A story goes that
Moses, peace be upon him, went
     to find a saint in the desert
          said to be one of the
greatest masters alive.

He went into the arid wastes,
made a camp, went further, made
     another camp, went further perhaps than
anyone dared go, being Moses, and

found, out where the world ends, in a
blazing nothingness of sand and
sky, lying face down with his
chin on the
ground, his saint,
saying with each breath, in a
barely audible voice, only:
 
Allah – Allah – Allah

The sound of his tongue and the
heartbeat of his body boomed all the
dunes around him to ring in
harmony with that Name.

Moses was struck dumb.

Here, without food, without water,
lay the Master of the Age, dry as
bone, nearly naked, more like
the sand itself than
a man.

He sat respectfully, the
saint not seeing him, but keeping his
invocation throbbing on dry lips with
a dry tongue:

Allah – Allah – Allah

At last the saint opened his eyes and saw
Moses, who bowed, and, as good
servant to master, asked if there was
anything the saint needed.

The saint said, in a small voice
Moses had to bend close to hear:
 
"Yes. If you could only bring me
a blanket against the
cold nights, I would be
      grateful."

Moses got up
and set out across the
dunes again to his
last camp, grabbed his
blanket and
brought it to the man, who was now
       
dead.

Shocked, Moses sat in
wonder at the sight. Then he got
up and went
off across the desert to his
camp again to bring a
shovel to bury him.

When he arrived, the body was already
dust.

Only
bones remained.

Amazed, Moses set
off again into the
glare to get a
receptacle for the
bones, to bring them back to
bury them in the town of the
saint's birth.

When he arrived back at the place where
the saint had died, Moses found
only a swirling whirlpool of dust where the
bones had been, and
nothing left but
spiraling drifts of white powder

twisting in the wind.

Moses sat down, his
eyes on the ground.

Then he put his
face on the ground in the
ache and questioning of his
heart, and asked:
 
     O Allah! What is the
     meaning of this.? Your
     saint gone like a
     breath in the desert wind?

And God's voice in the
heart of Moses replied:

     So long as My friend needed nothing but Me
     I gave him all he required.

     As soon as he needed something from
     other than Me, I

     took him.

                        4 Ramadan / 1986