Some Things Are So Nice

Some things are nice
Roly poly dribbly drooly babies growing into young ladies
Looking at the boy you love but seeing a son you might have one day
The day you realise you love being soft
The day you realise you love being round
The day you realise a man likes your softness
Your roundness
Some things are nice
Songs that are poems
A shirt that fits in all the right places
When your perfume becomes you
Freshly brushed teeth
Glasses after a contact lenses day
Food that makes you roly poly dribbly drooly
Soft
Round
Feet
The devil and his promises
Dirty jokes with extra dirty friends
Inside jokes that keep coming back
Silly things in a silly little life
A silly little life is nice
Some things are so nice

Limited Girl

My beautiful mortality
In my new grey hairs
In my thinner skin
My skin used to be thicker
Not so flat on my cheekbones
But the aging is so pretty
Because my eyes are the same
They shine
They look naughty
They crinkle
They look at you
They have thunderbolts sometimes
So pretty is my mortality
What a pretty girl

On Tortured Artists

"The idea that creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time. The four twentieth-century writers whose work is most responsible for it are probably Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, and the poet Dylan Thomas. They are the writers who largely formed our vision of an existential English-speaking wasteland where people have been cut off from one another and live in an atmosphere of emotional strangulation and despair. These concepts are very familiar to most alcoholics; the common reaction to them is amusement. Substance-abusing writers are just substance abusers - common garden-variety drunks and druggies, in other words. Any claims that the drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull a finer sensibility are just the usual self-serving bullshit. I've heard alcoholic snowplow drivers make the same claim, that they drink to still the demons. It doesn't matter if you're James Jones, John Cheever, or a stewbum snoozing in Penn Station; for an addict, the right to the drink or drug or choice must be preserved at all costs. Hemingway and Fitzgerald didn't drink because they were creative, alienated, or morally weak. They drank because it's what alkies are wired up to do. Creative people probably do run a greater risk of alcoholism and addiction than those in some other jobs, but so what? We all look pretty much the same when we're puking in the gutter."

- Stephen King, 'On Writing'

Stephen King's Babysitter

"Eula-Beulah was prone to farts - the kind that are both loud and smelly. Sometimes when she was so afflicted, she would throw me on the couch, drop her wool-skirted butt on my face, and let loose. "Pow!" she'd cry in high glee. It was like being buried in marshgas fireworks. I remember the dark, the sense that I was suffocating, and I remember laughing. Because, while what was happening was sort of horrible, it was also sort of funny. In many ways, Eula-Beulah prepared me for literary criticism. After having a two-hundred-pound babysitter fart on your face and yell Pow!, The Village Voice holds few terrors."

- Stephen King, 'On Writing'

Authority Figures

An excerpt from Stephen King's 'On Writing', where he talks about his school principal's reaction to a story he had adapted from a horror movie and sold stapled copies of the 'book' to his schoolmates when he was in the 8th grade...

""What I don't understand, Stevie," she said, "is why you'd write junk like this in the first place. You're talented. Why do you want to waste your abilities?" She had rolled up a copy of VIB#1 and was brandishing it at me the way a person might brandish a rolled-up newspaper at a dog that has piddled on the rug. She waited for me to answer - to her credit, the question was not entirely rhetorical - but I had no answer to give. I was ashamed. I have spent a good many years since - too many, I think - being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realised that almost every writer of fiction and poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all. I'm not editorialising, just trying to give you the facts as I see them.

Miss Hisler told me I would have to give everyone's money back. I did so with no argument, even to those kids (and there were quite a few, I'm happy to say) who insisted on keeping their copies of VIB#1. I ended up losing money on the deal after all, but when summer vacation came I printed four dozen copies of a new story, an original called The Invasion of the Star-Creatures, and sold all but four or five. I guess that means I won in the end, at least in a financial sense. But in my heart I stayed ashamed. I kept hearing Miss Hisler asking why I wanted to waste my talent, why I wanted to waste my time, why I wanted to write junk."

Prophecy

Excerpts from Ayn Rand's 'The Fountainhead', where the brilliant has-been architect Henry Cameron is warning his protege Howard Roark about the pitfalls of genius...

"You're too good," said Cameron. "You're too good for what you want to do with yourself. It's no use, Roark. Better now than later."

"What do you mean?"

"It's no use wasting what you've got on an ideal that you'll never reach, that they'll never let you reach. It's no use, taking that marvelous thing you have and making a torture rack for yourself out of it. Sell it, Roark. Sell it now. It won't be the same, but you've got enough in you. You've got what they'll pay you for, and pay plenty, if you use it their way. Accept them, Roark. Compromise. Compromise now, because you'll have to later, anyway, only then you'll have gone through things you'll wish you hadn't. You don't know. I do. Save yourself from that. Leave me. Go to someone else."

...

"You see, of all men, I'm the last one to whom you should have come. I'll be committing a crime if I keep you here. Somebody should have warned you against me. I won't help you at all. I won't discourage you. I won't teach you any common sense. Instead, I'll push you on. I'll drive you the way you're going now. I'll beat you into remaining what you are, and I'll make you worse...Don't you see? In another month I won't be able to let you go. I'm not sure I can now. So don't argue with me and go. Get out while you can."

...

"Why are you saying all this to me? That's not what you want to say. That's not what you did."

"That's why I'm saying it! Because that's not what I did!...Look, Roark, there's one thing about you, the thing I'm afraid of. It's not just the kind of work you do; I wouldn't care, if you were an exhibitionist who's being different as a stunt, as a lark, just to attract attention to himself. It's a smart racket, to oppose the crowd and amuse it and collect admission to the side show. If you did that, I wouldn't worry. But it's not that. You love your work. God help you, you love it! And that's the curse. That's the brand on your forehead for all of them to see. You love it, and they know it, and they know they have you. Do you ever look at the people in the street? Aren't you afraid of them? I am. They move past you and they wear hats and they carry bundles. But that's not the substance of them. The substance of them is hatred for any many who loves his work. That's the only kind they fear. I don't know why. You're opening yourself up, Roark, for each and every one of them."

...

"No! I don't want to speak of that! But I'm going to. I want you to hear. I want you to know what's in store for you. There will be days when you'll look at your hands and you'll want to take something and smash every bone in them, because they'll be taunting you with what they could do, if you found a chance for them to do it, and you can't find that chance, and you can't bear your living body because it has failed those hands somewhere. There will be days when a bus driver will snap at you as you enter a bus, and he'll only be asking for a dime, but that won't be what you'll hear; you'll hear that you're nothing, that he's laughing at you, that it's written on your forehead, that thing they hate you for. There will be days when you'll stand in the orner of a hall and listen to a creature on a platform talking about buildings, about that work which you love, and the things he'll say will make you wait for somebody to rise and crack him open between two thumbnails; and then you'll hear the people applauding him, and you'll want to scream, because you won't know whether they're real or you are, whether you're in a room full of gored skulls , or whether someone has just emptied your own head, and you'll say nothing, because the sounds you could make - they're not a language in that room any longer; but if you'd want to speak, you won't anyway, because you'll be brushed aside, you who has nothing to tell them about buildings! Is that what you want?"

...

"Not enough?" asked Cameron. "All right. Then one day, you'll see on a piece of paper before you a building that will make you want to kneel; you won't believe that you've done it, but you will have done it; then you'll think that the earth is beautiful and the air smells of spring and you love your fellow men, because there is no evil in the world. And you'll set out from your house with this drawing, to have it erected, because you won't have any doubt that it will be erected by the first man to see it. But you won't get very far from your house. Because you'll be stopped at the door by the man who's come to turn off the gas. You hadn't had much food, because you saved money to finish your drawing, but still you had to cook something and you hadn't paid for it...All right, that's nothing, you can laugh at that. But finally you'll get into a man's office with your drawing, and you'll curse yourself for taking so much space of his air with your body, and you'll try to squeeze yourself out of his sight, so that he won't see you, but only hear your voice begging him, pleading, your voice licking his knees; you'll loathe yourself for it, but you won't care, if only he'd let you put up that building, you won't care, you'll want to rip your insides open to show him, because if he saw what's there he'd have to let you put it up. But he'll that he's very sorry, only the commission has just been given to Guy Francon. And you'll go home, and do you know what you'll do there? You'll cry. You'll cry like a woman, like a drunkard, like an animal. That's your future, Howard Roark. Now, do you want it?"

Poor Boy

Finals Week at the Oklahoma State University in Stillwater meant three things - the last week of the semester, exams, and unlimited pancakes and coffee at the Student Union. I don't like pancakes or coffee, and I didn't exactly hate taking exams, but it was nice to finally reach the end of the semester. Just in time for burnout. That semester I had Social Psychology, Introduction to Speech Communication, and Introduction to Databases. There was something else but I can't remember.

And then the email came. On the weekend before Finals Week. I was sitting in my dorm room when the phone rang. I answered; it was my second brother in Chicago. I gave him a cheerful hi, but he cut me short by asking me if I had checked my email. I hadn't, so I told him to hang on the line while I logged onto my email account on my PC. I had a new email, it was from my father in Muscat, Oman. There were just two lines. Something about how my eldest brother in Oman had been in a car accident and was being operated on at the hospital for spinal damage. "Please pray to Allah that Irfan's legs are saved," he had written.

I'm a fast reader, and it didn't take me very long to read the email. It made no sense the first couple of seconds. My second brother was still on the phone, waiting for me to finish reading the email. The phone's handset was still next to my ear, held in place between my shoulder and my neck. And then came the emotions. And ugly visions. Of my well-fed, healthy, glowing surgeon brother with his legs cut off. No words came out of my mouth, no words are usually sufficient when your whole body breaks out into a panic. My mouth opened, and a strange wail made its way out. It wasn't a loud cry, it wasn't particularly steady either. It was low-pitched and unattractive. It started soft, then it wavered, and as the panic suddenly started to spread in my stomach, the wail became louder and more terrified. It was almost like pushing down on a car's accelerator, except it's your panic, full-blown terror almost, that's suddenly picking up speed. There's no time for the rest of your body to catch up with the panic. Before your heart can start pounding, before your tears can start secreting, before all that there's a shout that's suddenly shown up in your abdominal cavity that starts forcing its way out through your wind pipe, like a jinn making its way out of the bottle it had been imprisoned in. My brother, who was still waiting on the phone, shouted at me and I suddenly fell silent. I was 19. I had long straight hair, and my child-like face and body had recently started softening and looking woman-like.

A week later, and I was in Muscat. Arranging for travel had not been any trouble, I'd already had a flight booked to return home for the summer anyway. My finals had gone well. I'd been in touch with my family the few days before I'd flown back, and I'd been told that although my brother's spine had been repaired and had not been severed, he was paralysed all the way down from his mid-chest. Paraplegia was what they called it. It was just a word at that point, and everyone was sure that, although the doctors didn't have a cure for the paralysis, my brother would be back on his feet in no time. But, of course.

My first day back in Muscat wasn't too bad. My brother from Chicago had already flown in. He and my father were in and out of the house, and I can't remember where my mother was. Probably at the hospital with my brother. My brother from Chicago took me to the hospital during visiting hours (4-6pm) the second day. It's not like I had never been to hospitals before. Both my parents have had heart problems my whole life, and I've visited them and others at the hospital, even this particular one, before. I'd been around the sick and dying more than usual for someone my age, so I wasn't particularly afraid this time. I was at home now with family and others whom I'd known all my life.

My father and mother were already at the hospital. My brother was in a private room, and my mother would stay there with him. I remember weaving past all the people in the frankincense-smelling corridors of the hospital. Everything in the Middle East smells of frankincense. It can be a startling odour at first, but I'd always been around it, and it comforted me. The hospital was white and very clean. It was the visiting hours, so there were a lot of people around. Mostly Omani and South Asian. A lot of Omani women from the interiors, Bedouin women covered in black from head to toe, a black Batman-like mask keeping their whole faces except their eyes covered. Very unlike their city sisters, who wore fitted black synthetic garments over their usual clothing and kept their beehive hairstyles stylishly covered with a scarf. Their faces were very visible. They wore a lot of makeup to make sure you noticed them. The men wore long white robes with open sandals. The older men carried canes. I've always wondered how these men keep their white robes so clean; they practically glow in their crispness. They keep such nice trimmed beards, it's always so nice to look at. Everyone's feet made soft slapping noises where the floor was marble or short, loud squeaks where the floor was rubber-like. The frankincense of the visitors mixed with the usual disinfected smell of hospitals. My paternal grandfather, who had passed away the year before, had once said that he loved how clean the hospitals were in Oman. He had a good sense of humour, and he had very excitedly remarked that if one had to die anywhere, it would have to be in an Omani hospital. This was a few years before his dementia and strokes had left him unable to speak and partially paralysed. He had died in his bed in our house in Muscat, a shrunken confused old man who recognised almost no one, had to be fed and taken to the bathroom like a baby, and had to be tied down to his bed so that he wouldn't harm himself.

I stood outside the closed door of my brother's private ward. My second brother was with me. He put his hand on the door, and before he pushed it open, he sternly told me to make sure I didn't cry. I thought I could handle it. I had images in my head of my brother in the hospital bed maybe with some plaster and bandages. His legs hadn't had to be amputated, and, aside from the paralysis, had no damage to them.

My brother pushed the ward door open, and we entered the room. Some people were in the room already, all family friends who'd come to visit my brother. My father was in there too. He turned to look at me. I looked at him and then looked around the room. "As-salaam-alaikum," I softly said to everyone. I smiled quietly at them because one has to be polite. The room wasn't huge but it wasn't too small. There was a partition on one side where they had an extra bed for an attendant. A door led to an attached bathroom. A TV was mounted high up on the wall. The few visiting men were with my father on the far side of the room, and the women - mostly their wives - were standing with my mother on the other side of the room. In the middle of the room against one wall was the bed with my eldest brother lying on it on his back. He looked at me, but I don't think he saw me. His body was still in shock, and he was constantly in a tremendous amount of pain, so the doctors kept him doped up with painkillers. He was barely awake most of the time; he had just happened to be awake when I met him. His pale skin looked the same, but his head was bloated and looked like a trapezoid. The top of his scalp looked flat but tilted. His hair had been shaved off because when his car had rolled off of the road down the mountain into the ditch, his head had smashed into the rolled up car window. His scalp had torn open - like a cut-up watermelon in the marketplace, my mother would tell me later - and although it had been stitched back up, there were still bits of glass embedded in the flaps of skin on his scalp. There was a roadmap of cuts and stitches on his scalp, and those cuts had got infected and were oozing pus. He had raccoon eyes, which I later learned happens to people with head injuries. He was wearing a hospital gown and was covered with a pastel blanket, probably green or blue because that hospital has blankets like that.

I never moved from where I had entered the room near the door. I stood there quietly, my polite smile weakly hanging on my face. I looked at the men in that one corner, my father with them with his back turned towards me. I looked at my brother and how ugly and frightening he looked. He was the best of us. He had recently finished med school in India and had been working as a surgeon in Oman for a while. He had cleared his USMLE exams and was planning on going to America for his residency. My parents had started looking for a wife for him. He was the best of us. He was the best of our entire clan's generation. I felt so stupid standing there, my silly smile fading from its edges, my eyes darting back and forth between the men and my brother in his bed. I wanted to see some plasters and some broken bones, I wanted to see the paralysis, but the damage was not like that. It was worse, it was something bigger and something much worse. The damage was to us and everything we were supposed to be, everything life was supposed to have been.

I stepped back out of the ward into the corridor that smelled like frankincense and disinfectant and shut the door. I started to cry, but I wasn't sure why I was crying. I wasn't feeling anything. I think I was frightened at how ugly my brother looked with his mis-shapen swollen head. I think I was wearing a swamp green shalwar suit, but I can't be sure. I remember seeing it as I bent my head down outside the ward and cried but not too loudly because I had been warned against upsetting people with tears. One of the aunties came out to comfort me. Someone else, maybe my mother was with her, I can't remember. I do remember the lady saying something about how sisters are particularly sensitive to their siblings' pain. That was the first time I felt angry at words of comfort. I didn't want to hear her words. I wanted to push her and be cruel to her. I wanted to hurt her, I wanted to be cruel. What did she know. Her words made me feel a physical rage in my little teenage body. I wanted to bury my nails into the sides of her head.

My summer vacation had started. I would spend the mornings with my brother at the ward. I'd brush his teeth for him, feed him breakfast (a cucumber, lettuce, tomato sandwich), and tell him about the headlines in the newspaper. My mother would take over in the afternoons and nights when I would go to a computer class I was taking whose credits I'd transfer back to OSU. The nurses whose faces I never saw because they wore surgical masks (to not infect the infection on my brother's scalp any further) gave him spongebaths in his bed and cleaned out his bedpan and urobags. My brother was sedated most of the time. Sometimes when I'd be lying on the extra bed on the other side of the partition, I'd feel like my brother was about to walk around the partition and laugh and tell me that he'd been joking about the accident and the paralysis the whole time, that the whole episode was over. I thought I heard him walking on the other side of the partition sometimes. But, of course, he wasn't. He couldn't even raise his head an inch because his body was in shock, and he would scream in pain. The doctors had operated on the segment of his spine in the middle of his back, and if you even lightly blew on those stitches on his skin, he would scream.

And so our routine continued. One day my father was sitting on his prayer mat outside the ward in a quiet corner. He had started doing that after prayers, sitting on his prayer mat, thinking. That day he was sitting with his face covered with one hand. I didn't know what to do or what to say. I felt so stupid because I was so young and wasn't able to do anything for anybody. I didn't even know how to drive in those days. So I went and crouched behind my father like a dog who has lost its master and leaned one side of my body against his concave back. I rested my head on his back, hoping that I wouldn't add to his problems and that I was sorry I couldn't contribute to anything like all the real grownups could. I didn't say any of that though, I felt too useless and ashamed.

My father doesn't emote or talk very much. He was quiet as usual, deep in thought. I heard him whimpering, "my poor boy, my poor boy".

The Wheel in the Sky

It's funny when life starts coming full circle, or sometimes circle upon circle upon circle. I wonder if it means something when that happens. I wonder if that means that you're zeroing in on something, like the way a predator swoops around its prey in swiftly shrinking circles, like the way a man can't help but linger in ever-closing circles around the woman who has bewitched his senses before he dares to reach out and touch her. Like you've just completed one huge revolution around your own personal sun. We all have our own suns that we orbit around our whole lives, suns that keep us anchored, that power us, that provide us our point of reference in a very dark and unmapped universe. Sometimes other objects get in the way and cast shadows on us, and we lose sight of our sun, the source of our warmth, the memory of what we once knew to be true when we first set out on our journey. Sometimes our orbits take us far, far away from our suns, and we start to feel cold and frightened, off course, lost. We begin to feel the presence of our sun less and less as where we are on our invisible orbit makes us feel colder and darker. We forget what we believed in in the beginning and why we do anything that we do. But whether we know it or not, we are still on our orbit. Our sun - even if we can't see it anymore - still holds us in its gravitational pull, and if we just hold on, we will inevitably swing back towards our sun and behold it again at the same point where we first started our journey from. We will be in two places and at two points in time at once. What is place and time in a universe where there is no up or down or sunrise or sunset? But we will have returned to something, except we will have changed, we will have seen things, we will have been places, and we will be able to acknowledge our journey and renew our belief in the sun that drives us before we set off on yet another revolution.

It was almost a year ago, at the same time this year, that I felt like I'd been there before, except not. Not really deja vu, but like I was there and somewhere else at the same time. Two places, two times at once. How do you plot that on a space versus time graph? 'There' was NDTV in New Delhi in 2011. I was interning in the first of a series of departments, and that particular month, I was at the internet news desk, which was basically 3 PCs on one side of a long cubicle. On the other side was a very excited internet sports desk. It was a special time for them - the cricket World Cup was on. It only came around once every 4 years, and this time, it may as well have been the Olympics because an IndoPak semi-final was on the cards. At the Mohali stadium in Punjab, right across the border from Pakistan. Patriotism was rising a little bit everyday around the country, much like the mercury in everyone's thermometers. The air even began to smell a little bit more greenwhiteandsaffron. Stick your tongue out and you could taste those colours in the gray Delhi breeze. People around the country were planning to take an off from work, officially or unofficially, on the day of the match, and everybody knew that their bosses would understand. No real work that could be avoided would happen that day anyway. It's just the way. Indians are funny like that. They snap and snarl at and often steal from each other every single day of their lives, but a national level cricket match whips up the long-muffed-out symbolism of their freedom fighters. The ghosts of the khhaadi heroes and heroines start wandering India's streets. It's like the whole country becomes a television rerun of 'Gandhi'. A defiant salt march, anyone? This age that I live in, the age that I am of, is an age where most young people have no cause to offer their youth to, where they mindlessly swing between desk jobs and fast food and bad postures. To such a generation, the promise of an impending IndoPak match, with the possibility of their mostly crumbly country winning its first World Cup final in twenty years, flicks on a light on their usually expressionless faces. With every passing day that brought the semi-final closer, that light grew brighter. It reminded me of the general mood in the United States around the 2008 presidential election. I was living in a Republican state where you didn't dare show too much support for the Democratic candidate, but the day after Obama became the first black president and brought the Conservative hold on the White House and the world to an end, one couldn't walk down the street without meeting the knowing glance of someone wearing a half-smile as if you shared some underground secret, like you weren't alone, like you won, like you had contributed just by being alive. Like it meant something.

So there I was quite firmly, almost 30 years old and at NDTV, but I was also somewhere else. That other place was 12 years ago. I was 15 kilos lighter and in Lucknow with my mother in our old crumbly home in our mouldy moholla. I had finished 12th grade and was in the country for my university entrance exams. It was that period in every modern student's life where when you think of the future you don't really see anything at all, just a vague blackness extending into forever. Que sera sera, what will I be? A doctor, an engineer? In architecture, biotechnology, genetics, hotel management? Papa kehte hain bara naam karega...

It was 1999, but it was the Lucknawi summer from every year before. Life had slowed down, and the desert 'loo' winds from Rajasthan were swirling about like bodyless jinns in our ancient alleys. The mangoes in Barabanki were ripening. The Kargil war was on in Kashmir. Ajmal Jami's footage from the border made it to our rented-for-the-summer TV. He was making Barkha Dutt famous. I'd follow the story on NDTV everyday. I remember how the body of one army boy from Lucknow made it back to town and how the roads were blocked off for the mourners that showed up for the boy from their city who'd died for his country. They wouldn't let his family grieve alone. The World Cup was also on that summer. I remember an IndoPak match that I'd got excited about. I'd watched it on TV with my mother even. I don't care for sports at all, but I always enjoy an IndoPak cricket match. India had ended up winning that match, and I had leapt up in all my 18-year-old glory as someone set off celebatory firecrackers on Victoria 'Tooria' Street outside. My cousins who lived a couple of houses down from us had announced a few days earlier that they would offer extra prayer rakaats to Allah so that India would win the match. Maybe Allah had listened to them. Our generation was different. We were Muslims but we had been born and raised as Indians. We felt no affinity for the Pakistani cricket team. It felt good to know for sure which side you were on, even when some identities threatened to make things confusing, even if just for others. Like it did for me and other Muslims in another hemisphere in the years that were to follow.

But here I was back again, 12 years later at NDTV in New Delhi. Ajmal Jami was now on my Facebook friends list. I had even spoken to him a few times about that Kargil footage I had seen in 1999. Back then, Dilli really had been far, a monster city that swallowed the mild Lucknawis who dared. In another few months, I would fly to America and make a life there for almost 10 years. Back then, I could not have known that, many countries and so much living later, not only would I dare to return to India, but that this time I would be sitting inside the NDTV office, talking to the man whose footage I had seen in that warm room in a moholla that time and even I have forgotten. I even saw Barkha Dutt at the NDTV office a few times. She's a lot taller in person. Amazonian even. I was in two places, two times at once. In 2011, an IndoPak World Cup match was around the corner. India won that match. India went on to win the final against Sri Lanka and brought home the trophy for the first time since 1983. Somewhere 12 years ago, I leapt as firecrackers went off on Tooria Street.

Magar yeh toh koi na jaane ke meri manzil hai kahaan...

The Journey to the King

"By far the most famous parable describing the Sufi Way and the stations that a disciple must pass through on the journey toward self-annihilation was composed by the twelfth-century Iranian perfumer and alchemist, Farid ad-Din Attar (d. 1230). In Attar's epic masterpiece, The Conference of the Birds, the birds of the world have gathered around the hoopoe (a mythical bird), who has been chosen by lot to guide them on a journey to see the Simurgh: King of the Birds. Before they can begin their journey, however, the birds must first declare their absolute obedience to the hoopoe, promising that

Whatever he commands along the Way
We must, without recalcitrance, obey.

The oath is necessary, the hoopoe explains, because the journey will be perilious and fraught with physical and emotional adversity, and only he knows the Way. Consequently, he must be followed without question, regardless of what he demands.

To reach the Simurgh, the birds will have to traverse seven treacherous valleys, each representing a station along the Way. The first is the Valley of the Quest, in which the birds must "renounce the world", and repent of their sins. This is followed by the Valley of Love, where each bird will be plunged into seas of fire "until his very being is enflamed." Next is the Valley of Mystery, where every bird must take a different path, for "There are so many roads, and each is fit/For that pilgrim who must follow it." In the Valley of Detachment, "all claims, all lust for meaning disappear," while in the Valley of Unity, the many are merged into one: "The oneness of diversity/Not oneness locked in singularity."

Upon reaching the sixth valley, the Valley of Bewilderment, the birds - weary and perplexed - break through the veil of traditional dualities and are suddenly confronted with the emptiness of their being. "I have no certain knowledge anymore," they weep in confusion.

I doubt my doubt, doubt itself is unsure,
I love, but who is it for whom I sigh?
Not Muslim, yet not heathen, who am I?

Finally, at the end of the journey, the birds arrive at the Valley of Nothingness, in which, stripped of their egos, they "put on the cloak that signifies oblivion" and become consumed by the spirit of the universe. Only when all seven valleys have been traversed, when the birds have learned to "destroy the mountain of the Self" and "give up the intellect for love," are they allowed to continue to the throne of the Simurgh.

Of the thousands of birds who began the journey with the hoopoe, only thirty make it to the end. With "hopeless hearts and tattered, trailing wings," these thirty birds are led into the presence of the Simurgh. Yet when they finally set their eyes upon him, they are astonished to see not the King of Birds they had expected, but rather themselves. Simurgh is the Persian word for "thirty birds"; and it is here, at the end of the Way, that the birds are confronted with the reality that although they have "struggled, wandered, traveled far," it is "themselves they sought" and "themselves they are." "I am the mirror set before your eyes," the Simurgh says. "And all who come before my splendor see/Themselves, their own unique reality.""

- Reza Aslan, "No god but God"

Other People

I could've told you that I love you
If we had been other people

That I crave seeing you often
And it bothers me that I do
I don't like it that I do

That I wish I could amuse you
And hold your gaze forever
Make you look at me forever
Or just a little longer

I don't know what it means

That I feel restless when you're out of town
Not that I get to see you much anyway
But your swagger is too much
It makes me shake my head in disbelief
It’s just too much style
And I can't take my eyes off of you when you start talking
What a performance
You’re on fire
I hold my breath
And wish you'd never stop
Your eyes blazed with something nameless I’ve also known

I believe in some things again
Because of how you've been
Because of the adrenalin
I enjoy that we don't agree on many things
But you listen to me still
And tell me what you think still

I like you in knit sweaters
I like that your nails are short
I like the veins on the back of your hands
How organised you are
And your wicked, wicked terrible wit
I want to hear you keep talking
I want you to keep talking to me

I feel shy when you speak Urdu
Or say my name right
And when you open the door for me
Or let me go first

I love that you're quirky
That you spaz out sometimes
I enjoy that I don't know what you mean sometimes
That your voice sounds like a breeze
That your voice sounds like the most crystalline thing I’ve ever seen
It’s been so difficult
I could've told you what that means

There would've been so much to say
If we had been other people
If we had been other people
If only we had been other people