Tags: mystic
Abby Sher collected thumbtacks and paper clips, traced the patterns on her wallpaper, and prayed fervidly to avert disaster. In another era she might have been just another pious eccentric; today she’s a recovering obsessive-compulsive who has renounced (most of) her faith.
The best-selling poet in America today was born in Afghanistan, practiced a form of Islam that originated in Iraq, and has been dead for 800 years. How did a white man from Tennessee, who doesn’t read a lick of Persian, make Rumi accessible to mainstream America?
