01-27-2005, 07:23 AM
<b>Bilal
and Abu Bakr</b>
My circumstances had surely changed. I lived in a house without slave quarters or frightened faces. Abu Bakr was more servant than master to any who came under his roof.
His first work of the morning was to milk goats- no, I do him wrong. His first work of the morning was his prayer and after that he milked the three goats. Of all the Companions of the Prophet, men educated to kindness, Abu Bakr was the gentlest and most kind. Yet, later when the day called for bravery, Abu Bakr was always first with the brave.
Whatever humble task had to be done about the house he would do. Even history did not change him.
When he was Caliph, the successor of the Prophet, and the ruler of half the world, when he armies were overthrowing empires, you would find him…where? Sitting in his doorway mending his shoes.
At least that is where I found him the day I brought him the news of our great victory at the Battle of Babylon in the spring of 634. but that morning of my Islam there were not two handfuls of us and the great empire of the Persians was still sitting safely on its throne of a thousand years. I must not jump my story or overthrow Persia yet.
I met Abu Bakr coming in from the goats and thanked him again for buying me. But instead he began to thank me as if I had done a favour even to the money he had spent.
<b>‘Muhammad teaches us that the freeing of a slave pleases God,’ he said.</b>
He said it with embarrassment and a slight stammer- for I was the slave he had freed and he was too honest to hide from me the self-interest of his soul. But that is the crisis of charity in every religion.
<b>‘Ah, Bilal, Bilal,’ he said, ‘you have new work to do. Will you slave more than you ever slaved?’</b>
What could I say? ‘Yes, master,’ I said.
My reply hurt him and I knew I had stepped backwards into my own darkness and out of his sight. I had reverted to slavery and given him the ‘Yes, Master’ of a slave’s reply. To make it worse I hung my head.
He put down the bucket of milk and took me by the ears- yes, by the ears- and bumped his forehead against mine.
<i><b>‘Listen to me, Bilal. You are a free man, without masters. But you must learn to be free.’</b></i>
‘Yes…yes…yes,’ I said, in time with the bumping.
Suddenly he laughed and let go of my ears.
<b>‘What can I teach you? Not to be startled when you are spoken to…to look men in the face…to know that your own shadow is indeed your own? Yes, these are important…’</b>
he broke off. A pregnant cat was circling the milk and I had to wait until she was given her share. I was, I suppose, put out. I’d have kicked the cat away. But I had much to learn.
I remember when we were marching onto Mecca, ten thousand strong, Muhammad led the whole army a hundred yards off the road to avoid disturbing a dog in labour with a litter of pups. Muhammad, the last of the Prophets, was the first to teach mankind kindness to animals. You may go to Hell for cruelty to a cat, he said, and there will be a reward for anyone who gives water to a being that has a tender heart.
But I was new to such considerations. The cat was being fed and I was not. How could an emancipated slave be expected to enjoy second place to a cat? At last, the great, good, gentle man aquatting beside the cat continued the conversation from mid-sentence.
‘…but more important, Bilal, is a future. Slaves have no future…they are not permitted…’
He drifted back to watch the cat lapping at the milk as if cats might have something very important to tell him about the future. I was yet to learn that every stir of life, being a creation of God, was beautiful to Abu Bakr. Those who love God find schools in a creature and in a flower.
‘If I cut you a pen, will you learn to write?’
The question was too casual, almost too unasked, for me to hear it well. Yet this was the moment I passed out of slavery. It was what Abu Bakr gave to me, not what he gave for me, that set me free.
I learned to write. I made ink from the leaf of the indigo, soaking it from sunset to sunrise, pounding it, then drying it in the shade. I wrote on skins, on bark, on the dried shoulder bones of sheep, in mud, in ashes, on stones- whatever would take characters. I would write with my fingers in the air, so I could write.
Every day Abu Bakr cut me a new pen from the thorns of the cactus that grew around the paddock. So his day now had a new beginning- his prayer, my pen, the goats.
He would stand at my shoulder watching and helping my progress. He brought me the poems of Antara and word by word, then line by line, I learned to read them aloud.
Antara was the hero of the desert; he did his high deeds, fought alone against companies, performed his chivalries and sang songs all for the love of the Lady Abla. No man in the time of Antara could match either his sword or his rhymes. My wonder increased with every line for, you see, Antara was like myself, the son of an Abyssinian slave woman.
Then one day Abu Bakr came home in great excitement. I was making ink and the sight of this ordinary work increased his happiness; he took my ink- stained hands and pressed them to his lips.
‘Do you know what the Prophet said, what he said today…?’
He took me to a bench and told me to sit down. His news needed this small ceremony. It did indeed!
<b>‘” The ink of a scholar is even more precious than the blood of a martyr.” These were the Prophet’s words.’</b>
I went back to the basin and plunged my hands into the ink and the soaking leaves of indigo. For a long time I stared down at my hands, black dipped in black.
