Page 49 - The Book of Rumi

The Lover Who Was Nothing

man, desperately in love, arrived at the house of his beloved and enthu-
A siastically knocked on the door.
“Who’s there?” asked the lady.
“It’s me,” declared the man, full of hope.
“Go away, there’s no place for someone like you in this house!” she
responded, her voice laced with sorrow. “You’re naïve and not yet ready, just
like an uncooked meal! You declare yourself as ‘me’ and still proclaim your
undying love for me? A lover who only sees himself is no lover at all but needs
to roast in the fi re of separation until he’s properly cooked!”
She refused to open the door, and the distraught man eventually backed
away from the house. Soon after, he left the town for an unknown destination
in some faraway land. Burning with the pain of separation, after a year of trav-
eling from place to place he gathered his courage and approached his beloved’s
home once again. Apprehensively but politely, he knocked on the door.
“Who’s knocking at this hour?” asked the lady impatiently.
“No one! The one on this side of the door is also you!” expressed the
man humbly.
“Now that you’ve stopped seeing only yourself, you’ve become me at last!
Two people could never exist in this house simultaneously, but now you may
enter.”
She cautiously opened the door and let her lover inside.
“Now you’re welcome in this house. There’s no difference between us
anymore; no longer are we the rose and the thorn. We are one and the same.”

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