Our Guide

Once again we are walking through the winding, confusing streets but this time we have retrieved our shoes. Sayyed Ali is leading the way towards his house. I try to make mental notes of our direction but keep losing my sense of it. Finally we come to a worn-looking, narrow wooden gate that opens into a tiny, paved courtyard. Three small buildings enclose the space and a smaller one than these, the toilet. One building is the living room, one the sleeping quarters and the third a tiny kitchen. The colors here are predominantly white and a pale, washed-out green.

Sayyed Ali introduces us to his wife Margaret who is much younger than he is and she greets us warmly. She is small but compact of build with a round, pleasing, even pretty face and her hair tied back in a Bavarian-style braid. Her smile is infectious yet restrained and there is a strong character in her penetrating look. She holds her hands demurely together as we talk.

There is an immediate affinity between us which we all seem to feel. We are taken into the main room through another narrow wooden door. The walls are covered in a darkening whitewash, the many niches are empty and there is not a single piece of furniture in here. The only apparent decoration is an ornate electric wall clock of polished brass.

Margaret enters the room carrying a carefully folded and ironed, white, embroidered cloth which she spreads over a thicker blanket for us to sit on. Despite the poorness of the surroundings there is an elegant beauty about this gesture, a pure simplicity that enriches the look and feel of the room. Sitting on this spotless white cloth, I feel like a visiting king, a guest of honor.

I ask Sayyed Ali what his name means and he explains that the Sayyed is an honorific term that has been inherited through his family line and that he would prefer if I drop that and call him Ali Moosa. Nizami is the family name, he explains and that the family have been the custodians of the dargah for centuries. He explains that his position is Sajjadah Nashin, which he translates as meaning "sitting priest" and which I later discover means "the one who sits on the carpet", welcoming guests and acting in all official capacities.

Margaret brings in a pot of spiced, sweet tea and milk and after a word with her, Ali Moosa asks us to please sit and enjoy ourselves, explaining that he must run an errand and will be right back. We learn later he has gone to the market to get some food to prepare for us. These sudden departures are very much a part of visiting with Ali Moosa and they are usually related to us in some way. He has gone to get some food, some books for us, some sweets for our children.

When he returns the conversation resumes where we left off. Everything is unhurried, there is no sense of rush about anything. He is never too busy. He always seems to want us to stay longer. We can rarely manage to depart without eating. Being in his house is extremely relaxing and comfortable.

During one of his departures Karen confides a dream she had the night before, which she had begun to tell me earlier, at the dargah. She claims she dreamed our arrival here the night before  and that when I sat down to play music at the tomb she had found a rupee on the carpet in front of her that brought the whole dream back to her mind. In the dream she said we had been walking through winding streets, just like in the bazaar and had come into a courtyard where there was a huge carpet spread and on which she found two rupee coins.

"It happened just like in the dream!" she exclaimed again and again. Later I would discover that we came on a Wednesday, the traditional day on which visitors would come to visit the saint during his lifetime and that he used to "tip" them a bit of money as a blessing of good fortune.

We have come for tea and nearly four hours have passed. The clock on the wall reads 6:30 p.m. and Margaret is bearing in a huge steaming platter of rice pilaf. We did not intend to stay for supper but both Ali Moosa and Margaret seem delighted we are still here. There is so much to talk about and it's also pleasant to sit and talk about nothing.

Karen and Margaret have an instant rapport and so when Ali Moosa and I are talking of religious matters, Karen and she are conducting a conversation all their own, equally animated. The children seem delighted to nibble, listen and play.

I am curious about the nature of the dargah, its historical beginnings and Inayat Khan's connection with it. Although we talk at great length, because everything is new to me, I do not process a lot of the information. Ali Moosa plays down any talk of Inayat's work in the West. I revere Inayat as a kind of demigod but he sees Inayat, apparently, in a much less important light.

The way he talks, Inayat is only one of many great saints and teachers who have passed through or been associated with the dargah. To me, Inayat was the bringer of Sufism to the West but in Ali Moosa's view this is a transmission that has always been going on from time immemorial.

Ali Moosa explains a little of the history of the 13th century sufi saint who is buried here, Khwaja Nizamuddin Aulia. Somehow the family line goes back to the prophet Mohammed in Arabia but I do not follow the connection because I know little of the history of Islam.

I will learn more later as I read and study some of the materials that Ali Moosa will give me. "I will send you some books about this" is one of his favorite lines. Years later, although he has sent none, many books on the subject have come my way. Perhaps there is more than one way of "sending" study materials in the Sufi way.

There is a firmness about Ali Moosa as he talks and walks. A kind of royalty or aristocracy in his bearing and demeanor. Yet hand in hand with this sense of certitude about things is a gentleness, a sweetness that keeps him from being overbearing. We are talking about God now. Ali Moosa seems to indicate that although I say I meditate and have done much self study that I still doubt the existence of God.

"You have to learn to talk to God" he suggests. "I will teach you how." I take it for granted that this is part of his duty but feel slightly annoyed that he would think I don't really believe in God. Why do I feel annoyed? Could it be because there's truth in his observation? How does one learn to talk to God, I ask and he tells me that his method is called murakabah, stopping the breath. For a brief instant he demonstrates but I can't tell whether his breath has stopped.

There's a little bit of fun in this exchange, sort of like telling fish stories. We don't go any further and I assume that he will get around to telling me more in his own time, although it is already late and I have no way of knowing if we'll ever come back to see him. I mention that it is strange being here and that I'm not even certain why, exactly we have come. "Do you think it's an accident you are here," he asks, his voice penetrating, "at Sufi headquarters?"

I don't know what to make of this statement, although I've been asking myself the same question. There's no doubt that I feel an affinity with the Sufis but after all I simply came to visit a grave. Or did I?

All the while we talk, Ali Moosa smokes. He is a heavy smoker and the coughing accompanying it tell me that his health suffers. I mention this and he says he knows it's not good but that it's a habit. He tells me that he gets up before dawn and jogs five miles each morning before going to the mosque. He feels this helps to counter any ill effects and to keep his lungs strong.

However, this does not prevent him from cautioning Karen, who has smoked on and off all her life, to quit. He says he will prescribe her a remedy to help her quit and writes down the Indian name of a seed that he suggests she chew when she craves a cigarette. The name is ellachi which we soon discover is cardamom seed. Karen has tried to quit smoking ever since we met and I have little hope of ever seeing the day she will stop.

Before we leave Ali Moosa reads Karen's horoscope in the Indian style. He asks her birth date and from this makes an elaborate series of rapid-fire calculations of the back of an envelope. He tells her many things that she feels are true about her life including past problems with parents. He foretells difficulties and strengths about our daughters and forecasts the birth of a son in 1987.

He says we will have two sons and two daughters. Karen is very impressed by his reading and I am waiting for my turn. Ali Moosa doesn't offer and by the end of the evening I manage to ask if he will do mine too. He reminds me that once I learn to "talk to God" that I won't have to ask any of these things, that everything will be between God and myself.

Now we are at the gate to the courtyard, saying good-bye. Ali Moosa offers to walk us to the edge of the bazaar where we can find a cab but before we leave he suggests we check out of our hotel and come and stay with him. Considering the tiny and rudimentary space of his dwelling I feel we would be much more comfortable in the hotel and so I decline.

He suggests that sometime before we leave India we spend as couple of days, at least, living with him. I don't say no but feel that we would not be comfortable, all of us, in that little space. Now I regret that we did not.

Ali Moosa is taller than I am or if not, he walks taller. There is a willowy spring to his step and he walks with dignity. I feel he must be a very respected member of this community. He shows us to the cab stand and at the moment of parting I give him a hug. My guitar, still in my hand is in the way of the traffic and while returning my hug he gently pulls me out of the stream of it.

On the homeward ride I am filled with conflicting emotions. I did not come to the dargah looking for a new teacher, only to pay respects to an old one. Could Ali Moosa be my new teacher, I wonder and dismiss this thought when I remember his smoker's cough. At the very least my teacher must have clean lungs!

Yet, I can't deny the magnetism of his presence. Especially the look in his eyes and forehead, that power and serenity that reminded me, even as we talked, of pictures I had seen of Inayat. Could they be related in some way or was this the power of brotherhood shining through the teaching they both shared in?

All he said, I remind myself, was that he was going to teach me how to talk to God. He never said anything about becoming my guru. Maybe he can really teach me something, I consider.

As I look back now I laugh at these musings of mine. Perhaps I could not believe my good fortune. At any rate my brain was working overtime trying to poke holes in a meeting that had already been truly remarkable.