There is an old tale, retold many times so that it is no longer funny, about Mullah Nasrudin. The old trickster runs a smuggling operation—it is well known but the border guards cannot catch him. When Nasrudin appears at the border on his donkey the guards turn out his belongings and examine his saddlebags and the jars attached to the saddle. There is nothing to be found—every time, no matter how hard they search, the guards must let Nasrudin go (and very hot and bothered and sweaty they are at the end).
Years later, the chief border guard meets Nasrudin in a cafe—he is long-since retired and reclines on a purple cushion with a Shisha pipe and a glass of tea to hand (the leaves percolate in the glass). “Nasrudin, you can tell us now it’s all over,” says the chief border guard, “just what it was that you smuggled all those years.” “Donkeys,” replies Nasrudin.
This is not just a weak joke, it is a mystical insight—just as I say “the cup of tea is on the table” (by the way, did you know Dervishes used to meet in teahouses?). It is an injunction to take mystical and religious insights literally. Hence, for example, we speak about “the Heavens” and over time “the Heavens” have become an abstract other world that may or may not exist—“Heaven” is a place, some invisible place, that may or may not exist (probably not).
Here is the smuggled donkey: the Heavens are the Heavens—the stars above you at night. It is literal. “You will be my little angel in Heaven.” Yes—it was held by the Christians that the faithful become angels, and the angels are stars in the Heavens; long, long ago, in the Arabian desert, the Bedouin worshipped sages who turned into stars—you see, there is another type of star, not visible, that manifests in certain conditions; and these relate to the visible stars.
“We appreciate your simple and childlike faith—here, we have prepared a seat for you at the children’s table; you can wear a paper crown and a little badge that says ‘I am special’ (God knows, even the children are more sophisticated than him).” Thus it was I began my career as a donkey-smuggler; everyone points at me and says “he’s up to something”, he’s playing the fool, he’s not so innocent—yet every time we search him we find nothing. It has always been the same. You think it is a complicated scheme to smuggle illegal goods, but it is very simple—Heaven is before you every night; and the tomb is empty.