Zoroaster's Children by Marius Kociejowski

Author:Marius Kociejowski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Biblioasis
Published: 2015-08-20T19:57:22+00:00

‘When you get to know God you disappear in the world.’

‘What can you tell me about Khizr?’

Khizr (or the Arabic ‘Khidr’) had fascinated me ever since I first learned about him in Damascus, where he is identified with the Christian St. George almost to the point of being interchangeable with him. Khizr is also synonymous with the Jewish Elijah and in European mythology becomes the Green Man. Although he is never named in the Qur’an, Muslims will tell you that it is he who accompanies the prophet Moses on his journeys. As a figure of fecundity and rebirth he would appear to predate all three great monotheisms. The paths between cultures have been overgrown with ignorance, but as a single meeting point for all three there is no figure that cries out more for our attention. Where Khizr differs from the martyred St. George is in the fact that he drank from the waters of immortality, and thus remains the living presence to whom many Muslim mystics have turned for guidance. Hafez attributed his poetic gift to a meeting with Khizr.

‘Khizr is wherever you need him to be,’ the dervish told me, ‘and whomever you wish him to be, whether as teacher or guide, and in whatever religion, in whatever form he takes. You have to find him. He is in the world. In any decade, any country, Khizr will always be there.’

‘And did you find him?’

‘Yes, that’s why I’m a majnun. All dervishes have seen Khizr. Night after night, he gave me messages. People say God is bright, but one cannot compare him with anything that we see. I’ve been a majnun for twenty-six years.’

Azadeh stared at me from the other end of the table in surprise.

‘How do you know so much about our religion?’ she asked.

I was startled to hear her clear English sentence coming, as it were, from a hitherto deep silence.

‘I know very little, but I am interested in that particular figure.’

Azadeh looked at me sceptically, saying, ‘I think you know more than you wish to admit.’

On the basis of a scrap of knowledge she seemed to think I knew everything about her faith and asked me to compare it with Christianity. Which, she asked me, was the better of the two? This, I replied, was a question that need not concern us here, not where one man’s poetry healed the divisions between people. We spoke across the length of that table, a few heads to either side of it, and without too much trouble managed to dissolve the distance between us. Afterwards, we strolled over to the tomb of Hafez. We watched a young woman fall to her knees, and, after first knocking at it three times, kiss the edge of the tomb and then place her cheek on the marble. She ran her fingers through the rose blossoms scattered there. It was almost as if she were physically caressing the spirit inside. The woman was so completely transported I doubt she was aware of our presence.

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