The Forty Rules of Love

Many of the characters and situations in Shafak’s The Forty Rules of Love are not what they seem to be on the surface. Ella, for example, seems to be a successful woman. She works part-time for a prestigious literary agency, and she is married to a successful dentist, David, with whom she shares three children. But the reality is that her life is falling apart due to David’s affairs and to her own lack of romantic feelings toward David. Aziz, meanwhile, whom Ella corresponds with over email, seems to be a cheerful and spiritually fulfilled man. While that remains true on some level, Aziz has a much more complicated past. Eventually, he reveals to Ella that he grieved for years after the death of his first wife, Margot, and that he become a devoted Sufi after a long struggle with addiction. His frequent travel and adventure similarly hides the reality that he is terminally ill and has not much longer to live. In both cases, the surface-level appearance of both characters has some truth to it, but it ultimately conceals a deeper, more complex reality.

In Aziz’s historical novel, Sweet Blasphemy, the character Shams is also obsessed with external appearances. He knows Rumi has a spotless public reputation, so he challenges Rumi to ruin his reputation by purchasing wine in the tavern (which is forbidden in his religion) and to take a woman from the brothel (Desert Rose) into his own home. While Aladdin is outraged at many of the things Shams suggests, Rumi sees the ways in which Shams is trying to make Rumi grow by causing him to challenge his everyday assumptions and disrupt his routine. Rumors spread about both Shams and Rumi being heretical, but Shams tells Rumi not to heed the mumblings of ignorant people. Rumi learns both to let go of his own fears about his reputation as well as not to judge others based on how they first appear, which may not be accurate. In The Forty Rules of Love, many of the characters put on external appearances that hide their inner nature, and the novel illustrates how truly getting to know someone involves going beyond external appearances or rumor to see their true nature.