at his door: - Leave my friend alone! Alarmed but resolute, Malik faced the young man who was seated in his courtyard smoking his pipe. - Why, what has happened, why are you back again? - I haven’t come to scold you. Just to tell you I heard those words telling me to leave you in peace. I will not come back. - Ah, said the young man, I’ll give away this house of mine and all my goods, and set off to travel across the world. Malik said later that he saw the young man in Mecca, destitute, emaciated and close to his end. - My friend, he gasped, I came to see my friend, and now I’ve reached his door at last. And he died. 3. Bichr-Barefoot, drunk in the morning on leftover wine, but clear headed and in good spirits, came upon a scrap of paper on the pavement on which he read the letters that spelt God’s name. All he had in the world that morning were a few grains of wheat to exchange for a glass of wine. He spent them on a grain of musk which he used to perfume the paper, incensed as he was to see God’s name soiled with the mud of the track and the dust of a thousand feet. That night, he heard a voice in a dream: You retrieved my name from the dust. In my turn, I will perfume you for ever with the truth. 4. Sheikh Junayd had a disciple whom he favoured above all the others: this made the other disciples jealous. Junayd, with his understanding of hearts, ordered twenty caged birds to be brought to him. He summoned his disciples and said: - Each one of you must now take a bird to a place where no one can watch you; kill the bird and bring it back to me here. The disciples went away, killed the birds, and each one brought back a cadaver: all but the favourite, who returned with a living bird, flapping its wings, on his wrist. - Why did you not kill it? Junayd asked. - Forgive me, but Master Junayd, you told us to we should choose a place where no one watches; but God was watching me everywhere I went. Junayd smiled. The other disciples listened in wonder and bowed their remorseful heads.
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LIJLA Vol.6, No.1 February 2018