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.
- First attested
- 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 the tale at “There is not room for two ‘I's’ in one house.” Nicholson's full text runs two lines further, into the needle: the double end of thread cannot pass it, and “the eye of the needle is not suitable for the camel” (I.3064–3065).
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, answers “I”, and is sent away; after a year burning in absence he answers “thou”, and is let in.
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, and on 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 is what “cooks” the raw man, so the closed door is preparation rather than rejection, and the second answer is learned, not given.
Shadow
Rūmī sets it straight after a lion who flays a wolf for saying “I” in his presence, and the same demand — no self allowed at the door — reads as grace from inside the house and as terror from outside it; the friend never has to give anything up.
