The Forty Rules of Love

Shams arrives on the outskirts of Konya, where he meets a cattle driver. The two have a conversation about Rumi and the cattle driver explains how Rumi’s sermons bring joy to his life after hardship. He invites Shams to go to one of Rumi’s sermons but Shams decides that he wants to explore the city before he sees Rumi.

Hasan relays the intricacies of life as a leper—the constant pain and disintegrating body as well as the culture of begging. He discusses how alms are given so that he might pray for other people, especially during Ramadan. On this particular day, Hasan intends to attend a sermon by Rumi but quickly finds himself disillusioned by the scholar; his opulent dress and speaking of suffering (when Hasan supposes Rumi has never really suffered like he has) turns Hasan off and he leaves the sermon early.

Shams wanders the city of Konya on the day that Rumi is giving a sermon. Instead of attending, Shams ventures to a seedy part of town and runs into the owner of a brothel. There, he gets into a debate about the nature of God and sees a beautiful young woman named Desert Rose who Shams says will be leaving the brothel soon, much to the brothel owner’s amusement.

On her fortieth birthday, Ella thinks about what she has and hasn’t accomplished in life. In an email to her, Aziz recounts all the ways that forty is a mystical number in religions all over the world and tells her that it is an important and beautiful age.

After devising a plan to leave the brothel and sneak into Rumi’s sermon at the mosque with a bodyguard named Sesame, Desert Rose reflects on her life. The death of her mother and her father’s abuse of her brother ultimately led to her brother murdering her father and stepmother and leaving Desert Rose an orphan. While trying to get to an aunt in a city, Desert Rose is robbed, abducted, and raped before escaping to the city; these losses led to her ultimate descent into prostitution. Disguised as a man, Desert Roses sits in the mosque and listens to Rumi and suddenly feels at peace in spite of all that has happened to her.

Shams approaches Hasan during Rumi’s sermon and the two speak for a moment before Shams offers him the silver mirror that Baba Zaman gave Shams before he left. In the middle of their conversation, a mob spills out from the mosque—Desert Rose’s disguise did not work and the mob demands a lynching. Shams reasons with the angry crowd, saying that if they were truly good Muslims, they would have paid more attention to the sermon than who was in the audience. Using this as a distraction, Desert Rose breaks from the crowd and flees.

While Rumi and his admirers pass by the tavern, Suleiman and his comrades drink and contemplate pulling turbans off of the heads of passersby before one of them hurls a rock at Suleiman, almost striking him. Incensed, Suleiman complains that it could have killed him, which opens a discussion between him and the tavern owner about why Islam prohibits drinking. In the end, Suleiman thinks about how all the men of different religions sit in the same tavern and “raised [their] glasses and toasted together, hard though it was to believe, to a God who could love and forgive [them] even when [they themselves] clearly failed to do so” (128).

Ella reflects on her relationships with her husband and the world around her and classifies herself as one of two versions of herself: either Ella the “meek” or Ella the “control freak.” She notes she is meek when it comes to David’s affairs but a control freak with Jeanette; overall, she thinks about how safe she has kept her life since childhood and through her teenage and young adult years. The chapter ends with Ella praying that God either gives her love or makes her “tough and careless enough” to not mind the lack of love in her life (131).

After escaping from the mob, Desert Rose is approached by Shams in the street. Before they speak, she reflects on the man who outted her as a woman in the mosque, a cruel man named Baybars who was a patron of the brothel. Shams reassures Desert Rose that those men who harassed her and called her a whore do not dictate what is and isn’t clean and tells her that she needs to change the way that she treats herself before others will treat her better. He then gives her the silk handkerchief that Baba Zaman gave him in Baghdad and tells her not to focus on where the road will take her, but to take the first step toward changing her life.

After leaving the tavern, Suleiman gets into an altercation with Baybars, who is working as a guard. Baybars nearly beats him to death. Sometime later, Shams finds Suleiman in the street and gives him the ointment that was the last of Baba Zaman’s three gifts to Shams. Helping Suleiman get home, Shams and Suleiman discuss the role of drinking in religion and Shams says that he does not judge him. Upon arriving home, Suleiman thinks:

As miserable as I felt, somewhere deep inside me there was a blissful tranquility. For a fleeting moment, I caught a glimpse of it and yearned to remain there forever. At that moment I knew there was a God after all, and He loved me (141).

After the death of her dog and upon discovering that one of the twins has bulimia, Ella feels increasingly more connected with Aziz and the rate at which they exchange emails increases. Ella seems infatuated with Aziz and thinks that their flirtation is “an innocent one that might do them both good” (142). The tone of their correspondence grows decidedly more intimate; Ella refers to Aziz as “beloved Aziz” in her salutation and Aziz teases Ella in his email and signs off “With love” (146). Discussing religion, Aziz says that he is “spiritual” rather than religious and harbors a laissez-faire mentality—something that Ella does not relate to. In the end, though, Aziz and Ella’s friendship seems to be becoming increasingly more intimate.