Пауло Коэльо - Hippie

She wasn’t naïve, but she’d always gotten what she wanted in life—she wasn’t lost in the desert but running like the waters of the Bosphorus toward a gigantic ocean where all rivers meet, and she would never forget Istanbul, the skinny Brazilian and his conversation, though she couldn’t always follow it. He had performed a miracle, but he didn’t need to know this—otherwise guilt might change his mind.

They ordered another bottle of wine. It was only then he began to speak.

“The man without a name was at the cultural center when I arrived. I greeted him, but he didn’t return my greeting; his eyes were fixed on something, like in a sort of trance. I kneeled on the floor, tried to clear my mind and meditate, to reach out to the souls there who danced about, singing and celebrating life. I knew that at some point he would leave his state, and I waited—actually, I didn’t ‘wait’ in the literal sense of the term, I delivered myself to the present moment, without waiting for absolutely anything.

“The loudspeakers called the city to prayer, the man returned from his trance state and performed one of that day’s five rituals. It was only then he noticed I was there. He asked why I’d returned.

“I explained that I’d spent the night thinking about our previous encounter and that I’d like to deliver myself, body and soul, to Sufism. I was dying to tell him how, for the first time in my life, I’d made love—because when we were in bed, and I was inside you, it was as though I really was leaving my own body. I’d never experienced that before. But I deemed the subject inappropriate and said nothing.

“‘Read the poets,’ came the response from the man without a name. ‘That’s all you’ll ever need.’

“That wasn’t all I needed. I needed discipline, rigor, a place to serve God so that I could be closer to the rest of the world. Before going there for the first time, I had been fascinated by the dervishes who danced and entered into a sort of trance. Now I needed my soul to dance with me.

“I ought to wait a thousand and one days so this could happen? Perfect, I’d wait. By that time, I’d done plenty of living—perhaps twice as much as my high school classmates. I could dedicate the next three years of my life and, eventually, try to enter into that perfect trance of the dancing dervishes.

“‘My friend, a Sufi is a person who lives in the present moment. Tomorrow isn’t a part of our vocabulary.’

“Yes, that I knew. My real question was whether I needed to convert to Islam to continue my learning.

“‘No. You need make only one promise: deliver yourself to the path of God. See His face each time you drink a cup of water. Listen to His voice each time you pass a beggar on the street. That’s what every religion teaches and it’s the only promise we ought to make—the only one.’

“‘I still lack the discipline for that, but with your help I’ll arrive at the place where heaven meets earth—in man’s heart.’

“The man without a name said that he could help me if I left my entire life behind and did everything he told me. Learn to beg when I had no money, to fast when the moment arrived, to serve lepers, to wash the wounds of the sick. To spend my days doing absolutely nothing, merely staring at a fixed point and repeating the same mantra, the same phrase, the same word.

“‘Sell your wisdom and buy space in your soul to be filled with the Absolute. Because the wisdom of men and women is madness before God.’

“At that moment, I began to doubt I was capable of this—perhaps he was testing me with this demand for absolute obedience. But I detected no hesitation in his voice, I knew he was serious. I also knew that my body had entered that green room that was falling apart, with its broken stained glass and on that day particularly free of filtering light, as a storm was approaching.

“I knew that my body had entered that place, but my soul had remained outside, waiting to see what would come of it all. Waiting for the day when, by a simple coincidence, I would walk in there and see others spinning around one another. Everything would be a well-orchestrated ballet and nothing else. But that wasn’t what I was looking for.

“I knew that if I didn’t accept the conditions he was imposing at that moment, the next time I’d find the door closed to me—even if I could come and go as I pleased, as I’d done the first time.

“The man was reading my soul, observing my contradictions and doubts, and at no moment did he show any flexibility—it was all or nothing. He said he needed to return to his special meditation, and I asked him to answer at least three more questions.

“‘Do you accept me as your disciple?’

“‘I accept your heart as a disciple, because I cannot refuse—otherwise, my life would have no use. I have two ways of showing my love of God: the first is to praise Him day and night, in the solitude of this room, but that wouldn’t be the least use to me or Him. The second is to sing, dance, and show His face to all through my joy.’

“‘Do you accept me as your disciple?’ I asked a second time.

“‘A bird cannot fly with a single wing. A Sufi teacher is nothing if he cannot share his experience with someone else.’

“‘Do you accept me as your disciple?’ I asked for the third and final time.

“‘If tomorrow you come in through that door as you’ve done the last two days, I accept you as my disciple. But I’m almost certain you’ll regret it.’”

Karla filled up their glasses again and toasted with Paulo.

“My journey ended here,” he repeated, perhaps thinking she hadn’t understood what he’d just told her. “I don’t have anything to do in Nepal.”

He steadied himself for the tears, the fury, the despair, the emotional manipulation, everything to be said by the woman who had told him “I love you” the night before.

But she just smiled.

“I never thought I’d be capable of loving someone the way I love you,” Karla responded after they’d emptied their glasses and she’d filled them one more time. “My heart was locked up, and it had nothing to do with psychologists, a lack of chemical substances, that sort of thing. It’s something I’ll never be able to explain, but suddenly, I don’t know exactly the moment, my heart opened. And I’m going to love you for the rest of my life. When I’m in Nepal, I’ll be loving you. When I return to Amsterdam, I’ll be loving you. When I finally fall for someone else, I’ll continue loving you, even if in a different way from today.

“God—I don’t know if He exists but I know I hope He’s here with us now, listening to my words—I ask to never again allow me to be satisfied with only my own company. That I never feel afraid of needing someone or of suffering, because there is no suffering worse than the dark, gray room where pain cannot reach.

“And that this love so many people speak of, so many share, so many suffer on account of, that this love lead me to that which was unknown and is now becoming clearer. That, as a poet once said, He takes me to a world where there exists no sun, no moon, no stars, no earth, not even the taste of wine in my mouth, merely the Other, he whom I will find because you opened the way.

“That I might walk without need of my feet, see without needing to look, fly without asking for wings.”

Paulo was surprised and content at the same time. Both of them were coming to an unknown place, with its terrors and its wonders. There, in Istanbul—a place where they might have visited the many attractions that had been suggested to them—they’d chosen to journey into their own souls and there was nothing better or more comforting than this.