A whirling dervish

When I was little I'm sure I remember the term 'dervish' being used by the oldies. "You're like a whirling dervish."

I never knew what a dervish was until last week. 

I had the vague idea it was something bad, usually because of the way the term was applied. It wasn't complimentary. I associated it, if I thought about it at all, with little devils, I suppose because it contains some of the same letters!

Last week I finished reading The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak. It's a beautiful story of the great friendship between thirteenth century poet, Rumi, and Shams of Tabriz. These days I imagine it would be called a bromance but it was far deeper and more significant than that.

Shams, a Sufi Muslim, was a wandering dervish. It was he, or perhaps his loss, that turned Rumi from simply a hugely revered speaker and leader into a poet. It is his poetry for which he is remembered. There are some wonderful passages in the book. Needless to say I can't find any of them now. I advise reading it instead.

The story is told from multiple viewpoints, which might sound confusing but they are clearly designated.

A travelling photographer, Aziz, has submitted a story, a novel about this great friendship, to a publisher who sends it to a reader for her opinion, so what we read mostly is Aziz's manuscript if you like. This is interspersed with chapters about the reader and her life. I don't think the book needed this add-on. It was the main story and its wonderful characters that gave the book its power for me.

And now I know what a dervish is and a bit more about Sufis.