Who Is at the Door?
No Room for Two I's
Masnavi I.3056–3065 · tr. R. A. Nicholson, 1926A certain man came and knocked at a friend’s door: his friend asked him, “Who art thou, O trusty one?”He answered, “I.” The friend said, “Begone, ’tis not the time (for thee to come in): at a table like this there is no place for the raw.”Save the fire of absence and separation, who (what) will cook the raw one? Who (what) will deliver him from hypocrisy?The wretched man went away, and for a year in travel (and) in separation from his friend he was burned with sparks of fire.That burned one was cooked: then he returned and again paced to and fro beside the house of his comrade.He knocked at the door with a hundred fears and respects, lest any disrespectful word might escape from his lips.His friend called to him, “Who is at the door?” He answered, “’Tis thou art at the door, O charmer of hearts.”“Now,” said the friend, “since thou art I, come in, O myself: there is not room in the house for two I’s.The double end of thread is not for the needle: inasmuch as thou art single, come into this needle.”’Tis the thread that is connected with the needle: the eye of the needle is not suitable for the camel.
- Earliest record
- 1278No autograph survives. The oldest witness is the Qoniya manuscript (G), “transcribed in A.H. 677-A.D. 1278”, five years after Rūmī's death. Nicholson's 1930 Appendix, which lists every change G would make to his 1926 translation of Books I and II, records one here, and only in the heading: after “any friend that is ‘I’” G adds “Begone!”. For the ten lines quoted it lists no change.
Whinfield's 1887 abridgement ends on the two I's. Nicholson's full text (1926) runs two lines on, to the needle whose eye is “not suitable for the camel”.
E. H. Whinfield, Masnavi i Ma'navi (Trübner's Oriental Series, 1887), Book I, the section headed “Till man destroys ‘self’ he is no true friend of God”, ending before Story XII; Nicholson 1926, Book I, vv. 3063–3065, p. 167.
A man knocks, says “I”, and is sent away; a year later he answers “thou”, and is let in.
More context
Mathnawī I.3056–3065, the tale Nicholson's running head calls “The Friend who said ‘I’”. A man knocks at a friend's door and, asked who he is, answers “I”; he is told there is no place for the raw at such a table. He spends a year burning in separation, returns, and to the same question answers that it is the friend himself at the door. He is admitted because there is not room in the house for two I's, and a double thread will not pass the eye of a needle. The tale follows directly on the lion who hunted with the wolf and the fox and killed the wolf for speaking of “I” and “thou” in his presence. It also follows Rūmī's verdict at I.3055 that whoever says “I” and “we” at the door is turned back. The closing camel and needle's eye is also a Qurʾānic image (7:40), said of the arrogant. After a digression on God's power, the welcome resumes at I.3077.
Light
The refusal becomes part of the welcome: the year of absence “cooks” the raw man, so the closed door prepares him.
Shadow
It follows a lion who flays a wolf for saying “I” and “thou”: grace from inside the house, terror from outside it.