The Forty Rules Of Love
Elif Shafak
Before The Review ..
Allow me start it with the letter "B" .. As the novel taught me ..
Bismillah Arrahman Arrahim ..
(in the name of Allah, the Benevolent and Merciful)
The Forty Rules of Love is a novel that brings out the best in you.
After having read it, I was like " how would I write a review?". I honestly did not know how to start , for it was too deep to be described in words. I was wondering whether or not will I find the expressions that would be faithful enough to the greatness of this book. I knew that it would be so hard, and, indeed, it was.
This novel, I believe, holds between its lines the real meaning of life, love, and respect. With every Rule that Shams utters, it seems like something is moving deep within my soul. It is one of the most influential books that I have read so far. Though its title seems to introduce the novel as a love story, it can be misleading, for the novel is more about the philosophy of love than about love as ordinary people see it. While reading it I felt afraid, I embraced a kind of an ambivalent attitude, Like .. I wanted to finish it, and I was scared of the non-expectancy of the end, so both options were fine with me. To finish it or not to finish it? That was the question that haunted my mind, until I took the decision to go on with it till the end. In brief, reading it is a Must, for it is to have a marvelous impact on the reader's personality, thus he\she would feel the urgent need to discover its caves and to have a journey within its corners, and hence, by extension, within the corridors of the self. Once one wanders within the self's darkest depths, it becomes possible to realize that , though they are deep and dark, they are somehow full of light. The light that God implants in you. Ultimately, you will find God in the most unlikely places, because God has no place.
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The Forty Rules of Love is a lyrical novel written by the Turkish author, Elif Shafak. It consists of two parallel narratives, or a story within the story. The general frame-story is about a forty-year-old married woman, named Ella Rubenstein , who discovers after 20 years of marriage that she has been "unhappy" in her life with her husband David. Rubenstein works as a reader for a literary agent ,which helped Elif Shafak represent the other story. Lucky enough, Ella's first assignment for her new job was to read a novel written by Aziz Zahara, her future lover, called Sweet Blasphemy, and to write a report on it. Sweet Blasphemy is about a mystic scholar and poet Rumi who would encounter his instructor, the Sufi wavering dervish Shams of Tabriz. In this review, I will highlight the powerful points I appreciated about the novel, as well as the defects without which the novel could've been much better.
To start with, remaining in a neutral position while talking about this masterpiece seems to be impossible. When it comes to style, Sweet Blasphemy was perfectly written. The use of the Perspectivization technique allows the reader to peep into the characters' different dimensions and to see every single detail from different angles. That is, Sweet Blasphemy is told from several perspectives, sometimes it's Shams's, other times it's Rumi's , the zealot's or the prostitute's. Shafak managed to use a very simple and clear language ,yet deeply connotative and endowed with symbolic interpretations. When it comes to the setting, it was basically built in an innovative manner. Mixing two stories that belong to two different time zones is not something we frequently confront in novels. The author made a fusion between a story that took place in the 13th century, that is of Rumi and Shamsm and a contemporary story that any ordinary human being can be prompt to, that is Ella's. A remarkable inter-mixture between night and day, seasons and days. Additionally, this novel was something like a journey within all the different corners of the world. Events take place in Turkey, Iraq, Moscow. They also happen in Masjids, as well as in brothels. This hodgepodge between time and place encapsulates the author's tendency to make her point as clear as possible, and to transmit the ideas she wants to. No matter what was your profession and how was your appearance, it is your heart that shapes your identity. Accordingly, Elif Shafak was skillful at making the setting and the plot go hand in hand. By means of combining all of these contradictions she managed to make both of these novelistic elements flow in an attempt to create a harmonious and a well-driven plot which rhymes with the characters as well. What is hyper-noticeable in both stories is that the majority of the characters are round ones. For instance, at the beginning of the novel, Ella seems to be an unhappy married woman who reached her forty years unaware of her misery. A married woman who does not believe in love, and thinks that marriage is not supposed to be based on love, but rather responsibility. By the end of the novel, she ends up leaving her family, heading to another country, longing for the love she finally found, not in her husband, but in the writer of Sweet Blasphemy, Aziz Zahara. In Sweet Blasphemy, shortly after meeting Shams, Rumi witnesses a radical metamorphosis. From being a prestigious preacher and a universally known scholar and a teacher that people would spend their whole lives wishing that he looks in their eyes for once, he turns out to be a weird poet whose eyes are blinded by Shams's "Black Magic",as townspeople believe. Hence, he abandons the majesty he created around himself and starts to talk to all the people from different social scales, including thieves, beggars, drunkards, prostitutes, for Shams filled his heart with love and made him believe in the equality of all people in the eyes of God, and that He only sees what is in their hearts. As far as the content s concerned, Elif Shafak managed to answer a set of confusing unanswerable questions. She could represent Islam in a way that non-muslim societies would get to the fact that it is a religion of Love. She insisted on the possibility of co-existence between all religions, for all religions are supposed to spread the same message of Peace. Rumi, for instance, is a Muslim whose wife is a former-Chrsitian and Ella is a Jewish whose lover is Muslim. With every Rule that Shams utters, another Islamic Sufi principle is represented. In her novel, Shafak came across several social ills, such as betrayal, hypocrisy, traditional marriages, the absence of love in our contemporary society, generation gap, the death of the divine within human beings , stereotypes and the reign of appearances. These intriguing snags made of the novel a castle built upon dualities and oppositions. This idea is brought to the fore by dint of the struggles between good and evil, inner and outer, right and wrong, Love and hate, Spiritual Love and Contemporary Love, as if the writer aims at showing all the possible binary alternatives to her readers so that they would follow the suitable option. She also referred to historical events such as the fall of the Byzantine Empire and te attack that Anatolia witnessed. In brief, both the form and the content of the novel are flowing in euphonious way that serves Elif Shafak's willingness to create a well-structured novel that questions various social and religious matters.
However, in every novel, no matter how perfect it is, there is always something to blame on the writer. When it comes to style,though Sweet Blasphemy was beautifully written, Ella's story was disappointing. The fact that Shafak did not opt for the same technique ,that is the multiple perspectives, made her seem to have concentrated more on the other story, or to have been afraid of using the same technique while telling the story of Rubenstein. Hence, characters such as Jeanette,her daughter, and David were not dealt with as expected; in the sense that we only see them from Ella's point of view. Accordingly, David was depicted as a flat character that does not even take action or contribute to the development of the plot. When he realizes that Ella cheats on him, he does not even try to get her back, he rather abandons her and allows her to leave him easily. Another point i did not appreciate is related to language. Shafak's use of contemporary idiomatic expressions in order to talk about a story that happened around 800 years ago is an awkward step that a writer as skillful as her should not have taken, for the simple reason that associating a contemporary term while presenting an old manuscript is considered as a literary error. Another thing I did not like about this work is the instances of exaggeration Elif Shafak sat forth. This can be illustrated by the fact that the writer made religious principles too simplistic to the extent that religion became marginalized instead of being a priority. In other words, Muslims agree that engaging into sexual relations without getting married and drinking are classified as Haram ( Forbidden ) practices in our religion; however, Shafak reveals them as being "Okay" as long as they are bounded by Love. All in all, The Forty Rules of Love , with all its artistry, has some errors.
To conclude, we may say that Elif Shafak, by means of this novel, managed to give birth to an immortal child that would be read and reread throughout different generations.
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Favorite Rules:
Rule 3
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.
Rule 7
Whatever happens in your life, no matter how troubling things might seem, do not enter the neighbourhood 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.
Rule 8
Patience does not mean to passively endure. It means to look at the end of a process. What does patience mean? It means to look at the thorn and see the rose, to look at the night and see the dawn. Impatience means to be shortsighted as to not be able to see the outcome. The lovers of God never run out of patience, for they know that time is needed for the crescent moon to become full.
Rule 9
East, west, south, or north makes little difference. No matter what your destination, just be sure to make every journey a journey within. If you travel within, you’ll travel the whole wide world and beyond.
Rule 15
It’s easy to love a perfect God, unblemished and infallible that He is. What is far more difficult is to love fellow human being with all their imperfections and defects. Remember, one can only know what one is capable of loving. There is no wisdom without love. Unless we learn to love God’s creation, we can neither truly love nor truly know God.
Rule 18
If you want to change the ways others treat you, you should first change the way you treat yourself, fully and sincerely, there is no way you can be loved. Once you achieve that stage, however, be thankful for every thorn that others might throw at you. It is a sign that you will soon be showered in roses.
Rule 24
Hell is in the here and now. So is heaven. Quit worrying about hell or dreaming about heaven, as they are both present inside this very moment. Every time we fall in love, we ascend to heaven. Every time we hate, envy or fight someone we tumble straight into the fires of hell.
Rule 29
Destiny doesn’t mean that your life has been strictly predetermined. Therefore, to live everything to the fate and to not actively contribute to the music of the universe is a sign of sheer ignorance. The music of the universe is all pervading and it is composed on 40 different levels. Your destiny is the level where you play your tune. You might not change your instrument but how well to play is entirely in your hands.
Rule 40
A life without love is of no account. Don’t ask yourself what kind of love you should seek, spiritual or material, divine or mundane, Eastern or Western. Divisions only lead to more divisions. Love has no labels, no definitions. It is what it is, pure and simple. Love is the water of life. And a lover is a soul of fire! The universe turns differently when fire loves water.
_____________________________________________________________________References:
The Forty Rules of Love, Elif Shafak.
http://www.goconscious.com/
https://thevisionweekly.wordpress.com
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