c. Further away was Rumi’s cook. The story we were told by Abdullah is that while cooking for the Master, and the other disciples, he ran out of wood for the fire. So instead, he placed his feet in the fire, to serve as fuel. He was able to finish cooking the food. There are other miracle stories associated with the cook, but it is too much for this little article. His dargah was charged, and the dargah keeper gave us “salt” from him, for our cooking. Aspen took the salt.
Abdullah also took us to an overlook, and the tomb of a local saint, and he explained that Rumi would come to these places with his disciples to get away for a break. After that, took a lunch break, and had more containing cheese bread, this time including lamb, and beef. While I normally avoid red-meat, this time I indulged and wow – was it good. From lunch we went to a small museum that contained clippings from the beard of the Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him and his family). From there we visited the dargah of Hazrat Fahrunnisa, the only female Murshida (spiritual guide) appointed directly by Rumi during his lifetime.[4] She was now in the backyard of someone’s home. We got the feeling that at the time of Rumi the town of Konya was much smaller, and these dargahs would have been in the countryside, not in backyards!
d. Then we found Rumi’s caretaker, a male-nanny, who helped raise young Jelaluddin when the family of Bahauddin moved from Afghanistan to Turkey, fleeing the Mogul invasion(s)… Rumi called him “Camel” since he used to give Jelaluddin rides on his back, and pretend he was a camel, making camel sounds to amuse the child. Rumi loved him dearly. We were exhausted. Ironically, the only dargah my daughter did not visit was that of Murshida Fahrunnisa. It was after this that we went to see Esin Celebi Bayru, the 22nd generation granddaughter of Mevlana Rumi, through his oldest son, Sultan Walad (Veled). When we arrived at her office, which serves also as the headquarters for her “International Mevlana Foundation,” there were already visitors. In fact, I couldn’t immediately tell which woman she was, as there was one woman wearing a turban, and I thought maybe that was her. But no, the woman seated behind a wooden office desk, middle aged, and with the stature of a Germanic woman, with light brown hair, and smiling eyes, bade us sit and kindly bade farewell to the previous guests.
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