Before this goes any further, I should probably explain that Ray is my fencing master. That isn't to say that he's my fencing coach or some guy who teaches me the sport of fencing in school—he's the genuine article, which is somewhat rare these days. In other words, his job is to teach professionally how to kill somebody really and truly dead with a sharp sword. What with the rarity of dueling these days and all, it's easy to see why classical fencing masters aren't in demand very much any more. What a nice Jewish boy like me is doing studying such a thing is another story in and of itself. He's also, uniquely enough, Muslim, which is where the sufism comes in. A sufi, as I understand it, is an Islamic holy man, sort of like the Lubavitcher rebbe was to the Lubavitcher Jews, or what St. Francis was to the people of medieval Assisi. He's a mystic, a man who seeks personal experience of and communion with God. This sounds somewhat trippy to the enlightened modern mind, which is perfectly willing to accept the outward trappings of anyone's culture, just so long as nothing really personal (like religion) comes into it. But, since I have the utmost respect for Ray, and since I trust him implicitly, and since I promised to edit an article he had written, I was more than willing to broaden my mind, at least for a few hours one Friday night.

I caught a ride down from Boston with Dr. Glick and Isabelle, who are, respectively, a professor of Medieval Spanish history at B.U. and a really cute grad student from France who's studying for, of all things, her doctorate in French literature. The trip was amusing, at least, since Dr. Glick got to listen Isabelle and I chatter like magpies the whole way down. Apparently, one thing that the French and the Jews have in common is that we never shut up. This gave rise to speculation upon other similarities, and even ideas of unifying France and Israel into one country, thus creating a new and completely obnoxious people who (a) never lose a war and (b) have an impeccable sense of style.

They dropped me off in one of New York's more lovely neighborhoods-- 38th and 7th Avenue, right by the Port Authority—and I walked a block to the address that Ray had given me. I knocked on the door, which was presently answered by a gentleman in a red turban, which, as I later found out, was red because he was from Africa.

"Er... I'm looking for Ahmad Abdur Rashid," I said, giving the name that Ray had told me to ask for him by. "And do you have a bathroom? It's been a long trip from Boston."

He led me in. I removed my shoes and left them by the front door, and took the book and paper that I had brought to give to Ray from my bag. The book was Terry Brown's English Martial Arts, which I had picked up on a recent trip to England, whereas the paper was my own doing, a work on the historiography of fencing that I wanted to show to Ray before I handed it in for the history seminar that Isabelle and I were both taking. Giving these two items to Ray and getting his article to edit were the ostensible reasons why I had come to New York, though as he himself said, "There are no coincidences."

I was led downstairs to a basement that was decorated in a style that I might call "high Fatamid." It was carpeted and hung with cotton/poly knit oriental rugs and filled with people sitting on cushions wearing traditional Middle Eastern clothes, as if someone had transported a bit of medieval Arabia or Ottoman Turkey to Manhattan. The men sat in one part, and the women in another. At one end was the center of attention, a great round man with a long white beard who, quite frankly, looked like a sheik. This wasn't Disney's Aladdin version; this was the real thing.

"Ken!" Ray waved me over, after I had stumbled over seated parishioners and plates of lamb and rice on my way to and from the bathroom.

"Maestro," I breathed, executing a clumsy half-pirouette, tripping over three people, and falling onto a cushion.

"There are no masters here," he said as I handed him the books. "Here, we're just about to eat. If you have any questions, be sure to ask."

Now, I should inform the reader here that telling me that I'm free to speak up and ask any questions that I might have is sort of like a benevolent uncle giving a pyromaniac ten-year-old his own charge account at a fireworks warehouse the weekend before July 4. It's like giving a homicidal maniac a hunting license and telling him that it's perfectly OK for him to go to the sporting goods store and stock up on shotguns and ammo. It's like trying to get your pit bull terrier to wear that adorable sweater that your grandmother knitted for him. In other words, it's quite likely to have severe, though not entirely unforeseen, repercussions.

Dinner was served, someone handed me a plate, and the sheik led a blessing. We took a lick of salt, and I gave Ray all my rice and lamb, since I'm a vegetarian, and chowed down on pita bread, yogurt, and some salad, because I was starving.

"So, what's happening?" I asked.

"We're going to pray," Ray said. "In fact, you're very privileged—you're one of the few non-Muslims to ever see this prayer, because we're going to pray the names of Allah."

Like a teenager with the keys to his father's new Ferrari, the question came tearing of my mouth:

"But if God is the creator of all, and superior to all his creation, and therefore the greatest thing that is or that can be, even beyond the human capacity for imagining it, if God is that-about-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought, so great that we can't even describe him in human terms and human language, then how can we ascribe names and qualities to God without it being idolatry?"

Before you give me credit for being really, really smart, I should say that this is a bit of argumentation from Anselm of Canterbury, an 11th century ecclesiastic and pre-Scholastic theologian. Being a grad student in Medieval history is really useful for picking up bits of trivia that are of little or no practical use, unless you plan to make a living as a game show contestant.

"That's a good question," Ray said. "I don't know the answer, but I know who does. Why don't you ask the Sheik?"

"I don't want to ask the Sheik," I said. "I want to sit here and be quiet and respectful."

"No, ask the Sheik," Ray said. "It's OK, he won't mind."

So, I found myself shoved forwards in front of the Sheik, timidly recounting my question and expecting him to, at any moment, shout "Infidel!", pull out a scimitar, and take a swipe at my head.

"That's a good question," the Sheik said. "So, if what you say is so, then we have no connection between the human and the divine, and we are not responsible for our actions. This is not so: How could a god that is infinitely good and infinitely just allow this to be so? The names, or, more properly, attributes of God, as you call Him, are revealed to us by the Prophet. He tells us in the Quar'an not to call him 'God,' but 'Allah,' and it says that He is infinitely good, and infinitely just, and..."

The sermon went on for a long time, and I can't recall all of it. Honestly, I felt a bit cheated. He had pulled the "divine revelation" card, which is sort of like bringing a gun to a knife fight. Saying, "But God said this himself!" effectively pulls the plug on any other form of debate.

After the disputa, the lights were turned down, everyone gathered on the floor around the Sheik, and the fellow who had answered the door for me began a prayer that sounded like a cry to assemble for Armageddon. They all responded in chorus and began something that was partly a hypnotic chant, partly a football cheer, and partly like the Hebrew prayer that I remember from my compulsory childhood attendance in synogogue. Considering the success of the monks of Santa Maria de Silos' Gregorian chant album, it would have made a best-selling New Age album if the Sheik wanted to deal with the shaitans of the record companies. It was weird and beautiful, and unlike anything I had heard before. It was also far too long, since I had to meet some friends in the Village, and since my legs fell asleep from sitting on the hard floor. Still, I remained absolutely quiet and as still as I could, despite the fact that I very soon lost all feeling in my lower extremities.

After the prayer, which was actually a series of prayers that lasted about fifteen or twenty minutes, we all stood up and shook hands all around, as if after a little league game. I apologized for not being able to stay for tea and theology, said goodbye to Ray, and split for downtown. A couple of guys who I knew from their having stopped by the fencing salle walked with me, gave me their blessings that I should have a safe journey since I was now "under the protection," (which, in that neighborhood, I was grateful for), and showed me where the train was.

I was only about an hour late to meet my friends Puppy and Elizabeth in this little hole-in-the wall in the East Village called Sophie's. I needed a drink, after which, I had another, after which we adjoined to the Kiev so we could eat something more substantial than pita bread and salad. The rest of the weekend I spent in rather more worldly pursuits, and came back to Boston with Isabelle by train on Monday afternoon, with the article on la verdadera destreza, the 17th-century Spanish rapier school, that Ray had asked me to edit for him tucked safely into my bag. Tuesday, while re-typing the swordsmanship article into e-mail format to send back to Ray, I took a moment to drop a line to Dr. Glick to tell him about my weekend.

So you treated it like any other seminar, he e-mailed me back. The Sheik was like any other professor... You're lucky to have your head still attached to your body.

No—it wasn't my idea! I was pushed! I replied. Besides, it's not like I ever use my head.

Well, he wrote back. At least it sounds as if it'd make for one of those weird stories that you're always writing.

He had a point. All things considered, I think that I'm a little over-verbal. Sometimes it's better just to shut up and listen.