‘They too have flocked, the fallen Gypsies,
The rootless who are falsely rooted,
The Gypsies who have mixed with strangers
And mated with outlandish races;
Who by these foreigners are hated,
Who are disowned by their relations,
And who are even more detested
By their own blood, by other Gypsies;
They too have come, the scorned and outcast
Of even those who themselves are outcast.’
— Kostes Panamas, The twelve words of the Gypsy (1899)
‘ She disappeared on him; he is waiting on the roadside, his things scattered about while people pass around him like ether. Through windows in their bodies, he sees her running towards him. But she does not reach him. And he, running towards her, cannot reach her either.’
— Qasim Haddad, The chronicles of Majnun Layla (2001)
In the third miserable hut from the cart path, thrown together with sticks and leaves and straw and mud, was born in the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent a boy with raven black hair and eyes to match. His mother’s labor was long and hard, her screaming filled the night and brought forth wailings nearly as strong from every other woman who knew this pain. Alas, she did not survive, and the wailing was followed by the animal keening of grief, to which the infant boy joined in, though his motivations were not the same. Give me, give me, give me, he said. Even when the music of death had subsided, the music of birth continued to surge from the boy’s little body, with a volume that astounded those who heard it, and which awakened anyone who had dared to sleep. His aunt gave him the name Majnun, crazy person, and he took it into himself, as if it were his mother’s milk, and was silent for a while. But there was not a breast in the whole company of Gypsies that he did not crave, from the dried teat of his grandmother, hanging slack and defeated like an unpicked fruit at the end of a dry summer, to the flat chest of the girl who was sent to tend him. Even the muscled chests of the young men, only imagined through their clothing, seized the gaze of little Majnun. It was agreed by all that great and amazing things awaited for this child, but there was disagreement about whether he would be a saint, a warrior, a thief, or even some form of demon. His father, understandably, kept a good distance from the infant, and even as he grew older and walked on his own two feet, his father was likely to walk in the opposite direction. He was, then, for all intents and purposes, an orphan, but never did Majnun lack care or companionship, because there were always girls and women, and more than a few of the boys, who wanted to be close to him.
When he could walk, run, speak, and presumably listen — though he gave little sign of listening — he put in the charge of a girl named Leila who was his contemporary and his cousin. This was the unchallenged way of the time, that girls were at the service of the boys, and Leila was a bright child more than able to keep track of Majnun, whose peregrinations even at a young age were legendary. Once he had been brought back to their camp by a bearded Sufi in colorful robes, who said that the boy had wandered into the middle of their midnight dhikr and begun chanting along with them. His aunts were ashamed that they had not noticed his absence, and even more ashamed that the observed in themselves the wish that the Sufis had kept their nephew. They did take him back and offered the man a rib of goat meat in exchange for a prayer. Leila, who aside from being dependable and uncomplaining, was also beautiful — even the old Sufi turned his eye in her direction for longer than he might have — then became Majnun’s guardian. They became very attached, like sister and brother, and were often seen holding hands and whispering secrets in each other’s ears. None of Majnun’s tendencies to find trouble rubbed off on Leila. But it must be admitted that her beneficial influence required her constant presence, because whenever they were apart, he was prone to disappear or to appear in the wrong place. The Gypsies, through Majnun, became acquainted with several of the Sufis who lived nearby, and some of the young men took up the practice and were to be seen attempting shirks of their own. The women were right to be suspicious of this development.
As they grew older, Majnun and Leila remained close, far too close for the imagination of their elders, or the rules than bound the families together, and kept them from the clutches of the djinni. Boys and girls of a certain age, an age that Leila and Majnun were racing closer to each day, were not meant to be alone, together, and while Leila understood* kuntari*, the intended universal balance, Majnun may have understood — nobody ever doubted his cleverness — but he chose to act as if he did not. There were those amongst the Gypsies, some of the older men related to Leila, who spoke more often between themselves instead of dishonor and its consequences. The obvious cure for dishonor was an honorable marriage. But while honor could be finessed, even between cousins, Majnun brought little of value to Leila and her family. His father had left their settlement years ago and gone to Istanbul, some said to get away from his crazy son. But that was not true, it must be said here and now, because there were other reasons that will play an important role later in this story. For a beautiful girl like Leila the family had higher hopes and better prospects than this cousin, and her desires did not entire into the calculations. They decided that they must take steps to actively discourage the two would be lovers. Leila’s father took a last swallow of his wine and said, she is my daughter. I will do it.
Two days later, as twilight stretched out from the western mountains, Majnun was on his way to meet Leila in the woods near the small river from which the clan took its water and washed its clothes. It was a beautiful spot, once the women had gone home to prepare dinner and had left off shouting at each other about whose son would marry whose daughter, and Majnun and Leila liked to sit on the small beach with their bare feet caressed by the stream and talk about the future, without ever speaking of marriage, but a future in which they were also never apart. When they were children they would hold hands. Now each always carried some item that they did need to their rendezvous that could be placed on the sand between them, to mark the border that they knew must not be crossed. They were both still young, hovering between childhood and whatever came next, so it was not so hard to tame their imaginings. But more and more they felt the gravity of each other’s bodies, pulling at them from across this artificial barrier.
That evening Majnun was met before he entered the woods by Leila’s father, his own uncle Abdul, who bid him return to his home for a word, just a word. Majnun could not very well complain that he would leave Leila waiting, as he knew that her family did not approve of them, or him. So he went. Abdul sat him down on the ground inside and told the boy he was entrusting him with a serious responsibility, one that would usually be reserved for a much older boy, but given the trust that Majnun had earned in the village, he and the other men had decided that the boy was close enough to being a man to take on this task. Majnun did not believe a word of it, but what could he do, call his uncle and Leila’s father a liar? No, he could only smile and thank him for his trust and agree to do whatever was asked of him.
From inside his shirt, Abdul pulled a leather pouch, and from the leather pouch a small scroll. Unlike most Gypsies, there were men, and even women and some children — like Majnun himself — who could read and write, having descended from a race of scribes who tradition reported had written letters for the sultans in those faraway and nameless realms from which the Gypsies had come aeons before. Majnun was cautioned not to open the scroll, or to attempt to read it, though it is near certain that Leila’s father believed that the boy could not read. Perhaps he knew full well that Majnun could and would read the scroll and was not out just to put the boy out of the way until he could make a better match for Leila, as he had told the other men, but to be rid of him permanently. Majnun was his nephew, after all, no one would believe that he meant the boy any harm worse than not getting the girl he wanted. Majnun was to take the letter to a Sufi in the nearest city, a rugged walk of some two or three days to the west. There were families along the way who would feed him and provide him a place to sleep. Majnun nodded. He would of course go, anything to serve his uncle and his family. Tomorrow morning then? Abdul asked. You should go home now and prepare. I will be here at daybreak to give you the scroll. Uncle Abdul insisted on walking with him back to the small hovel that Majnun shared with another aunt and her husband, who was of course part of the cabal set upon finding Leila a better match.
In the morning, Majnun rose early and gathered a small bit of food, a rough blanket, and three or four small items he had collected — a stone from the river, a feather, an unidentifiable nugget of red and gray gunk, and a lock of Leila’s black hair — into a bundle, and set off to collect the scroll from his uncle. He hoped to catch sight of Leila before he left, but Abdul intercepted him before he could reach the hut and gave him the leather pouch. Majnun accepted it with thanks, along with a skin of water, and communicated to Leila’s father that he best set off immediately, if he hoped to reach his first destination before nightfall. He walked for nearly an hour, on familiar paths, before finding a hidden place to open the pouch and read the letter. It requested that the Baba Ja’far receive this boy into his order and to feel free to make use of his labor in the years it might take him to find his *tariqua*, his path. If the Baba were to find Majnun unsatisfactory, then he might hand him over to the Janissaries so that he could become a soldier, or the slave of a soldier. The village, Uncle Abdul wrote, was too small for a boy of such a vibrant spirit. I am sure that you know what I mean, he added. Majnun was sure that he knew what his uncle meant, and certain also that his bond with Leila was the cause of his banishment. In this moment, the extent of his love for her was finally and fully clarified in his mind, with the force of a religious revelation. But Majnun was a practical young man, who knew that his purpose would not be served by returning to the village now, and proclaiming his desire. On the contrary. And underneath the appearance of impulsivity was a deep patience. If Baba Ja’far would accept him, then Majnun would become a most excellent Sufi.
Later in the day, when the sun had reached the top of its wearying ascent, letting out a blaze of heat and light in celebration, Majnun slipped off the road to find a spot of shade in the woods where he might lie down for a few minutes. The night before had been long, full of tortured thoughts, and what sleep he had stolen, his dreams quickly stole back. As he lay on his back on a bed of pine needles, only pinpricked by sunlight filtering through the branches above him, he heard a company of men passing on the road only a few cubits away. They were riding horses or donkeys, going slow in any case, and speaking with great exertion, as if each word was a heavy stone requiring great grunts and exhalations to be propelled from one to the other. Majnun did not understand the language they were speaking but judged it, unconsciously, to be inferior, incapable of expressing fully human thoughts and emotions. In a minute the sounds of their animals was gone and soon after the sounds of their voices vanished too, into the buzzing of overheated insects. Majnun dozed for a while and woke with a start, jumping up in alarm and setting off again down the road in a dead run that tapered to a canter and a steady jog.
Unbeknownst to him, the men who spoke the language of heavy stones continued on its way until they entered, with some stealth and a surprising silence, the outskirts of Majnun’s village. They made their way directly to the stream where the women washed clothes and fetched water, the place where Leila and Majnun had met two nights before, and where Leila has waited for Majnun the previous evening. By the time darkness crept out of the forest and pooled around her feet, she was in a state of high anxiety, matching perfectly the state of unhappiness that Majnun himself was experiencing as he lay awake on the floor of his aunt and uncle’s hovel. That hot afternoon all the women had already returned to the village, but Leila remained, sitting in the sand where Majnun had lately sat, tears running down her face. If her father had seen her, he surely would have felt sympathy, but he was again with his brothers and uncles, plotting a better marriage, self-satisfied that he had removed his troublesome nephew from play. The men came out of the woods on three sides of Leila. Perhaps they knew exactly what they would find and had come especially for her, because men’s whispering about this beautiful girl had passed already beyond her village, and had found the ears of these slave traders. She would bring a good price, and if they were lucky, they might even sell her to the Janissaries from Istanbul who were always seeking fresh stock for the Sultan’s harem.
[To be continued ...]
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