While Guru Gobind Singh Ji was at Anandpur, a long way off in the frontier country, a Pathan chief killed his own brother and that brother's whole family, and took everything they had.
One boy of that family got out alive.
He heard that they were still looking for him and would kill him if they found him, so he ran, and kept running, all the way down into India. The road was long and dangerous and he had nobody.
By the time he came near Hoshiarpur he had not eaten for seven days.
Seven days of nothing will take a person apart. He was past caring what he ate. He had already picked up a stray pup off the road, because when you are that hungry you stop thinking like yourself.
That was when he came over a rise and saw a fire burning and people at a well.
There were two groups of travellers. One was packing up to leave. The other had just arrived and was settling in.
And the boy stood there and watched them, because they were not behaving like other people.
They were singing as they made camp. Some were quietly reciting something. And the young men among them, who had walked all day and must have been aching, were not resting at all. They were kneeling down and pressing the legs of the older ones.
These are not traders, thought the boy.
So he went up to one of them and asked.
Holy man, he said. What kind of people are you, and where are you going?
O Khan, said the man, we are Sikhs. We are going to see our Guru Ji.
You are Sikhs, said the boy. Then are you the Sikhs of Guru Nanak Dev Ji?
Yes, said the man. Sikhs of Guru Nanak Dev Ji. We are going to meet our Guru Ji.
And the boy said the reasonable thing. The thing anybody would say.
But Guru Nanak Dev Ji left this world long ago.
Now listen to what that ordinary Sikh, standing by a well with his bedding in his arms, said back to him.
That same Guru Ji took another body, he said. He is living in this world. We are going to see him.
Where does he live? said the boy.
Across this river, said the man, a few miles on. A place called Anandpur. He is sent by the Lord and he is the image of the Lord, and his name is Guru Gobind Singh Ji.
Have you ever tested him? said the boy, who had learned to trust nobody. Holy men are supposed to have powers.
He is sent by the Lord, said the Sikh. He knows what is inside you without being told. He came to take away people's suffering. He is the shelter for people who have no shelter. Powers sit at his feet.
Then the boy asked the question he really wanted to ask.
Is he a Hindu?
He is not a Hindu, said the Sikh, and he is not a Muslim. He belongs to the Lord.
The boy thought about that.
What you say is true, he said slowly. Holy men are above all that.
But he is not a Muslim like me. If I go to him for shelter, he probably will not take me.
And the Sikh gave him the answer this whole book is about.
In his eyes, he said, there is no high caste and no low caste. No Hindu and no Muslim. No rich and no poor. He shines on everybody like the sun shines on everybody.
There is the smell of love about him, said the Sikh, and no stink of hatred anywhere.
But you should know one thing. He carries a sword.
And at the word sword the boy's heart came up, because he was a Pathan and a fighter's son, and he had been thinking of holy men as people who sit still.
Can a man with a sword be a saint as well?
Then he answered himself. Mohammad Sahib carried a sword, he thought. This is the Lord's own way of doing things. There is so much cruelty in the world just now.
Perhaps the Lord has handed somebody a sword on purpose.
And the boy who had eaten nothing for seven days turned and looked across the river, towards Anandpur.