A Muslim Suicide

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100 2 Six months have now passed with no news from my students. Perhaps our last session together made them feel that, since I was now in retreat, their visits were somehow bothering me and I preferred to do without them. Then again, maybe the trials and tribulations of life in our times have kept them away. Even so, I’m sure that my quartet of close confidants will be back, even if the time-lapse is a year or more. Throughout the days and weeks I’ve gone back to reading books on Sufism and theology that I had brought with me as part of my baggage, and others in copied form that I got hold of through the good offices of the person in charge of the zawiya and a shaykh named Isma‘il al-Tadili who was a vigorous proponent of the cloistered life. So, in addition to reading the Risala of al-Qushayri* and the Ihya’ ‘ulum al-din of al-Ghazali, I undertook a concentrated study of Manazil alsa ’irin wa-zad al-‘arifin by ‘Abdallah al-Ansari al-Harawi, Dalalat al-ha’irin by ‘Abdallah Musa ibn Ishaq ibn Maymun [Maimonides], and Fusus al-hikam and selected chapters from al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya by Muhyi al-din ibn al-‘Arabi. Truth to tell, the sheer perfume given off by the sublime fascinations of this treasure -trove of brilliant Islamic learning stayed with me even when I had to attend to my own personal needs. I might be asleep or taking a stroll, but I would still be able to smell and relish the scent. So research took up most of my time, only interrupted by my modest attempts at prayer and other beneficial obligations. My own love of learning was undoubtedly my most cogent driving force, but the thing that gave it an even sharper edge was that, once in a while, snippets of my missing manuscript would come to me in a flash. I used to write them down at once in case I could use them to recall a larger segment of it. A Muslim Suicide | 101 At the end of each week I used to take walks, and that too helped sharpen my mind and enliven my spirits. The one I liked best led me to Jabal Musa ibn Nusayr* to the west. I used to stroll around there, enjoying the gardens and orchards watered by fresh springs and full of sweet basil and fruit trees. There I joined other people picking the luscious fresh fruit. Occasionally I would come across an ascetic who was not actually picking but merely watching in amazement , or still another who simply stared in wonder at the gorgeous flowers and tree blossoms as they opened up. Among the most memorable occasions for me was one when I was able to watch a horse giving birth to a foal. “Praise be to the Living One, praise to the Living One!” I would shout repeatedly. At times I might ask a dervish what was the quickest way to get to a particular place I would name. Such a person would then ask me if I were on the road; if I replied yes, he would advise me to keep going and not worry . . . I may forget some things, but I can never forget one particular ascetic, who might have been Jewish, who was facing a wall and addressing it in an audible voice. Among the words I was able to pick out were: “‘O Lord, it is of no matter to me if the weather is bright or gloomy, nor do I have any objections to rainfall and the assaults of fate. No, the thing that I would ask You to do is to dispel my despair at the words of those who would distort the Torah and the equivocations of Ibn Maymun.” I felt no real sympathy for or leaning toward those ascetics, people who combined disorder with compulsion. It was just that, when things got bad for them, I understood and forgave them. Riding on the back of flashes of bogus inspiration, they were full of the wildest notions and gestures. One day I was wandering my way through the Jamal Musa ibn Nusayr gardens with all their natural splendors. I was approaching a particularly beautiful, shady tree when all of a sudden a thought came to me, one that I had no doubt came from the inner core of my missing manuscript. I made...