You know nothing of love

Just when you think you’ve read works of masters.
Fiction, non-fiction, tales, fables, romance novels, poetry, prose, all of it amounts to nothing when you hear a single word and understand it’s meaning; Ishq.

Think of everything you have ever thought, felt, expressed, read, spoken, sung, danced and acted about love and throw it away.

This word, is the epitome of what it means to love.

The word was dear to the most potent poet that ever lived, the most widely read, the most popular world wide, despite his background, transcending cultures, religion, nationalities, politics and more. Alone, he has the ability to transform the most wretched of hearts with a simple line of his poetry and anecdotes.

Rumi, was no drunk lover, he was a consciously drunk one. Aware  and purposeful in his devotion, a former celebrated theologian and scholar of the highest calibre, he devoted himself to the ultimate art. The art of love, of annihilation.

A devotion so sincere he no longer existed in this world, other worldly, his longing for the divine was sacrificial. His prestige, power, honour, fame, community standing discarded like it was a pungent robe and the ragged woollen drapes of discomfort he adorned until he vanished between them.

A hollow of a cloak, framed in the shape of a man, he disappeared in love. His longing answered, his sincerity heard, his nearness to his beloved granted.

To comprehend the meaning of the word above ‘Ishq is to forget all notions of love you have ever imagined and be atomised into dust…..It is a pang and longing unbearable of which it’s inheritors never so much as take a backward glance at the world any more.

The mundane translation of it meaning love, is unbearably nauseating. It is so much more than that, hence why a thorough story like context must be given to begin to comprehend it, and this is just the introduction to it.

-W.E.