The Forty Rules Of Love

I had been meaning to read this book ever since I graduated from Architecture School. Years ago, I fell in love with the cover art of this book, so flaming red and inviting with its delicate yellow flowery design and font. Any book that puts so much effort into its cover page illustration is worth giving it a try, is something I always believe. Prior to reading this book, for about six years I've heard numerous reviews and recommendations from friends and fellow readers but never the actual gist or theme it represents. I always thought it is like a guidebook to finding love in about forty steps or rules that will guarantee a brushing with this exquisite emotion. Since I'm not a spiritual nor a religious person, the ideas explored about Rumi and Sufism evolved into their present fame and global recognition did not occur to me earlier (because I never consciously thought upon these two in religious overtones). When one of my friends from college met me at a bookstore she kept raving about finding The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak saying it was highly recommended by her office colleague and she couldn't wait to read it. Despite the excessive exorbitant Hard Back edition price she had to pay in securing a copy, she told me she hoped her life would change after reading it. Somehow I finished reading this book before she did and I knew while reading it, that she will be disappointed and cringe at certain themes from the book because she is an overt romantic and perhaps looked for ways to find love through the book. When she did discuss about it, she didn't like it and plainly made it clear that the title is deceptive and she found it mediocre. I wasn't surprised by her reaction because I knew she has little temperament for anything Islamic. She is quite a lot prejudiced against Islam and its followers. Having said this, she further commented that basically this book should be for Muslims which although did not shock me coming from her, I felt terrible about knowing people with such poor thought and concern towards religious faiths different than their own.  Enough said about other people's reaction about this book, I discovered to my pleasure that it's an utterly rewarding book journey between the 13th and 21st century. It narrates a woman's experience on reading a book about love's spindling essence which takes her and us into a world of dervishes and sufi mysticism, a world where Rumi is discovered by a wandering dervish, Shams of Tabriz; we travel in a Sufiana era when people knew little about their own mysteries. Reading this book has been a wonderful exercise in understanding the longing for love we all feel and are unable to express convey to our loved ones. There are rules and why they are forty is also a great story that's unfolded as we move through Ella and Aziz from 21st century to Rumi, Desert Rose, Kimya and Shams in the 13th century while imagining the quaint towns of Samarkand and Konya. “Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven't loved enough.” I truly believe this. We seldom remain the person we were before falling in love. It's like love transforms us to become more lenient and compassionate to someone else other than staying in our own cocoon of selfish being. Love indeed makes one become selfless. Elif Shafak writes: “How can love be worthy of its name if one selects solely the pretty things and leaves out the hardships? It is easy to enjoy the good and dislike the bad. Anybody can do that. The real challenge is to love the good and the bad together, not because you need to take the rough with the smooth but because you need to go beyond such descriptions and accept love in its entirety.” I believe once we begin to understand the depths of caring and loving more than we expect to get in return, is when our core changes and we truly become a new person all over. Of course, love cannot and perhaps will not transcend the challenges life throws at us, but the will power and strength to bear another stressed day is greatly overpowered and soothed when one realises the love that lies waiting for them. It is a just sentient bestowed upon all but only touched by and experienced by those who wish to embrace everything that a good grief carries within it. And so is hurt. Among one of the many quotes that stayed with me is: “The words that come out of our mouths do not vanish but are perpetually stored in infinite space, and they will come back to us in due time.” We can safely believe that our actions could be forgiven but words seldom are. Not if they particularly cut through someone's soft stance in life. Sometimes we end up being too cruel not just to others but ourselves too. I wish we could give some thought upon the danger we perpetually put our self in by attacking our heart's actions and mindless thoughts that end up wrapped in the air, haunting us later. Nothing brings more pain and misery than the haunted past actions. They afflict all, even the ones who perpetrate them and those who suffer through that sorrow.  Reading this book has been a wondrous affair to engage in at midnight. Nothing soothes the stressed mind as reading verses of love. I always give myself wholeheartedly while reading a book, and when it turns out to be such an exotic spell of spiritual essence I am only too happy about the energy spent. I understand my friend's reaction but for me every word felt like an amen of good faith and hope to relish towards finding meaning in this living of our times. Elif Shafak has given us a splendid treasure of a book, one that I intend to guard within me forever.