A Hadith, Told in the Style of Haruki Murakami
The Hadith is a collection of stories about the Prophet written 200 years after his death. This one is just as valid…
LOWER THY GAZE
The first thing I noticed about the young woman was her stare. Someone trying to focus on a thing a thousand yards away only her eyesight wouldn’t allow it. She doesn’t see me. I had no breath to take as I took in her swan-like neck, the wings that framed her shoulder blades, her bare breasts like twin moons colliding. Perfectly shaped balls of emmer flour glistening in sesame oil. My fingers tingling to knead them.
Spellbound, I dared to lower my gaze even downwards. Her curtains were open. Fluttering. I wondered if this might be intentionally. Who dares be so careless in a world where the sight of flesh is reserved only for the eyes of her intended, on pain of death?
I was too young, too foolish, to know why, but I ran. A Mau cat fleeing a pariah dog that never even knew it was there. Not once did I stop, or look back, until I reached the mountains between Mecca and Medina, where I hid for forty days. The dolomite shell of my cave a wall of mirrors that reflected my pitch-black soul.
The Messenger would know of the sin I had committed. Something inside me just knew. What exactly it was that dwelled within me, that I could not answer.
One midwinter night, maddened by hunger and guilt, I ventured out of my cave. The sky an inky canvas pierced with pin pricks that let in the lustrous glow of the heavens beyond it. I placed my hands on my head, through anguish as much as to hold it in place.
At first, I did not see the man, my vision being so accustomed to only imagining shapes these past many nights. Then I heard a name being called out. A few seconds went by before I realised the name was mine.
“Tha’labah, isn’t it?” The man clarified it was indeed me whom he was addressing. I recognised him as a fellow Ansari from the Banu Khazraj tribe, a shepherd, I believe, with a wiry beard and teeth like tombstones. I momentarily struggled to recall his name. I had the vague memory that it sounded like the beat of a darbuka drum. Dhufaafah, that was it. But instead of greeting him in any traditional way, I heard myself utter:
“Would that you took my soul as you took other souls. And my body as you took other bodies. And not expose me on the Day of Judgement.”
“You sound like a man fleeing from hell,” Dhufaafah observed casually, seemingly unfazed by my wild pronouncement. “The Messenger has been looking for you. He sent Umar and Salman. They’ve been asking everyone around town whether we’ve seen a man who looks like he’s fleeing from hell.”
I do not know how long I stood there with my hands still placed on my head, but when Dhufaafah returned, he now appeared flanked by Umar and Salman.
I heard myself greet them, once again with the words: “Would that you took my soul as you took other souls. And my body as you took other bodies. And not expose me on the Day of Judgement.”
Umar approached me and, to my surprise, wrapped his arms around me in an embrace. Oh, the touch of a human. How I did not deserve such comfort!
“Oh, Umar,” I quivered. “Does The Messenger know of my sin?”
“All I can tell you is The Messenger spoke of you yesterday with tears in his eyes,” is all Umar could tell me.
Following some cajoling on their part, I agreed to join them to return to Medina to meet with The Messenger, on one condition: “I shall only show my face while The Messenger is in prayer.”
Umar and Salman guided me to the mosque at the crack of dawn just as the muezzin atop the minaret recited the adhan to usher in worshippers to the fajr prayer, a melody so mesmerising I immediately fell unconscious. After the prayers I could hear, or imagined I heard in the mind’s ear, The Messenger himself speak.
“I am here,” he assured in a voice as soft and comforting as a blanket. “What kept you away from me, oh Tha’labah?”
Upon hearing my name, I dared to venture back into a sentient state. “My sin,” I could only howl.
“Let me recite you a verse that will expiate all sins,” said The Messenger, before delivering the lines from what will become surah al-Baqarah 2:201 once someone writes it down, “Dear Lord, give us in this world that which is good and in the hereafter that which is good, and save us from the torment of the fire.”
I could not see how this absolved me of my sins of gazing upon a naked woman, but as I said, I was too young and too foolish to comprehend much about anything.
The Messenger bid me to rest, and so I returned home to my bed, to writhe in a pit of existential despair. Eight days went by thus, troubling my nearest and dearest sufficiently for word of my fleshly ailment to reach the attention of The Messenger.
I awoke from one in a long series of deathly dreams to find The Messenger in my chamber, my head placed on his lap. I pulled my head away. Through startle or for shame I could not say.
“Why did you pull your head away from my lap?” The Messenger still wanted to know.
“Because it is full of sins,” I confessed.
“How do you feel right now?” He wondered.
“Like there are ants crawling between my skin and bones.”
“And what is it you long for?”
“The forgiveness of my Lord!”
A bright light suddenly blazed into my small, dark room, blinding yet brilliant. There, in the centre of the dazzle and flash, emerged a man of such celestial beauty my eyes spiralled in wonder. With skin as soft as the snow that falls on the Jabal Al-Lawz mountains. Wings that spread more majestic than the buraq The Messenger rode on his Night Journey to the heavens. For I was beholding the herald of visions, the angel Jibreel.
“Verily your Lord conveys greetings of salaam to you,” said the angel Jibreel, in a matter-of-fact sort of way. “He said, ‘if this slave of mine’, that’s you by the way, ‘is ready to meet me, even with an Earth full of sins, I shall meet him with a similar measure of forgiveness.’ So what do you say?”
I was so gratified, so humbled, to hear this, I let out a scream and died.
It matters not to me whether you believe me, but at my funeral, while being carried by pall bearers that included The Messenger leading the procession, I heard someone ask him why he was walking on tip toes.
The Messenger said, “By the one above who sent me with the truth as a Prophet, I swear cannot place my feet on the ground because of the many angels who have come down to help carry this man.”
Allowing myself a long-lost smile, and now eternally rid of my shame, I quietly wondered what the angels looked like without their clothes on…
So creative. Thanks for sharing.