Rumi's Secret

by Brad Gooch

  Mostly, Rumi did not bother to argue. One time, on hearing someone begin to broach a criticism of Shams, he jumped up and shouted, “I’m not going to listen to this!” and exited the hall. At other times, he spoke so honestly of the depths of their friendship that he left little room for criticism in the wake of his blatant exhilaration and passion—articulating for them the eternal love at the core of their striking spiritual connection:

  On the Day of Resurrection, when the ranks of the prophets and the categories of the Friends of God will be drawn up, and the believers of the Muslim community, troop after troop, will gather together, Shamsoddin and I, holding one another’s hand, will walk proudly and graciously into Paradise.

  Rumi was remarkably confident about the great changes caused in his life by Shams, whose bold commands helped him not only to relax from reading his father’s words but also from copying the manner of life of his father, as much as he continued to respect him. He realized that he had been given an opportunity for a more expansive existence. Shams allowed Rumi to experience the heartfelt warmth that he would always associate naturally enough with the sun, from which creativity soon began to flow. As he wrote of this disruption, appropriately, ventriloquially channeling the voice of Shams:

  You were silent and I made you a storyteller

  You were pious and I taught you how to sing

  CHAPTER 8

  Separation

  A few days before Nowruz, the Persian holiday marking the first day of spring, in March 1246—about fifteen months after appearing in Konya and upending Rumi’s life—Shams abruptly disappeared. He departed Konya without any warning, leaving behind Rumi, who became startled, confused, and distraught. Influencing his quick exit was the rising volume and intensity of anger from Rumi’s followers and, perhaps, Rumi’s ambivalence about Shams’s insistently pressing him to abandon his former life entirely.

  Sultan Valad vividly recalled the agitation that had been so consuming in the days before Shams vanished. A hint of violence was in the air. Some angry men even flashed their daggers at Shams or cursed at him as he passed them in the street. “All wondered when he would quit town or come to a wrathful end,” Sultan Valad wrote. Driving this wish for the eclipse of Shams was the expectation of Rumi’s followers that they would have their teacher and old way of life back. Yet the opposite occurred. Rumi withdrew entirely. As Sultan Valad poetically described, “His bird of affection flew away from their houses.” Realizing their situation had deteriorated—not improved—many repented.

  If Shams had been devising another of his tests, Rumi passed. He found that he was not able to return to his earlier ways. He was not able to go forward, either, as his new life pivoted on Shams. In its place was an emptiness Rumi was unable to fill, and he was left feeling paralyzed and depressed. As Aflaki reported, “Because of being apart from Shamsoddin, Mowlana grew unsettled. Day and night he found no rest and did not sleep.” Unknown to Rumi, Shams had traveled to Syria, either Damascus or Aleppo, or both. Yet he may have heard of Rumi’s condition. Even though it took a while to travel this distance, many shuttled between these cultural capitals. So Shams relented a bit. He entrusted a note with a traveler to Konya, reassuring Rumi he was alive and thinking of him: “Please be aware this humble man is praying for you, and mixes with no one else.”

  Rumi’s response was electric. He composed at least four letters in verse for Shams, moved by this momentous personal crisis to begin to try to find his voice as a poet. Rumi may have been experimenting earlier, since he was an aficionado of Arabic and Persian poetry, and implied in one stanza that he had begun writing poems:

  When you’re not here the sama is forbidden

  Music and dance are pelted with stones, like Satan

  Without you not even one ghazal has been written

  Until the clear message of your letter arrived.

  The first few of these urgent verse-letters lack the confident tone of his mature works. Tellingly, he began in Arabic, the more intellectual and formal language of the time. He did choose, though, as his form, the ghazal—his lifetime favorite—a rhymed poem of seven or more lines classically used as an erotic poem, sung by minstrels mostly on frivolous topics of wine, women or boys, and song, and eventually developed as a vehicle for mystical love poems. Like the English or Italian sonnet, the ghazal could be modulated from low to high themes, still redolent of the roughness of the Bedouin desert chants, while expressing the subtler Sufi sentiments.

  Although Shams was so derisive of the poetry of al-Mutannabi, these first poems Rumi wrote to him often sound like that favorite Arabic poet, both in language and in courtly convention. Very much a poet-for-hire, al-Mutannabi had specialized in qasidas, or odes of praise, written in a heroic style for a tenth-century ruler of Aleppo. In these paeans, the king is compared to the sun, his perfumed scent is carried on the breezes, his power rivals that of lions, his favor to another causes the poet painful jealousy. Rumi simply adapted these majestic tropes for Shams, comparing him to King Qobad, a Sassanian Persian king, or to a great military commander bringing triumph and victory. He instinctively knew that only the grandest of comparisons matched his spiraling emotions.

  If these first attempts were imitative copies of classical poems of love and praise, like juvenile poems, some of Rumi’s wit and vulnerability are evident—that other voice Shams heard when they were in private. A link in many ghazals was the radif, a repeating refrain of a word or phrase at the end of each line, adding a percussive beat that made for easy group chanting, when recited in public. For one of these verses, Rumi chose as his radif a supplication of a command, “Come!”—an urgent refrain imploring Shams’s return:

  Oh you, light within the heart, come!

  Goal of all effort and desire, come!

  You know my life is in your hands.

  Do not oppress your worshiper, come!

  Midway through the supplication, Rumi cleverly switched to Persian, and likewise switched from the Arabic for “Come!”—“Taal”—to the Persian for “Come!”—“Biya!”:

  What is “Taal” in Persian? Biya!

  Either come or show mercy, Biya!

  Rumi and Shams lived in a bilingual world, and this switching back and forth matched the way they spoke together and with others. When recounting to the disciples his important memory of meeting Rumi, Shams shifted to Arabic. When Rumi dictated to Hosam the precise date of Shams’s departure for Syria, he segued into formal Arabic:

  The Sun of Truth and Faith, the hidden light of God in the beginning and in the end—may God lengthen his life and favor us with greeting him—departed on Thursday the 21st day of the month of Shavval in the year 643.

  (A waning quarter moon on a lunar calendar, the date corresponded to March 11, 1246.)

  Rumi deputized his son Sultan Valad to deliver his reply to Shams in Syria, sending with him a tribute of gold and silver coins. The offering was a subtle reminder of the tariffs that Shams had demanded of Rumi’s followers to prove their love. In an accompanying prose letter, Rumi addressed the issue of these followers and assured Shams of their sincere change of heart—they were eager for Shams’s return and looked forward to his renewed teachings. In his verses, though, Rumi allowed more intimate glimpses of a desperate heart, coded and camouflaged in standard poetic decor:

  From the moment when you went away

  I was stripped of sweetness, turned to wax

  All night long I burn like a candle,

  Scorched with fire, but deprived of honey.

  Separated from your beauty, my body

  Lies in ruins and my soul is a night owl

  He signed off with his favorite source of puns from that time on—Shams’s name, as “shams,” lent itself, in Arabic, to the sun, as well as to Syria (Sham) and, in the ancient yet still current Pahlavi Persian vocabulary, to the night or early evening hours (sham):

  May my night be turned to bright morning by you

  You, who are the pride of Syria, Armenia and Rum!


  His saddlebag filled with the missive, gold and silver coins, and the verse letters—both charming and intense—Sultan Valad, then twenty, set off for Syria. In his writings, he spoke of being dispatched by his father to Damascus. The biographer Aflaki later gave more details of Rumi directing Sultan Valad even more precisely to a well-known caravanserai located in the Sufi Salehiyye neighborhood, where he told him to expect to find Shams playing backgammon. Shams in his later accounting of his time away from Rumi in Syria spoke fondly of Damascus, and of his special love for the grand Umayyad Mosque, repeating the well-worn equation of Damascus with paradise. Mostly, though, he spoke of having lingered in Aleppo, so that Sultan Valad either went to both cities, the two men stopping in Aleppo on the way from Damascus, or two separate trips were taken.

  In his own mind, the high point of Shams’s retreat from Konya, and the city with the greatest pull on his spirit to remain and never depart for Rum, was Aleppo. Shams reported having felt the excitement of a return visitor, sitting near its grand Citadel, close to the district where Rumi’s tutor Ibn al-Adim lived: “It’s a wonderful city, Aleppo—the houses, the streets. I looked around happily, seeing the tops of the battlements. I looked down, I saw a world and a moat.” Of a fortress a short distance from town, he said, “If they had said to me, ‘Your father has come out of the grave and wishes to see you. He has come to Tel Bahser to see you and then die once again—come see him.’ I would have said, ‘Tell him to die.’ I wouldn’t have left Aleppo even for him.” If still unsure of his feelings about Rumi, he was quite sure he had no desire to exchange Aleppo for Konya.

  Shams brought between three hundred and five hundred dirhams from Konya, and paid seven dirhams a month for his room, so he did not need to seek odd jobs, as in the past. He also ate frugally. When he had been on the road in earlier days, he was so ascetic that once a day would he go to a lamb’s head seller to buy bread and broth. When a shopkeeper insisted that Shams be given the best cut of lamb in his soup, Shams switched to a shop where they did not give him any such special treatment. On this trip, he was more relaxed about eating. As he later reminisced to Rumi, “I remember in Aleppo, I was saying I wished you were there. When I was eating, I would have given some to you, as well.”

  Apart from his absolute love for the city, though, Shams did experience mixed feelings about his motives for being there and his split with his beloved Rumi. During their first month apart he kept vacillating. He was testing Rumi’s resolve. He was also testing himself, deciding whether to walk away from such a cherished friend after having spent much of his adult life looking for him. He later confided to Rumi, “Such praying I did for you in Aleppo in that caravanserai where I was staying! It was not right to show my face to the people when you were not there. So I busied myself with work or spent time at a Sufi lodge.” At other times he felt ready to revert to his earlier, freer life: “When I was in Aleppo, I was busy praying for Mowlana. I prayed a hundred prayers, and only brought to mind memories that increased my affection, avoiding those that cooled the affections, but I had no intention to return.” Balanced in Shams’s thoughts, as well, was the mission of transformation he called “the work.” He did understand their friendship as not merely emotionally charged, but also critical for releasing Rumi’s potential.

  Eventually Sultan Valad, with a retinue of twenty companions, discovered Shams’s whereabouts: “When I found Shamsoddin, I put my forehead to the ground, and bowed.” According to the account in Aflaki, Shams was touched and moved to see Sultan Valad again: “Kissing Valad several times, Shamsoddin caressed him beyond measure and asked after Mowlana.” Sultan Valad duly presented the gifts, pouring all the coins into Shams’s shoes, and then passed on a crucial message from his father. “All the companions of Rum have bowed their heads in complete sincerity,” he reported. “Having repented, they have sought forgiveness beyond measure and regret what they did. They have resolved that from this day forward they will not show any disrespect and will not allow any envy to arise within themselves. They are all awaiting your most blessed arrival.”

  Shams relented—though when he later discussed their exchange that day with Sultan Valad, he insisted that he had been far from certain about his choice. He was not simply being evasive. He reminded Sultan Valad that his composure had not changed when he saw him: “When you came to Aleppo did you see any change in the color of my face? It’s as if it had been the same for a hundred years.” He went on to admit that he had been suffering greatly inside from the separation: “But it was so unpleasant and difficult for me that it would be bad to speak of it. Sometimes I enjoyed myself. But the unpleasantness was stronger. I preferred Mowlana.” No one knew better than Rumi the hesitation that his son was likely to encounter. Shams had evidently been talking about this choice for some time. Before the group left Konya for Syria, Rumi wrote and performed for them a more lighthearted ghazal that warned of just that strong possibility:

  Comrades, go, and bring back my beloved

  Bring back to me my runaway beloved

  Lure him with sweet melodies, and gifts of gold,

  Bring him back home, his face a beautiful moon.

  If he promises that he’ll come along shortly

  He may be deceiving you. All his promises are tricks.

  Rumi’s playful tone implied that he judged the worst over. Likewise playful was his toying with the romantic conventions of the ghazal—addressed to women in Arabic lyrics, though more often in the Persian tradition to young men, especially Turk soldiers in court, or wine stewards, with curly black hair and eyebrows. Shams was as far from that beardless ideal as from the warrior kings Rumi compared him to in his verse letters, while at the same time arousing all of the fiery love, longing, and awe that the imagery carried.

  The distance from Aleppo to Konya was about four hundred miles, which would have taken a camel caravan approximately a month. Sultan Valad’s contingent traveled on horseback. According to Aflaki, as they now had an extra rider, they were one horse short. Sultan Valad reasonably enough insisted that Shams ride the horse. Less reasonably, when Shams suggested their riding together, Sultan Valad refused, on the grounds of proper respect in the presence of a sheikh. Given the ancient emphasis on elaborate rituals of politeness in Persian culture, this exchange might have gone on extensively. “It is not permitted for a king and a slave to ride on one horse at the same time,” demurred Sultan Valad, attending to Shams’s stirrup throughout the entire journey.

  Rumi and Shams’s separation lasted about a year, with Shams’s reentry to Konya taking place around April 1247. As Rumi was dejected for months, his happiness anticipating Shams’s return was nearly manic. He saw the chance of having his life both ways—exploring the freedom, creativity, and love Shams offered, while remaining responsible to family and community. If Rumi had been more committed when the two—according to Shams—briefly met in Damascus during his student years, he might have pursued a life as a poet and mystic. He, too, could have been a “flier” like Shams, Attar, or Sanai. As his revolution occurred midlife, he needed to set responsibilities bequeathed by his father against the adventurous alternatives offered by Shams. The hope he might be able to have both made him giddy.

  Rumi wishfully told his disciples of the wonderful life they would now share, as he took them at their word about leaving behind their jealousy of the provocative Shams:

  This time you will find yourselves taking more pleasure from Shamsoddin’s words that faith is the sail on the ship of a man’s life. When the sail is set, the wind takes it to great places. Without the sail, words are nothing but wind.

  Trying to please, these disciples encouraged their teacher’s excitement by reporting rumors of Shams being spotted on his way to Konya. In his playful response, Rumi scolded them for these false sightings, making a comparison between seeing Shams and having spiritual insight. Without such insight, Shams would remain invisible:

  These people say, “We saw Shamsoddin of Tabriz, Master, we did
see him.” You brother of a whore, where did you see him? It’s like someone who can’t even make out a camel on a roof saying, “I found the eye of the needle and threaded it!”

  Shams’s highly anticipated homecoming was treated as a civic holiday. When Sultan Valad arrived at the nearby Zanjirli Caravanserai, he sent ahead a dervish to inform Rumi of their imminent arrival. Rumi alerted his disciples, who paraded out beyond the city gates to greet Shams in a welcoming ceremony that included banging on kettledrums, waving banners, and reciting poetry. Sultan Valad then led Shams’s horse to Rumi’s house. Again they saw each other, and again their hearts expanded. As Sultan Valad described the event, stressing the lack of clarity, or the mutual feeling, which marked their unconventional relationship, they fell at each other’s feet, “and no one knew who was the lover and who the beloved.” This perceptive comment on the abandon of their greeting was circulated widely enough to find its way eventually into a quatrain of Rumi’s:

  With his beautiful face, the envy of angels,

  He came to me at dawn and wept on my chest

  He wept and I wept until the break of day

  “How strange,” they said. “Of these two, who is the lover?”

  Rumi celebrated Shams’s arrival by performing occasional poems—writing poems for special occasions would remain his lifelong practice. These lines were musical, and trancelike, designed to accompany the whirling and meditating that went on at festivals. In his rousing lyric for Shams’s return, he used the same radif, “come,” which he had used in his imploring verse letter, but in the past tense, as a wish fulfilled, making a full circle. The poem was a long exhalation of the breath Rumi had been holding for nearly a year: