Daliah Merzaban reflects on forming a heart connection with late Mevlevi Shaikh Suleyman Hayati Dede
It was through seeing a photograph of late Mevlevi Shaikh Suleyman Hayati Dede several years ago that my heart learned how to deepen a connection with a being I’ve never met in the flesh. In this black and white image, Suleyman Dede is seated wearing a suit, with a single white rose on either side. He sits before an open window, lips pressed together in a subtle smile, eyes gazing lovingly at a beloved beyond the camera and, in my imagination, a Beloved beyond space and time.
Dede’s smiling eyes captivated me so deeply that I kept the picture as the background image of my phone for months, so his face would be the first one I saw in the morning and the last one I gazed upon before sleeping.
Sometimes, I would imagine the photo was taken in the early 1980s in Konya, Turkey, and that the beloved he was smiling at was me, then a little girl thousands of kilometres away in the Canadian prairie city of Saskatoon. As someone who never met her own grandfathers, the mysterious connection forming in my heart for this Anatolian grandfather healed a void of male affection in my childhood.
I can’t explain in any rational way why I was gripped by love for Suleyman Dede, the teacher of my own shaikh and shaikha, the first time my eyes met his in this photograph. Nor can I explain why the connection and guidance I receive from Dede only seems to flourish, like the roses in this image, with each passing year. It is one of the mysteries of this path, a gift from the Most Loving One and the Supreme Giver of Gifts, Ya Wadud, Ya Wahhab.
Of course, it isn’t merely through an image that a heart connection with a murshid, a saint or a prophet is formed. It is through getting to know their character, which I’ve glimpsed through anecdotes shared by my teachers, like this one describing an Ottoman gentleman whose generosity and kindness was so sincere that he would offer to do their laundry.
Suleyman Dede is widely credited for being the reason that Mevlana Rumi’s poetry is now popular in the West; during trips to the United States in the 1970s, he planted the seeds of love for Rumi in hearts far beyond his Turkish homeland. These seeds continue to blossom today, 37 years after Suleyman Dede passed into the Unseen in Konya on Jan. 19, 1985.
On the Sufi path, forming a heart connection with one’s Pir, or the founder of the particular order to which one belongs, is of paramount importance for a dervish. Deepening in love for my Pir, Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, has happened through the gateway of grace opened by my teachers, Kabir and Camille Helminski.
Dew Point 