The Smell of My Father's Coat

9 a.m. and we are gratefully back in Delhi's Marina Hotel. The last twenty-four hours seems like a dream.

We had arrived in Gaya yesterday after a tearful farewell with the Lodge staff who had all lined up, including the manager's mother, to have their picture taken with us.  Gaya seemed even more filthy than it had before and the heat was so intense that we consumed 10 orange soda pops in the space of a half hour.  We couldn't bear to spend a night in what felt to us like a den of thieves, after our last experience and so using plenty of baksheesh to grease the wheels we obtained tickets for a 3 a.m. train to Delhi.

This meant a 12 hour wait in Gaya and we used it to explore and do a little shopping. We hired a bicycle rickshaw to ferry us through the street, all four of us piled on the torn plush of the seat and navigated through this area of intense poverty.   We purchased some scarves to wrap our newly shaved heads and protect our scalps from the sun and we felt quite rakish in them, looking perhaps like extras in "Lawrence of Arabia"  I thought or real life characters from "Journey to the East".

The hours dragged by and we spent the last of them waiting for the train, trying to sleep on benches in the station waiting areas with many other travelers who were also attempting a restless, uncomfortable sleep while awaiting the arrival of the midnight train.

We encountered a middle aged Indian couple, dressed in renunciant orange, their family duties complete, their children now grown and married, heading for the Khumba Mela in Hardwar.  They were kind and helpful with us and the children, explaining that their pilgrimage was a very natural event in the lives of many Hindus of their age.  "We will never return to the old patterns of our life," the husband explained to me.  "We have paid our dues in the world. We are only living for God now."

The last few hours in the darkened station seemed to drag interminably but by this time we are too eager to leave, to think about sleep. Even the children were wide awake and at last the familiar rocketing sound of an approaching train and the looming, steam-bellowing black engine plowing through the echoing silence brought us all to our feet, bags in hand, searching for the number of our coach.

This morning we will go to the British Airways office to check on the status of our airline tickets, but this is India and my hopes are not high.  Our spirits are high after the hot bath and a sumptuous meal last night in a good hotel and the walk to the office is only minutes from the hotel.

I am uncomfortable, however, at the thought of what might await us and when we arrive the sight of the now familiar and inevitable queue with a turbaned agent at the distant end does nothing to help buoy my spirits.  Karen sits with the children and I wait in line, about a half hour. Finally it is our turn.  I explain that we have not been able to confirm our flight but that we would like to depart April 1st as pre-arranged.  The agent does not seem interested in any of this, but says "Tickets, please." in a rather stone-faced manner.  I am not sure he heard any of what I said but I am astounded at what he says to me after punching a few computer keys.  "Yes sir, your flight is confirmed!"   Just like that.  A thrill runs through me and I turn to Karen with a broad smile.  "Good old British Airways.  We're on our way!"

Karen has some last minute shopping to do.  We leave tomorrow and there's no time to waste. She is determined to fill the suitcases we have purchased for the purpose to breaking point.  I too have a stop to make and so while Karen goes shopping with Shannon,  I bundle Nika into a rickshaw and we motor off through the dusty traffic toward the dargah, to see Ali Moosa.

It is 3:30 p.m. and I am sitting on the floor of  the little white-washed room off the courtyard where Ali Moosa and Margaret sleep.  Nika is sleeping peacefully at my side on one of the mats, her infected mosquito bites having been tenderly anointed with a white medical cream by Ali Moosa, as we talked.  This has been an incredible and memorable afternoon.  I am the same person who walked in here earlier today and yet I am not, for I am now also a Sufi.

I am stunned and did not expect this honor and in answer to my "whys", Ali Moosa said simply that "It's a gift of God".

While the actual initiation was going on there was powerful atmosphere in the room and we were both weeping.  I kept looking at Ali Moosa's overcoat hanging on the wall. My father had worn an overcoat like his in the cold and snowy days of Winnipeg winter. Now as I looked at the coat it seemed to me that my father's smell was coming from it, like a sweet and heavy incense, filled with love and tenderness.

I had come here without any expectations and only to say good-bye. Ali Moosa had met me in the courtyard of the dargah and was pleased and surprised at my appearance.  My head was completely shaved and I was dressed in a new blue kurta with a brown khadi vest and he exclaimed, "Now you look like an Indian.  I hardly recognized you. Where is your good wife?"

I explained she had gone shopping because we are leaving tomorrow.  "It's her duty," he replied smilingly, "but why are you going so soon?"

"How am I supposed to know?"  I laughed and he grabbed my hand in both of his, shaking it warmly, delighted at my answer.  I felt badly that Karen was not here with me but Ali Moosa seemed to think it perfectly normal, under the circumstances.  Right away, he excused himself from the dargah and invited me back to his home for tea.

I am now waiting for him to return from the market where he has gone to get me some books to take with me on my journey.  I am experiencing such a wonderful sense of peace and security right now that is beyond words.  There is nothing wrong in my life.  Even leaving India now is completely right.

Ali Moosa has given me some rather complicated prayers and breathing instructions instructions along with an initiation which was a simple verbal exchange followed by a blessing. At the end I asked "What is my sufi name?" Ali Moosa smiled and said "I will select one for you" and left the room.

In my thoughts, I had always wished my imagined sufi name might reflect my connection with Inayat Khan, and yet be something familiar and yet "exotic".  So I waited for Ali Moosa in eager anticipation.

When he returned, he sat down and said, "The sufi name I will call you by is Baba Farid."  For a moment, I confess I felt something like disappointment.  This was not the name I was expecting, although I have no idea what I was expecting. 

Ali Moosa's look was penetrating. "Do you like it?" he asked.  I swallowed and answered, "I don't like it and I don't not like it.  I just accept it.  Thank you."

I was still recovering but Ali Moosa was smiling.  He then told me that Hazrat Baba Farid, whose name he has given to me as my own sufi name, used to take the saliva from his own mouth and put it in the mouth of his disciples when they received their bayat or discipleship from his hand.  He demonstrated this by actually taking some saliva on his fingers and putting it toward my mouth.

I can't remember if I had ever discussed Baba Farid with him, or shown him the book I found in the bazaar.

I asked him, "What I will do now when I go back to the West?"  He laughed and said, "You will soon be a big Sufi man, six months from now and when she," and here he pointed to Nika, asleep on the mat, "is six years old, you will see your life."

He explained that I am to continue doing my music but that now I will be using it to teach in the Sufi way.  I had brought with me a little printed silk bandanna, whose color was a rich yellow gold and taking it in his hands he said that I must have a kurta made in this color, cut long, just past the knees in the Moslem fashion and wear this when I perform.

I asked Ali Moosa what, exactly I was supposed to teach and he confidently answered that he would send me books and would purchase some immediately to give to me. Years later, I have never received any more books from him but many books on the Sufi Way have come to me through other means.  I now see that there is more than one way for a Sufi teacher to "send" books.

Ali Moosa returns with the books he has promised me and I insist on paying him for them.  He asks me for my notebook and writes in it my given and my Sufi names, signing it and dating it by way of formal declaration of this meeting and exchange between us. 

I look into his eyes and I seem to see the gaze of Inayat Khan, that familiar look of strength and love mingled that had looked out at me from his photograph hung on the wall beside my sleeping platform on those many lonely nights of meditation in my mountainside cabin so many years ago. 

I do not know when we will meet again but this does not seem important to me now because I know we are connected in a way that is not subject to time and space.

I will never forget this meeting or this moment.