-Photo by Hasaan Haider.

This is the first part of a series on the Muslim identity crisis.

“They chased the dog out, lest it pollute the mosque. But they left these men inside, ignoring the filth hidden in their hearts. Who will clean the mosque now?”

I looked back and saw a strange man sitting on the steps of the shrine. He had a long flowing beard and was wearing spotless white trousers and a long shirt.

He did not look poor — yet he was doing a job only the poorest do. He looked after the shoes of the visitors who had to take them off before entering the shrine and the adjoining mosque. In return they threw a few coins before him.

Nobody knew his name. Everybody called him “jootaywala,” the shoe-man. He saw me looking at him and smiled. “Don’t believe what you see. Seek more,” he said. I ignored him and went inside.

Someone was singing a devotional song: “What will you get from this bowing and prostrating when your heart is still attracted to sins? Clean your heart first and then come to worship.”

Surrounded by a group of devotes, he was playing a simple tune on a harmonium while one of his companions played the tabla and others repeated the refrain with him.

“Tera dil tu hai sanam aashna, tujhay kya milay ga namaz mein,” they chanted. Some of the devotees got up and started dancing in ecstasy.

I sat under the banyan tree sheltering the shrine. Dozens of parrots were chattering above me. I watched the devotees quietly. Every now and then, one of the devotees would say “Allah” and the others would join the chant which was echoed back to them by the surrounding hills.

“Chase the dog out of your heart,” I heard the shoe-man say to a group of people gathered around him.

Then he started telling them the stories of Mullah Nasiruddin, a legendary character popular in the Muslim world.

“Mullah came to a wedding reception in his usual dress of coarse cloth and nobody took any notice of him. Nobody asked him to sit. Nobody served him food. He went back, put on his new silk coat and returned to the reception.Now he was taken to the best table and made to sit with the notables of the city. When the food came Mullah dipped his sleeve in the soup and said ‘eat, my coat, eat.”

“The host was surprised and asked Mullah why he was doing that,” the Shoe-man said.

“When I came in my usual dress, nobody welcomed me, but my new coat made all the difference. So I gather that the invitation was for the coat, not for me,” said Mullah Nasiruddin.

“Now tell me what do you want — do you want to be respected for your appearance or desire real honor?” asked the storyteller.

This reminded me of another story that I had read as a child. It was from Gulistan, a book by the famous Persian poet Sa’adi. For centuries people have read Gulistan to learn wisdom, faith and morality and also about the wicked ways of the world.

There was a poet who wrote a long eulogy for a robber and went to his den to recite it, expecting a great reward in return. The robber listened to the poem patiently and when he finished, he asked his companions to strip the poet and throw him out of the cave.

“But why? I praise you and you do this to me,” asked the poet.

“This will teach you not to praise robbers,” said the chief.

When he left the cave, dogs started chasing the naked poet. He looked around for stones to throw at the dogs but it was snowing and the snow had covered all the stones. He tried but could not retrieve one from under the snow.

“What strange people,” said the poet, “they have tied their stones but set their dogs free.”

When I read this I asked my teacher what relevance the story had for me, as I was neither a poet nor a robber. He asked me to be patient and read through the book. Later, while working as a journalist, I would remember the story again and again. Dozens of times I had to write homage for those who were not much different from the robber and dozens of time I was stripped of my ego and thrown out in the streets to suffer my nakedness. Many times their pet dogs bared their teeth at me and I had no stone to throw at them.

And yet I was among those who did not have the courage to say no to this hypocrisy. Often I wrote what I was expected to write and suffered humiliation that comes with surrender.

The story echoes again in a beautiful poem by Faiz Ahmad Faiz, “nisar main teri galeon pe ai watan kay jaha.” When talking about restrictions on freedom of expression in his country, Faiz recalls how the rulers had “tied the stones but let the dogs lose.”

These old stories were part of the knowledge of the Sufis. They used them to train their followers for the path. The stories are so powerful that they appeal to an intellectual like Faiz and an ordinary peasant alike.

Perhaps that’s why there is always a crowd at the shrines of the Sufi saints. They give knowledge without arrogance.

-Photo by Hasaan Haider

But what brought me to the shrine, I did not know. I could have read the stories at home, but instead I preferred to hear them from this man who always shouted: “Take the plunge, take the plunge. Don’t watch the storm from the bank.” He never explained what he meant.

Perhaps he was referring to Hafiz, another famous Iranian poet. Himself a Sufi, Hafiz asks the seekers of the path “not to watch the storm from the safety of the bank but to take the plunge” if they wanted to learn.

I was surprised to hear an apparently illiterate shoe-man quoting Hafiz. The man intrigued me. I could not make out if he was educated or had learned bits and pieces from here and there and kept repeating them. He never gave me the chance to guess.

One moment he was there smiling and inviting others to take the plunge and the next he was gone, ensconced in his shell, dusting the shoes with a piece of cloth, unwilling to let anything out.

One day I saw the shoe-man in the bazaar, buying flowers for the shrine. When he saw me, he laughed and showed me a little boy who was selling flutes.

“Do you know why the nai (flute) wails? It is the pain of separation from its source that makes it do so,” he told me and laughed.

Now he was referring to the Sufi master and great Persian poet Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi, who also formed the circle of whirling dervishes. “Listen to the nai, it cries because it has been separated from its source (the tree from which the branch was broken). That’s why it is full of sad notes. Similarly men suffer because they are separated from their source (God),” says Rumi.

I tried talking to him but he disappeared in the crowd. To my contemporary mind his attitude made no sense. If he is educated why does he not print a resume and go around lecturing people on Persian poetry! Why does he not carry a visiting card!

I went back to the shrine. The Qawwals were singing another song. “In your love I dance like a whirlwind, I dance like a whirlwind.”

The shoe-man was there but he ignored me. I sat under the tree.

The parrots were chattering. One big bird sat separately on a higher branch. It seemed as if the others listened when he spoke.

It reminded me of another story, The Assembly of Birds, by another Sufi master, Attar. And I entered another age when animals spoke and people understood.

One day the shoe-man disappeared from the shrine as well. And I never saw him again.