212 No god but God
wilderness, Rabia achieved fana, becoming the first, though not the
only, female Sufi master: a woman in whose presence the venerable
scholar Hasan al-Basra admitted to feeling spiritually bankrupt.
Like her Christian counterpart, Teresa of Avila, Rabia’s poetry
betrays a profoundly intimate encounter with God:
You are my breath,
My hope,
My companion,
My craving,
My abundant wealth.
Without You—my Life, my Love—
I would never have wandered across these endless countries...
I look everywhere for Your love—
Then I am suddenly filled with it.
O Captain of my Heart,
Radiant Eye of Yearning in my breast,
I will never be free from You
As long as I live.
Be satisfied with me, Love,
And I am satisfied.This intense longing for the Beloved, so prevalent in Rabia’s
verses, betrays an important aspect of the Sufi conception of love.
Above all else, this is a love that must remain unfulfilled, as Majnun dis-
covered in the palm orchard. After all, as Attar’s birds realized on their
journey to the Simurgh, one cannot begin the Way expecting to com-
plete it; only a handful of individuals will reach the final destination
and achieve unity with God. For this reason, the Sufi is often compared
to the bride who sits on her marriage bed, “roses strewn on the cush-
ions,” yearning for the arrival of the Bridegroom, though she knows
he may never come. And yet, the bride waits; she will wait forever,
“dying from love,” aching for the beloved, crying out with every breath,
“Come to me! Come to me!” until she ceases to exist as a separate entity
and becomes nothing more than a lover loving the Beloved in perfect
union. As al-Hallaj wrote of his experience of unity with the Divine: