door of the guest house. He was trembling with cold, with snow in his hair and beard. They made him welcome and gave him a seat by the fireplace, and the cook gave him a bowl of hot soup. That day he didn’t speak much, only telling him that he had had a long journey, because he had come from Azerbaijan to Konya especially to study under my great-great-great-grandfather, now that he had become famous all over the world.

  “My grandfather accepted him as one of his students, and he quickly became a favorite. He was a man of few words, and did as he was told. One time, as they were gathered in the listening room, playing and dancing, he asked to be allowed to dance in circles as they did. My grandfather refused, as he was not yet ready for the whirling dance.”

  “But does that dance need any training?” Sherif asked, taking a gulp of his coffee. “It’s just turning around and around.”

  “Mr. Sherif,” Borhan said seriously, “the thing is very different from what you imagine. It is an ancient ritual dating back to the start of what we call human knowledge—the knowledge that allows a human being to take the path back to the Lord. It was first known in Persia. The whirling dancer departs his earthly life to spin high up into the Kingdom of God. My grandfather warned him at the time, ‘Not yet. Transmutation hurts you if you are not ready. Transmutation touches the heartstrings, and brings on such a flood of emotions that it becomes a temptation. Such a temptation blocks spiritual growth for those who immerse themselves in it merely to fulfill their emotional longing. Because of this, before transmutation, the heart must first abandon its burdens. When a dervish goes forth to the whirling dance, this is his path to the Complete Human.’”

  “The Complete Human?” Sherif repeated.

  “Yes,” Borhan explained, “the Complete Human refers to the wise creature whose ultimate goal is to reach God. To reach Him, he must pass through four portals. The passageway leading to these four portals is the four parts of the dance. The first portal is sharia, religious law, and the second is the tariqa, the Sufi order, that is the mysterious inner dimension of the Mevlevi Sufi order. The third portal is al-ma‘rifa, knowledge, and the fourth is al-haqiqa al-mutlaqa, absolute truth, where the skirted dervish shares his wisdom: when he opens his right hand above his head, he is drawing blessings upon himself from God, and when he opens his left toward the floor, he is conferring these blessings upon others. And thereby the dervish is reborn.”

  Sherif blinked. “I see.”

  He had not known that the simple-looking whirling had such a weight of ideas and beliefs behind it.

  “If you like, I can take you to a Mevlevi retreat, and you can see them for yourself.”

  “I’d definitely like to do that, but tell me the rest of the story about the dervish.”

  “There’s nothing to tell. This dervish refused to heed my ancestor’s advice. Once when they were dancing, he slipped in among them and began to whirl with them. My grandfather punished him by banning him from dancing for six months, even if he were to become ready during that time. But no one saw him again after that night, in the guest house or outside it. They looked for him high and low, but he was gone without a trace. Ever since, there have been rumors that his spirit roams the guest house and the streets, wearing his white skirt and performing the whirling dance.”

  Sherif stilled, lost in thought. Clearly afraid he would change his mind about the house, or put down in his report ‘Dancing dervish in the house,’ Borhan started to convince him. “The only reason for all the rumors was the way the dervish disappeared. There’s no truth to them, none at all. Please don’t believe them.” He mopped his brow. “Or write them down in your report.”

  Sherif let the man prattle on, finally cutting him off. “Where do you think the dervish went?”

  Borhan took a breath. “Nobody knows. They do say he was a mysterious one, who never talked to anyone. And everyone knows that dervishes like to travel far and wide, across God’s green earth. Look, come on, let me take you to the retreat and show you the ritual.”

  It was late at night when Sherif came back to his hotel room, after a long evening where Borhan had initiated him into the secrets of the dervishes’ hidden world. He had taken Sherif to a Sufi order, where he had watched the dance, and had the different parts of it explained to him by Borhan. The most enthralling to him had been the state of mind into which they entered while performing the whirling dance, the spiritual ecstasy so intense that he fancied he could see them levitating off the floor.

  He thought long and hard about the divine love that transported them to this state, as though they were in a completely different world from ours. He wished he could have risen to join them and whirl and spin as they did, to join them in this world of theirs. But was he ready? It was then that he understood the dervish’s overpowering urge to dance.

  Borhan took him to the graves of the dervishes with their tall hats carved into the top of their headstones, telling him that a dervish’s hat was always buried with him. The hat was an important part of the ritual, and the worst punishment that could befall a dervish who had committed some sin was to be forbidden from wearing it. They ended their tour by visiting the graves of the famous dervishes Jalal al-Din al-Rumi and Shams al-Tabrizi. Sherif was consistently astonished by the depth of the man’s knowledge about a world of which Sherif knew nothing: to him, before today, a dervish had been only a dancer in a white skirt.

  Sherif flung his exhausted body down on the bed, and, unusually for him, fell asleep at once.

  He saw himself wearing the costume of the dervishes, complete with tall hat, spinning and whirling. Suddenly, a voice whispered in his ear: “Not yet . . . not yet . . . transmutation hurts you if you are not ready.”

  He bolted upright, turning his head this way and that in search of the voice. Had it been a dream? He had been asleep, but the voice that woke him . . . that had not been a dream.

  The muezzin’s voice rang out with the call to dawn prayer: al-Salatu khayran min al-nawm, prayer is better than sleep. He leapt out of bed, did his ablutions, and went out to the mosque.

  The wind whistled loudly as he made his way across the square, chilly gusts that nearly blew him off his feet. He crossed the road quickly and went into the mosque. He scanned the rows of the faithful, hoping to find the dervish among them, but he was not there.

  Sherif did not leave the mosque like the rest of the men who had been praying. He sat in a corner saying fervent prayers, the name of God on his lips, praising Him and asking for His mercy and forgiveness. A ray of light shone down from the sky and found its way into his heart, filling it with light and faith
. He didn’t know how long he sat there, apart from reality. Through the veil of his tears, he saw the hem of a white garment: looking up, he saw him standing there. “You?” he breathed, overcome with love and gratitude.

  The man smiled without answering.

  “But are you really the dervish who disappeared long ago? Tell me. Are you real, or am I imagining you? Dead or alive?”

  “Dervishes never die. They live on in silence.” Sherif was still thinking of these words when the man went on, “Don’t stop. Keep going and you’ll get there.”

  When Sherif opened his mouth to speak, the dervish began to whirl. He spun at breakneck speed, his perfume spreading like a breeze, then faded away and vanished, still spinning.

  Dawn was breaking when Sherif left the mosque, a weak light trying to push its way up and dislodge the weight of the darkness. Gradually, it grew and grew until it filled the world with brightness, light, and warmth. The light dispelled not only the darkness in the sky, but also the darkness in Sherif’s heart and soul. This was the time of day he usually crawled out of the clubs he frequented, but he had never thought to notice the darkness gradually clearing the way for the sun to spread its light anew. The darkness that had settled over his soul had blocked him from seeing anything of beauty.

  He didn’t feel like going back to the hotel. He went to a café and ordered tea and pastries stuffed with cheese and vegetables. He ate with great appetite, and then took a walk all around town. While the dervish didn’t appear again, he remained with Sherif in spirit. He saw him whirling and turning all around him, his wide white skirt touching the whole of creation.

  Going into a stationer’s that stocked dervish-themed gifts, he found figurines of dervishes in different shapes and sizes, and books on their history. He bought several books on Sufi mysticism and their different orders, the dervishes, their lives, rituals, and guest houses. As he was walking out, he saw an enormous earthenware statue of a dervish, wearing a wide skirt, with one palm raised to the heavens and the other pointed at the floor. He bought it.

  Back in his room, he checked his phone to find more than ten missed calls: from the office, from friends, and from his partner asking him for his report. There were also two calls from Borhan. Sherif returned these first. Borhan’s voice came tersely through the phone. “Good morning, Mr. Sherif. I called you a couple of times, but you didn’t answer. Did you sleep late?”

  “Not at all,” Sherif said curtly. “I woke early.” He let him stew, imagining curiosity eating him alive. Borhan couldn’t very well ask him why he hadn’t answered his calls, and Sherif imagined that his short responses were making him uneasy.

  “Mr. Sherif. Please don’t mention that business with the dervish in your report about buying the house. It’s just a superstition, I told you.”

  “Of course,” Sherif took pity on him, “of course, I know it’s just a superstition. Don’t worry about it.”

  “And about the dervishes buried under the house. . . . We can demolish the mausoleum, and move the remains somewhere else. They’ve been buried for three hundred years at least, and the remains won’t be more than a handful of dust.”

  Sherif thought about all the years that the dervish had been in this world, the man who had disappeared from the city without a trace. Had he really left Konya? And if he had, why had his ghost remained in the same location, going around the place performing the dance of which he had been deprived, openly defying his imam? Here he had remained, for decades, dancing and dancing. ‘Dervishes never die . . . they live on in silence,’ he remembered. What had the man meant by that? Had he been hinting that his ghost and his soul were there for eternity? So many questions flashed lightning-fast through his mind, Borhan’s voice snapping him out of his reverie. “Mr. Sherif? Mr. Sherif? Are you with me?”

  “Yes, yes.” Sherif took a breath. “Don’t worry about the house. It’ll all be fine.”

  He did not leave his hotel room all day: he began to read a book of biographies of the dervishes in the Mevlevi order founded by Jalal al-Din al-Rumi. It gave details about their rituals, their lives, their clothing, their creed, their dances, their hopes and dreams, the circumstances of their lives, and even of their deaths. From time to time, he ordered coffee from room service to help him concentrate. Humming, he recited the dervish’s mantra that the author had quoted: There was a dervish . . . the dervish opened a shelter for dervishes . . . his wide skirts scattered secrets . . . but no one knows what they are. . . . There was a dervish . . . the dervish opened a shelter for dervishes . . . his dance rises high to the sky . . . his beard touches the ground below him . . . and his lips scatter secrets . . . but no one can hear them.

  The book drew him in and filled him with astonishment. He couldn’t put it down until he had read it from cover to cover. He closed the book, still chanting the mantra. He contemplated the image of a dervish on the cover: suddenly the image changed to that of the familiar ghost, smiling and chanting.

  He was still frozen with astonishment when he felt a strong hand pulling him up from where he sat. The dervish began to whirl around the room. Sherif found himself dancing with him, one hand splayed above his head and the other pointed at the floor, turning and whirling with the dervish. He felt an incomparable lightness, as though his soul had left his body and floated far away into another world. He was transmuted into nothingness; he was not present on this earth. He remained thus until a tremor through his body brought him back to the mortal plane, pulling him out of the spiritual.

  Here he was, he who had sampled this world’s every pleasure and experienced the extremes of ecstasy, overcome by an ecstasy that was matchless, a pleasure that was peerless. He decided not to think: however he cudgeled his brains, he would not understand.

  Sherif ended up spending twenty full days in the city. During that time, he went to the dervishes’ retreat that Borhan had taken him to, and met with their imam, and spoke to him of his desire to join their order. They had a long meeting that day: Sherif laid bare everything about his life and his past, and his desire to liberate himself from it and start anew. However, when he tried to mention the dervish, something stopped the words from coming out.

  In his report on the house, he assessed the price accurately, not overpricing or underpricing it. It might have been the first time where he did not fudge his report, or try to convince the seller that his property was worth a lower price. It was his modus operandi to try and find a loophole to bring down the price, and if none existed, he would make one up out of whole cloth. Borhan’s property, with its Sufi order, was positively riddled with holes—all he had to do was tell Mr. Borhan that his house was haunted with the ghost of a dervish that wouldn’t leave, and he’d be forced to accept any price the company offered. But he didn’t.

  11

  Cairo: Winter 2012

  With great care, she placed the painting into the trunk of the car, and drove to the Cairo suburb of Maadi. On the way, she thought of what had taken place with Sherif yesterday. The oddest feeling had come over her since he had held her: she could still feel his embrace, feel his strong arms encircling her and the tenderness he had offered. Because of it, she had gone to bed happy that night. Now she felt stronger than before, no longer a feather in the wind.

  She parked outside the address on the business card, remembering what Dr. Khalil had said about this man: “He’s an expert on painting, a graduate of the Florence Academy of Fine Arts. He’s been a voracious learner ever since he graduated, always reading about the newest ways to examine a painting. He worked at the National Institute for Fine Arts here in Egypt, and oversaw the conservation of a lot of paintings in state-owned museums.”

  The place was a two-story building in a quiet street, surrounded by a wrought-iron fence and tall trees that blocked the view inside. The owner had built it especially for the conservation of privately-owned artwork that would otherwise have been discarded, or at the very least permanently removed from display. She pressed the intercom button. A scra
tchy, electronically distorted male voice grated, “Who is it?”

  “It’s Yasmine Ghaleb.”

  “Come in.” The door buzzed. She entered, carrying the painting that had preoccupied her since the moment she had laid eyes on it. The entrance was marble, the stairway flanked with two marble statues of lions. The wooden door stood open, revealing a reception hall beyond it, furnished with leather chairs, and a blond secretary behind the counter who welcomed her with a smile. She asked one of the assistants to take the painting from Yasmine and she and the assistant took the elevator up to the second floor.

  The expert welcomed her with a smile and shook her hand warmly. “Good to meet you.” He was middle-aged, somehow managing to look both conservative and bohemian at once. He wore a black wool jacket with a partly unbuttoned white shirt underneath, and black dress shoes. His hair was in a ponytail, and he had leather braided bracelets on his wrist. She liked him at once: he did not seem rigid or pedantic, as was typical for those who worked in research and conservation, nor disorganized and chaotic, which seemed to be the rule for artists. “How do you like your coffee?” he asked, which was a prelude to an interesting conversation about painting. “Do you know,” he said, “I have found that people’s relationships with their artwork has little or no relation to its value. Most of the paintings I’ve restored are neither signed nor dated, nor even by any artist of note. On the contrary, most were by amateurs, and many were copies of famous masterpieces. But in every instance, there is a relationship between a painting and its owner. It’s that which makes people keep the same painting on the same wall for years, and look at it from time to time as if they’re seeing it for the first time. When they move, it’s the first thing they think of taking with them, and they’re careful to re-hang it in a prominent place.”

  Eventually, the conversation turned to her painting, and Yasmine told him of the information she had managed to acquire in her research into it, with her experience as a professor of art history. He listened attentively and did not seem surprised by her attachment to the painting, clearly used to it from his clients. What did surprise him was when she told him about the locks of human hair in the girl’s braids.