For Amjad Sabri
“I spoke for you,” the qawwal said.
“Pardon?” I said, confused.
“To Nizamuddin. I spoke for you.” He smiled. “You’ll be fine, inshallah.”
His words unsettled me. Life had been sad since the divorce, but at that moment I thought I was fine. I’d joined the US Department of State in an effort to construct a new self, succeeding to some extent. The job had brought me to Pakistan, my childhood home, where I now sat in a freezing American embassy office with the famous devotional singer, who needed a visa for his upcoming concert tour. Qawwali—a genre of Sufi music—was an inheritance from his forefathers, a spiritual tradition going back centuries.
When I’d last met him, the qawwal was about to visit Delhi. He said he would pray for me at the shrine of Nizamuddin, the fourteenth-century Sufi who had lived and died in the Indian capital, and who still lived in people’s hearts through fables about his wisdom, compassion, and miracles. I’d nodded, not knowing how an unbeliever should respond to a generous offer of Sufi intercession.
Now, the qawwal sat beside me. “You’ll be fine, inshallah,” he repeated. He smiled and left.
I resisted the urge to cry for no apparent reason.
*
We met in a little shop near the American embassy building. I clutched a bottle of red wine; she nibbled at a bar of chocolate. I attempted a lame joke about our excellent pairing of drink and dessert. She laughed. I was drawn to the intelligent face, silver earrings, hair like autumn sunshine. Her name: Anna.
In the days that followed, I looked for opportunities to talk to her, inviting her to dinner at a local restaurant, asking her to accompany me to a colleague’s house party, and suggesting we go to a popular cafe for the city’s best ice cream sundae. She never refused.
Anna served her country with distinction as a diplomat. She knew several languages from the places where she had lived. She spoke of her work on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia with a remarkable passion.
“I left a piece of my heart in Sarajevo,” she said. Mine skipped a beat.
Together, we hiked the modest hills north of the city. We saw an ancient train from the days of the British Raj. We fled a screeching jazz recital. And we talked incessantly about American literature, world cuisine, and the fate of the universe.
For my birthday, she gave me Pablo Neruda poems printed on sheets of colored paper. That night we went out to a Lebanese restaurant. After dessert—Nabalusi knafeh, syrup-soaked pastry filled with cheese—I could not deny the reality that I was falling madly in love.
“You’re perfect,” I said, sitting in the car outside her house. The scent of jasmine from her flower bracelet filled the air. She gave a wordless smile.
Since the divorce, pessimism had become my life strategy. I expected the worst in every situation. When Anna went away on a work trip, I fell into a deep and familiar depression, convinced that grief was inevitable.
*
Once upon a time, the city of Delhi suffered under the cruelty of an unjust tyrant, who was jealous of Nizamuddin’s popularity with the people. He dispatched a threat to the Sufi from a distant battlefield: leave Delhi now or die.
Nizamuddin’s companions and disciples were terrified, but the Sufi himself was unperturbed.
“Delhi is still far away,” he said, with Sufi inscrutability.
Nobody understood him.
On his way back to Delhi, the tyrant encountered a crazed elephant and died.
Nizamuddin’s remark—Delhi is far away—has become a common proverb warning against the danger in trusting plans, even when one’s desire is simple and attainable.
Those days, Anna seemed very far away from me.
*
I emailed her poems of love and longing, reckoning that poets of exile like Mahmoud Darwish and Faiz Ahmed Faiz would help me. “In her absence, I created her image / I am here weighing the expanse with the Jahili odes,” I wrote, adding: “It feels as if the day of separation is past.”
The counterpoint of separation and union is a common theme in Sufi poetry. Another is the ambiguity between the earthly and divine beloveds, which some modernists have used as a symbol for the homeland. My goal was neither god nor country. I wanted her.
Anna returned, giving me faith in the poets. I asked her to marry me. She accepted, and I remembered the qawwal’s song. “Nizamuddin, you make the world bright!”
Our wedding day dawned. Indeed, the world was bright. Wherever we looked, there were flowers and fairy lights and laughter. We saw garish colors, wore uncomfortable clothes, and ate endless meals. Among the guests were well-known personalities from our world of diplomacy: a handsome ambassador, a chatty politician, a mighty general with his mightier mustache. None danced.
I thanked the generous qawwal and the dead Sufi for my unexpected and undeserved good fortune.
*
When Anna received an invitation to a conference in Delhi, I naturally suggested she visit Nizamuddin’s shrine to pay her respects.
“I never thought an unbeliever would be superstitious,” she laughed.
Sufis are generous, even in death. Every day Nizamuddin’s shrine is packed with the despondent, seeking employment, babies, and health. Our jobs were in no danger, so we decided that Anna would ask the Sufi for a child for us and a cure for my cancer-stricken aunt.
She did. The shrine’s custodian told Anna that Nizamuddin listens to everyone, even an American woman without faith.
*
My aunt died that summer. She was my mother’s youngest sister, the baby of her generation. Her suffering ended, but she left behind loved ones to suffer in her absence.
On a crowded, sunny street, a young man shot the qawwal dead. According to news reports, the killer was a religious extremist who considered killing a Sufi to be his duty. The newspapers did not mention if he was fasting when he violated the sanctity of the holy month of Ramadan and orphaned five children.
“Nizamuddin has failed. Where is he and his mystical power? By God, he has failed,” I said in sadness and anger.
Anna sipped her coffee in silence.
*
“Fortunate is the one whose scarf Ali dyes,” the qawwal chanted in his last song, a mystical hymn in honor of Nizamuddin. Ali, a martyr from Islam’s early days, is the inspiration for much Sufi thought, adored for his courage, compassion, and kindness.
I’ve never been to Nizamuddin’s shrine. Anna and I live in Oman now. Ali, our only son, is the light of our eyes.
