NAME: SAWERA AKBAR

5/8/20
THE FORTY RULES OF LOVE

The forty rules of love is a 2009 novel by Elif Shafak. The book tells the story of Ella
Rubinstein, a woman in her late thirties who has settled into the vanity of a life. She exists
without drive or devotion. The narrative follows her unlikely escape from what at first shows up
to be inevitable unhappiness. The novel also distress itself with the deep, brotherly love between
Sufi dervish Shams of Tabriz and the mystical scholar-poet Rumi. The story of Shams and Rumi
comes to Ella through a book she is studying for her new job as an assistant to a literary agent;
that book, Sweet Blasphemy, is a novel about the lives of the two masters and the friends,
enemies, and families they touched. As Ella reads Sweet Blasphemy, she becomes more aware of
the lack of love in her life bracketed to the love experienced by the characters in the book. Ella
inclines to relate to the world around her through her relationships, and her dual roles of wife and
mother. Spitting over the pages of Sweet Blasphemy, Ella grows discontent with her impassive
marriage to David and inspired by the love related by the author, Aziz.
The text of Sweet Blasphemy starts with Sufi dervish Shams of Tabriz’s vision of his own death
and the finding of his body by the master he knows he have to come to find. After years of
wandering, Shams knew that he is meant to be joined with this master in order to learn from him
and for them to discover new ideas about Islam and love together. After waiting of months,
Shams meets Rumi when he went to Konya, a very famous Islamic scholar whose sermons are
attended widely by the masses. Together, Shams and Rumi bring their skills to a sometimes
receptive but often hostile flock who do not understand Shams or the Sufi teachings—the
scholars think the Sufi are guff and the work of Satan. Shams is day and night threatened by
members of Rumi’s family, particularly Rumi’s younger son, Aladdin, whose jealousy
eventually turns to loathing.
As Ella kept to read the story, she begins to research the author and ultimately sends him an
email, introducing herself and sharing about her life. Before long, Aziz and Ella are emailing
each other many times a day, and sparks light as their flirtations begin to come off romantic
feelings. Ella is taken with Aziz’s openness about love and living in the present and begins to
think what it would be like to meet him.
Sweet Blasphemy keeps up, introducing Ella to characters who experience vitriol and then are
renewed through their faith; it also shows that the love and goodness of characters that could be
measured “sinful,” like Muslims who drink alcohol or sell out their bodies for a living. In spite of
the positive message Shams is spreading, his divisive personality and possessiveness of Rumi
continue to bother Aladdin the wrong way, and Aladdin and his friends made a plan to have
Shams murdered. This is not news to Shams, of course—his vision relayed to him that this can
happen when he reached Rumi. In the end, Shams’s warnings that his death will end Rumi are
not heeded by Aladdin and Shams is killed; shortly after, Rumi find out Shams’s body in a well.
These haps inspire Rumi’s poetry, the words were flowing out of him after the loss of his
companion.
Meanwhile, Ella is enduring love and loss of her own. After telling her husband that she wants to
meet Aziz, Ella went to Boston, where Aziz were staying in a hotel. They two soon realized that
the chemistry they had over email is the same in real life and Aziz tells Ella that he loves her
after he takes her to his hotel room. While the two do not experienced these feelings, they spend
in the following days exploring Boston and learning more about each other, deeply engaged in
conversation. At the end of her visit, Ella tells Aziz that she wants to go back to Holland with
him; it is then that Aziz splits the news that he has terminal cancer and no more than sixteen
months left to live. The two separate from each other for few days; then, one evening, after
setting dinner for her family, Ella packed her bags and leaves to be with Aziz.

Aziz and Ella travel the world for a year before they go to Konya, where Aziz’s book takes
place. He dies from difficulties related to his cancer. Ella hosts his funeral and then decided to
live like Aziz did—fully in the moment—and planned to move to Holland, to see where her life
will take her.