But Layla was not superstitious. She was a graduate student in medieval Islamic esotericism, and her thesis was due in three months. The only complete manuscript of Shams al-Ma'arif in North America sat in a climate-controlled vault at the University of Michigan, accessible only to tenured professors with three letters of recommendation. Layla had tried. She had been denied.
The 13th letter of the Arabic alphabet. The letter of the sun.
That night, she dreamed of a desert where the sand was made of letters— alif , lam , mim —and a voice said her full name, including her mother's mother's name, which she had never told anyone. shams al ma 39-arif pdf download
It read: "You are on page 1,001. There are 1,001 more pages. The sun has already risen. The door is open. We are waiting."
She turned to page four.
The next morning, her laptop was open to the same PDF. But the page numbers had changed. She had closed it on page 4. Now it was on page 97.
She read the basmalah —"In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful"—and then the warning on page three: But Layla was not superstitious
"Whoever reads this book without the proper purification and the permission of a living master shall find that the book reads him instead."