The Darkness, the Dervish, and the Vardapet: Part vi

‘Hey! Hey!’ An Armenian priest was stooping over Ibrahim, shouting, and rubbing his hands and face. They were at the edge of an icefield, high in the mountains of Hakkari. Around them the snow lay light on the rocks, the wind catching and blowing it down towards the valley. The sun was thin and pale behind wispy gray cloud. It was perhaps noon. Hajji Ibrahim opened his eyes, blinked, sat up, and stared out in the distance, trying to recollect his thoughts. The vardapet sat down beside him and pulled a blanket over him.

‘Who are you? Where am I? Where are the others?’ After a moment Hajji Ibrahim spoke, in a blank, monotone voice, to no one in particular. He weakly waved his arms about, then sat back against the stone. Vardapet Gevorg replied, ‘We, my companions and I, were in a village on the lower slopes of this mountain. We are passing through these cursed hills, on our way to Erchitzian, on account of a rebellion among the Kurds south of Bitlis. The khan of Hakkari is—never mind though. I am Vardapet Gevorg, and this is Vardapet Shiroyan. Over there is a boy from the village, a Mehmed I think. We are in the midst of the lands of the khan of Hakkari, though I am not sure where exactly we are, to be honest. We became lost two days ago in a snowstorm and only by the grace and providence of God we found our way into a village near here.’

‘The mountains of Hakkari? How—how did I arrive here? Are you speaking the truth? Swear to me on the Gospel sent down from God that you are speaking the truth!’

‘I swear to you! To the east of here are the lands of the Persian shah, I am quite certain. The road we were following crossed another path coming in from the east, and some days ago, before the snowstorm, we met a group of peddlers who had only the day before been forced to pay a toll to exit the Safavi lands, of which they complained for quite some time to us… Whether shah or sultan has any writ in these lands, I do not know. Some strength greater than either seems to be about, though. So it feels, at least. I am not sure…’

Hajj Ibrahim blinked, and nodded. ‘Your sense is right, I am afraid. But you would not believe what I have seen. I do not believe what I have seen, but I am certain of one thing. This morning I was in the hills north of Halab, I swear to you on our Prophet and upon the exalted Qur’an. My companions and I—though I do not know whither they have gone—took refuge in a cave from bedouin. Then—then I awoke in a place full of terror, a well of hell, beyond all story and knowledge… But I will not speak further of it here. I do not know how I arrived here, I do not know where my companions are… We take refuge in God… a well of hell…’ He sat back and began to shiver violently. Gevorg motioned to Shiroyan and the two lifted Ibrahim up, his hands trembling, his legs barely able to move. They noticed that it seemed as if all the color had drained from his face and his hands. ‘How… why… you came?’ He muttered as they bore him down off the boulder field to the edge of the scraggly tree line, below which the boy Mehmed was now waiting with one of their horses.

‘We saw a fantastic light exploding and enveloping the mountain, whirling around it all night. In the morning I had to come and see; it is a habit of mind to seek out strange and rare things, you see. So we struggled up from the village and came to this place, and saw you—and tongues of blue flame up above, higher on the cliffs and the ice. It was… ungodly. Never have I seen such a thing, or heard tell of it save in stories. My grandmother used to tell me of such things, but only in fun, or so I thought…’

They gingerly lifted Ibrahim onto the horse, and he slumped forward and weakly grasped the animal’s neck. Then, slowly, they worked back down the mountain, retracing their tracks in the snow, the trees growing taller and darker, the snow denser and heavier. On and on they went, retracing their steps, though it seemed as if the time needed had doubled since their first passing. The sun was setting. Behind them Vardapet Shiroyan could have sworn that he heard shrieks and moans in the blackening forest, but he chose not to mention them to the others—fear lay on all well enough. Night fell, but the moon was bright, and lit the snowy forests and wastes in an erie glow. Two hours after night had fallen, the temperature dropping rapidly, they reached the edge of the village. It huddled along a precipitous ridge plunging down from the icy peaks behind, the two or three streets—paths, really—threading the village dropping down endless steps and stairs, the houses all but piled one upon another, like terraces. The boy Mehmed, as they drew nearer to the village, had suddenly bolted and run home, leaving the two vardapets and the barely conscious merchant alone.

The village was completely silent, and every door was locked, with only tiny glimmers of light coming from under the cracks. The windows were all locked shut. They could see Mehmed’s tracks disappear into the fourth house from the edge of the village, but despite knocking repeatedly no one answered, even so much as to shoo them away—a marked contrast from the hospitality, if someone bemused, of the very same people earlier in the day. What had changed?

By now they were quite tired, and cold, and the horse was limping, exhausted from the snow. They furiously banged on every door, slogging through the snow banks from house to house, yelling and cursing, growing more frantic with fear and frustration, even as their bodies burned and ached, their fingers and faces bitter and cold. No one would open, nor even make a sound from within. At one house they heard furious whispers and a low wail, then silence. In frustration, they returned to the center of the village, an irregular meydan where two roads—paths, really—intersected. They eased Haci Ibrahim down from his mount and let him rest against the saddle bags, but as they did, the horse turned wild with fright and bolted into the night. Vardapet Gevorg threw up his hands in desperation, but as he did, he recalled the tiny village shrine, up on a knoll at the back of the village. Perhaps they could force their way within and stay there for the night?

So, lifting Haci Ibrahim to his feet and leading him behind them, they pushed up the hill to the shrine of the village saint, an Ereklı Dede, a holy man of some distant or not-so-distant past. It was a half-crumbling domed box of a structure, the dome barely visible in the heaps of snow, gnarled old fir trees hunched around the walls, a thin light streaming through a mostly covered-over window. Someone was inside. They pounded furiously on the door, and, against hope, it opened. A hunched-over old man, a dervish of some sort, wearing headgear stood in the doorway, his tongue lolling and his hair wild and disheveled. Fear was in his eyes. He stared at them with his wild eyes, then cried: ‘In the name of God, the Forty Men of the Unseen, our Master’s herd of holy deer, and the Green One, enter, you’re no spirits, no! Well, in you go, now!’ The old man slammed the door shut behind them, bolted it, and paced about the interior of the shrine, muttering imprecations and jumbled Arabic-sounding formulas all the while, swinging his hands back and forth, his long matted hair swaying.

After a few moments of pacing, interspersed with long intense gazes at the guests, he turned to face them and cried out in a loud and high pitched voice, ‘They’ve awoken! My shaykh, God enlighten his spirit-face, yes, yes, foresaw ‘em, he did, in the world of dreams one night, he saw… Listen to me! It was terrible, terrible, we take refuge in the Almighty! They came last night, at midnight, right at midnight. Took a whole family, I swear, a whole family, just walked right through the door, it was locked and all. We found them in the morning, all of ‘em as white as fresh linens, looking like they’d seen Shaytan himself, worse maybe. Not dead. Not alive either. Breathing, sitting up, but that was it. I pricked each one of them, I did, with a needle, just blood came out, blood turned all white, I swear on the grave of our shaykh Ereklı Dede! Then we found the goat—it was inside out, would you believe me! Insides all on the outside, and not a lick of blood, but walking around, silent as death, just the back of its eyes going back and forth looking at us. One of the locals went crazy seeing it, went after it with a big old blade, lopped the head clean off. You know what happened?’ At this he positively jumped up and down, his dirty long hair sloshing from side to side, grinning and grimacing by turns. ‘Goat just hopped around, guts swinging this and that a way, and butted the fellow with his stub of a neck, you know, marrow and veins and skin poking up, and—hey presto! Just popped his head right back on, took off for the wilds, skipping and prancing and making nary a bleat. Silent as death, I say. Same as the family they came for. I mean, they took off to, we haven’t seen them since. Awful, just awful!’

He fell silent, and retreated to a little alcove at the back of the shrine, the noise of his shuffling in some books or loose papers coming dimly from behind the wooden sepulchre. The vardapets and the merchant had by now sat down and positively slumped against the wall, their heads spinning and aching, silently soaking in the warmth of the charcoal brazier the old man had burning next to his mattress, which was itself wedged between a wall and the tomb of the saint. He quite clearly lived here, tending the shrine and attending to the spiritual needs of the villagers. A couple of candles were burning down on a stone at one end of the tomb, which was itself overlaid with a beautiful green fabric interlaced with designs of flowers and trees. The ceiling was low and close, and the rafters were crammed with deer antlers, the skulls of birds, bits of talismanic paper and votive rags, all sooted with black, some deeply, some slightly, from years of candles burning and the dervish’s brazier in the winter. Coffee paraphernalia littered one corner, while in another there were a couple of pieces of bread, a jug of water, and what looked like some dried fruits, the dervish’s meager diet, not doubt. The dervish returned, clutching some pages, which he deposited in front of his exhausted guests. ‘Bread? Coffee?’ he asked, and they accepted the bread, and some water, asking if perhaps there were anything more for the clearly ill merchant. The dervish seemed quite thrilled by this request for some reason, as he had a small hearth and enough cooking things to make some soup. Before he did, he motioned to the just deposited pages. ‘Read! Read!’ The vardapets picked them up, but they were all written in Arabic, which they did not know. They could decipher the vivid, if rather crude, illustrations though: in them, dark spirits rose from the earth, their visages followed in consecutive pages by images of humans and animals turned topsy-turvy and rendered in horrifying, unnatural colors and shapes. Finally, on a page at the bottom of the heap, was the image of a great seething void, Arabic magical phrases and numbers and prayers scribbled in minuscule hands all around the margins, confining the foul being to the center of the page. Vardapet Gevorg shivered, and began to repeat a prayer under his breath.

Haci Ibrahim had barely managed to stay awake once he settled onto the ground of the shrine, his back against a thin bolster, the cold melting out of his bones. Only the sharp pain of hunger and thirst held him back, his mind a tangle of sensations and barely cogent. He gathered very little of what the dervish said, his words coming and fading, but anyway he already knew everything, having seen it, seen it all in a moment, a counter-revelation, an inner experience yes but a strange and infernal one, for which he came up short in explanations that comforted him at all. We take refuge in God… The two vardapets were chattering in their funny tongue… What strange colors, what strange shapes overhead, these mountain shrines, so interesting… he lifted his head as one of the vardapets gave him water to drink and some bread and dried fruit to eat, he slowly chewed, tasted every particle his mind following every bite back into cosmic origins, divine oneness, how tired he was, so tired… a little of the hot soup, his throat burned, but that was all…

In his sleep he passed over Mount Kaf, gliding, like a crane or stork, his heart quiet and peaceful. Coming to rest on a cypress tree beyond the world, he found himself reciting odd lines of verse, which he had never heard and which followed no rules or order he knew in waking life.

There is a river of fire before the Throne. There is a river of stars being born.
There is a basin of holy boiling blood. There is a fountain of dying stars.

There is a river of the flaming interiors of hearts being transfigured and transfixed
By His gaze, the force that quickens and wrecks every world in every configuration,
In every spin of the dervish’s dance a billion worlds are born on other planes.
The contours past place, his heart became inscribed with the Divine Names
A map not scribed by hands, ‘this’ and ‘that’ passing away, passing away…

When Haci Ibrahim awoke it was well into the morning, but the snow was coming down again, big heavy flakes now, only the almost silent sound of snow on snow filtering under the door through the window. The two vardapets were soundly sleeping, wrapped in colorful Turkman blankets. Haci Ibrahim found that he too had been wrapped in such a blanket. It smelled of horses and distance. His head ached, the un-sound of the snow was almost too much, it was too quiet. The dervish was awake, or at least he was sitting up, cross-legged, but he was silent. His lips were moving, wordlessly. Haci Ibrahim watched him, wondering under the pressure of his throbbing head. He stirred a little, and asked himself silently whether there was coffee to be had here. The dervish opened his until then closed eyes and spoke, looking directly into Haci Ibrahim. ‘Yes, yes, we’ll drink and be merry soon, soon, my son. And then!’ The dervish stopped speaking for a moment, his eyes dancing. ‘Then, then my son, you’re in for a show! Yes, quite a show. The saints are coming! The saints are coming! A whole host of ‘em—just you wait!’

Haci Ibrahim had no idea what the wild dervish meant about the coming of the saints, though little of what had happened over the last few days—or was it weeks, or months, or years?—made much sense to him. ‘My son! My son!’ The dervish was now standing, positively dancing about with joy or glee, and gesturing at Haci Ibrahim, which caused the vardapets to awake and stir. ‘Look out the door, go, now, look!’ Ibrahim slowly lifted himself, thinking it best to humor their host. The blanket stilled wrapped around himself, for the shrine was quite cold, he pushed open the door, snowflakes gathering about his head and gently whitening the red and yellows of the blanket. Silence without. But the space beyond the shrine was not empty. Not by far. Above the pillowing snow banks, as silent as the fallen snow, an ethereal herd of magnificent deer, half antlered, half not, stood guard around the shrine, their hooves resting lightly upon the surface of the snow, their bodies awash in holy light, alert, nimble, waiting. The saints were coming, and the holy deer of Ereklı Dede would greet them when they came. And then…

Part i

Part ii

Part iii

Part iv

Part v

The Darkness, the Dervish, and the Vardapet: Part v.

The surviving letters of Hajji Ibrahim contain a significant gap between his correspondence from Van and his much later correspondences from Istanbul, while the journal of Vardapet Gevorg also has considerable omissions, though his occasional but unorganized and now scattered papers contain significantly more information regarding the occurrences of these days. I, the humble and sinful editor of these marvelous and terrible tales, have therefore reconstructed the following material from a variety of other sources, visions, and intimations. And God knows best.

*

Hajji Ibrahim and his companions, having discovered themselves to not be where they had been mere moments before, but instead, inexplicably, now found themselves in some far darker recess of the earth, down below light and the ordinary flow of time, out of memory of all but God and the oldest, deepest spirits of the underlands.

Meanwhile, far away, back in the stony wadi north of Aleppo, the Bedouin had cautiously approached the sealed up cavern, in fear, not of any firearm riposte issuing forth, but of the dread powers they knew the dark places of the earth held in this stretch of land. Listening at the cracks in the barricade, they heard only the stomp and snort of horses. One waved a hand in front of the barricade. No response from within. Another, bolder, stepped in front, and peered in. Seeing no sign of human activity, the bemused tribesmen hauled down the piled up stones. As soon as they had cleared a sufficient amount, they stood back, and the horses came galloping out, overjoyed to be freed. The Bedouin looked within in terror, not daring to go further in, despite the piles of goods and baggage just within. They muttered prayers to their local saints, clutched their rifles close, and beat a frightened retreat.

In the cavern depths out of time and memory, Hajji Ibrahim wiped the cold sweat from his brow and tried to speak again to his companions, but found his throat was closed tight and dry, and words would no longer come. He waved his hands, but in vain: the gloom was absolute. He crawled in the direction he thought the brave Kurd would be, found him by touch, and tapped on his arm. The courageous Kurd replied only with a like tap, then felt his arms up Hajji Ibrahim’s chest, to his throat, and tapped there, signifying the same sudden malady. From this point on, things began to occur in those depths, whose exact sequence Hajji Ibrahim could never completely untangle, suspecting that the ordinary flow of temporality somehow did not apply, and many things could happen and be perceived simultaneously. Nonetheless, at some moment afterwards they all found that a faint glow was building to two sides of the cavern, a glow that was at once reminiscent of moonlight, yet horribly unlike any light that had ever shone on the earth’s surface. Perhaps it was no light at all, but only the lesser darkness being marked off: for between the two dead glows there grew a great and horrible Darkness, at first utterly without form or shape or sound, but growing more and more distinct as the moments passed, perhaps taking its temporal, this-wordly form from the forms and dispositions of the men present in its hidden lair outside of the walls of the world. Feeding on them. Hajji Ibrahim was certain of this much: that whatever foul spirit or being into whose snare they had fallen, It was intent upon devouring them, and perhaps devouring everything it could come upon.

The Darkness went from silence to a sudden and ear-rending roar, a sound that seemed not aural but plainly material, crashing across the ears and psyches of the men, knocking them on their backs. Then it was utterly silent again. It seemed to gather, then spread, until it was as if four or five distinct bodies of the Darkness loomed over them, on all sides. Hajji Ibrahim felt his very being tighten and constrict, as though some force out of the Darkness were drawing his fibres out, untangling his very inner self, and he was powerless to resist. Visions of blood drops and seines of his own skin and muscle appeared before his eyes, real or unreal, he could not say. Again his terrible dream came to mind, and he felt as if he were watching a shadow play unfold, with his body and spirit and soul actors before his very eyes. It was as if a part of him, or a facsimile, rather, had been ripped from his innermost self, messily, leaving traces and fragments hanging in the air. A vision of his own spirit, or a doubled, yet slightly fainter, less real, version of his spirit, rushed past his eyes, flamed into a thin, yellow, yet burning form of light, then dissipated, gone into the depths. A bit of thin light remained, with a crimson mist of blood enveloping it and moving outwards towards the Darkness in slow spirals. Hajji Ibrahim could see what seemed to be stone overhead, the stone of the world-mountain, perhaps. Perhaps they remained within the shadow of the walls of this world, or below them. Now the Darkness yawned and yipped, now like a dog, now like a dragon waking from slumber, as if pleased by whatever alchemical operation it or its unruly potencies had performed, yet also disturbed by the thin flash of light, which cut into its inner and absolute darkness.

As the light began to fade, Hajji Ibrahim suddenly remembered the piece of paper the majdhub of Damascus had given him. He found it, against hope, within his sleeve, folded. Unfolding it with as much haste as he could manage without tearing it, he found within a talisman: a single circle, with three letters inscribed at certain points: alif, lām, mim. The light floated, floated overhead of them, and the Darkness seemed to circle, waiting. Little time remained. Hajji Ibrahim pointed at the talisman in his hand, motioning to his companions to remain in one place, and with his finger he traced a circle around them, rapidly dashing off the letters. His finger left no trace in the hard stone floor of the cavern, but as he completed the circle, stepping back into the knot of his companions, a blue light gathered along the line of the circle. It grew in intensity, then suddenly burst into a solid wall of cold, intensely bright blue flame, sending the Darkness reeling backwards for the moment. The talismanic paper itself burst into blue flame and was utterly consumed. All of his companions dropped to the ground, in a deep sleep. Only Hajji Ibrahim remained awake: not merely awake, but completely awake, his eyes now able to see further and deeper and more clearly than ever before or ever after in his life.

Now, the mountain’s heart opened up to him as he stood within the Circle, blue, ethereal flame lapping the edge of one half of the Circle, the swaying, bright, red-fiery schema of the mountain’s interior somehow filling the horizon before the other half. For these moments he forgot everything else—the terrible darkness without the Circle, the undead shadow with its fleshless face and the eiry haze of blood——drifting before its ungodly visage. He even forgot his companions, lying in an unconscious heap on the ground around him. His eyes, inner and outer, were utterly taken up with the vision of the cosmic peak rising before him.

The mountain itself was some sort of facsimile, perhaps, though whether it was real in a material or spiritual sense or some other sense, he could never afterwards say. Not that he found the usual categories of reality to be very fitting for the world at large, anyway, an insight he had long before read in texts but in these moments of terror and, as it would turn out, spiritual ecstasy, finally truly realized. He stared, transfixed, looking up and down the layered worlds that seemed to nest within the mountain, all manifest to him at once and singly. At the highest point there was only Light, sheer, pure, and resistant to the searching of his sight, his thought, anything—it was as if he was seeing it from the back of the corner of his eyes yet feeling its rays suffuse every particle of his being. Below the Light were worlds of various sorts, some filled with blisteringly hot and strong stars, others with luminescent darkness, others with hills and forests and wonderful creatures, all cloaked in wings and colors and living jewels. At the base of the mountain was stone, but stone shot through with splendor and—perhaps not the right word, but close—life. Throbbing with life, somehow. If asked, he could not explain it.

A simple enough task. The vision of the mountain disappeared, but the ethereal blue flames continued to flicker. And the Darkness was still there, and he could hear it deliberately sniffing the air, no doubt smelling out his flesh and blood and bone and spirit, eager to devour them as It had devoured many before, he was certain. His companions stirred, and one opened his eyes, only to behold the terrible Darkness, which he too had seen once in a dream. He screamed and screamed and scraped at his eyes with his fingers, until his face bled. The Darkness rose yet higher, until Its shadowed tendrils towered over the tips of the blue flames. And suddenly, before Ibrahim could do or say anything, one of the great black tendrils had swooped down in to their circle and suspended directly before the man who had screamed. His face went blank, as if his soul had vacated, and his lips began to move in some evil chant. But Ibrahim sprang up and interposed himself between the thing and his companion, and, as he grasped his prayer beads in one hand and clutched his other hand to his heart, he felt a strange power rising in him, or through him, and he could feel his heart growing hotter, and a light pulsing out, through his hand, into the thick dead air. The tendril wavered, then rose, wavered again, then met the blue flames, having flagged ever so slightly. The Darkness roared. Drops of what seemed to be blood and filth and oil exploded from every direction, out of every particle it seemed of that foul place. The Darkness roared again, and Ibrahim went cold, and remembered nothing further.

The Darkness, the Dervish, and the Vardapet: Part iv

[Undated.] In the name of God, the Compasionate, the Merciful. It is He Who finds that which is lost, and gives light to those in spiritual darkness, and Who manifests the secrets of the unseen and makes unseen what today is most powerful and most present. In Him we take refuge, Him we praise. Peace and blessings be upon His messenger, Muhammad, and upon his household and upon all spiritual masters and wayfarers and all the Friends of God. As for what follows: the lowly and ever-sinful dervish Ahmed Efendi al-Bosnawi, to his brother in the spiritual, lordly Way, Hajj Ibrahim Efendi, wherever he may be, God knows best.

My brother I will be brief, for I have but little hope that these words will reach you ere I see you again, either in this life or the Next. Long is the road and many are the dangers, both to the body and to the heart. We take refuge in God from all evils! My brother, these past months I have been afflicted with the most bitter and prolongued spiritual and mental constriction, as if my heart has been pressed from every side, both by the cares and worries of this world below and by spiritual glimmerings and signs that have settled over my heart. I have found it hard to even speak with my wife and the rest of my family, much less our friends and brothers in the Way, though I have seen and spoken with our Shaykh a few times. I have been forced by this state of affairs to hand over all management of the waqfs to my son, as I fear doing something foolish, without knowing it, in my reverie.

For three weeks, every night I dreamed dreams such as I can barely describe to you, most of which I have found myself unable to remember without shaking, and very few of which I have been able to interpret. In one dream, which I have now had four different times and which is not the most horrible of them, I was sitting in the home of an alchemist. His walls and floor were covered in strange symbols and numbers, which shone in the darkness and seemed to move and sway of their own accord. I sat and watched him work, aided by, so it seemed to be, demons and jinn who had taken visible form. It was as if I were not there, for he paid me no attention at all. Then, in a flash, I was without the house, walking through the streets. Everyone was dead. Everywhere I looked I saw only bodies, disfigured, as though by the plague, and beginning to decay, the skin falling away, bones beginning to push through the putrid flesh. But they were undisturbed, for there were no other living things. The bodies merely lay where they had fallen, expired, though some looked as if they were suicides, driven to despair as all died around them. I walked and walked, through every lane, through every marketplace, mosque, medrese, everywhere, until I came to the edge of town. I kept walking through the countryside and it was the same. The plague, or whatever it was, had carried away every living thing, and I was alone. The Sultan, God preserve and protect his well-defended realm, was dead, along with all his armies—I gazed down on their bodies, saw the death in their cold eyes. Then I looked down at my hands and they were beginning to decay, too, but I remained alive, forever. I do not know the meaning of this dream. God knows best!

That is only one of the dreams I have had, and it is not the most horrifying one. In short, my brother, at last unable to continue day by day, I resolved to enter forty days of retreat and find some peace of heart. I spoke to our Shaykh, God be pleased with him, of my intentions and the burdens upon my heart, and he gave me leave to pursue the forty days of retreat. I took up my retreat in the cave that the ascetic Shaykh Arslan once dwelt in, my younger son keeping me supplied for my few physical needs, for I ate and drank very little. I will not speak of what I saw and felt in those forty days, but I emerged stronger and more resolute. I am still tired and often feel depressed and a loathing for company, but I have rejoined my son in the management of our affairs. Still the dreams haunt me, and lately they have been of you in your travels. I fear evil tidings. I fear the continuation of these dreams, lest I become ensnared in them. I have read in one of the books of the Knowers that a man may finally slip into the world of dream, the world of imagining, and find himself lost therein, wandering until the Day of the Resurrection, neither living nor dying. I do not wish such a fate. Yet I sense that your fate lies along worse paths, and that perhaps all of our paths will meet, though I do not know how or whether I should cheer such a happening. We take refuge in God.

The Darkness, the Dervish, and the Vardapet: Part iii

17th of Shawwal, 1118 [January 22, 1707]. In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful. We take refuge in Him from every hidden danger, and from every imagination of evil, and from every whispering of Shaytan. And peace and blessings upon Muhammad and upon his house and upon all his followers and saints, amen.

As for what follows: in brief, my brother, I, the miserable sinner Hajj Ibrahīm Efendī, and my companions, are now sojourning in Van, having slowly and with much danger and toil made our way from Bitlis up the shore of the lake, through deep snows and in danger from bandits. But I will not linger in telling you of these things, for,

When the rose of divine majesty is in splendid flower/ All other scents and blooms lose their power,

and what I began describing to you, in intimations and hints, in my last letter, outweighs my most recent troubles. First, before I resume my story, you should know, my brother, that everything is possessed of a spirit, breathed forth from the cosmic mirror, the universal Spirit. Time, place, this ink with which I am writing. Therein lies the secret of the worlds, and the ways in which the innumerable worlds are joined together, along an infinite number of spiritual doors, each spirit leading into another spirit, every particle meshed with every other particle, each a manifestation of the Divine Presence, in infinite particularity. The spirits are, of course, of varying strengths and degrees of self-knowledge, and of varying degrees of closeness to their Source, exalted is He. Some are very distant indeed, though, we take refuge in Him, they are all subordinate to His will, in the end. Still, my brother…

Second, you should know that what the polytheists of old called gods, my brother, are various in their realities, though none are truly gods, nor a part of God—may He be exalted over such! Some were merely the imaginations of men, or ancient heroes changed in time into deities. Others were jinn, good and bad, dwelling in various places, rocks, springs, trees. Still others were angels, taken by men with weak minds to be God Himself, or gods like unto Him. And others were lower, darker powers, formed of the Fire, yet without the Fire, invisible to us, and thirsty for other spirits, for flesh, blood, water, fire, wind, earth. We take refuge in God, exalted is He, from the hunger of these gnawing spirits, for, my brother, it is terrible. We have now seen them, and we fear what we have seen of them, and what we have seen of our lower selves in proximity to them.

I have told you these things, brother, so that what I relate to you now will not seem utterly unbelievable. As I mentioned in my previous letter, I was deeply discomfitted by my encounter with the mad saint in the street, but we did not change our plans, nor seek a delay, for we knew that winter would be upon us should we delay. Instead we set out from Damascus on the 6th of Jumada II, traveled north to Aleppo, sojourned there but briefly, resting and replenishing our supplies, then continuing north. Our next goal was Ayntab, but on the second day from Aleppo, as we crossed the stony open lands between Aleppo and Ayntab, we saw riders in the distance, so we stopped and dismounted so as to wait for them to arrive, for they had seen us and were approaching at great speed. My heart was in my throat, and I anxiously sought the intercessions of the Forty and the Martyrs of Badr. One of our traveling company, a Kurd from Mosul, was armed with a musket, which he loaded and held at his side. There were ten or twelve of us in the traveling company, some Shamis, some Kurds, others Rumis. Some of the others had swords, which they unsheathed. The riders came into sight. They seemed to be Bedouins, ten or eleven in number perhaps. One of them dismounted from a short distance away and walked up towards us. The brave Kurd from Mosul shouted to him in Arabic, “Stay! What do you want with our company of pious Muslims, who mean you and your people no harm?”

The Bedouin leader replied, “We want nothing, for now. This is our grazing land, and we wished to see who you might be, and whether you were sekbans or janissaries, but we see you are but merchants and pilgrims. We will depart now. Peace be with you.”

He returned to his riders, remounted, and they faded into the desert. We ourselves remounted our steeds and continued on, praising our brave Kurdish companion, but afraid that the Bedouin would return, and in greater numbers, before we could reach shelter. And as the evening approached, we rode along the edge of a deeply cut valley, stony and rough, looking for a safe place to camp, for we had not come to a village, and feared riding in the dark. Suddenly in the distance one of our number descried riders, still far off, but in greater numbers. Immediately, hoping they would not see us, we rode down into the deep ravine, and up along steadily rising cliffs, with a trickle of water beside. I paused, for my horse was winded from the descent into the ravine, and I was nearly trembling from weariness and fear. When I looked up, I saw two of our companions, still astride their horses, suddenly disappear into the side of the ravine! They had found a cave, carved into the living stone. I rode up to see, and myself entered within.

Would that we had not entered that foul place! But the Bedouin were many, and we were few, and we feared that they had seen us and would seek us in the ravine, and our first success in repelling them would not repeat itself. So we all led our horses inside, and quickly barricaded the door with stones and fallen timbers from within, leaving only a small opening for our musket to fire out if need be. We lit some candles and bore them into the depths of the grotto. We could now see the interior of this fabulous cave in more detail: it seemed to me to have been a cave of the earth, expanded and worked by skilled hands in ancient times. Fifty men could have with comfort resided therein, for the floor was wide and level, with five columns in the midst supporting the roof, which was the height of two men at least. But carved into the walls facing into the earth were shallow niches, arched at the tops, and in them were the most hideous and leering images I have ever seen, creatures with ragged teeth and sunken eyes, great rolls of fat and flesh and hair falling down their bodies, and fierce, curving claws and talons. Some had the heads of demons, others of fish or birds, but all were terrifying. In the center niche, instead of an image, there was a great round stone, black, oily even. Bits of bone and dried skin and muscle were scattered around its base. I felt my heart race faster and faster as I came close to these strange and hideous shrines, the traces, I supposed, of the ancient polytheists. On the walls, I could see, were many carved shapes and patterns, none of which I knew. I was growing more and more uneasy, as were my companions. The horses were perfectly calm, however, and in fact went to sleep. We huddled near the door, listening for the hoofs of the Bedouin, our backs turned to the wicked idols behind us, not one of us wishing to look upon them again. Then, through some evil charm or power dwelling in that place, each of us became terribly weary and fell asleep, leaving no one to watch. I passed into a dream, in which it was as if I were sitting atop a high pillar in the middle of the Bosporus, watching the clouds scuttle by. I sat there for what seemed like centuries. I do not even now know just how much time passed while we were in this state.

When we awoke, we thought ourselves still in our cavern fortress, but we were not. I attempted to light a candle, as they had all gone out, but no spark would come. The darkness was complete, and I could not see my hand in front of my face. I searched in vain for the entrance, hoping to see starlight through the cracks in our wall, but I could see nothing. All was black. I called for my companions, unable to see them, and they replied, saying that they too could see nothing. We did not hear our horses, and could not find them or our baggage as we flailed about on hands and knees. Suddenly, I remembered my terrible vision, and it was as if I had returned to that vision, and knew what would next occur. We were not in the cavern in which we had taken refuge from the Bedouin. I do not think we were in a place in this world. We had passed through into another world, the spirits of its particularities communicating with our world, yet distinct from it, and filled with hatred and rage towards our world and all other worlds. That is what I have concluded, from what I have seen and felt, and from what I know of the knowledge of the Way. You know, my brother, how some of the Friends of God can fold time and space and pass from one place to another, or one time to another, with utter ease. Something of this nature happened to us, though it was not, I believe, the same. I cannot clarify everything that has happened, or that is now happening. I do not know the name of the evil we encountered in those depths, but I know that we have not escaped it. It is not of our world, but it is here. It will not rest, my brother, and its hunger is great.

My hand is now trembling and my eyes grow weary and red, my brother in the spiritual Way, so I must cease writing for now. And there are things I dare not put to paper. But there is much more I must tell you. We will soon make for Erzurum, and I will head west, while the Armenian vardapet, about whom, God willing, I will relate to you, and his companions are returning to Erevan. We fear what may follow us along paths unknown to mortal men. I will write to you again when I come to Trebizon. The snows are deep and cold, so our journey will be long. I do not know if this letter will reach you. There are many things I no longer know. I entrust you and myself and our companions to God. We take refuge in Him.

Part i.

Part ii.

The Darkness, the Dervish, and the Vardapet: Part ii

September 13, 1137 [1706], three days until the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. We, the sinner Vardapet Gevorg, my brother in Christ Vardapet Shiroyan, and two merchants, Zak’aria and Hohvannes, both of Nakhchivan, along with their two apprentices, and a musketeer hired by the merchants, set out from Erbil three days previous, and have traveled north into the mountains, making for Van. We had intended to take a more westerly route, so as to avoid the worst and most difficult part of the mountains, but as we were preparing to depart from Erbil word came of a rebellion by some khan or another among the Kurds around Şiirt, so we were advised to find a different path. As the winter will soon be upon us, we determined to continue on our way, not wishing to return to Baghdad nor to attempt a route closer to the Sea.

Tonight we are shivering in the autumn cold in a sad and poor village just within the mountains, having left the plains behind us early this morning. It is composed half of Kurds, half of the heretical Nestorians, for they are the dominant sect in these mountains until one reaches the hills south of Van. All of Hakkari is inhabited by these rough mountain people, Kurds to one side of every village, the Nestorians to the other. Still, we were kindly received, even though there are but a few here who speak Turkish with any skill, and none who know Armenian.

When we came into the village we were greeted by the children of the villagers running and shouting, some of whom came and rubbed their hands upon our clothing, then rubbing their faces and own clothes with their hands, thinking us to be saints of some sort. But their elders told them we were not, and they hid from us after that. There is a single church here, small and ragged, with only a rude wooden door, an earthen floor strewn with straw, and a single window above the door to admit a little light. But it is a finer construction than the mosque of the village’s Kurds, which is only a trellis with vines and brush for a roof, and which I do not believe they use in the colder months. Instead of this mosque they frequent a white-domed shrine on a hill above the village, where they go to tie cloths to the trees and make vows and sacrifice. There is a holy tomb beside the church, though we could not learn the name of the saint buried there. The priest gave us a handful of holy earth from the tomb, wrapped in a cloth, and told us not to part with it so long as we traversed these hills.

We are spending the night in the church, as it is the only place for travelers, who come rarely along this route. We pray to Christ our God that the route ahead does not grow harder, and that we will be safe from both snows and bandits, since both are a danger here. The village priest brought us a good meal, such as they have to give, with excellent honey, for many people here are beekeepers, taking their honey to markets towards Erbil.

I must record, with God’s permission, a strange and uncanny sight that we saw on the narrow road leading to this village. The road ran alongside a stream, fast and cold, that fell down out of the mountain peaks. In one very narrow place the road passed under great high cliffs, the stone jutting out over the way, so that we were forced to pass single file, leading our animals. When we reached the end of these cliffs and the road became wider, we saw on either side of the road a line of tall, sculpted stones, going up the mountainside and down to the stream. Being tired, we stopped here and I and the merchant Zak’aria looked at the stones, to see what manner of beast or man they might be, and who might have carved them. They were half again the height of a tall man, but thinner, dark gray, and worn by time, though we could still make out the images. What terrible things they were! Each was of a creature like a hideous man, or a terrible angel stripped of his wings, with gaping mouths, tongues that reached down to their chests, each with its arms before itself, holding what looked like human arms or legs or hearts. One had a sword, or perhaps a spear. There were letters carved into the bases- for they had no legs or feet- but none of us recognized the script, for it was neither Arabic nor Armenian nor the script of the Jacobites or of any other sect known to us. We did not linger long for the horses were frightened, and stomped and snorted and pulled at their lines, trying to hasten down the way and escape the shadow of these idol-like stones. We crossed ourselves and quickly walked on, leading the horses, reciting Psalms. We asked the villagers about the strange stones, but if they understood our question, they did not wish to answer, for they only looked away, the Kurds towards their holy man’s shrine on the hill, the Nestorians to their holy tomb, and said a prayer in their own tongues.

Tomorrow we continue north, for we hope to make Qudshanes by the Feast. Were it not for the goods of the merchants we might travel faster, but Vardapet Shiroyan and I are glad of their company, and of their muskets, though we hope not to see them in use.

This is part ii. of an ongoing tale. See also part i. of this story.

The Darkness, the Dervish, and the Vardapet: Part i.

10th of Shawwal, 1118 [January 15, 1707]. In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful. Glory to Him, the exalted, who encompasses all the worlds and is the only true Knower of their manifold secrets, He Who is the Manifestor of the beauty and the majesty, and in Whose Hand are the living, the dead, the unquiet spirits and the jinn, and all else that may have been, is, and will be. We take refuge in You from the temptations of Shaytan! And peace and blessings upon Muhammad and upon his house and upon all his followers and saints, amen.

As for what follows: the miserable and most lowly sinner, Hajj Ibrahīm Efendī, presently dwelling in the environs of Bitlis in the well-protected domains of the House of ‘Uthman, God preserve them and us, to his dearest brother in the Way, his boon-companion in the circle of divine remembrance, Dervish Ahmed Efendi al-Bosnawi, God be pleased with him. I trust God, though I do not know, that my last letter reached you. I entrusted it to a mutual friend making the journey to Constantinople, but the times are uncertain and the road is long, and I have not heard from you yet- but even had you written, how would you know to address me in this place in which I now sojourn? I pray for your health, and for your advance in the ranks of the spiritual stations, and protection against the foul whisperings of Shaytan.

Much has transpired since I last wrote to you from the safety of Aleppo. I have traveled for these past three months on ways long and dark, and entirely undesired or unlooked for. I have encountered things, dear brother, for which nothing in our lore or learning had prepared me. I have seen things that I believed only existed in the half-formed tales of street entertainers and in the books of tales and fabulous things. There are yet other things that I have not seen, but I swear to you I have felt them manifest themselves to me in the very core of my heart, chilling it cold, beings that I encountered in the dark, beings that came, perhaps, from beyond the circle of Mount Qaf. I escaped from those awful shadowed lands with my life, thanks be to God, the exalted, but I am still in fear. But I run ahead of myself, and, as the poet says,

Perished in the desert wastes, bones all bleached/ is the camel that outpaced itself,

so I must begin at the beginning.

I had determined to leave for well-protected Islambul in the company of my uncle, my cousin, and two brothers of the Halveti way whom I met in Damascus during my stay there. My uncle had acquired quite a few bags- I do not recall the exact amount, and it is all perished now- of coffee from merchants returning from the hajj, along with various other fine goods of no small worth, but whose transport did not promise us great difficulty. I, poor dervish that I am, was prepared to set off with only my horse, an old musket I acquired some time ago in Kurdistan, and the small library of books I have acquired in ‘Arabistan, including an autograph copy of a treatise by our Shaykh ‘Abd al-Ghani, God be pleased with him. I was cheerful and content in the days leading up to our departure, being pleased at the prospect of seeing our dear Rum again. But on the day before we left Damascus, I was passing from the khanqah in which we had been residing, going to the bazaar to replenish our traveling stock, when I was confronted in the street by a man seized by divine madness, one Arslan the Majdhub, who dwelt, so I had heard, in a hut of brush leaned up against the shrine of Shaykh Arslan himself, and, being holy, they said, no one disturbed him. When I saw him his appearance was truly terrifying, brother: he was completely naked, his body covered in rough hair and smeared with dirt and worse things, his hair long and matted, but his face almost completely denuded, such being his custom. He held in one hand a living snake- I swear to your brother this is true- and in the other a long, splintering piece of wood, like a broom-pole or a long piece of kindling. As he approached me, my entire body became cold, as if a snow-bearing wind off of Uludag had swept down on me (do you remember the days we spent in the meadows above Bursa, brother?) and cut me to the core. I drew my cloak about me, but the cold only grew deeper, and I promise you there was ice upon the hair of my beard and mustache. This Arslan began to sway and moan, and the snake in his hand swayed in time with him. I was utterly alone in the street, save Arslan and the snake. As he moaned and swayed, my eyes went dark, and I fell into the street, as if in a trance, despite the bitter cold.

In my trance I saw things, whose reality I cannot entirely describe, though I remember them vividly and now do not doubt their veracity. I was in a cavern in the earth, but there was a thin, cold light in the back of it. Then I saw It: a great hideous black form, the size of several men I thought, but of no definite size, for it expanded and shrank as I watched. For some reason, known only to God, I suddenly looked down at my body, and I was naked, and my skin glowed with the same cold, thin light- but as I watched my own flesh, every vein turned white, as if the blood were draining from me, though to where, or how, I did not know, and I felt nothing. My skin became brittle and my bones frail, and then I could see my blood, but it was not in my body, but floating in front of me, tiny drops, coalescing into a clot, then into a lump of flesh, and so on, until to my horror I watched a fully formed child form from the blood drained from my flesh. The child- and I swear to God it resembled me, exactly, as a child- stretched out his arms, raised them, and was swallowed up by the great dark mass hovering nearby. And then every particle of being within that cave cried out, with a single voice so heart-rending and terrible that there is nothing to which I may compare it. I fainted- in my dream- and awoke in this world.

Arslan the Majdhub was standing over me, leering, but he had neither a snake nor a stake. He yelled at me: ‘Swallows and icestorms, take ’em or leave ’em, and your mother’s a nasty whore!’ Then he stooped down, grabbed my right hand, and leaned to me, so that I thought he was going to kiss me, or worse (I had not recovered my strength yet), but instead he simply whispered: ‘Do not go to Istanbul. Do not go. That is all.’ He slapped me, jumped up, and with incredible speed and agility clambered up a nearby wall and disappeared. I slowly stood up, and found that one of my hands was clasped around a piece of paper, which I shoved into a pocket and forgot about for some time. I stumbled back to the khanqah, still terrified, and made myself some coffee, drank some, recited some prayers from the Dala’il al-Khayrat, and only then had the strength to go to the bazaar. But everything that I had seen and felt haunted me for the rest of the day- my heart was as if in an olive press- and would only become more terrifying in the days to come. For, woe is me and my father’s kin, we did not heed the divinely mad one’s advice, and instead embarked on our journey. But I must tell you the rest in another letter, for the brother who is to convey this one to you is waiting to go. God keep you safe, and I will write again as soon as I can, God willing. Peace be with you.

I Write to Make Progress, Or Something

I’ve been ‘blogging’ since 2002, which, heaven help us, makes thirteen years of publishing my thoughts to the internet. A veritable archive of my personal history, there for the viewing (first here, now here, in case you’re interested). At some point in my blogging career (I really don’t like the sound of ‘blogging,’ I might add, but…) I decided to limit my ‘personal’ writings, namely, posts in which I opined on some item of political or cultural interest. I then largely phased them out, in favor of things that, I hope at least, have proven to be of use for people interested in history, in poetry, and a few other topics, but which carried relatively little of my own political, philosophical, or cultural idiosyncrasies. Poetry excepted, I should note- I’ve gotten bolder, perhaps, about offering my poetic attempts to the world. But gone are my days of broadcasting juvenile political tirades- not that I’ve ever been an especially potent polemicist, mind you.

Well, they were gone. This blog (that word!) is going to constitute something of an exception, at least for a few months. For entirely practical purposes, I will be writing here, on as daily a basis as possible, honing my essaying skills in preparation for my upcoming comprehensive exams, as part of the process of securing a PhD. I am also working at a couple of journal articles, and will soon enough begin writing my dissertation. I’d also like to move towards a more, dare I say it, literary style of communication, though perhaps not a ‘popular’ one. But at least something with fewer traces of academese. Not an absence of pretentious words, mind you, just an exchange of the duller, stuffier sort we tend to employ in the Discipline, in favor of the stuff novelists use. That’s what novelists do, yes? No matter.

Somewhere, in some book, St. Augustine of Hippo wrote something to the effect of: ‘I write to make progress, and I make progress by writing.’ That is my very modest goal here. There are many things- philosophical, critical, political- that I want to begin addressing, that I do not wish to litter my ‘primary’ blog with, things with which I am grappling, refining, and for which I make no claims of definitiveness. I hope to make some progress, towards various ends, practical and less so. I do not wish to be read as a polemicist, though I am sure I come across in that way at times. Rather, here I will offer up conversations within myself, as it were, with topics and matters of current interest broadly, as well as things that will likely interest few to no one besides my self. Hence the title of this blog, actually- which I will perhaps explain in greater depth later, but shall for the moment leave a mystery (and I checked- Google will not help you, it seems).