The Conference of the Birds is a Sufi allegory of birds who are looking for its true leader. For this, they consult the hoopoe, an enlightened bird on where to lead them to find the Simorgh, the king of the birds. However, the birds are hesitant, and the journey is long. Not every bird who will embark in the journey will complete it. Forevery hundred thousand, only one will make it through, most will perish.
Despite my love affair with Persian history and culture, I haven’t read much Persian poetry or even Sufi poetry. The Conference of the Birds then, is a good introduction to the doctrine. And though Sufi philosophy is Islamic in nature, it has a mystical tone and in some cases, controversial concepts. For example, at the end of the birds’ journey, they encounter a reflection of themselves instead of the Simorgh figure. The Simorgh is a play on words, meaning thirty birds — the number of survivors of the journey.
The Conference of the Birds made me feel small in a way. I can find parallels of the stories with biblical parables in the New Testament. The examples are cryptic at first, and requires a deeper level of thinking to appreciate. And even then, I feel that with my upbringing and my lack of understanding of Ancient Persian customs and culture that some of these parables ungraspable. I have to read many passages many times, and with some luck, some of them make sense, and some still leave me empty. Nonetheless, all the lines in the poem are worthwhile reading.
We start by reading about the excuses made by the birds on why they should not go in this trip, and the hoopoe’s rebuttals. Each bird represents a form of human weakness and perhaps, you can empathise with all of them. The finch is a coward, the nightingale is a lover, the duck is someone too comfortable on its own surroundings, to name a few examples.
The birds finally embark on the journey across the seven valleys: quest, love, understanding, detachment, unity, bewilderment and poverty. Each of these valleys more difficult than the last. The valleys are the test of faith — even when one acts correctly, is one’s faith beyond doubt? Will you be able to sacrifice everything to cross the valleys to find the Simorgh?
Even though the poems are well-translated, that the poetry flows easily from one line to the next, for me the Conference of the Birds is still a difficult read. It is deceptively simple, especially with Darbandi and Davis’s translation, but some of the ideas are foreign and difficult to connect, especially when Attar goes in a tangent of historical examples and parables with ancient kings. If you are aware of Persian history, this may be relevant, but if not then hopefully there are some explanations in the back of the book whenever these historical figures are mentioned.
But there is a lot of cryptic parables to grasp here, and maybe it is a cultural thing. I am both Indonesian and Australian, but my upbringing is slanted more towards the west. Some of the thoughts, parable-like, seem bizarre in its logic and perhaps harsh. Our concepts of ethics with Western education may not gel with the teachings of the poem.
But there are thoughts that’s resonant and I’d like to keep with me, and I will revisit this book for many, many of its lines.
On distractions:
“But if you sink to its swirl alone
Your head will some mill’s enormous stone ;
The least distraction will divert your mind
From that tranquility you hope to find.” (pg. 87)
On the search of happiness:
“If in this world you seek for happiness
You are asleep, your search is meaningless-
If you seek happiness you would do well
To think of that thin bridge arched over hell.” (pg. 122)
And for sheer poetic perfection:
“I too am lost; I leave no trace, no mark;
I am a shadow cast upon the dark,
A drop sunk in the sea, and it is vain
To search the sea for that one drop again.” (pg. 213)
