Bambi Chases Sufis

Which is why Iyer’s Sufi novel, Abandon, begins as a wholly promising read, yoking three interesting elements — Maulana Rumi, travel and Iyer’s writing. The storyline seems good. John Macmillan, an English post-graduate studying Sufism in California, focuses on Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi. Rumi was a 13th century Sufi, originally from Balkh in Afghanistan, who fetched up all over the Islamic world and finally moved to Qonya (Konya) in present-day Turkey. However, because he wrote in Persian, he was very much an Iranian property who now rules as America’s bestselling poet (in English translation).

Conferencing in Damascus, Macmillan hears of a secret, religiously explosive manuscript that apparently evaded the Ayatollahs and got smuggled out of Iran. He is asked by a professor to take a package to another Californian student of religion, Kristina Jensen. Instead, he meets her ditsy sister Camilla. Their consequent love story combines with a spiritual search for John through Syria, India, Iran and New Mexico.

Structurally, the “internal” plot is loosely patterned on Maulana Rumi’s life. A scholar and theologian, Maulana Rumi encountered one Shams Tabrizi at the age of 37 and was inspired to take the mystical path of “tassawuf”. Shams was probably murdered by jealous people and Rumi dementedly hunts for him everywhere. Other people come into his life, but always Shams (meaning “sun” in Persian) remains Rumi’s inner light, resulting in his two great works, the Diwan-e-Shams Tabrizi in Dari (Afghan Persian) and the seven-volume Mathnawi. Maulana Rumi dies in 1273, having lost Shams but found himself.

Iyer’s Englishman too is looking to understand many deep things and, in keeping with the Sufi pattern of the “hidden liberator”, it is the unlikely character of Camilla that Iyer positions as John’s “key”. But neither character is attractive. John is fusty and feeble, though essentially a nice guy. Camilla is simply awful. She is full of American psycho-babble, she’s vague, woolly and irritating, yet Iyer sticks her in the role of the one who really knows the mysteries, thereby forcing the Sufi point of the hidden liberator with in-your-face contrivance, or what we’d call ‘zabardasti’.

Basically, Iyer buzzes all the New Age buttons. It’s a formula feed whip-up, everything pre-mixed, just add hot water — industrial strength Niceness, pop Sufism, dizzy Californian (whose father is Persian), bookish Englishman (pet name, Johno), the very topical Other (Islamic culture) juxtaposed with the West, airhead conversations dripping New Age soultalk. You can almost smell the incense and hear the Guru lead you in guided meditation. R-e-s-t. R-e-l-a-x. I don’t know about you, but my cue says “exit, pursued by whirling Bambi”. I urgently need to pop two quick mean stories by Saki as antidote.

But just a moment, this is Pico Iyer. So what if he hasn’t managed to create interesting and surprising people whose doings you end up deeply engrossed in? So what if his plot doesn’t work out all that hot? He’ll get it right next time. When it comes to describing a place so feelingly with just that precise choice of vivifying detail, you don’t make them better than Pico Iyer. Be it California, Damascus, New Delhi, Agra, Isfahan, Iyer the magic imagist takes you there in his armchair. Here’s Venice: “They walked along thin lanes, over arched bridges in the hesitant light, their breath coming up to greet them… Dante was over here…

with Beatrice…”

But Dante was in Florence. Oh dear. Bambi, wait up. I have this little problem and the doctor says it’s lack of imagination.