Stain Your Prayer Rug with Wine 195ing the cups of their hearts to the brim; they drank whatever was
poured for them and grew drunk without understanding why.
Kais and Layla kept their feelings secret as they roamed the alley-
ways and passages of the city’s markets, close enough to steal a furtive
glance and share a giggle, far enough not to arouse gossip. But a secret
such as this cannot be contained, and a whisper is all it takes to topple
a kingdom. “Kais and Layla are in love!” someone said on the street.
Layla’s tribe was furious. Her father removed her from school and
banned her from leaving her tent; her brothers vowed to ensnare Kais
if he ever came near. But one cannot keep the baying hound away
from the new moon.
Separated from his beloved, Kais wandered from stall to stall,
from tent to tent, as if in a trance. Everywhere he went he sang of
Layla’s beauty, extolling her virtues to whoever crossed his path. The
longer he went without seeing Layla, the more his love gave way to
madness, so that soon people began pointing him out on the streets,
saying “Here comes the madman! Here comes the majnun!”
Kais was mad, it is true. But what is madness? Is it to be consumed
by the flames of love? Is the moth mad to immolate itself in the fires of
its desire? If so, then yes, Kais was mad. Kais was Majnun.
Clad in rags and stripped of his sanity, Majnun left the city and
wandered aimlessly through the mountains and wastelands of the
Hijaz, composing mournful odes to his absent beloved. He was home-
less and tribeless, an exile from the land of happiness. Good and evil,
right and wrong, no longer had any meaning for him. He was a lover;
he knew nothing but love. He abandoned reason and lived as an out-
cast in the desert, his hair filthy and matted, his clothes tattered.
In his madness, Majnun came to the Ka‘ba. Pushing through the
crowd of pilgrims, he rushed at the sanctuary and hammered upon its
doors, shouting, “O Lord, let my love grow! Let it blossom to per-
fection and endure. Let me drink from the wellspring of love until
my thirst is quenched. Love is all I have, all I am, and all I ever want
to be!”
The pilgrims were appalled. They watched as he fell to the
ground, heaping dust on his head, cursing himself for the weakness of
his passions.
Majnun’s actions shamed his family and tribe, but he himself knew