A Thousand Yearnings

by Ralph Russell

  It is related that this bird said to Sikandar,‘Go onto the balcony and see what is there.’ Then Sikandar went, and what should he see but a man who was standing on one leg and had a horn put to his mouth and was looking up at the sky. They say that it was Asrafil,the angel who will sound the last trump on Judgement Day. He said to Sikandar, ‘Sikandar, why have you left your kingdom and the light of your country and strayed into this darkness? Was not that enough for you?’ He said,‘I have come to drink the Water of Life, so that the Water of Life may give me increase of days and I may worship God.’ Then Asrafil (on whom be peace) put into Sikandar’s hand a stone like the head of a cat, and said, ‘I have awakened you from heedlessness. Now go! And restrain your greed!’

  Then Sikandar, without gaining the Water of Life, came back to his armies. And all joined forces and went their way together. In the darkness of the way they saw beneath the trees growing on heaps of refuse, pieces of rock gleaming like rubies that illumine the night. They asked,‘What is all this?’ Luqman, the wise man, replied,‘These are stones. He who picks them up will in the end repent it. And he who does not pick them up will in the end repent it.’ In the end some picked them up and some did not. When they came out from the darkness what should they see but that all were gems—rubies, and beryls and garnets and turquoises and emeralds. Then those who had not taken any began to regret it, and those who had taken some regretted that they had not taken more.

  Sikandar asked Luqman the Wise,‘What is the meaning of the stone that Asrafil gave me?’ Luqman said, ‘Put your stone on one side of the balance and the stones of all the others on the other side. See which stone is heavier.’And they saw that Sikandar’s stone was the heavier. Then he asked Luqman the Wise,‘What is the mystery of this?’ He said,‘Now take all their stones off the balance and put a handful of dust in the scale.’ When he did so then both scales of the balance came level. Then he asked Luqman,‘What is this?’ Luqman said, ‘Exalted God has given you kingship from the East to the West. Even so you were not satisfied. But your belly will be filled with a handful of the dust of the grave.’

  When Sikandar heard these words he sent all his armies away from him. And they went away each to his own country, and Sikandar remained there and occupied himself in worship. After some days he died, and was buried there in a coffin of gold. The story is told that at the time of his death Sikandar declared his testament to his mother: ‘After my death grant my soul this heavenly reward, and feed those that are fatherless and motherless, and the poor and helpless, and the widows and destitute and needy.’ When his mother heard this she began to weep bitterly; and she fulfilled his wish.

  Guests are Pests

  KHWAJA HASAN NIZAMI

  It was December, and very cold. Twelve o’clock at night. Lightning flashing and thunder rumbling, and rain falling. My servants had gone home to sleep, and my wife and children, snug in their quilts, were also fast asleep. I too, wrapped in two quilts, was asleep—two, because one is not enough to keep me warm. Suddenly I was awakened by the noise of people shouting and knocking at the outer gate. Several of them were shouting together. ‘Wake Khwaja Sahib up! He has visitors! Open the door! We’re getting wet through!’ Pyare Shah Peshawari’s lodging was near the gate, and he had a servant with him, but neither of them spoke, either because of the cold and rain or because after a full day’s hard work they were sleeping so soundly that they did not wake up. I got up, wrapped a blanket around myself and went out. I was shivering and my teeth were chattering and I could not speak. But out of consideration for these visitors I went to the gate and opened it. Meanwhile my servant too had woken up, heard me calling him, and come out. I saw five men standing there, soaked to the skin, and shivering with the cold. None of them had bedding with him.

  It was dark. I could not see their faces, and I did not recognize any of their voices. All the same I invited them into the men’s part of the house, switched on the light, and asked them to sit down. I then enquired where they had come from at this time of night, and who they were. One of them replied,‘First get us some dry, warm clothes. We’ll talk when we’ve recovered from the cold.’ I told the servant to open the box and get out blankets and loincloths and give them to them. My visitor said,‘Loincloths? In this cold? Good sir, get us warm paijamas and shirts.’ I said, ‘I keep blankets and quilts for any visitors who may come, but I am sorry to say I have not had warm paijamas and shirts made. Please forgive me. For the present, take off your wet clothes, put on these loincloths and wrap yourself up in the blankets. I’ll send for a brazier right away and you’ll soon be warm.’ My visitor got cross at this and said, ‘We came here thinking that it was a godly man’s house we were coming to and he’d have everything that guests need. But I see there’s practically nothing here. All right, give us the loincloths. We don’t want to catch pneumonia. We’ve been wearing wet clothes for the last hour.’ Then, in the next breath,‘All right, order some tea for us. We’ll eat a little later. For the present tea will do. It’ll warm us up. If you tell them to put cloves and cinnamon in the tea we’ll enjoy it more, and it will warm us up better. And order eggs for our meal, with quite a lot of chillies.’

  Up to that point I had overlooked their rudeness in my concern to take care of their needs, but when I saw that here they were, complete strangers behaving as though they owned the place, and without any regard for the inconvenience they were causing others, I laughed and said, ‘No, my good sir, just wrap yourselves in your blankets and go to sleep. It’s bad for your health to drink tea in the middle of the night, and as for food, it’s virtually poison at this time. Just keep repeating the name of God and you’ll very soon be warm.’ Meanwhile my servant brought the brazier in and set it down between the beds. My visitors laughed out loud, and one of them said,‘Just look! This saintly man is like a stone. We’ll get nothing out of him.’ He went on,‘Listen, good sir. We’ve had nothing to eat all day. There’s nothing along the line from Nagda. You can’t get anything to eat anywhere. And the train was late. When we got to Nizam-ud-Din it was twelve o’clock. We asked the ticket collector where we could stay and he sent us to you. “He’s a godly man,” he said,“and an extremely hospitable one. He always has room for hundreds of guests.”’

  I said,‘Listen to me. When I intend to visit someone I inform my host eight days beforehand. I tell him that I will arrive at such and such a time, and shall have my servant with me, that I don’t eat rice and don’t drink tea, and that I shall bring my bedding with me and stay only one night. And I expect anyone who wants to stay with me to do likewise. That is what “courtesy” means, or, in English,“behaving like a gentleman.”And when people go against these standards—come without warning, at an inconvenient time, without previous acquaintance, I call them not guests but pests.’

  At this he got angry and said,‘I see! You’ve embraced the New Light.* We’ve made a grave mistake in coming here, and I can promise you we’ll never come here again. But at the moment we need tea and food. If we get neither we’ll be dead by morning and you’ll have to get five graves dug and provide five shrouds.’

  I said, ‘No matter. To provide graves and shrouds is a meritorious act, and I will gladly do you this service. And if you care to express any last wishes I shall hear what you have to say and fulfil your bequests.’

  One of them was a maulvi,†and he now began to expound the merits of hospitality towards guests.‘What evil times we live in!’ he said. ‘Even people like you have banished, both from your hearts and your conduct, the concept that guests are a blessing. Your predecessor Sultanji even on his deathbed asked whether any guests had come, and said that if so they should be “made welcome.”’

  I said, ‘Have I not made you welcome in getting out of my warm bed in all this cold and rain and inviting you in and giving you shelter? My servant is only human, like yourselves. He’s already done a full day’s work. How can I ask him to make tea at this time of night? This place is a village. I can’t get milk at this time.
’ He said, ‘You must have tinned milk in the house.’ I said, ‘In the first place, I don’t like tinned milk. And secondly, even if I did, I’m not willing to trouble either my wife or my servant at such a time. So goodnight—sleep well. If we live, we’ll meet in the morning.’ He said,‘So are we to spend the night repeating qul ho vallah.’*

  I said,‘Yes. First recite qul ho vallah, then,“in the name of God” and then auz o billah,†so that God may bless you and make you human, so that you will never again have the effrontery to arrive anywhere in the middle of the night and announce “Like it or not, we are your guests.”’

  I did then signal to the servant and he brought tea and biscuits and eggs. I stayed awake until two o’clock, and when they had had tea and food and gone to sleep I too went to bed.

  My visitors woke up at ten o’clock and took a bath in hot water. My servant had dried their wet clothes in front of the fire, and they got dressed. After they had had their breakfast I began to converse with the maulana, the expounder of Islam.

  I said,‘Maulana, if you found anything I said to you last night offensive, please forgive me.’

  He said,‘Your conduct was unforgivable. You ridiculed me, and he who ridicules even the slipper of a Muslim divine is an infidel.’

  I replied, ‘Perhaps you do not know that on five occasions, fatwas have been issued declaring me to be an infidel, each bearing the signatures of a hundred and fifty maulvis. If by insulting you I have again become an infidel, well, I was a five-fold infidel already. What difference can that make?’

  He said,‘Do you know how hospitable to guests Hazrat Ibrahim‡ (peace be upon him) was? Even angels from heaven used to come to him in the form of guests. And our holy prophet Muhammad (peace and security be on him and his progeny) used to entertain even guests who were not Muslims. He would give a guest all the food he had in the house and himself go to bed hungry. He would give up his own bed for his guest to sleep in. On one occasion a non-Muslim guest excreted in his bedding and ran off while it was still dark. The prophet washed the excrement off with his own hands. His companions pressed him to let them do it, but he refused and said,“This is my guest’s excrement. I will wash it myself.” It so happened that this guest came back to collect something he had forgotten, and saw what Muhammad was doing. Whereupon he fell at his feet and became a Muslim. Your leader and Imam of all, Hazrat Ali, acted in the same way. And this was the custom of all the most revered men of God. If you revere Hazrat Ibrahim and the Prophet of God, then you should not behave to your guests as you did to us last night.’

  I replied, ‘Respected Maulana Sahib, I am familiar with the hospitality of the prophets and saints and the Muslims in general, and I revere them for it. But in the days when there were no roads, no railways, no cars, and no inns and hotels, simple humanity demanded that hospitality to travellers be looked upon as a matter of honour, and pride, and religious merit. Those were days when because of the difficulties that faced travellers, people very rarely travelled. Travel was regarded as a torment. But today there is rail and motor transport, running from morning to night and carrying passengers in hundreds of thousands from place to place. There are inns and hotels everywhere. And now the same degree of hospitality is not required. And since there are many unemployed and idle people who have made it their trade to make themselves uninvited guests and, on the plea that their luggage has been stolen, asking you to pay their fare, I entertain only those guests who give me previous notice of their arrival or whom I know. These professional guests I look upon as pests. And my apologizing to you was a matter of courtesy; because I still think that what I said to you last night was absolutely right. And I tell my followers too to beware of entertaining uninvited guests like you. Moreover, I am opposed to the entertainment customarily offered at weddings and occasions of mourning—to such an extent that I consider even the marriage banquet in present day conditions to be an occasion for display and hypocrisy.’

  When I said this the expounder of Islam was beside himself with rage. He told his companions that to lodge with a person like me, and to accept his food and drink was a sin. His four companions said nothing. The maulana told them again and again to get up and get moving.‘I am not going to stay here,’ he said. I smiled and said, ‘If you wish I will send for salt and water.’ He stared at me and said, ‘Why?’ I said,‘Because you have eaten and drunk forbidden things last night and this morning. You need to bring all that up, and you cannot do that without salt and water. Or I can send for a peacock feather. Put that down your throat and move it about and you will soon vomit everything up.’

  At this the maulana stood up and said, ‘Curses on any man who ever stays in your house again, and triple pronouncement of divorce of the wife of any man who eats and drinks anything at your table.’ I put my hands together and with folded hands said,‘If your honour will give me your spouse’s address I will write to her today to inform her that you have divorced her in the presence of five Muslim witnesses.’The maulana’s four companions burst out laughing, and the maulana himself laughed. Then he sat down and put on a serious air and said,‘Shahji,* I like your bluntness. And it is marvellous how in the course of what you had to say you spoke of travellers’ luggage being stolen. You seem to be a man of great spiritual powers, because that is exactly what happened to us. All five of us had our luggage stolen during the rail journey. And now we haven’t a single penny left. You will at least have to give all five of us the fare for our journey home.’ I said, ‘Most gladly. I have work for you. There are book pages and newspaper pages here that need to be folded. I will give you your two meals a day and two annas a head as your wages. When you have saved enough to get you home you can go. If you accept, you can have the servants’ quarters to stay in.’ The maulana again got very angry and began to swear at me. And at his insistence his four companions got up and left. And that was the end of the matter.

  I was asked to speak on this theme, and that is why I have told you a story of my own experience. I frequently have experiences of this kind, and Delhi Radio station probably gave me this subject to speak on so that I should present you with some useful lessons to be drawn from it.

  But now I should show you the other side of the picture, and tell you that hospitality and entertainment of guests is the most valuable thing in our Asian culture and eastern way of conduct. If we can get rid of those professional, sham guests that I spoke of and still maintain our standards of hospitality, we shall be preserving an excellent trait in our Asian, Eastern way of life.

  The late Hakim Ajmal Khan once told me of two incidents that occurred during his travels in Europe. On one occasion, he was the guest of an Englishman, and there was enough food on the table to feed several others besides. At this point a poor man, an Englishman, came to his host and said that he had had no food for the last three mealtimes, and was hungry. The host told him he could go to such and such a place that provided food as a charity, and when the man had gone said to the Hakim Sahib, ‘I don’t know whether this man was really hungry or not. There are plenty of bad characters who make up stories like this.’

  Some time later the Hakim Sahib went to Constantinople, the Turkish capital, where he stayed in a hotel. In the evening he went out for a walk and came upon a big garden at the roadside. He thought it was a public garden, and went inside. But in fact, it belonged to the wife of a high-ranking Turkish officer, who observed purdah. (This was in 1911, when Turkish women used to observe purdah.) A maidservant saw the Hakim Sahib and called out, ‘Who are you? And why are you in this purdah garden?’ He replied,‘I am a visitor.’As soon as she heard the word ‘visitor’the woman said,‘A visitor? You are most welcome. Please take a seat in that room in front of you. The pasha is out, and his lady is in purdah. I will bring you some refreshment at once.’ The Hakim Sahib said,‘I am staying in a hotel. I do not need any refreshment.’ The woman said,‘Can a visitor come to a Turkish Muslim’s house and go away without having had anything to eat or drink? Impossible!
That would be the worst insult, the worst humiliation that a Turk could be offered.’ The Hakim Sahib took a seat in the room. The woman first brought him the latest newspaper and a little later, a tray of fruit and sweets and tea, and with it a message from her lady that she was grateful to him for visiting her house and only sorry that the pasha was out and so would not have the pleasure of meeting him.‘When he comes I will congratulate him on his good fortune in having had an Indian Muslim visit his house.’

  These two incidents illustrate very clearly the difference between the West and the East and between European and Asian standards of hospitality.

  In that same year, 1911, I too travelled in Islamic countries. In Damascus I went into a restaurant to eat. There were a number of Turks and Arabs already sitting eating at one of the tables. I greeted them and sat down at a table and the owner of the restaurant served me food. The Turks and Arabs said farewell to me and left. When I asked the owner for my bill he said,‘The Turks have paid for your food.’ I said, ‘Why? Why have they paid? We’re not acquainted. I don’t know them and they don’t know me.’ He said, ‘They were Muslims, and so are you. They were already here when you came, and that makes you their guest. It’s not necessary to know one’s guests. They weren’t doing you a favour when they paid for your food—merely showing that they were good Muslims.’