Name: shadows of a sun-darkened land (Extract)
Rating: 5

God is love

Reflections on Shabbir Banoobhai’s

a mountain is an upside down valley

by Mphutlane Bofelo

This talk in Durban, at the occasion of the launch of Shabbir Banoobhai’s a mountain is an upside valley, provides an insightful look at the spiritual and mystical elements of Banoobhai’s writings. It links the writer’s works to the Sufi tradition and discusses some of the impacts of this tradition. Mphutlane wa Bofelo is himself a well-known South Africa poet, essayist and socio-political critic and activist.

Like most of Shabbir Banoobhai’s recent works, a mountain is an upside down valley contains poetry and prose that reflects on the real nature of things visible and invisible to the human eye and investigates the essence of concepts and values such as love, compassion, justice, and knowing God. While the very act of engaging in serious critical reflections of this nature is a bold exercise, it is a much bolder act to actually share these deeper feelings, emotions, thoughts and imaginations with the rest of humanity.

even in the darker aspects of humanity
he sees a flicker of transcendental light

The very act of Banoobhai opening up not only to his immediate family but also to the rest of the world, and sharing with all humanity his feelings, thoughts and reflections, is an expression of love and faith in humanity. It is indeed an act of surrendering the self to the real purpose of our being on earth – knowing the Ultimate Truth. Through deep and serious reflection, Shabbir Banoobhai seems to have arrived at the point where he sees in all human beings and all creatures – in all of creation – reflections of the light of God. Even in the darker and darkest face of humanity he sees a flicker of primordial and transcendental light.

How is this possible? The answer to this, besides in Banoobhai’s own collection, may be found in the assertions of Sheikh Muzaffar of the Sufi Helveti Tariqa: the purpose of remembrance of the creator (Zikr) is to open the eyes of the heart, to make us graduate from seeing with the eyes of the head to seeing with the eyes of the heart. Sheikh Muzaffar says: “If you can see through your heart you will know all men, all things, you will see like a telescope with wide lens. When you see with your heart’s eyes, all space opens for you.”

looking within allows us
to discover buried treasures

Banoobhai’s collection of prose and poetry encourages us to believe that it is complete devotion to immersing the self in the remembrance of the Creator that allows us to see light everywhere. What runs like a thread in this book, and indeed in all his work, is that looking within allows us to discover buried treasures and gain the ability not only to live in the moment but also to see beyond it, so that we are not deluded into living for the moment. a mountain is an upside-down valley, shows us that seeing beyond form, tasting the essence of life, being in touch with the reality beyond the moment, is possible through real awareness.

Real awareness is moving beyond the knowledge and sight of ‘something’, to being within something and ultimately becoming it. In a mountain is an upside-down valley and other works by Shabbir Banoobhai that ‘something’ is love. For Banoobhai it seems, God is love and love is Godly. Loving is seeing God. Knowing God is being in love. Being in love is being in God. It is not enough to know about love, God. Real knowledge is seeing the love of God in everything, being consumed by that love, and ultimately becoming that love.

love is the only thing on the lips of the poet

If you read a mountain is an upside down valley carefully, with the eyes of the heart, you will see that, like most of Banoobhai’s work, it is all about love. The book is a reflection of a person who has arrived at a point where the only thing in his eyes, mind, ears and heart is love, a person who has surrendered his whole being to love, therefore becoming a living expression of that love himself by living for nothing else but to be a loving person. When I read a mountain is an upside down valley, I could not help but think that love is the only thing on the lips of the poet, so much so that, even when he wants to say such simple things as ‘you’ and ‘me’, he ends up saying ‘love’.

I would like to end these thoughts and reflections about Banoobhai’s work with an extract from a poem of my own, ‘This love’, inspired by the writings and thoughts of Banoobhai and Rumi:

This love
It seems to me
Even when he wanted
To say such holy
Things as light
Or utter mundane
Stuff like candle
All Rumi could say is
Shams of Tabrizi
Simply because all
He could see
In the man freed of ego is
Love trapped in nothing but itself.

Reviews:

Shabbir Banoobhai again gives us poems of an intense yet simple lyricism. The simplicity of Banoobhai’s poetry is deceptive. His language is simple, his words chosen with an almost austere delicacy. The meaning of his poems is immediately accessible and the emotional appeal direct. His images are the universal ones of land, sea and sky, used with a Biblical economy of detail. Yet the meaning of these poems often has a profundity that yields ever-widening rings of understanding, like a stone thrown into still water.

- Eve Horwitz, University of the Witwatersrand.

September 23, 2014

A luminous work of the heart containing profound reflections on the nature of the Divine, Prophetic and human consciousness, love, justice, peace and war. A genuine and original Sufi primer for the 21st-century seeker, reflecting an important development in contemporary South African spiritual thought, it is both a treasury of wisdom and a hands on learning manual for our times.

- Associate professor Sa’diyya Shaikh, Department of Religious Studies, University of Cape Town

September 10, 2014

I first came to know Shabbir through his poems when I was struck by the clean simplistic line he generally favoured. But the simplicity was deceptive: he made each word (a sign of the true poet) carry great emotional and intellectual weight. An obsessive and talented poet, a precocious master of the Word and a fine lyricist to boot, almost every line of the work was subliminally ignited by the ancient great Islamic poets. He shares their prime qualities: sensuality, passion, brilliance of imagery, a holistic approach to nature, and love of God.

Knowing Shabbir Banoobhai, the man through his work, can illuminate something of the unknown. Here, then, is a further asset to and aspect of, South Africa’s uncommon humanity.

- Douglas Livingstone – renowned South African poet

September 10, 2014

There are very few book-length sequences of poems and it excites me to encounter this form in the work of a well-known South African poet. To sustain a cycle of poems is to begin to dismantle the barriers between a novel or short story and poetry.

- Joan Metelerkamp, well-known South African poet.

September 10, 2014

at least take off your shoes
when you go dancing
on the heart of god

- From water would suffice – reflections of love

September 10, 2014

when love burns, we call it sun
when love cools, we call it moon

when love falls, we call it rain
when love forms, we call it cloud

- From lyrics in paradise

A wise, distinctive voice – powerful, pure poetry.

- Michael Chapman, renowned anthologist of South African poetry.

September 18, 2014

This novel is a bold experiment and includes some wonderfully supple writing. It is full of ideas – more than one can say for many novels. I like the ease with which it shifts from narrative action to lyrical description to philosophical speculation – unusual, intriguing.

- Ivan Vladislavic, well-known South African novelist.

September 18, 2014

In the body of South African writing, his is a rare voice with the courage and the artistic skill to articulate a contemporary spirituality convincingly. The utmost simplicity of expression is used to conceal and reveal, at one and the same time, ideas of intense profundity. The poems are often meditative songs of love, longing and loss in a mystical world but as often remain rooted in the social and political struggles of this world, as depicted in the stanza above taken from the poem ‘sarajevo’ for which he received the 2001 Thomas Pringle Award for poetry.

- Kobus Moolman, poet and academic, University of Kwa-Zulu Natal.

September 10, 2014

In Leadership as Healing, Shabbir Banoobhai has crafted a journey into the deepest heart of leadership that is both pragmatic and poetic...Leadership as Healing is a resource that I would find essential to use in my academic work and experiential training.

- Professor Kriben Pillay, Graduate School of Business and Leadership, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa

March 29, 2017

Shabbir Banoobhai’s brilliant exposition on leadership is an invaluable approach to reperceiving the nature of leadership in the coming century. All aspiring and established leaders should read this book and share its lessons widely to transform themselves and the communities they serve.

- Dr Koffi M. Kouakou, MD, Stratnum Futures, Formerly Senior Lecturer at the Wits School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand

March 29, 2017

I was able to read this novel in one day, in an almost uninterrupted swathe. I could not put it down; it was too compelling, also too demanding. Hypnotic ... I like it very much it indeed. The tension in the three love triangles rises to a nearly unbearable pitch, and the overlapping and interweaving of the triangles is extraordinary. So much is not said or explained, almost too much so; but the craft of it lies in the unanswered questions … I felt sorrow when the pages came to an end. I had become so invested in the characters. I wanted more!

– Dr. Helen Moffet, South African academic, poet and editor.

September 25, 2014

A river that flows downhill needs to hold itself together to reach the sea. In its flowing to the sea are important lessons in oneness and togetherness. Water needs to combine with water to build the momentum it needs for its journey. But how does a river flow upwards, to refresh the source from which it began?

- From the mirror’s memory

September 10, 2014

I am fascinated … In tone, and in the sections set in an indeterminate time and place, it reminded me of JM Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians, although its worldview is less harsh, more forgiving, and suffused with a sense of what one can only call love. It also carries whiffs of David Malouf’s An Imaginary Life. The story seems to operate on a meta-level, although it is free from the overly clever games of postmodernist meta-fiction.

- Rustum Kozain, award-winning South African poet.

September 25, 2014

Help us to see your presence everywhere;
in the mule carrying a load of concrete blocks,
its drooping tongue covered in flies;
in the darkness forever fighting for its share of light

- From dark light – the spirit’s secret

September 10, 2014

In these reflections, meditations, prayers and poems written over a month of fasting and shared daily with his friends via email, Shabbir Banoobhai describes the journey of love as a ‘journey of the heart, in the heart, from the heart, to the heart’ and his experience as:

one of spirit engaging with spirit – sometimes trying to remove the veil of selfhood that covers our hearts, or that of ignorance covering our faces.

- From lightmail

September 10, 2014

The collection in your hands is an inspired and an inspiring one.

The poems, essays and reflections challenge us to see the Divine without creating a God limited by our preconceptions. They remind us of the presence of beauty everywhere, of our essential oneness, the need for a life of compassion, and the uniqueness of love.

- Omid Safi, Professor of Islamic Studies, University of North Carolina.

September 23, 2014

Shabbir’s works present us with a language of lightness to help us navigate our way through heavy issues while at the same time it is woven through with the key metaphor of light, the opposite of or complement to darkness, a metaphor with strong spiritual association. This darkness is also the darkness within our selves, in those aspects of mind and being closed off to the human spirit or divine soul, and which for the spiritual seeker is strived against in religious terms and for the secular individual in moral terms.

- Roshila Nair, editor of the collection

September 10, 2014

wisdom in a jug contains reflections of love and wisdom – wise loving and loving wisdom drawn from an eternal well, restoring to all who love, the preciousness of the gift of love.

knowledge
is the garment of the heart
its stitches – god’s beautiful names

- From wisdom in a jug – reflections of love

September 10, 2014

In Shabbir’s poetry collection, the drums beat all night, the title which takes itself from a poem about imminent death we see the call for spiritedness even in the face of death. In many of the poems, even those dealing with serious social subjects or about personal hurt, lightness is seen in the poet at play in the world of the imagination, the poet playing with the clay of words and celebrating joyfully wit, humour and the embrace of life.

- Roshila Nair, editor of the collection.

September 18, 2014

"The volume contains pieces on a variety of themes – religious poems, love poems, philosophical poems, poems of social and political concern. Through all of them, one senses the poet’s personality – sensitive, meditative, scrupulous, passionate, humane. Banoobhai’s apprehension of society and its pains and injustices is grounded, then, in an impassioned sense of the possibilities of human expansion and human relationships".

Professor Colin Gardner – University of Kwa-Zulu Natal

September 10, 2014

"Shabbir Banoobhai again gives us poems of an intense yet simple lyricism. The simplicity of Banoobhai’s poetry is deceptive. His language is simple, his words chosen with an almost austere delicacy. The meaning of his poems is immediately accessible and the emotional appeal direct. His images are the universal ones of land, sea and sky, used with a Biblical economy of detail. Yet the meaning of these poems often has a profundity that yields ever-widening rings of understanding, like a stone thrown into still water. Banoobhai’s strength lies in this combination of simplicity and universality. The most outstanding feature of the poetry is that it is infused with such clear intelligence … so that feelings become intelligence and intelligence, feeling…"

Eve Horwitz – University of the Witwatersrand

September 10, 2014

Shabbir Banoobhai seems to have arrived at the point where he sees in all human beings and creatures – in all of creation – reflections of the light of God. Even in the darker and darkest face of humanity he sees a flicker of primordial and transcendental light.

Mphutlane wa Bofelo, well-known South African poet, essayist and social activist.

September 10, 2014

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