The Forty Rules of Love

by Elif Shafak

Building her whole life around her husband and children, Ella lacked any survival techniques to help her cope with life’s hardships on her own. She was not the type to throw caution to the wind. Even changing her daily coffee brand was a major effort.

Ella was as bowled over as if she had read there, “Love hits everybody, even a middle-aged housewife in Northampton named Ella Rubinstein.”

It was always like this. When you spoke the truth, they hated you. The more you talked about love, the more they hated you.

You can study God through everything and everyone in the universe, because God is not confined in a mosque, synagogue, or church. But if you are still in need of knowing where exactly His abode is, there is only one place to look for Him: in the heart of a true lover.

Either way the outcome remained the same: The glow between them, the light that had helped them to navigate the uncharted waters of marriage, keeping their desire afloat, even after three kids and twenty years, was simply not there anymore.

Most of the problems of the world stem from linguistic mistakes and simple misunderstandings. Don’t ever take words at face value. When you step into the zone of love, language as we know it becomes obsolete. That which cannot be put into words can only be grasped through silence.

Loneliness and solitude are two different things. When you are lonely, it is easy to delude yourself into believing that you are on the right path. Solitude is better for us, as it means being alone without feeling lonely. But eventually it is best to find a person, the person who will be your mirror. Remember, only in another person’s heart can you truly see yourself and the presence of God within you.

Whatever happens in your life, no matter how troubling things might seem, do not enter the neighborhood of despair. Even when all doors remain closed, God will open up a new path only for you. Be thankful! It is easy to be thankful when all is well. A Sufi is thankful not only for what he has been given but also for all that he has been denied.

One by one, I said the letters of his name: the powerful, lucid R; the velvety U; the intrepid and self-confident M; and the mysterious I, yet to be solved.

Qur’an, Truly We offered the trust to the heavens and the earth and the mountains, but they refused to bear it because they were afraid of it. Only man took it up. Having been given such an honorable position,

human beings should not aim any lower than what God had intended.”

But the truth was that Ella didn’t want a piece of information she wouldn’t know how to handle. The less she knew about her husband’s flings, the less they would occupy her mind, she thought. It was true what they say about ignorance. It was bliss.

gleaming. “Fret not where the road will take you. Instead concentrate on the first step. That’s the hardest part and that’s what you are responsible for. Once you take that step let everything do what it naturally does and the rest will follow. Do not go with the flow. Be the flow.”

Whenever I think about you, the ingredient I add is a big smile. With love, Aziz

Decent people cannot sleep in peace anymore.

aside. In this life stay away from all kinds of extremities, for they will destroy your inner balance.

Sufis do not go to extremes. A Sufi always remains mild and moderate.

The real challenge is to love the good and the bad together, not because you need to take the rough with the smooth but because you need to go beyond such descriptions and accept love in its entirety.

Nothing had changed, and yet nothing was the same anymore.

Love cannot be explained. It can only be experienced.

Love cannot be explained, yet it explains all.

“The universe is one being. Everything and everyone is interconnected through an invisible web of stories. Whether we are aware of it or not, we are all in a silent conversation. Do no harm. Practice compassion. And do not gossip behind anyone’s back—not even a seemingly innocent remark! The words that come out of our mouths do not vanish but are perpetually stored in infinite space, and they will come back to us in due time. One man’s pain will hurt us all. One man’s joy will make everyone smile,” he murmured. “This is what one of the forty rules reminds us.”

The first man responded calmly, “My friend, I carried the woman across the stream, and that is where I left her. It is you who have been carrying her ever since.”

The past is an interpretation. The future is an illusion. The world does not move through time as if it were a straight line, proceeding from the past to the future. Instead time moves through and within us, in endless spirals. Eternity does not mean infinite time, but simply timelessness. If you want to experience eternal illumination, put the past and the future out of your mind and remain within the present moment.

“I wish we had met earlier,” Ella heard herself say. “There is no such thing as early or late in life,” Aziz said. “Everything happens at the right time.”

“I already love you.” Aziz smiled.

there was a time for everything.

to die before death.”

No eye sees so clear and sharp as the eye of love. After grief comes another season, another valley, another you. And the lover who is nowhere to be found, you start to see everywhere.

How can you say Shams is gone when he is everywhere and in everything?