Greetings, Textual Deviants, and welcome to a new season of Texting! For this first episode of the fifth (!) season of the pod, Jihad of the Mind (Tomek) and I (no pseudonym this time) discuss Turkish author Elif Shafak’s historical novel The Forty Rules of Love, in which a modern-day narrative about a housewife in Massachusetts is interwoven with the story of the great Sufi scholar Rumi and his spiritual friendship with the wandering dervish Shams in thirteenth century Konya (modern-day Türkiye). Press play above to hear the full convo and/or watch the video on my YouTube channel:
My co-host has provided the following commentary as background on Shafak and her work:
I don’t remember how she was introduced to me exactly, I said from my Mama, but yea, it could have been in Morocco by Safae. Identity-wise she appealed to me, Turkish, female, arguably queer even. She went to U of A which is cool also. At first I thought she had studied creative writing there like me, but turns out she was teaching, courses like Turkish history, gender, and lit.
She writes beautifully – and if you listen to our pod Elif, please forgive the sweet blasphemy of idiotic reductions on my part – middle aged middle class women who read are awesome anyway.
AI OVERVIEW: “Elif” primarily refers to a popular Turkish feminine name meaning “slender,” “upright,” or the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, often symbolizing grace.
She is all those things and has surely lived a beautiful, intensely passionate life full of creation, sensuality, and heartfelt conversation.
The Ted Talks are kinda corny but do you.
“A gorgeous, jewelled, luxurious book.” – The Times, it says on my cover.
Self-help gets a bad rap. How can we not want and need self-help. That we don’t turn to it more is the more surprising thing. I guess people go to church and stuff. The 40 Rules are legit inspirational and I’m tempted to write them and post them all over my apartment, but that might feel a bit ott. These are genuinely inspirational koans – well that would suggest they’re riddle like – paean – well that would suggest an overly tributary nature – nuggets – well that would suggest they are Chicken Soupy which they’re not – dictums – well that would suggest they’re hierarchical – well they describe LOVE.
My friend Viacheslav the personal trainer says “I don’t really like books about emotions, love. It’s a little boring for me.”
I respond, “That’s why they call you the terminator bro.”
“What do you mean? I prefer the bigger issues or just a pure form.”
“All you need is love bro.”
“I have it in a real life and it’s enough for me so I’m not seeking for it in art.”
“That viewpoint sounds reductive to me but enjoy.”
This quote from Raoul Vaneigem comes to mind.
People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth.
We were talking about Eugene Onegin, and obviously the love that Shams exhorts is more spiritual.
Ishq (Arabic: عشق, romanized: ʿishq) is an Arabic word meaning ‘love’ or ‘passion.’ It does not appear in the Quran but is used extensively in Sufi poetry to describe a “selfless and burning” love for Allah. (Wiki) In Urdu, Ishq (عشق) is used to refer to fervent love for any object, person or God. However, it is mostly used in its religious context.
I don’t really care that much about the etymological stuff though. I’m just saying that these exhortations to love are clearly not about romance, heartbreak, and such intrigues. This is a summons to appeal to our best, most altruistic, ‘heart’ self. In that sense it is not of the crypto banking business mind and can venture into the woo woo realm. But even for those of us who keep religion away, and look at Russell Brand and Donald Trump’s fondling and groping of Bibles with groaning disgust, our soul still thirsts – and, as Langston says, can grow deep like the rivers. We should water our souls more. Scratch that, I should.
Let’s take a rule and sit with it for a sec. Let’s judge its cringiness.
Rule 2: The path to the Truth is a labour of the heart, not of the head. Make your heart your primary guide! Not your mind. Meet, challenge and ultimately prevail over your nafs with your heart. Knowing your ego will lead you to the knowledge of God.
Nafs, dear reader, is an Arabic term meaning ego, and, accordingly, my pseudonym, Jihad of the Mind, is opposed to slashing up the kafir.
So if I read a rule like that and I actually bothered to sit with it--- well let’s do it now. First of all the idea of heart can seem – well you can reject it. I think the heart is actually a softness, a slowing down, an appeal to reduce the competitive, thrusting cutthroat drive and be okay just sitting with your students and having a bit of a chat instead of being paranoid that you haven’t made them do enough exercises yet. It’s the looking into the eyes of the people you’re with and believing in their goodness and knowing that even if Joe says,
“I get the no one is good or bad thing… I agree to an extent… But there are a lot of cunts… IMO.”
--I still disagree. I see Russell Brand fumbling and I see a human more than I see a cuntian. Let’s take the contrarian view to the dumping on Russell thing – we should dump on him by the way – he is hideous in a way but we should also be a bit self-aware and for the love of God STOP BEING SELF RIGHTEOUS. The one thing I like about Russell’s diarrhea was him reiterating, and appealing to the idea of “fallen”, and how we are all fallen. So see yourself in the pathetic and in the grime and try your best to love and pity it.
~Jihad of the Mind
For the record, I agree with Joe.
Show Notes
I can’t wait to read this:
Does Sting read Shafak?
Bismillahirrahmanirrahim!
And what are those 40 rules? Click here.
The Next Text
As for S5E2, shall we begin the series on Koreality or read Mark Twain’s War Prayer, the Unabomber Manifesto, or Eugene Onegin? So many texts, so little time.
