Tara

He looked up from his devotions.

In the humble room with its rough whitewashed walls and threadbare carpets, half a dozen men in tattered clothing knelt down in supplication. All had been born within a parasang of this rude temple.

All except him.

All had lived their entire lives within a parasang of this rude temple.

All except him.

All will die within a parasang of this rude temple.

All except him.

Probably.

Inshallah.

He rose from his prayers and walked out into the cold night. The harsh rocks of the mountains bore down on him like weights, whilst above the glories of the heavens shone like the lights in the greatest of all tea gardens. He gazed up at them and wondered. Why was he here? What was this all about?

He knew the answer to the former question of course. He was following instructions. He had submitted to the will of Allah. Allah who taught that one must seek knowledge even unto China. And so, he was going to China, to find that unknown, elusive God that the soul cried out for, the heart yearned for and yet, was always distant, always just over the horizon like the end of a rainbow that beautifies the sky and guarantees the security of Allah.

‘Why oh why are you so hard to find, Lord?’ he cried wordlessly into the dark night.

As usual, the abyss did not deign to reply.

He started early, straight after Fajr, just as he did every morning. The shepherd with whom he had stayed had told him that there was no settlement for some distance and so he knew it would be a hard day. The road was steep and stony underfoot and he feared both the heat and the loneliness. He walked alone as was so often the case, his staff his only comfort save for the surahs that he uttered as he travelled. The road rose and his breathing grew heavier. The air was clean and fresh, and a bird of prey swooped overhead. He had never felt more alone in the world than he did that morning. If this was seeking knowledge, then maybe Allah meant for him to discover true pain before he would be allowed to experience true happiness. The solitude was overwhelming and…

“Hello traveller, what are you doing here?”

It was a girl. A young girl, sixteen or seventeen at the most and shamefully uncovered. She had curly raven hair and laughing eyes. She was seated on a rock above him, and he could not fathom out where she had sprung from. It did not look as if there was a cottage for many a parasang around. She jumped down from her perch as nimble as a cat and stood blocking his way, her head cocked to one side as if contemplating him, considering.

“What is your name?” she asked, forward in a most unfeminine way.

But then, she was obviously but a shepherd’s daughter, uncouth and uneducated in the ways of civilised society. “Al-Masafir,” he replied. “And you sister, what is your name?”

“You can call me Tara,” she replied.

Tara. It was not a name that he had heard before; certainly not one taken from the Quran. Again, more proof of her being uncouth and uneducated in the ways of civilised society. “Do you come from nearby?” he asked, glad of someone to talk to after the stultifying solitude.

“Just over yonder,” she said, jerking her neck to the left. She paused. “But also, over there,” she declared, pointing to the right, before then adding, “Or maybe there… or there!”

She had now indicated all four directions of the compass. “So, you are a joker?” he replied.

“That’s me!” she said with a laugh, and started to walk alongside him, despite not having been invited. He felt uneasy. To be with an unrelated woman like this was haram, particular a half-naked one whose form and words were causing him to think improper thoughts. But he was so lonely, and besides, who else was there to see him sin?

He said nothing.

“And how old are you, Tara who comes from everywhere?” he asked with a smile.

“Oh, thousands of years old!” she replied with a flourish.

“You look more like eighteen to me,” he countered. “Are you not married yet?”

“Not yet. Why, are you interested?” she asked coquettishly.

“Not I. I have my full quota of wives already. I just wondered if your husband would be concerned about you wandering abroad with a strange man.”

“No worries on that score,” she replied, grinning.

“I’m glad to hear it,” he said.

They walked on.

“So, what are you doing walking through this desolate place?” she asked him when they sat down on a rock to catch their breath.

“I am on a quest to find God Himself,” he replied. “I am walking to China for the hadith says one should seek knowledge even unto that place.”

“You won’t find much there you know. It really is quite a mundane part of the world,” she replied.

“Have you been then?” he asked.

“All over.”

“And how did you find it?”

“Boring on the whole. Korea is far nicer. Try the tea though, it is excellent.”

“I shall bear that in mind.”

“And this god that you seek; what have you learnt about Him so far?”

The pilgrim cast his face to the ground. “Very little I am afraid.”

They had walked a quarter of a parasang or so when she said, “Have you tried singing?”

“Singing?”

“To this god of yours. Have you tried singing to her. Maybe that is what they are waiting for?”

“Don’t be ridiculous! God does not want me to sing! Indeed, it is expressly forbidden! And besides, God is a him, not a her! Have you had no education?”

Tara seemed uninterested in his admonishment. She merely kicked a pebble and whistled a tune. Then she stopped, turned around to face him, and asked, “Then what about dancing? Have you tried to reach him through dancing yourself to ecstasy?” And if to prove the point, she started swinging her hips to the rhythm of her whistling.

The pilgrim was horrified. “Astagfuralah!” he exclaimed. “You really are a naughty girl; perhaps you are not human but instead some sort of djinn sent to tempt me away from the righteous path! Everyone knows that dancing is haram too; it causes fitnah!”

Tara snorted. “Whatever. I like to dance, and I find that it brings me closer to God. Singing too.”

“Then you should educate yourself, young lady!”

“Says the man who has walked thousands of parasangs to find God and is still no closer to doing so than when he started!” She laughed and ran off.

About a ghalwah further down the track, he caught up with her. She was seated on a rock, still whistling and smiling. “Found your God yet?” she teased.

“I will one day, you mark my words!”

She jumped up off her seat and started to walk beside him. “There was once a man was stuck on his rooftop in a flood. He started praying to God for help. Soon a man in a rowing boat came by and shouted to the man on the roof, ‘Jump in, I can save you!’

“‘No brother,’ he replied, ‘I’m praying to God, and he is going to save me. I have faith.’ And so, the rowing boat went on.

“Sometime later, by which time the waters had covered the house and our stranded man was up to his neck in water, another boat came by. Again, the man in the boat shouted, ‘Jump in, I can save you!’ And again, our drowning man said, ‘No brother, I’m praying to God and he is going to save me. I have faith.’ And so, the rowing boat went on.

“Then a third boat came along, and the very same thing happened and so the man was left alone, totally submerged in the water and he drowned. He went to Paradise where God was waiting, and he was very angry. ‘I had faith in you, but you didn’t save me! You let me drown!’ he exclaimed.

“To which God replied, ‘I sent three boats, what more did you want?’”

Tara turned to the pilgrim and said, “So what do you think of my little story?”

“Very nice,” he replied, “but what does it have to do with me?”

“You will never find this god you want to find if you refuse to get into any of the boats that he sends your way, you silly man!” she exclaimed, before running off again, her laughter echoing behind her.

He did not see her for the rest of that day, but her words stayed in his mind and he tossed them over again and again.

And, as the hours passed by, he sorely missed her playful presence.

That evening, after he had risen from Maghrib prayer, he heard a sound in the dusk behind him. It was the sound of a flute, beautiful, simple, piercing. He turned around to see Tara sitting on a rock, playing a simple wooden instrument which emitted music finer that that moulded by the finest of craftsmen. The notes seemed to fill the valley and reach up unto the stars themselves which shone down as if in admiration to her skill.

Perhaps it was the music, or perhaps it was the light, or perhaps it was the freshness of his soul after the cleansing bath of prayer it had just been immersed in, but in that moment, he saw his travelling companion in a new light. He noticed her narrow waist, her two breasts like ripe apples, the curve of her hips and those glorious sparkling eyes that exuded youth, playfulness, pure joy.

He knew that the scriptures said that music was a sin; that gazing upon an unrelated woman like this was a sin, that glimpsing the divine on earth was a sin and yet… yet how could anything so glorious be sinful? How could it be aught but holy?

“I am glad to see you again,” he said to her. “I feared…”

His voice petered off into the night. She did not reply but merely descended from her perch and took his hand in her and there, with a carpet of rock and a billion stars above them, they danced in the moonlight, a dance so gorgeous, so intimate, so perfect that, when he held her to him, he felt as if it were not a shepherd girl whom he danced with, but instead the divine itself, that their bodies were melting into one another and he was attaining the sacred union that the Sufis talk about in their trances.

He awoke shivering and alone. His heart chilled for the dream that he had been immersed in had been of that dance and his partner in it. However, in the dream realm they had been dancing, not in some rocky wilderness, but in a garden of lush vegetation by the placid waters of a wide river. The fragrance of flowers filled the air, peacocks wandered in the undergrowth, Tara wore a lotus flower in her hair, and all heaven and earth seemed alive and full of glory. In his dream, so entranced was he by her beauty and his love for her, that he whispered to her that they should marry and thus make what is spiritual also legal.

To his surprise though, she had replied, “Marriage is a union of two souls. You and I are one soul, how can I marry myself?”

That was when he had awoken and found himself alone on that rocky hillside.

He sat wondering what it all meant, what significance had this for his life. Then, the first fingers of dawn crept across the harsh landscape and he knelt down to perform the Fajr.

The prayer brought with it no fresh understanding, but his soul felt cleansed, and it was as if God were telling him that an answer would be provided soon, if only he kept on his path. So, after collecting his things, the pilgrim continued on his way. However, after only a ghalwah or so, he came across a set of ruins with a small hut in front of them where an ancient, bearded man sat by the door. He hailed the traveller and invited him in, sharing his bread and goat’s milk. As they ate, the pilgrim asked what the ruins were, and so, when completed, the old man took him by the hand and showed him. He explained that, in the Age of Ignorance, this place has been a thriving city, where over a thousand people had lived. He took him up the slope and into a cave which he explained was where the monks of the idol worshippers had once lived and prayed and showed him the painted frescoes on the walls. The pilgrim examined them and then, gasped and stepped back. “Who is that?” he asked the custodian of the ruins.

The old man looked. The image that he pointed to was of a young girl with a narrow waist, two breasts like ripe apples, curved hips and glorious sparkling eyes that exuded youth, playfulness, pure joy.

“Ah!” he said with a smile. “She’s pretty she? I often feel I should scratch her out as graven images are forbidden by Allah, but I have not the heart; she looks so happy there. She was the goddess that they worshipped in these parts in the time of Jahiliya.”

“What was her name?”

“I am told it was Tara,” he replied.

Postscript

Travellers on the high mountain road from Herat to Kabul often talk of the tomb of a Sufi beside the road by a set of ancient ruins. In a landscape devoid of colour and vegetation, his disciples have somehow created a lush garden around his small shrine. They say that he too was a traveller, a pious man from Tripoli who had taken the hadith that instructs us to seek knowledge even unto China literally, and so decided to walk all the way to that far-off land. He never made it though, for there in the mountains, he had some sort-of spiritual awakening where he achieved union with the divine and so settled in a cave above the ruins, where he welcomed everyone, man or woman, Muslim or pagan, and would worship Allah by dancing a whirling, wonderful dance every evening underneath the stars, accompanied by the flutes and drums of his devotees.

The pious men of the ulema disliked it of course, calling it innovation, but the common people flocked to him and, it is said, that anyone who looked into his eyes, would never doubt that he had been given great baraka by God. And besides, so numerous are the healing and other miracles performed at his tomb then well, who could doubt his holiness? Orthodox it may not be, but everything is in the hands of God, He has ordained it, He knows best after all.

Written 24-25/04/2021, Smallthorne, UK

Copyright © 2021, Matthew E. Pointon