Prologue
Between your fingers you hold a stone and throw it into
flowing water. The effect might not be easy to see. There will
be a small ripple where the stone breaks the surface and then a
splash, muffled by the rush of the surrounding river. That’s all.
Throw a stone into a lake. The effect will be not only visible
but also far more lasting. The stone will disrupt the still
waters. A circle will form where the stone hit the water, and in
a flash that circle will multiply into another, then another.
Before long the ripples caused by one plop will expand until
they can be felt everywhere along the mirrored surface of the
water. Only when the circles reach the shore will they stop and
die out.
If a stone hits a river, the river will treat it as yet another
commotion in its already tumultuous course. Nothing unusual.
Nothing unmanageable.
If a stone hits a lake, however, the lake will never be the
same again.
For forty years Ella Rubinstein’s life had consisted of still
waters—a predictable sequence of habits, needs, and
preferences. Though it was monotonous and ordinary in many
ways, she had not found it tiresome. During the last twenty
years, every wish she had, every person she befriended, and
every decision she made was filtered through her marriage.
Her husband, David, was a successful dentist who worked
hard and made a lot of money. She had always known that
they did not connect on any deep level, but connecting
emotionally need not be a priority on a married couple’s list,
she thought, especially for a man and a woman who had been
married for so long. There were more important things than
passion and love in a marriage, such as understanding,
affection, compassion, and that most godlike act a person
could perform, forgiveness. Love was secondary to any of
these. Unless, that is, one lived in novels or romantic movies,
where the protagonists were always larger than life and their
love nothing short of legend.
Ella’s children topped her list of priorities. They had a
beautiful daughter in college, Jeannette, and teenage twins,
Orly and Avi. Also, they had a twelve-year-old golden
retriever, Spirit, who had been Ella’s walking buddy in the
mornings and her cheeriest companion ever since he’d been a
puppy. Now he was old, overweight, completely deaf, and
almost blind; Spirit’s time was coming, but Ella preferred to
think he would go on forever. Then again, that was how she
was. She never confronted the death of anything, be it a habit,
a phase, or a marriage, even when the end stood right in front
of her, plain and inevitable.
The Rubinsteins lived in Northampton, Massachusetts, in a
large Victorian house that needed some renovation but still
was splendid, with five bedrooms, three baths, shiny hardwood
floors, a three-car garage, French doors, and, best of all, an
outdoor Jacuzzi. They had life insurance, car insurance,
retirement plans, college savings plans, joint bank accounts,
and, in addition to the house they lived in, two prestigious
apartments: one in Boston, the other in Rhode Island. She and
David had worked hard for all this. A big, busy house with
children, elegant furniture, and the wafting scent of homemade
pies might seem a cliché to some people, but to them it was
the picture of an ideal life. They had built their marriage
around this shared vision and had attained most, if not all, of
their dreams.
On their last Valentine’s Day, her husband had given her a
heart-shaped diamond pendant and a card that read,
To my dear Ella,
A woman with a quiet manner, a generous heart, and the patience of a saint.
Thank you for accepting me as I am. Thank you for being my wife.
Yours,
David
Ella had never confessed this to David, but reading his card
had felt like reading an obituary. This is what they will write
about me when I die, she had thought. And if they were
sincere, they might also add this:Building her whole life around her husband and children,
Ella lacked any survival techniques to help her cope with life’s
hardships on her own. She was not the type to throw caution to
the wind. Even changing her daily coffee brand was a major
effort.
All of which is why no one, including Ella, could explain
what was going on when she filed for divorce in the fall of
2008 after twenty years of marriage.
But there was a reason: love.
They did not live in the same city. Not even on the same
continent. The two of them were not only miles apart but also
as different as day and night. Their lifestyles were so
dissimilar that it seemed impossible for them to bear each
other’s presence, never mind fall in love. But it happened. And
it happened fast, so fast in fact that Ella had no time to realize
what was happening and to be on guard, if one could ever be
on guard against love.
Love came to Ella as suddenly and brusquely as if a stone
had been hurled from out of nowhere into the tranquil pond of
her life.Ella
NORTHAMPTON, MAY 17, 2008
Birds were singing outside her kitchen window on that balmy
day in spring. Afterward Ella replayed the scene in her mind
so many times that, rather than a fragment from the past, it felt
like an ongoing moment still happening somewhere out there
in the universe.
There they were, sitting around the table, having a late
family lunch on a Saturday afternoon. Her husband was filling
his plate with fried chicken legs, his favorite food. Avi was
playing his knife and fork like drumsticks while his twin, Orly,
was trying to calculate how many bites of which food she
could eat so as not to ruin her diet of 650 calories a day.
Jeannette, who was a freshman at Mount Holyoke College
nearby, seemed lost in her thoughts as she spread cream cheese
on another slice of bread. Also at the table sat Aunt Esther,
who had stopped by to drop off one of her famous marble
cakes and then stayed on for lunch. Ella had a lot of work to
do afterward, but she was not ready to leave the table just yet.
Lately they didn’t have too many shared family meals, and she
saw this as a golden chance for everyone to reconnect.
“Esther, did Ella give you the good news?” David asked
suddenly. “She found a great job.”
Though Ella had graduated with a degree in English
literature and loved fiction, she hadn’t done much in the field
after college, other than editing small pieces for women’s
magazines, attending a few book clubs, and occasionally
writing book reviews for some local papers. That was all.
There was a time when she’d aspired to become a prominent
book critic, but then she simply accepted the fact that life had
carried her elsewhere, turning her into an industrious
housewife with three kids and endless domestic
responsibilities.
Not that she complained. Being the mother, the wife, the
dog walker, and the housekeeper kept her busy enough. She
didn’t have to be a breadwinner on top of all these. Though
none of her feminist friends from Smith College approved ofher choice, she was satisfied to be a stay-at-home mom and
grateful that she and her husband could afford it. Besides, she
had never abandoned her passion for books and still
considered herself a voracious reader.
A few years ago, things had begun to change. The children
were growing up, and they made it clear that they didn’t need
her as much as they once had. Realizing that she had too much
time to spare and no one to spend it with, Ella had considered
how it might be to find a job. David had encouraged her, but
though they kept talking and talking about it, she rarely
pursued the opportunities that came her way, and when she
did, potential employers were always looking for someone
younger or more experienced. Afraid of being rejected over
and over, she had simply let the subject drop.
Nevertheless, in May 2008 whatever obstacle had impeded
her from finding a job all these years unexpectedly vanished.
Two weeks shy of her fortieth birthday, she found herself
working for a literary agency based in Boston. It was her
husband who found her the job through one of his clients—or
perhaps through one of his mistresses.
“Oh, it’s no big deal,” Ella rushed to explain now. “I’m only
a part-time reader for a literary agent.”
But David seemed determined not to let her think too little
of her new job. “Come on, tell them it’s a well-known
agency,” he urged, nudging her, and when she refused to
comply, he heartily agreed with himself. “It’s a prestigious
place, Esther. You should see the other assistants! Girls and
boys fresh out of the best colleges. Ella is the only one going
back to work after being a housewife for years. Now, isn’t she
something?”
Ella wondered if, deep inside, her husband felt guilty about
keeping her away from a career, or else about cheating on her
—these being the only two explanations she could think of as
to why he was now going overboard in his enthusiasm.
Still smiling, David concluded, “This is what I call
chutzpah. We’re all proud of her.”“She is a prize. Always was,” said Aunt Esther in a voice so
sentimental that it sounded as if Ella had left the table and was
gone for good.
They all gazed at her lovingly. Even Avi didn’t make a
cynical remark, and Orly for once seemed to care about
something other than her looks. Ella forced herself to
appreciate this moment of kindness, but she felt an
overwhelming exhaustion that she had never experienced
before. She secretly prayed for someone to change the subject.
Jeannette, her older daughter, must have heard the prayer,
for she suddenly chimed in, “I have some good news, too.”
All heads turned toward her, faces beaming with
expectation.
“Scott and I have decided to get married,” Jeannette
announced. “Oh, I know what you guys are going to say! That
we haven’t finished college yet and all that, but you’ve got to
understand, we both feel ready for the next big move.”
An awkward silence descended upon the kitchen table as the
warmth that had canopied them just a moment ago evaporated.
Orly and Avi exchanged blank looks, and Aunt Esther froze
with her hand tightened around a glass of apple juice. David
put his fork aside as if he had no appetite left and squinted at
Jeannette with his light brown eyes that were deeply creased
with smile lines at the corners. However, right now he was
anything but smiling. His mouth had drawn into a pout, as
though he had just downed a swig of vinegar.
“Great! I expected you to share my happiness, but I get this
cold treatment instead,” Jeannette whined.
“You just said you were getting married,” remarked David
as if Jeannette didn’t know what she’d said and needed to be
informed.
“Dad, I know it seems a bit too soon, but Scott proposed to
me the other day and I’ve already said yes.”
“But why?” asked Ella.
From the way Jeannette looked at her, Ella reckoned, that
was not the kind of question her daughter had expected. Shewould rather have been asked “When?” or “How?” In either
case it meant that she could start shopping for her wedding
dress. The question “Why?” was another matter altogether and
had completely caught her off guard.
“Because I love him, I guess.” Jeannette’s tone was slightly
condescending.
“Honey, what I meant was, why the rush?” insisted Ella.
“Are you pregnant or something?”
Aunt Esther twitched in her chair, her face stern, her
anguish visible. She took an antacid tablet from her pocket and
started chewing on it.
“I’m going to be an uncle,” Avi said, giggling.
Ella held Jeannette’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.
“You can always tell us the truth. You know that, right? We’ll
stand by you no matter what.”
“Mom, will you please stop that?” Jeannette snapped as she
pulled her hand away. “This has nothing to do with pregnancy.
You’re embarrassing me.”
“I was just trying to help,” Ella responded calmly, calmness
being a state she had been lately finding harder and harder to
achieve.
“By insulting me, you mean. Apparently the only way you
can see Scott and me getting married is me being knocked up!
Does it ever occur to you that I might, just might, want to
marry this guy because I love him? We have been dating for
eight months now.”
This elicited a scoff from Ella. “Oh, yeah, as if you could
tell a man’s character in eight months! Your father and I have
been married for almost twenty years, and even we can’t claim
to know everything about each other. Eight months is nothing
in a relationship!”
“It took God only six days to create the entire universe,”
said Avi, beaming, but cold stares from everyone at the table
forced him back into silence.Sensing the escalating tension, David, his eyes fixed on his
elder daughter, his brow furrowed in thought, interjected,
“Honey, what your mom is trying to say is that dating is one
thing, marrying is quite another.”
“But, Dad, did you think we would date forever?” Jeannette
asked.
Drawing in a deep breath, Ella said, “To be perfectly blunt,
we were expecting you to find someone better. You’re too
young to get involved in any serious relationship.”
“You know what I’m thinking, Mom?” Jeannette said in a
voice so flat as to be unrecognizable. “I’m thinking you’re
projecting your own fears onto me. But just because you
married so young and had a baby when you were my age, that
doesn’t mean I’m going to make the same mistake.”
Ella blushed crimson as if slapped in the face. From deep
within she remembered the difficult pregnancy that had
resulted in Jeannette’s premature birth. As a baby and then as a
toddler, her daughter had drained all of her energy, which was
why she had waited six years before getting pregnant again.
“Sweetheart, we were happy for you when you started
dating Scott,” David said cautiously, trying a different strategy.
“He’s a nice guy. But who knows what you’ll be thinking after
graduation? Things might be very different then.”
Jeannette gave a small nod that conveyed little more than
feigned acquiescence. Then she said, “Is this because Scott
isn’t Jewish?”
David rolled his eyes in disbelief. He had always taken
pride in being an open-minded and cultured father, avoiding
negative remarks about race, religion, or gender in the house.
Jeannette, however, seemed relentless. Turning to her
mother, she asked, “Can you look me in the eye and tell me
you’d still be making the same objections if Scott were a
young Jewish man named Aaron?”
Jeannette’s voice needled with bitterness and sarcasm, and
Ella feared there was more of that welling up inside her
daughter.“Sweetheart, I’ll be completely honest with you, even if you
might not like it. I know how wonderful it is to be young and
in love. Believe me, I do. But to get married to someone from
a different background is a big gamble. And as your parents
we want to make sure you’re doing the right thing.”
“And how do you know your right thing is the right thing
for me?”
The question threw Ella off a little. She sighed and
massaged her forehead, as if on the verge of a migraine.
“I love him, Mom. Does that mean anything to you? Do you
remember that word from somewhere? He makes my heart
beat faster. I can’t live without him.”
Ella heard herself chuckle. It was not her intention to make
fun of her daughter’s feelings, not at all, but that was probably
what her laughing to herself sounded like. For reasons
unknown to her, she felt extremely nervous. She’d had fights
with Jeannette before, hundreds of them, but today it felt as
though she were quarreling with something else, something
bigger.
“Mom, haven’t you ever been in love?” Jeannette retorted, a
hint of contempt creeping into her tone.
“Oh, give me a break! Stop daydreaming and get real, will
you? You’re being so … ” Ella’s eyes darted toward the
window, hunting for a dramatic word, until finally she came
up with “ … romantic!”
“What’s wrong with being romantic?” Jeannette asked,
sounding offended.
Really, what was wrong with being romantic? Ella
wondered. Since when was she so annoyed by romanticism?
Unable to answer the questions tugging at the edges of her
mind, she continued all the same. “Come on, honey. Which
century are you living in? Just get it in your head, women
don’t marry the men they fall in love with. When push comes
to shove, they choose the guy who’ll be a good father and a
reliable husband. Love is only a sweet feeling bound to come
and quickly go away.”When she finished talking, Ella turned to her husband.
David had clasped his hands in front of him, slowly as if
through water, and was looking at her like he’d never seen her
before.
“I know why you’re doing this,” Jeannette said. “You’re
jealous of my happiness and my youth. You want to make an
unhappy housewife out of me. You want me to be you, Mom.”
Ella felt a strange, sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach,
as if she had a giant rock sitting there. Was she an unhappy
housewife? A middle-aged mom trapped in a failing marriage?
Was this how her children saw her? And her husband, too?
What about friends and neighbors? Suddenly she had the
feeling that everyone around her secretly pitied her, and the
suspicion was so painful that she gasped.
“You should apologize to your mom,” David said, turning to
Jeannette with a frown on his face.
“It’s all right. I don’t expect an apology,” Ella said
dejectedly.
Jeannette gave her mother a mock leer. And just like that,
she pushed back her chair, threw her napkin aside, and walked
out of the kitchen. After a minute Orly and Avi silently
followed suit, either in an unusual act of solidarity with their
elder sister or because they’d gotten bored of all this adult talk.
Aunt Esther left next, mumbling some poor excuse while
chewing fiercely on her last antacid tablet.
David and Ella remained at the table, an intense
awkwardness hanging in the air between them. It pained Ella
to have to face this void, which, as they both knew, had
nothing to do with Jeannette or any of their children.
David grabbed the fork he had put aside and inspected it for
a while. “So should I conclude that you didn’t marry the man
you loved?”
“Oh, please, that’s not what I meant.”
“What is it you meant, then?” David said, still talking to the
fork. “I thought you were in love with me when we got
married.”“I was in love with you,” Ella said, but couldn’t help
adding, “back then.”
“So when did you stop loving me?” David asked, deadpan.
Ella looked at her husband in astonishment, like someone
who had never seen her reflection before and who now held a
mirror to her face. Had she stopped loving him? It was a
question she had never asked herself before. She wanted to
respond but lacked not so much the will as the words. Deep
inside she knew it was the two of them they should be
concerned about, not their children. But instead they were
doing what they both were best at: letting the days go by, the
routine take over, and time run its course of inevitable torpor.
She started to cry, unable to hold back this continuing
sadness that had, without her knowledge, become a part of
who she was. David turned his anguished face away. They
both knew he hated to see her cry just as much as she hated to
cry in front of him. Fortunately, the phone rang just then,
saving them.
David picked it up. “Hello … yes, she’s here. Hold on,
please.”
Ella pulled herself together and spoke up, doing her best to
sound in good spirits. “Yes, this is Ella.”
“Hi, this is Michelle. Sorry to bother you over the
weekend,” chirped a young woman’s voice. “It’s just that
yesterday Steve wanted me to check in with you, and I simply
forgot. Did you have a chance to start working on the
manuscript?”
“Oh.” Ella sighed, only now remembering the task awaiting
her.
Her first assignment at the literary agency was to read a
novel by an unknown European author. She was then expected
to write an extensive report on it.
“Tell him not to worry. I’ve already started reading,” Ella
lied. Ambitious and headstrong, Michelle was the kind of
person she didn’t want to upset on her first assignment.
“Oh, good! How is it?”Ella paused, puzzled as to what to say. She didn’t know
anything about the manuscript, except that it was a historical
novel centered on the life of the famous mystic poet Rumi,
who she learned was called “the Shakespeare of the Islamic
world.”
“Oh, it’s very … mystical.” Ella chuckled, hoping to cover
with a joke.
But Michelle was all business. “Right,” she said flatly.
“Listen, I think you need to get on this. It might take longer
than you expect to write a report on a novel like that.… ”
There was a distant muttering on the phone as Michelle’s
voice trailed off. Ella imagined her juggling several tasks
simultaneously—checking e-mails, reading a review on one of
her authors, taking a bite from her tuna-salad sandwich, and
polishing her fingernails—all while talking on the phone.
“Are you still there?” Michelle asked a minute later.
“Yes, I am.”
“Good. Listen, it’s crazy in here. I need to go. Just keep in
mind the deadline is in three weeks.”
“I know,” Ella said abruptly, trying to sound more
determined. “I’ll make the deadline.”
The truth was, Ella wasn’t sure she wanted to evaluate this
manuscript at all. In the beginning she’d been so eager and
confident. It had felt thrilling to be the first one to read an
unpublished novel by an unknown author and to play however
small a role in his fate. But now she wasn’t sure if she could
concentrate on a subject as irrelevant to her life as Sufism and
a time as distant as the thirteenth century.
Michelle must have detected her hesitation. “Is there a
problem?” she asked. When no answer came, she grew
insistent. “Listen, you can confide in me.”
After a bit of silence, Ella decided to tell her the truth.
“It’s just that I’m not sure I’m in the right state of mind
these days to concentrate on a historical novel. I mean, I’m
interested in Rumi and all that, but still,me. Perhaps you could give me another novel—you know,
something I could more easily relate to.”
“That’s such a skewed approach,” said Michelle. “You think
you can work better with books you know something about?
Not at all! Just because you live in this state, you can’t expect
to edit only novels that take place in Massachusetts, right?”
“That’s not what I meant …” Ella said, and immediately
realized she had uttered the same sentence too many times this
afternoon. She glanced at her husband to see if he, too, had
noticed this, but David’s expression was hard to decipher.
“Most of the time, we have to read books that have nothing
to do with our lives. That’s part of our job. Just this week I
finished working on a book by an Iranian woman who used to
operate a brothel in Tehran and had to flee the country. Should
I have told her to send the manuscript to an Iranian agency
instead?”
“No, of course not,” Ella mumbled, feeling silly and guilty.
“Isn’t connecting people to distant lands and cultures one of
the strengths of good literature?”
“Sure it is. Listen, forget what I said. You’ll have a report on
your desk before the deadline,” Ella conceded, hating Michelle
for treating her as if she were the dullest person alive and
hating herself for allowing this to happen.
“Wonderful, that’s the spirit,” Michelle concluded in her
singsong voice. “Don’t get me wrong, but I think you should
bear in mind that there are dozens of people out there who
would love to have your job. And most of them are almost half
your age. That’ll keep you motivated.”
When Ella hung up the phone, she found David watching
her, his face solemn and reserved. He seemed to be waiting for
them to pick up where they’d left off. But she didn’t feel like
mulling over their daughter’s future anymore, if that was what
they’d been worrying about in the first place.
Later in the day, she was alone on the porch sitting in her
favorite rocking chair, looking at the orangey-red
Northampton sunset. The sky felt so close and open that you
could almost touch it. Her brain had gone quiet, as if tired of
all the noise swirling inside. This month’s credit-card
payments, Orly’s bad eating habits, Avi’s poor grades, Aunt
Esther and her sad cakes, her dog Spirit’s decaying health,
Jeannette’s marriage plans, her husband’s secret flings, the
absence of love in her life … One by one, she locked them all
in small mental boxes.
In that frame of mind, Ella took the manuscript out of its
package and bounced it in her hand, as if weighing it. The title
of the novel was written on the cover in indigo ink: Sweet
Blasphemy.
Ella had been told that nobody knew much about the author
—a certain A. Z. Zahara, who lived in Holland. His
manuscript had been shipped to the literary agency from
Amsterdam with a postcard inside the envelope. On the front
of the postcard was a picture of tulip fields in dazzling pinks,
yellows, and purples, and on the back a note written in delicate
handwriting:
Dear Sir/Madam,
Greetings from Amsterdam. The story I herewith send you takes place in
thirteenth-century Konya in Asia Minor. But I sincerely believe that it cuts
across countries, cultures, and centuries.
I hope you will have the time to read SWEET BLASPHEMY, a historical,
mystical novel on the remarkable bond between Rumi, the best poet and
most revered spiritual leader in the history of Islam, and Shams of Tabriz, an
unknown, unconventional dervish full of scandals and surprises.
May love be always with you and you always surrounded with love.
A. Z. Zahara
Ella sensed that the postcard had piqued the literary agent’s
curiosity. But Steve was not a man who had time to read the
work of an amateur writer. So he’d handed the package to his
assistant, Michelle, who had passed it on to her new assistant.
This is how Sweet Blasphemy ended up in Ella’s hands.
Little did she know that this was going to be not just any
book, but the book that changed her life. In the time she was
reading it, her life would be rewritten.
Ella turned the first page. There was a note about the writer.
A. Z. Zahara lives in Amsterdam with his books, cats, and
turtles when he is not traveling around the world. Sweet
Blasphemy is his first novel and most probably his last. He has
no intention of becoming a novelist and has written this book
purely out of admiration and love for the great philosopher,
mystic, and poet Rumi and his beloved sun, Shams of Tabriz.
Her eyes moved down the page to the next line. And there
Ella read something that rang strangely familiar:
For despite what some people say, love is not only a sweet
feeling bound to come and quickly go away.
Her jaw dropped as she realized this was the contradiction
of the exact sentence she had spoken to her daughter in the
kitchen earlier in the day. She stood still for a moment,
shivering with the thought that some mysterious force in the
universe, or else this writer, whoever he might be, was spying
on her. Perhaps he had written this book knowing beforehand
what kind of person was going to read it first. This writer had
her in mind as his reader. For some reason unbeknownst to
her, Ella found the idea both disturbing and exciting.
In many ways the twenty-first century is not that different
from the thirteenth century. Both will be recorded in history as
times of unprecedented religious clashes, cultural
misunderstandings, and a general sense of insecurity and fear
of the Other. At times like these, the need for love is greater
than ever.
A sudden wind blew in her direction, cool and strong,
scattering the leaves on the porch. The beauty of the sunset
drifted toward the western horizon, and the air felt dull,
joyless.
Because love is the very essence and purpose of life. As
Rumi reminds us, it hits everybody, including those who shun
love—even those who use the word “romantic” as a sign of
disapproval.
Ella was as bowled over as if she had read there, “Love hits
everybody, even a middle-aged housewife in Northampton
named Ella Rubinstein.”Her gut instinct told her to put the manuscript aside, go into
the house, give Michelle a call, and tell her there was no way
she could write a report on this novel. Instead she took a deep
breath, turned the page, and started to read.