Love's Sharia

By Sevinç Özarslan, "Şafak merges worldly with love that transcends this world Love" - Today's Zaman - Istanbul, Turkey
Sunday, March 15, 2009

Best-selling writer Elif Şafak’s latest novel “Aşk” (Love) was published last week. What connection exists between Ella Rubinstein, a middle-aged housewife and a member of a Jewish family living in Boston in the 2000s, and Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi, who lived in Konya in the 1200s?

Şafak believes that we can find an answer to this question in her novel, “Aşk” (Love). She ponders Mevlana’s words, “Love’s Shariah is different from all religions as its Shariah or path consists entirely of God,” during the course of the entire novel. Şafak talks to Sunday’s Zaman about her novel and how she has been transformed by love.

On Internet forums, everyone is announcing that your new novel has been published. Was everyone really anticipating it this much?
Yes, they were waiting for a novel, but not a novel on love specifically. I was receiving many e-mails. When I walked on the streets, some people would ask me about my next novel. This was because “Siyah Süt” was not quite a novel. It was an autobiographical work. In my opinion, there are good novel readers. The majority of these readers are women. Some of them would ask me to write a novel on love. But please do not interpret love only as the relationship between a man and a woman. In other words, they were expecting me to write a novel that would also discuss divine love.

It is a common complaint that there are not many novel readers in our country. But what you say does not fit with this description.
I say this based on my personal experiences. In Turkey, there are good novel readers. And it is impossible to deceive these readers. They like novels very much and they make them a part of their lives. During the book signing sessions, I notice an interesting thing. A novel is not read only by one person. A chain of readers is established within the family. After reading the novel, a woman gives it to her mother, her sister or her aunt. These are facts supported by statistics. This is a situation unique to Turkey. This type of borrowing is not as common in Western countries. There are hardships facing authors in our country, but I think the novel is, nevertheless, an esteemed art in this country. In the US, so many books are published that a book may be lost amid the diversity. Yes, books disappear there. In Turkey, writing does not melt into thin air. There is an important base that nurtures literature in this country. This is very good, but we burden the novel with exaggerated meanings and tend to forget that it is fiction.

How did you feel while writing “Aşk”?
It is my ninth novel. Each of them was special, but I think this novel has a special place for me. When I was writing, I was moved by the process. I do not make plans. “Where should I go from here? What will readers think about it? What will be the reactions of critics?” I place these concerns in a drawer and close it. I enter the world of the story I am writing. I lived with the characters I created, with Ella, Aziz, Şems and Mevlana. I narrated the characters -- whom I love -- by heart. This book was written with love. I hope to transmit this feeling to readers. It is a novel that must be read with love.

In your novel you say, “In a world where no one finds time for the subtleties of love, the shariah of love becomes more important.” What is the “Shariah of love”?
The “Shariah of love” is not a concept that I have developed on my own. I borrowed it from Mevlana. In the “Mesnevi,” Mevlana tells the story of Moses and a shepherd and says, at the end of the story: “Love’s Shariah is different from all religions as its Shariah or path consists entirely of God.” This phrase has long preoccupied my mind. Indeed, in the society in which we live -- particularly in Turkey -- we tend to view love in terms of sexuality, the lack of rules or in more mundane aspects. On the other hand, we tend to associate Shariah with prohibitions, finger-cutting and fear. Why do these two concepts co-exist side by side? Eight hundred years ago, a scholar made this assertion. Yet, today, we tend to label and alienate people. We are doing this for the sake of religion or sometimes for ideology. We forget about the essence. We busy ourselves with form. Thinking about all these things was a sort of meditative exercise for me.

Where did this exercise take you?
There is unity in the “Shariah of love,” as Mevlana understood. It rejects discrimination. Yet, in order to attain this unity, one has to transcend the “disillusion of selfhood.” One must stop treating himself/herself as a separate or distinct “self.” This is a hard test for an artist. In art, we build egos, selves. On the other hand, we learn how to eradicate those egos in Sufism. For this reason, there are two different voices. And there are two distinct voices inside me. I like to ponder these and make sure that the readers think about them, too.

In the novel, Şems [Shams-i-Tabrizi] has 40 rules. Each of them is like a lesson. How were these rules formulated?
These are completely the work of my imagination. That is, they are not the rules originally developed by Şems. In the end, this novel is a work of fiction. Of course, I have been greatly inspired by my readings on Sufism. I have a close interest not only in Anatolian Sufism, but also in Sufism in Pakistan, India, the US and Europe. I’ve carefully read William Chittick’s biography of Şems. Yet, there is no manifesto of Sufism. But it has a universal and common essence.

In the 40th rule, you say: “A life without love is a life lived in vain. Do not ask which love I should run after: divine, metaphorical, worldly, celestial or physical! Distinctions will lead to distinctions.” Don’t you think that the love between Ella and Aziz and the union of Mevlana and Şems signify such a distinction between types of love?
These two are not the same, but they are not unrelated either. There are some people, like Ella, who have raised their children, who feel unhappy after a marriage of 20 years and who are urged to search for something new to forget their psychological gloom. I have seen so many people in the US who love and are curious about Mevlana. Their number is gradually increasing. I think that we are not aware of the extent of worldwide interest in Mevlana. “Mevlana nights” are organized. Poem recitals are held. Passages from the “Mesnevi” are read and discussed. Mevlana has a magnetic and mystical call for all human beings.

Actually, we recently have become aware of this interest. We see that the majority of people who come to see sema rites are foreign.
Yet, this is true. There are even people who visit Konya after seeing Mevlana in their dreams. This is magical. Rumi is the bestselling poet in the US. They know him as the Shakespeare of the Muslim world. In my novel, I wanted to discuss this. What does Mevlana mean to Ella, a Jewish housewife living in Boston, in the US? There is also this: Ella wants to experience both worldly and spiritual love. Indeed, she loves Aziz without knowing him and she falls in love with his words, not with his body. This was an important puzzle for me. How can a person love another without knowing him/her and by just looking at his/her words? Can one see the other’s essence? The first thing Şems told Mevlana is “See me.” Throughout the novel, there are transitions between divine and worldly love. It rejects discrimination. Because love is the driving force of this life. It is our raison d’être. It is the cause of our quest.

As we are reading the novel, we get the impression of seeing a woman who wants to experience divine love, but is being coquettish at the same time. What do you think about this?
I have never thought that way, but I will ponder on it. Perhaps, we cannot quit Him (God) on one hand, and we tend to behave coquettishly toward Him. We all have our ups and downs. Being a human being is to be like this. But after a novel is written, it belongs to the readers, not to the author.

In the novel, we come across a form of communication that a shepherd has established with his Creator, but which Moses fails to understand. What kind of language do you think you have developed?
Actually, everyone speaks their own style. This is a good thing. The story of Moses and the shepherd in the novel was very important for me. The shepherd prays to God in his own unique language. He says interesting and unacceptable things. “O God, I will wash your feet, and I will slaughter my sheep for you so that you can add their meat to your pilaf and eat it.” When he hears these words, Moses gets very angry and intervenes in his prayer. “How dare you speak with God in such a way,” he erupts. But at night, God warns him in his dream. “Are you here to unite or divide? Leave him. Let him pray as he wishes. We do not pay attention to language or words but to the heart,” he says. We need to refrain from judging or labeling other people and from assuming that we are superior to them. We must focus on the essence of faith. If we can do this, we can assume a universal, all-embracing and peaceful position. What does Şems say in the novel? “Have a lot of faith, but do not boast with it!”

There is an internal dialogue of Mevlana’s wife, Kerra; she says that what really is difficult for her in the conversion to Islam is abandoning Mary. Later, Şems responds to Kerra’s worries and tells her that she does not need to pine for Mary, as a Muslim woman may commemorate Mary with prayers. What passed through your mind as you were writing this dialogue?
Kerra is a Muslim convert. I wanted to delve into her psychology. I have observed many times that some women who converted from Christianity to Islam may have such hesitations: “Should I abandon Mary? Will she no longer be as important as before?” In Christianity, Mary symbolizes compassion. Those who want to pray to God establish communication via Mary. For the women who have such worries, the embracing and universal perspective of Sufism may be a good solution.

Are there many women like Ella in Europe and in the US?
Yes, there are many such women. There are such women even here in Turkey. What appeal may a character such as Ella have for housewives in Isparta or Rize? At first glance, Ella is a Jewish woman living in Boston. She has a rich life. But she also feels a sort of inner compression or deficiency. This feeling may be familiar to women in Burdur, İstanbul or İzmir. When we remove visible differences, we see that underlying stories are similar and universal. We may establish empathy with each other over these shared experiences. There are many people who are trapped within unhappy marriages, but who exert no effort to transform themselves and let their lives go.

Perhaps, they do not have the courage to do this. But Ella has this courage.
Yes, she is courageous, but she is not the combatant type. All through her life, she has led a modest and domestically oriented life; she is the silent type. The transformation of such a woman stirs me. Also, she always schedules her life, planning every bit of it. I have known so many people like her. They have journals, special notes and plans for the next three months in their bags. For such a women to abandon her obsession with tomorrow and choose to experience love in the moment is a radical transformation. For me, this was the most important part of the book. Indeed, Aziz does not promise her the future. As a matter of fact, no one can make such a promise in this world. But we have such delusions.