Finally, after about 20 minutes the doorbell rang. Mustafa had arrived after all. Hajj Mohamed greeted him with his buoyant "Salamskum!" kissed his hand and led him to the couch, sitting between the two of us. He then turned to Mustafa with a twinkling eye and said something to him in Arabic, which made Mustafa’s jaw drop. Mustafa looked over at me, stunned. I asked eagerly, "What did he just say?" Mustafa said in shock, "He said, ‘I just wanted to let you know that I really am a wali‘ullah.’” I almost burst out laughing.
The three of us had an incredible lunch. Hajj Mohamed was irrepressible. He told us that when he was in Makkah at the Ka’aba an angel appeared to him and told him that the Blast of Israfil would take place in 22 years. According to Sufi scholars, the trumpet blast of Israfil signifies the destruction of the world and the end of time. He added, "So be careful of your religion". This was in 1975, which would have meant, if we were to take Hajj Mohamed literally, that the world would end in 1997. Of course, we are still here. This illustrates something else that is often misunderstood about the awliya’ullah. Many outsiders and the uninitiated assume that sainthood (wilayat) is equated with infallibility. According to Shaykh Saleh Al-Ja'fari, the difference between a Prophet and a saint is that Prophets are not allowed to make mistakes – they are, he said, "disciplined by God” – but awliya’ullah can and do make mistakes. God disciplines the Prophets and Messengers. God’s saints are illuminated and possessed of deep spiritual knowledge but they are not infallible. Shaykh Abdul Qadir 'Isa reinforces this point, saying that the disciple should "not believe his Shaykh to be infallible. Even if the Shaykh is in the best of spiritual conditions, he is still not infallible.”**** The most important part of Hajj Mohamed’s message was the admonition, "Be careful of your religion."
He was also adamant that when we sat in circles of dhikr we should not interlock our fingers in our laps, but put one palm in another. He said that the Devil (Shayta) sits with interlocking fingers.
Everything Hajj Mohamed said was linked to practical instruction, basically on how to get to heaven. It was hard to believe that this old man had been shaking with fear less than two years before. He was effusive, joyful, serene and overflowing with good news.
The three of us recited from the Diwan of Mohamed ibn Al-Habib and performed a hadra. Hajj Mohamed’s wife joined us, standing apart from the three of us. She seemed a strange old woman. Mustafa recited from the Qur'an. His voice was ravishing. Hajj Mohamed wept. His wife also wept intensely, almost hysterically.
When his wife left the room, Hajj Mohamed shook his head and said sadly, "She's insane. I cured her once but she has relapsed. I am trying to cure her again, God willing.” He obviously loved her deeply. She was very sweet but very disturbed.
This exchange was a poignant reminder of the nature of the awliya. They are men and women, with human frailties and facing the same troubles and tragedies we all face. Some are wealthy, most are not. Some have wonderful, happy families; some have troubled children or demented wives. Sainthood does not guarantee a trouble-free existence in this life. It guarantees a trouble-free existence in the next life and wisdom to bear the trials of being alive.
I wanted to keep company with Hajj Mohamed as much as possible but couldn’t expect Mustafa to accompany me every time I visited him, so I took to paying him visits during the day. We didn’t talk but sat silently together. I loved his wordless presence. I was so gratified by his response to my gift of honey that I purchased a small bag of sugar with the last of my meager funds to bring with me on my second visit. I was worried about money but bought the gift as much to get the same response from him as to not come empty-handed. In other words, my gift was not spontaneous, from the heart, as my honey pot had been but, rather, something I saw as obligatory.
When Hajj Mohamed answered the door, I gave him the sugar. He frowned and said sharply, "Don't do that again!" It was an admonition to act from the heart, not from the head.
When we sat together Hajj Mohamed would often suddenly get up. He would tell me to wait and he would leave the house and return half an hour or forty minutes later. I came to understand that he was called away through some kind of inspiration, in the way that he had crossed my path to treat my ailing heart. He was an instrument of destiny, acting in concealment, touching ordinary lives, anonymously, without fanfare.
This station is described by Shaykh Mohamed ibn Al-Habib in his Diwan:
"When they make an action, there is no question but that they are just like instruments moved by Divine Decrees.”
During my long layover I was becoming a part of the small community of Sufis in Tangier. I was invited to the homes of scholars and other Sufis. I would perform the Siddiqui wird in darkness after the dawn prayer with two or three devoted fuqara. I would eat lunch daily with a very aged imam who ate in incredibly slow motion. To be courteous, I tried to keep his pace but found it almost impossible. I had submitted my application for a new passport to the US consulate but they needed to send it to the embassy in Rabat for approval. Weeks passed. I would check every few days. Finally, the Consul informed me that the passport would be ready. I was to pick it up at 7 a.m. in the morning. I had wired to my work in London for an advance on my salary and had already received funds to get me back to London. I booked passage on a boat to Algeciras, which was to leave at 8:30 a.m. in the morning.
I walked up the hill from the Siddiqi Zawiya to the U.S. Consulate to receive my new passport. All the way up the hill and all the way down I kept debating whether I should pay a quick visit to say farewell to Hajj Mohamed. I could have made a side trip on the way back to the Old City but it was about 7:30 a.m. and I wasn’t sure whether Hajj Mohamed stayed awake after the dawn prayers or, as many people did, returned to sleep. In any case, it felt awkward to simply knock on the door to say goodbye – a little like my not very well received obligatory gift of sugar.
With a pang of regret I carried on down the hill , bag and passport in hand, into the Socco Checo, the central square in the old town. The square was completely deserted, not a soul to be seen. All the shops were still closed. A café on the square with an outdoor terrace was just opening. I walked in to the bar and ordered a coffee. When I turned around to walk back out to sit on the terrace, perfectly framed by the door, standing alone across the square, was Hajj Mohamed. It was like a scene in a movie. It took my breath away.
I put my bag down by the table and walked straight toward him. We were alone in the Socco Checo. As I approached him he seemed to be preoccupied with something in a small shoulder purse. I greeted him. He looked up and seemed surprised to see me, as if this was pure coincidence.
I told him I was leaving. He prayed for me and said to come back to see him sometime. I knew we would never meet again. He then turned and made his way back up the hill toward the Nouvelle Ville. I turned back to the café and my coffee and then made my way toward the dock to take the boat to Algeciras.
It was the last time I ever saw this great soul. I will never forget him. May God be well pleased with him.
“It is more difficult to recognize the friend of God than it is to recognize God Himself.
After all, God is recognized by virtue
of His perfection and beauty.
By contrast, how long will it take you
to come to know another creature like yourself, who eats as you eat and drinks as you drink?”
Abu’l Abbas Al-Mursi*
ROCK CANDY
During the early 1970s we encountered the last vestiges of traditional Sufism in Morocco, alive with the gatherings of saints and ecstatics, men of transcendent knowledge and blazing illumination. The gross materialism that has long since overwhelmed societies across the Muslim world was only beginning its inevitable corrosive subversion of tradition and spirituality. Televisions and refrigerators were novelties only the rich could afford. Advertising had not yet reached the interiors. Traditional bazaars were the only shopping centers. The mosques were filled with worshippers and the litanies of
the people of the Path were still a feature of Muslim life.
As novices we were naturally captivated by the great Sufi saints, some of whom are described on these pages. In the background were fuqara who had utterly devoted themselves to service (khidma) and remembrance of God; serving tea and food, shopping, sweeping up, cleaning the zawiya, collecting money to pay bills, making repairs to the building, all because of their devotion to their Shaykh and for a reward in the Afterlife. Unrecognized, taken for granted, these men formed the backbone of the Sufi orders and kept the Path alive.
One of the first people I met in Morocco was the guardian of the Zawiya of Mohamed ibn Al-Habib in Meknes. His name was Sidi l'Ayyashi, which meant that he hailed from the village of Ayyash. He had been a builder and had, many decades before, been one of the stone-masons who had built the zawiya. In his later years he lived in and watched over the zawiya.
He was a stern, intimidating man, with the strong physical presence of a bricklayer. He rarely smiled and took his role as guardian of the zawiya very seriously. He was always exacting about where you made ritual ablution and that you wore flip-flops in the toilet; small things. I can't say that I ever got to know him well but I suspect that when he was young he had a hot temper. You could see traces of it in his personality but what was significant was that his personality had been almost completely transmuted by the act of remembrance. Someone described him as rock candy. He was very hard on the outside but very sweet on the inside.
The last time I saw him was in 1981. I had arrived in Rabat on a flight from New York and, passing through immigration, came upon an American couple having trouble at passport control. The U.S. had just changed the size of passports. The passport officer had never seen the new passport size and was refusing to let them in. They were very panicky, so I spoke to the official in Arabic and explained the change and he let them through. They were eternally grateful and, as it happened, we were staying in the same hotel.
They offered to give me a lift to Meknes and Fes, where I was headed. In Meknes I had them leave me off at the zawiya and spent the day with the fuqara.
Sidi'l Ayyashi was still watching over the zawiya with unswerving devotion and caring for the widows of Ibn Al-Habib who lived there. He was very elderly by this time and, if I remember correctly, having trouble seeing. Still, conditioned by my early days as a novice, I was intimidated by this severe, ascetic Sufi.
When the American couple arrived in their car to pick me up, all the old fuqara in the zawiya, including Sidi l’Ayyashi, came out to the street to see me off. These were men who had turned their backs on the world and spent their lives remembering God, "standing, sitting and reclining". They were the sanest people I knew. They could not have been further removed from the two naïve and slightly goofy New York tourists sitting in their rental car parked across from the zawiya.
At the car I said my farewells to these men and climbed in the back seat. I looked out at this cluster of old men and found them leaning in to the windows and greeting the American couple. Suddenly, I saw them through the innocent eyes of these uninitiated tourists. They could have walked straight out of another century, these big hearted, half-blind, gnarled, limping, bearded men, leaning on their walking sticks, in their worn out djellabas, huge warm smiles – anachronisms. At the center of the group leaning through the windows and shaking hands with the Americans and with a wide, genial smile was Sidi l'Ayyashi, this imposing presence I had always been a little afraid of.
When we drove away, the Americans were in a state of near hysterical euphoria. "Wow! Incredible! This is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me! I'll never forget this!" All the way to the spa town of Moulay Ya’coub, where we were headed to take the waters, my companions rhapsodized about the men they met.
I can’t say how long this memory lasted for them but, for me, the stonemason’s radiant face at the window is indelible, the shining badge of a simple life transformed through the alchemy of knowledge, devotion, hard work, service and the constant remembrance of God.
“Know, my son, that God will honor you with sweet and pleasant waters.”
I said, “Are these the waters of Islam, Iman and Ihsan?”
He said to me, “They are”.
I said, “O Messenger of God, shall I alone drink these waters, or myself and whoever follows me?”
He said, “You and all who follow you of my community shall drink them.”
A visionary exchange between the Prophet Mohamed, peace be upon him, and Shaykh Mohamed ibn Al-Habib, may God be well pleased with him*
ALMOND MILK
If you didn’t know anything about him and met him in a dark alley at night, you’d probably start shaking with fear, raise your hands, beg for mercy and hand over your wallet. He was tall, scarred and scary. I forget his name but remember his hard face.
He was, in fact, the polar opposite of this menacing thuggish figure. He was a feature of the bazaars and markets of Fes, patrolling the stalls to make sure both traders and customers behaved themselves. He settled disputes, chased down thieves and pickpockets and generally kept everybody honest. He was like an ex-officio Muhtasib or Sahib Al-Souq, which in traditional Muslim society was the Keeper of Markets and Public Morality. He didn’t get paid for doing this and his role was without any legal basis, but he didn’t need a license. His tough, intimidating presence and moral authority were enough. His real life was away from the bazaars, in circles of remembrance. Here he blended in with the motley crowd of Sufis and submerged himself in the Names of God.
Whenever we would come to Fes, we would escape from the rigors of the Way to indulge ourselves in almond milk at a little almond milk bar frequented by Fesi students. The milk bar was on the second level above a bakery just up the cobbled passage from an entrance to the Qarawiyyin Mosque with glass windows that looked out upon the street below. Students would gather in this brightly lit and garish hangout. Young Moroccan couples stared dreamily across the tables over sweet almond milk and biscuits. It was an early breach of the pristine traditional integrity of the ancient city, but for those of us from the West it was an innocent enough diversion and a fleeting relief from the punishing intensity of spiritual discipline, which could be brutally heavy on our over-pampered personalities.
One afternoon a friend and I were coming away from a gathering of invocation and on the way to another when we decided to take a quick, surreptitious detour to the almond milk bar. We ascended the spiral staircase to the second floor, sat down at a table beside the glass window and sipped the richly sweet infusion. We were in high spirits… until we looked down at the street below and saw the tall, scary faqir staring up at us, frowning. All our levity evaporated when, to our dismay, he charged up the stairs and into the almond milk bar.
"What are you doing here?" he snapped, shaking his head. Suddenly, through this powerful faqir’s eyes, the innocent almond milk bar seemed like an utterly depraved den of iniquity. He shook his head in disgust. "Come on, get up. You're coming with me!" He dragged us away from our almond milk, down the stairs, into the streets and to our next circle of remembrance. "Don't let me ever catch you in that place again,” he scolded. I never went back there. God bless him and have mercy on him.
“The act of worship that is most beloved to Me is giving good counsel.”
Hadith Qudsi *
ENCOUNTERS
“Outwardly, creatures are an illusion; But, inwardly, they are an admonition. Thus, the soul looks at the illusory exterior While the heart looks at the admonitory interior.”
Ibn Ata’illah Al-Iskandari*
THE MAN WHO WANTED
TO GO TO MADINAH
When I first arrived in Makkah I kept company with a friend from America who was living with his wife close to the Holy Mosque and studying Arabic at Umm Al-Qurra University. One day during Ramadan he mentioned that he had given money to a poor man to visit the mosque and tomb of the Prophet Mohamed, peace and blessings be upon him, in Al-Madinah Al-Munawwara.
&
nbsp; When he said this I thought, "What a wonderful thing to do – to send someone to Madinah. I wish I could do that.” For some reason I can’t explain I developed an overpowering desire to send someone to visit the Prophet. I didn’t mention this to anyone but loved the idea of doing it and kept thinking about it.
A few days later, I made the lesser pilgrimage (umrah) after the night prayer with a friend from England. When we finished our rituals, we were relaxing in a circle in the mataf between the Yemeni corner and the Black Stone.
While we were sitting, a man approached our circle. He sat down across the circle from me between two of our companions. Clearly, he was looking for a handout. He asked the group something. I wasn’t paying much attention and, in fact, found his intrusion annoying. I looked across without much interest and asked what he wanted and my friends told me he wanted alms (sadaqa). As I had my money rolled up in my ihram and difficult to get to, I made no move to give him anything. All the others reached for their purses or wallets. It was Ramadan after all and a blessed time for giving.
But the man stopped them and called across to me. Pointing to me, he said, "No, him!" I looked up, nonplussed. "You!" he said. I felt embarrassed because I had no intention of giving anything to this fellow. Then he looked me straight in the eye and said, nodding with a meaningful grin, "I want to go to Madinah!" With a jolt of recognition, I unrolled my ihram and pulled out the bus fare to Al-Madinah. He took it, refused anything from the others and disappeared.
“No deed is more fruitful for the heart
than the one you are not aware of
and which is deemed paltry by you.”
Signs on the Horizons Page 4