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You are in every place,

All the time, in each space,

In every sound I hear your voice,

O God, I see your face.

 

In every breath, each heartbeat,

In every advance, each retreat,

 All the desires and each thought

O God, I see your face.

 

In the branch and the root,

 In the flower and the fruit,

The amber nectar, green shoot,

O God, I see your face.

 

In the humming of the bees,

The swashing of the seas;

In frightful thunder and radiant lightning,

O God, I see your face.

I recall an anecdote once told by the late Shaykh Syed Khizir Ahmad Shah, may Allah have mercy on him, a friend of my father, of the famous Bharera Pir Bari, of Balagonj, Sylhet in Bangladesh, at our house during one of his visits to the UK. I had been fortunate enough to accompany him on some of his visits and have a first-hand experience of an ecstatic Sufi’s life, unlike some Sufis, he was an strict adherent of the shari’ah. On a typical day, he would visit many places, and even before he arrived the phones would be ringing incessantly asking when the Shaykh would come and if he was already here when he would leave; some just want to meet him, for others they sought spiritual blessings from him, others wanted cures to their physical and emotional health and yet for others only miracles would suffice.

His style of preaching was so different and unique; the room typically would be full of people which meant that there would rarely be time for one-to-one confidentials. And in any case the people found it really difficult to ask the Shaykh questions directly due to the respect for him, so the room full of him people would be silent with the air of anticipation for the Shaykh to speak. Now, the Shaykh would suddenly retreat deep into himself and tell stories and analogies which the people would hear with deep intentsity, and in these stories they would find the answers to their questions. In these stories there are many benefits, the least being the entertainment values - for one thing it saved the questioner the embarrassment of asking the question directly, secondly confidentiality is maintained for no one knew the problems of another, just the answers to the intentions and one cannot usually suss out who it was intended towards; and more importantly, everyone learnt the hidden wisdom that are buried deep within these tales.

At times the Shaykh was so normal – acted and spoke like any other ordinary Imam, chatted, joked, laughed and shared his personal emotions – yet at other times even he confides that he does not know why he said or did what he did! He used to disclose “I do not know why or how Qudrat (Omnipotent God) makes me do the things I do”! I have prayed behind him and when he goes deep into his prayers he forgets about the congregation that is praying behind him and finishes the prayers as if he was alone, sometimes he would dash out of the door leaving the people behind in middle of a conversation during his ecstatic raptures, reveal hidden mysteries, talk about what happened to you in the past and confirm or allay your fears, give counsel and point you in a certain direction. One rarely meets a Shaykh of this caliber.

Going back to the anecdote then the Shaykh retold of the classic Arabic love story of poet Qays ibn al-Mulawwah ibn Muzahim, who  fell in love with Layla bint Mahdi ibn Sa’d, whose father refused marry her to Qays during the 7^th century. Qays started wandering in the desert after he learnt of the marriage of Layla to another man before eventually turning mad! So he became known as Majnun (lunatic), and so the story is popularly referred to the story of Layla and Majnun.

Our Shaykh related that one day while Majnun was roaming in the desert a dervish was chasing him from the behind and yelling at him, “how dare you disturb my devotional fixation on the Divine?” “Is there no peace even in the desert from the people when I have shunned society?” Majnun repled, “Who are you, I did not notice you.” The dervish informed him that while he was prostating before God Majnun had accidently trod on his neck without realizing he had done so. Majnun was baffled by this. Majnun remarked, “How strange! We are both lovers and have come to the desert so that we will not be disturbed in our contemplation of the beloved. You are fixated on the Almighty God and repeating the incantation la ilaha illa Allah (there is no god but Allah), and I am merely fixated on Layla an insignificant creature of His, yet your concentration is broken but mine remains intact! How strange! How strange indeed!”

The Shaykh commented that for Majnun the repetition of the name ‘Layla’ incessantly had turned into the incantation la ilaha illa Allah, as Layla sounds like la ilaha illa Allah when this is done over and over again. Majnun had started with material form of love but this lead to the discovery of the eternal form of love, God Himself! It is believed that Majnun used to write poetry on the sand and on stones while he was roaming in the desert. I leave you with a quatrain of his:

“I pass by these walls, the walls of Layla
And I kiss this wall and that wall
It’s not Love of the houses that has taken my heart
But of the One who dwells in those houses”

– attributed to Qays ibn al-Mulawwah ibn Muzahim (Majnun)

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