The Forty Rules of Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

If they were scared sufficiently, they could not dare to do me wrong.
    So I said, “Yes, I am the best. That is why they call me Jackal Head. I have never let my clients down, no matter how hard the task.”
    “Good.” He sighed. “Because this might not be an easy task.”
    Now the other guy spoke. “See, there is this man who has made himself too many enemies. Ever since he came to this town, he has brought nothing but trouble. We have warned him several times, but he pays us no attention. If anything, he has become all the more contentious. He leaves us no other option.”
    It was always the same. Each time the clients tried to explain themselves before we cut a deal, as if my approval could in any way lessen the gravity of what they were about to do.
    “I know what you mean. Tell me, who is this person?” I asked.
    They seemed reluctant to give me a name, offering vague descriptions instead.
    “He is a heretic who has nothing to do with Islam. An unruly man full of sacrilege and blasphemy. A maverick of a dervish.”
    As soon as I heard this last word, a creepy feeling spread over my arms. My mind raced. I had killed all sorts of people, young and old, men and women, but a dervish, a man of faith, was not among them. I had my superstitions and didn’t want to draw God’s wrath upon me, for despite everything I believed in God.
    “I’m afraid I’m going to have to turn it down. I don’t think I want to kill a dervish. Find someone else.”
    With that, I stood up to leave. But one of the men grabbed my hand and beseeched, “Wait, please. Your payment will be commensurate with your effort. Whatever your fee is, we are ready to double the price.”
    “How about triple?” I asked, convinced that they wouldn’t be able to raise the amount that high.
    But to my surprise, after a brief hesitation, they both agreed. I sat back in my seat, feeling jittery. With this money I could finally afford the price of a bride and get married and stop fretting over how to make ends meet. Dervish or not, anyone was worth killing for this amount.
    How could I know in that moment that I was making the biggest mistake of my life and would spend the rest of my days regretting it? How could I know it would be so hard to kill the dervish and that even long after he was dead, his knifelike gaze would follow me everywhere?
    Four years have passed since I stabbed him in that courtyard and dumped his body in a well, waiting to hear the splash that never came. Not a sound. It was as if rather than falling down into the water he fell up toward the sky. I still cannot sleep without having nightmares, and if I look at water, any source of water, for more than a few seconds, a cold horror grips my whole body and I throw up.

PART ONE
    Earth

    THE THINGS THAT ARE SOLID, ABSORBED, AND STILL

Shams
    AN INN OUTSIDE SAMARKAND, MARCH 1242
    Beeswax candles flickered in front of my eyes above the cracked wooden table. The vision that took hold of me this evening was a most lucid one.
    There was a big house with a courtyard full of yellow roses in bloom and in the middle of the courtyard a well with the coolest water in the world. It was a serene, late-autumn night with a full moon in the sky. A few nocturnal animals hooted and howled in the background. In a little while, a middle-aged man with a kind face, broad shoulders, and deep-set hazel eyes walked out of the house, looking for me. His expression was vexed, and his eyes were immensely sad.
    “Shams, Shams, where are you?” he shouted left and right.
    The wind blew hard, and the moon hid behind a cloud, as if it didn’t want to witness what was about to happen. The owls stopped hooting, the bats stopped flapping their wings, and even the fire in the hearth inside the house did not crackle. An absolute stillness descended upon the world.
    The man slowly approached the well, bent over, and looked down below. “Shams, dearest,” he whispered. “Are you there?”
    I opened my mouth to answer,