I am not convinced.
This morning, I played Arvo Pärt’s “Tabula Rasa for two violins”. Nothing that made me feel that I had made a tabula rasa of my life, memories or identity. The two violins did not calm me. But the repetitive notes somehow put me in a transient mood, almost a trans, and made me think about the Whirling Dervishes of Konya. And in a rather surprising moment, I thought about my grandfather, a musician from Konya who has influenced my life in mysterious ways.
.. My grandfather died when I was 8 years old. For the past 50 years I thought of him as a grandson would occasionally do, with a yearning for a grandfather. But three years ago, while writing my most recent book, I realized how much of what he had shared with me in those short years and that these memories, lessons and teachings had stayed in me, somehow cached in a corner, for all these years.
And three years ago they came out, and I wrote about him and his legacy in a book (1) about Armenian history of the 19th century, the Genocide, why I was born in the Diaspora, and how one remains a descendant of his people, no matter where he is born and ends up dying. And this morning Arvo Pärt brought me back to these thoughts, and made me think about one of the famous sons of Konya, the mystic Rumi.
… In the trance that the two violins lead me to, I recalled words from my grandfather that previously had little meaning to me. He said:
“It was a beautiful tomb, carvings in black, orange and gold. He was a famous man who wrote about loving. After him, the Dervishes started to dance. They were still dancing when I left Konya.”
The West discovered the writings of Rumi only recently, through translations that often are unaware of the nuances of the original language. Born in what is today’s Tajikistan, Rumi lived in Konya for almost 50 years and is buried there. His mausoleum, or tomb as my grandfather described, is supposed to be grandiose and the site of pilgrimage. The epitaph on his grave reads:
“When we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth, but find it in the hearts of men”
He was a musician who played the rabāb, a luth-like instrument played in Urdu, Seljuk and Tajik cultures, although he is best known for his playing the reed flute or nay. It is said that he played the nay while reciting poetry.
My grandfather was a musician who played the Oud, a luth-like instrument one still finds popular in Arabic and Turkish instrumentals. He also played the violin but holding it vertically on his lap and moving the bow horizontally. My grandfather, Karnig Kazandjian, survived the 1915 Genocide of Armenians because he played for the Turkish harem ladies who helped him and a handful of friends leave town. A Schindler’s List of an earlier era. I have written about this here(2).
Back to Rumi. Now I am listening to Pärt’s Silentium and the piano accompaniment makes the violins less monotonous, less holding their cries back.
Rumi is said to have never physically written his poetry. Instead it seems that his over-active mind was restless, and he dictated his lines while his disciples anxiously took note. And in putting himself in this whirling mental state, he physically turned and danced reaching the “zone”. It is said that the Whirling Dervishes are a direct reflection and their dance a practice derived from not only the Sufi character of Rumi’s work, but also of his practice. Contrasting this thought to Pärt’s Silentium, I cannot resist thinking that if Rumi were a child in today’s Western World he would have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and put on Ritalin!
… I have never been to Konya but have a few pictures of my grandfather, grandmother and uncle dated sometime around 1915. In this picture my uncle should have been less than 4 years old as he died during bloodletting at the hands of a Turkish barber who used his razor to shave during the day and practice “medicine” at night. He was 4 years old.
Then my grandfather surviving the exodus from Konya through the Syrian desert of Der-el-Zor arrived to Aleppo where he restarted his life, always as a musician. This picture, dating from the early 1920s, shows him as a handsome man teaching the Oud and violin.
… Now I am listening to Summa by the Chilingirian Quartet, and thinking about another famous line from Rumi:
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you”
What wound did open today? Was there light that found its way into my transient self partly in trance through Arvo Pärt? Was it light or The Light?
I do not try to understand. But know that fifty years later, the turbulent waters of life have not polished the sharp edges of my soul like rivers would do to rocks. That somehow, the words of my grandfather have surfaced from those inner caches of my own self to swirl and dance, making me think about the Dervishes of the Mevlevi Order and a mausoleum in Konya, where my grandfather was born but I have never visited.
With the ending notes of the Chilingirian Quartet I remain perplexed by this suggestion of Rumi:
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it”
November 8, 2014
© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2014
(1) http://vahezen.blogspot.com/2014/04/this-posting-will-be-different-from-my.html
(2) http://vahezen.blogspot.com/2014/07/ottoman-times-armenian-timemakers.html
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