بخش 83

Shams

KONYA, MAY 1247

Beautiful bride, don’t you cry

Say bye to your mom, bye to dad

You will hear the birds sing tomorrow

Though it will never be the same.…

On our wedding night, I slipped out into the courtyard and sat there for a while, listening to an old Anatolian song pour from the house amid the many other sounds. Laughter, music, gossip. Female musicians played in the women’s section. I stood there thinking and chanting, shivering and feeling numb, all at the same time. I pondered the lyrics of the song. Why was it that women always sang sad songs on wedding nights? Sufis associated death with weddings and celebrated the day they died as their union with God. Women, too, associated weddings with death, though for entirely different reasons. Even when they were happily getting married, a wave of sadness descended upon them. In every wedding celebration, there was mourning for the virgin who was soon to become a wife and a mother.

After the guests left, I returned to the house and meditated in a quiet corner. Then I went to the room where Kimya was waiting for me. I found her sitting on the bed, wearing a white robe adorned with golden threads, her hair braided into a multitude of plaits, each of which was ornamented with beads. It was impossible to see her expression, as her face was covered with thick, red tulle. Except for a candle that flickered by the window, the room was without light. The mirror on the wall had been covered by a velvet cloth, as it was deemed to be bad luck for a young bride to see her reflection on her wedding night. Beside our bed there was a pomegranate and a knife, so that we could eat the fruit and have as many children as the seeds inside.

Kerra had told me all about the local customs, reminding me to give the bride a necklace with gold coins upon opening her veil. But I never had gold coins in my life and did not want to greet my bride with coins borrowed from someone else. So when I lifted Kimya’s veil, all I did was to give her a comb made of tortoiseshell and plant a small kiss on her lips. She smiled. And for a second I felt as shy as a lost little boy.

“You are beautiful,” I said.

She blushed. But then she squared her shoulders, doing her best to look more tranquil and mature than she could ever be.

“I am your wife now,” she said.

Then she pointed toward the beautiful carpet on the floor, which she had crafted on her own and with great care as part of her dowry. Exuberant colors, sharp contrasts. As soon as I saw it I knew that every knot and every pattern on the carpet was about me. Kimya had been weaving her dreams.

I kissed her again. The warmth of her lips sent waves of desire across my entire body. She smelled of jasmine and wildflowers. Stretching out beside her, I inhaled her smell and touched her breasts, so small and firm. All I wanted was to enter her and get lost inside her. She offered herself to me the way a rosebud opens to the rain.

I pulled away. “I’m sorry, Kimya. I can’t do this.”

She looked at me, still and stunned, forgetting to breathe. The disappointment in her eyes was too much to bear. I jumped to my feet.

“I need to go,” I said.

“You cannot go now,” Kimya said in a voice that didn’t sound like her. “What will people say if you leave the room now? They will know that this marriage was not consummated. And they’ll think it was because of me.” “What do you mean?” I murmured, half to myself, because I knew what she was suggesting.

Averting her eyes, she mumbled something incomprehensible, and then she said quietly, “They’ll think I wasn’t a virgin. I’ll have to live in shame.”

It made my blood boil that society imposed such ridiculous rules on its individuals. These codes of honor had less to do with the harmony God created than with the order human beings wanted to sustain.

“That’s nonsense. People should mind their own business,” I objected, but I knew that Kimya was right.

With one quick move, I grabbed the knife beside the pomegranate. I glimpsed a trace of panic in Kimya’s face, slowly replaced by the expression of someone who recognized a sad situation and accepted it. Without hesitation I cut my left palm. My blood dripped on our bedsheet, leaving dark crimson stains.

“Just give them this sheet. This will shut their mouths, and your name will remain pure and clean, the way it should be.”

“Wait, please! Don’t go,” Kimya beseeched. She rose to her feet, but, not knowing what to do next, she repeated once again, “I am your wife now.”

In that moment I understood what a terrible mistake I had made by marrying her. My head throbbing with pain, I walked out of the room into the night. A man like me should never have gotten married. I wasn’t designed to perform marital duties. I saw this clearly. What saddened me was the cost of this knowledge.

I felt a strong need to run away from everything, not only from this house, this marriage, this town, but also from this body I had been given. Yet the thought of seeing Rumi the next morning held me anchored here. I couldn’t abandon him again.

I was trapped.