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Dervish Healing Order |
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Report on Travel to Morocco - Sept 05 |
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Travels in Morocco: During our visit to Marrakech last September 2005, I asked Salima to take me to the Zaouïa of Sidi Bel Abbès, beyond Bab Taghzout. Prompted by the Sultan Moulay Ismaïl, Marrakech chose seven saints for protection of its city who lived and died between the XI and XVI centuries. The entrance of the Zaouïa is forbidden to non-Muslim. The Zaouïa of Sidi Bel Abbès honors a XII century saint that the shopkeepers, the farmers and the blinds made their protector. This Zaouïa continues to pursue its goal to educate and care for people. Each week a meal is served for the blinds. We took a ‘petit taxi’ at the Saadian tomb and drove to the Zaouïa. As soon as we exited the taxi a guide manifested as by enchantment who took us through the narrows alleyways to the entrance of the Zaouïa. An old man without legs but good eyes, sat on the floor at the entrance and showed us where to put our shoes. As we stepped in, fifteen blind men sat on the ground under the shadow of a porch around an inner courtyard. We passed them in silence. In the center of that courtyard there is a water fountain for the ablutions. We entered the main building where the saint is resting. There was only one man sitting in a corner of a large room. The tomb is a simple cloth covering a coffin on the ground. The decor except for the carpets on the floor consisted of many clocks hanged on the walls and some grandfather clocks that were donated as an offering to the saint. I said The Fatiha in my usual tone and did Fikar. I prayed with the saint, not to the saint, asking nothing, just feeling the presence and the atmosphere, becoming one with the Baraka of the place. Salima sat next to me. After the prayers, I did The Fatiha again and left with Salima. We gave our money offering to one of the blind man as directed by the old man without legs, who is in fact the guard of the place by the door. The guard told Salima, who translated to me, that we should make a vow. As Salima insisted that I must do it, I said that I did not want to ask for anything for myself. Finally I made a vow for Salima who guided me to this place. The blind man, who seemed the Sheikh of the group, asked in Arabic for the name of the woman there with me. Salima and the guard conferred in Arabic and the guard told the blind man that there were two people who made the offering, a man and a woman. The blind man said that they were going to recite the whole Koran for the woman and he wanted to know her name because the intention was made for her. Then the blind man asked the guard to have me sit next to him. I did. I sat and started Fikar again in my heart as nobody talked for awhile. The moment was so peaceful. The blind man started singing The Fatiha, I felt Salima jolting her head as she looked in disbelief. She thought that I was singing it loudly for the first time without an accent. In fact the old blind man was singing The Fatiha with the same tone and rhythm as I sang it in my heart in the building where Sidi Bel Abbès is resting. Then the old man told the guard that he wanted my name and that they would recite the whole Koran for me as well. Salima was surprised because she had never heard The Fatiha sang that way in Morocco before. She had only heard it sang by me in that tone and rhythm. I would not have told that story to anybody if Salima had not been there to vouch for it, first because my teacher always told me not to get caught in the world of phenomenas and secondly because nobody would have believed it. We left after offering more thanks. The guide took us back to the taxi through many beggars who crowded us. We had decided to give coins to a couple of children but that created a mob and the guide was helpful to take us through it. The taxi took us back to the hotel. As we did not have enough change, Salima left me to get it. The taxi driver took the opportunity to ask me if I was really Muslim. I said yes and as he looked in disbelief, I said to him “La Illahah Ilallah, Mohammedah Rassoulallah” but still he asked again. Then I sang the same Fatiha as I did before and as I sang it, he joined me and started crying softly, and then he took me in his arms and called me his brother. We embraced in friendship. As we visited La Mosquée Hassan II, the second largest in the world, in Casablanca, the guard asked me if I was Muslim and I responded yes without hesitation. He then looked at me and asked me for my name. I responded “my name is Salek” and he invited me in for prayer. I had never used that name before. Saul had offered me this name and I had refused to use it because I did not want to differentiate myself in the US by any external means to make myself look more ‘spiritual’, by clothing, by name, by any artificial form or concept. I believe in the words of Hazrat Inayat Khan that one should see the face of our beloved everywhere and that one does not need to differentiate himself from others. In fact it is enough to be more like a chameleon, melting with the environment, in Tibet I may claim that I am a Buddhist and sing the heart sutra. In France, I went to Notre Dame de Paris and to the church on the Sacré Coeur to pray. I trust in the universality of the spiritual ideal. In the Mosquée I was praying and the events in Marrakech were still deeply impressing my heart. I felt sorry and sad for a moment that I did not go to pay respect to the other saints including the Zaouïa of Sidi ben Slimane el-Jazouli, a XV century saint, close by and a little more south of Sidi Bel Abbes. That intent brought another unexpected turn of event. The last day in Rabat, Salima, Monick and I decided to go to the medina in the morning before leaving for the airport on our way to Paris Monick needed to go to the jewelry district for some last minute errands and as we passed in front of the Oudaïas (where Salima lives), a neighborhood of houses inside fortified walls dating of the middle age, Monick had an intuition and told me to go home rue Bazo. I did not want to miss the fun and I insisted to tag along with those two beautiful women. We entered the Souk, rue des Consuls, and as we passed in front of a store selling beautiful weaved fabrics, Salima not only remembered someone she knew, but saw him, the store owner standing in a small alleyway. She invited us to go meet him and a new turn of event began. It seemed during our whole trip with Salima as our guide that everytime we entered a door, we had to expect the unexpected and take a step in the unknown. After the usual greetings of As Salaam Aleikum, Salima told the young man, with a very gentle energy, totally unassuming, friendly, always with a smile in the corner of his eyes that we had little time before departing. He smiled again and said “we know what happened yesterday, we know now what is happening, but later, only Allah knows”. He invited us in a small courtyard behind the shop. There were four small rooms around the courtyard and in each one, there were one or two men working on a loom, weaving. All seemed totally immersed in their tasks and perfectly contented to be there, at peace. The owner whose name is Said Jazouli explained the weaving process and the thread used. Some thread made from aloe plant brought questions from Monick and Salima. Salima introduced Said to us as a Sufi and told him that we are from the Ruhaniat and that I am her teacher. Salima then all the soon realized, because of Said last name, that he is in fact from the Jazouli lineage and family, one of the seven saints in Marrakech. One of the saints I felt sorry not to have visited during my prayer in the Casablanca Mosquée. The coincidence was overwhelming. Said confirmed that he is from that lineage. He spoke much beautifully to us, in Arabic, with translation by him and Salima which sounded mostly like poetry. Salima asked him if they had meetings in their Tarikat, like Dhikr or special practices. Said said that his work and his companion’s work was their prayer. He explained that each part of the loom is named for the spiritual journey towards the opening of the heart in the presence of Allah. He said that for them this was their Tassawuf, each moment, as a remembrance, simply weaving with the regular rhythm of the work with total single-mindedness. He confessed that some time this get them in a special place of consciousness in their heart. I shared with him my understanding of Tassawuf, as Jilani said, Tassawuf means the four steps of Tawwab: the turning of the heart towards the One; Safa: the purification of the heart through the practices of Dhikr and Fikar; Wali when we get close to Allah and become as friends of Allah with certitude as in Tawakkul Allah and finally Fana, when all is Alhamdullillah, the effacement of the limited self in the presence of the One. He gave me his hand in friendship and I hugged him instead. He said “this is even better” We embraced and called each other brothers. He was very moving. This event reminded me immediately of Murshid Sam story about the people who searched for Gurdjieff teachers and found simple artisans, boot makers, weavers, etc… in the Caucasus. They only found people happy with their work, because their work was their prayer. Said and his brother Zouhair left that same impression of peace and contentment. I was so moved by his beautiful soul that I could only tell him that not only I was his brother but that I want him to know that all our family are his family as well. He took my hand and then I just hugged and kissed him on the cheeks again as brothers do. We stayed talking too long and Monick had no time left for the jewelry district, I was deeply sorry for that and her vision had come true, my presence had ruined her plan. Said then showed us that he just received a book in Arabic from another passing Sufi brother a few days before. This happened to be the very same book “Dalaïl Al Khaisat” that Salima had mentioned to me. She had been trying to find it in French; it was in Said’s hands in Arabic. We embraced again and left his shop not even having purchased a single item. We had just gained another member in our family of friends on the path. Our vacation turned out to be paved with many small miracles. Jean Pierre also known as Salik, the spiritual vagabond. |