“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”
– William Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet
Last week, I alluded to how the Phoenix must burn for it to rise again and how I thought the structure for the new season is to rebuild what we think we know. We will witness the reformation of a new order this season.
This latest episode makes me realize that not just the order itself but all the major characters such as Meryem, Levent, Cüneyd, Zeynep, Mira, and Sadi have also been torn down and we will also witness their rebirth as they fulfill their destiny (qadr). As such, the epigram for this week is so meaningful. Even if they are no longer recognizable as we knew them, particularly Cüneyd, are their essence any different?
Meryem’s clairvoyance is well known and the old Murşid Hazretleri also had a special place for her in his heart because of the purity of her soul. Through her visions while Meryem is in a coma, we see that many of her paths lead to “La Adri”, the name of Vahid’s sect, which translates to ‘unknown’. Her fearlessness and relentless pursuit for truth sets her apart from the other women in the tariqat and perhaps that is the reason behind Vahid’s mission to take her forcefully out of commission. But, she is coming back better and stronger.
In the upcoming episode’s trailer, we see Meryem telling him that “from now on it is my duty to free not just my daughter, but anyone whose mind, blood, or sins you have corrupted.” She will fulfill her qadr beyond being a mother to Zeynep and Mira, a vision Zeynep had had before her when she wanted to fight for the rights of all girls at the tariqat.
For the first time, Zeynep is in a position to decide the next steps for herself. Does she try to escape or does she stay and fight? Does she tell the truth or does she continue the charade of being pregnant? After an epiphanous experience that is described in more detail in the next section, Zeynep offers her intelligence to Vahid who wants her to decipher complicated social media algorithms and help amplify messages designed to create the kind of social discord he wants. She uses her access to the multitude streams of big data to find Cüneyd’s location, something Vahid’s vast army of morons are yet to do. Zeynep is beginning to blossom on her own, her growth no longer stunted by her mother’s shadow.
Cüneyd lost his way but qadr leads him to the one library that may hold the key to Vahid’s downfall. Books have been his sanctuary in the past and this is where he finds peace again. We see signs of him being able to walk away from Gülayşe’s insistent voice and he goes to find Levent Alkanli despite her constant declaration that he needs to stay away from everyone. He doesn’t remember the details of his past but when Mira quotes a Hayyam verse, knowing its importance to Zeynep and Cüneyd, he is able to complete it without understanding how he could. He is able to converse with Mira in an easy manner but, here again, he may be pulling on his muscle memory of seeing Mira as Zeynep’s friend.
The core of Cüneyd, a loving man full of humility and wisdom, shows through his actions. He is a natural savior and it is his bond with Ashik that leads Zeynep to him. The same Ashik who escaped animal rescuers in the past to lead Cüneyd to the library and Lokman, is now caught at a shelter. Zeynep tracks down Ashik, and ergo Cüneyd, at the shelter. She doesn't show herself due to her sadness at Mira's duplicity, but she found her way to him.
Cüneyd, fractured as he is, is slowly, intuitively and unknowingly drawing to him the forces he will need to rise up against Vahid.
Mira’s character growth from an embittered, angsty teenager to an empathic girl beginning to feel more secure in herself is shattered with Beste’s suspicious death. She turns her anger against the tariqat, and against Zeynep in particular. She projects her own insecurities onto Zeynep and wants to ‘punish’ her for ‘stealing’ her family.
How better to do it than to ‘steal’ Cüneyd from her. In so doing, Mira falls to the lowest depths of humanity as she knowingly abuses the darkness of a mentally ill person, while she keeps him away from real help or the ones who desperately need him. As she learns of her true parentage, it will be a journey to understand Mira’s new rise from the ashes and how she will make room for Levent, Meryem and Zeynep in her life.
Levent is disenchanted and finds refuge in his secularism while he tries to internalize Beste’s death and Meryem’s brush with death. He is disengaging from his practice and getting on a soapbox about how religious constructs and sects are the bane to society. He is focused on identity politics and making direct statements against Vahid’s practice of brainwashing his followers through fear. In his own way, Levent is rising as the foil to Vahid, by taking a diametrically opposite position to him.
Pressured by Vahid, Sadi is forced to hide the true reason behind Beste’s death and in repentance, he spends months locked in solitude. He apparently comes out reformed and willing to pledge his allegiance to Vahid. His is an effort to wipe his slate clean so he can gather his own army against Vahid. Sadi is no longer fixated on protecting the post and the ways of the tariqat. As he foresees the broader social implications of Vahid’s dominance, he wants to fight against it. He has broken through his shell to become a person with a mission who is no longer self-serving.
Each and every major character will morph and fulfill their destinies, and their actions will form a new order in the world with the same players i.e. the two schools of thought; one that needs a divine concept to build a social system around it and one that wants to build a system despite divinity. The rose may no longer look like a rose but the essence will remain the same.
The Conference of The Birds
The Phoenix/Simurgh/Anka hold spiritual significance in the Sufi’s journey to self-actualization. Metaphorically captured through the story of a flock of varying birds who must travel through seven valleys to reach Mount Qaf to seek wisdom from the Phoenix (Simurgh), The Conference of The Birds (Mantık'ut-Tayr) by Persian Sufi mystic Feridüddin Attar essays the real journey as the journey towards oneself.
The seven valleys represent seven stages of love and, one by one, birds who started the journey fall away as it progresses. For example, first the nightingale returned, remembering his love for the rose. The parrot used his beautiful feathers as an excuse for why he could not continue. The eagle could not leave his kingdom. The owl missed his ruins. The heron his marsh. The last 30 birds who persevere and make it to the Simurgh’s nest at Mount Qaf, learn that Si (thirty in Persian) and murgh (birds) were really themselves and each of them was a Simurgh.
It is apt then that Cüneyd uses the parable of birds to help see what Zeynep must strive for. She will learn to fly on her own but, in that journey, she should find her refuge in Mount Qaf where the Simurgh is known to reside. Mount Qaf itself is symbolic in Arab and Persian cosmology as the mountain that connects the earthly realm with the celestial one. And linking this to Attar’s work suggests that Cüneyd is telling Zeynep to find her own journey to herself.
It is interesting that Cüneyd mentions she shouldn’t be like the rock pigeon, the vulture and the hoopoe. Cüneyd says that “do not have a dirty, unkempt nest like the hoopoe bird.” Secondary research suggests that the wise hoopoe was one of the leaders of the flock of birds that fly towards Qaf and is one of the thirty that finish the journey in Attar's poem. For Cüneyd's words to make sense in the context of the poem's background, I can only imagine that Cüneyd is inviting Zeynep to this journey of self-actualization without becoming too comfortable in what she considers her home.
Within the sect, there is special reverence for Cüneyd because of his piety and oneness with Allah. When it comes to Cüneyd “the water stops flowing in the fountains” for the followers. His divine understanding of mystic and Islamic parables has a depth that Zeynep’s sharp mind is intrigued by. Her conversations with Cüneyd are far more spiritual and transcending than the more worldly upbringing she received from Meryem. With him, it is a mutual dialogue that invokes Zeynep’s sense of agency as opposed to Meryem’s prescriptive guidelines that tell Zeynep what to do and how to do it. As such, at a time when she is struggling in her loneliness and oppressive surroundings, her subconscious mind seeks guidance from Cüneyd and not her mother. It is also symbolic of her transition from a little girl under her mother’s protection to a young woman, willing to fly from her mother’s nest.
She wakes up with clarity on what she must do. She needs to create negotiating leverage with Vahid in order to protect her mother. The protected now rises to become the protector.
Saints & Seeds
Kevser says of Meryem that she is like a saint and Cüneyd had said the same of Zeynep after she didn’t complain about him upon his brief abduction of her. This mother daughter duo, Cüneyd and his grandfather embody a divine and spiritual connection to the universe that moves mountains without lifting fingers.
As Zeynep had explained in Episode 4 of Season 1, nature builds around a core or a seed, and that in turn provides the center of gravity around which the world turns. Zeynep, Cüneyd and Meryem are the fulcrum of the story while the other players revolve around them. The love they emanate turns the world, be it in the religious or the secular realm.
Slowly but surely, they will move towards each other and will learn to rise up together in the battle of right versus wrong, light versus darkness. Zeynep’s celestial explanation of how the universe forms will be a central theme in how the new order will also form.
New intrigues are coming with Kevser coming into the tariqat after Müesser forces her to give up her daughter to Zeynep. Feyza’s insanity has reached a new high where she is willing to ally with Zeynep to care for baby Elif because she is a piece of Cüneyd. Müesser’s scorn from being spurned leads her to do one manipulative thing after another, and yet underneath it all is perhaps a genuine desire to remain in the way of Allah as she understands it.
Interpretive differences lead to discord in any system, be it secular or religious, and we will continue to journey with the story as we explore the boundaries of such discord and learn to converge on an order that can turn harmoniously again.
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