Rumi
PROLOGUE
Hot, balmy, and tropical. Thick palm trees lined the streets. I first saw him walking along the ocean, his favorite place to be. He said it soothed his soul. The soft blondness of his hair fell around his hollow cheekbones so that it was only his eyes that one noticed. One could see both the passion of the man and the sadness of the little boy within. It was the mirror of unrest I saw in his eyes that drew me to him. That feeling of separation, which woke me in the darkness of night, that black hour in which no one could assuage my fears. Perhaps I was not alone in my aloneness.
His face was rather odd, both conventional and exotic. He had a suave, cool presence, with impenetrable gray-blue eyes that questioned all he saw and felt, how the universe worked, and what his role was in this vast plan. To him there were no coincidences. Somewhere in his subconscious mind he wanted to believe that we were fated, fated to a love that was beyond his power. He would keep track of all the times we met coincidentally.
It was the night after the great rains had subsided that we began our relationship. We were walking seaside in the dusk of the evening, the clouds still dark from their heavy outpour when we noticed the waves. In slow rolling motion from one end of the pier to the other, like dancers in a sequence, the waves came in, one after another, a brilliant, fluorescent green. He believed the phosphorous waves were surely a sign illuminating the fate of our destiny, to be together. The universe was the mirror of our souls.
