M6:1681 — بامدادان اطلسی زد در بغل / شد به بازار و دکان آن دغل

Translation: At dawn, that cunning one (the Turk) tucked his satin fabric under his arm / And went to the market and the tailor's shop. Meaning: This verse initiates the story of the Turk and the tailor; the Turk, confident in his own shrewdness, carries a valuable satin fabric to the tailor's shop, intending to test the cunning tailor.

This verse opens one of the Masnavi's most profound allegorical tales, which Mawlana employs to illuminate human heedlessness concerning the precious capital of one's life. The narrative begins with a Turk, intensely proud of his own shrewdness, who bets that no tailor, however cunning, can steal even a thread from his fabric. With this arrogant confidence, he tucks a valuable satin cloth under his arm and sets off for the tailor's shop.

I interpret this story, as Mawlana himself implies, as a vivid allegory for our own existential condition. Mawlana queries elsewhere: "O you who have become a tale and erased from existence / How many tales will you try to test?" We ourselves are "more laughable than any tale," for we squander the capital of our life and soul on the trivialities and amusements of this world. This "cunning Turk" (ān daghal) is, in essence, us; we fancy ourselves clever, yet our supposed cleverness is precisely our heedlessness and the cause of our undoing.

The atlasī (satin fabric) under the Turk's arm symbolizes the sarmāye-ye ʿomr (capital of life) and our hāl (present state or spiritual capacity); it is the essence that should be directed towards knowing God and achieving union, but which slips away through lāgh (jokes and idle distractions). The khayyāt (tailor) in this tale represents the darzī-ye ʿām (common tailor), or rather, falak (the heavens) and rūzegār (time/the world) itself. This cosmic tailor, by engaging us with afsāne va fosūn (tales and enchantments) and lāgh va dastān (jokes and tricks), gradually pilfers our spiritual capital. We, in our heedlessness and intoxication with hollow laughter, close our narrow eyes, lose our intellect, and fail to perceive how the "tailor of time" cuts pieces from the fabric of our existence and hides them between his thighs, with only God witnessing this hidden theft.

This verse marks the entry point into a formidable warning: a warning to "aged children" (pīr-e teflān) who, despite their years, have learned nothing from the charkh-e nadīm-e kardamard (this accursed companion-wheel of time). Instead of guarding the "satin" of their being, they crave another "joke" from life, another "prank," another turn of fortune, whether saʿd (auspicious) or nahs (inauspicious), to either laugh or grieve. Mawlana mercilessly holds us to gaze at ourselves in the mirror of this Turk—a Turk who believes he is clever, yet whose life's capital is being stolen, moment by moment, without his awareness.

Key takeaways

• Humanity's misplaced self-confidence against the world's deceptions is the primary cause of its heedlessness.
• The Turk's satin fabric symbolizes our invaluable capital of life and spiritual state.
• The cunning tailor represents the darzī-ye ʿām (common tailor) or falak (time/the world), which steals our life through futile distractions.
• Lāgh (jokes and amusements) is time's main tool to distract and pilfer from human existence.
• In its heedlessness, humanity laughs at itself while being robbed of its own essence.