Guru Nanak Dev Ji went to Mecca.
He went by sea, and he came back the long way round, through Iran and Baghdad, and eventually home to Kartarpur. But this story is about a morning in Mecca, and it is a short one, and it is probably the most famous thing that ever happened to him.
He arrived at the time of the Haj, when Muslims come from every country in the world, and the place was full. Holy men had travelled from India. Everybody was there.
Among the people at Mecca was a man called Jeevan Shah, who had come from India years before and settled.
He did the cleaning.
That was his seva. Every morning, early, before anybody else was about, he swept and tidied the ground around the mosque. He had chosen that work and he loved it, and he did it the way people do a job they have chosen because they love the place.
So he was out sweeping in the grey light, working his way round to the west side.
And there was a man lying asleep on the ground.
With his feet pointing at the Kaaba.
You have to understand what that meant to Jeevan Shah. When Muslims pray, they turn toward that house. To lie down and stretch your feet at it was the rudest thing he could imagine, and here was somebody doing it in the open, at dawn, at Mecca, during the Haj.
He was so angry he kicked him.
Who are you, he said, lying there with your feet toward God.
And the sleeper woke up and looked at him.
Jeevan Shah did not wait for an answer. He bent down and took hold of the man's feet and swung them round, to get them pointing somewhere else.
And the whole House of God swung round with them.
He stopped. He looked. He moved the feet the other way, to be sure.
And the House went that way too.
Whichever direction he dragged those feet, the thing he had been protecting was there in front of them, exactly the same, wherever he put them.
And Jeevan Shah, who had come out that morning with a broom in his hands, knelt down and kissed the feet he had just kicked.
Now, here is the part of this story that people sometimes miss, and it is the part worth taking to bed with you.
Guru Ji did not argue with him.
He did not say, you are wrong. He did not explain that God is everywhere and this man was being foolish. He did not defend himself at all. What he said, as near as we can put it, was this.
Very well. My feet are toward God.
Then take them, he said, and put them somewhere God is not.
That is all he did. He agreed with the man, and let the man do the moving, and the moving is what taught him. It was a habit of his, this. He would let himself lose the argument, and somehow the other person would end up standing in the truth, holding it in their own two hands.
Word went round Mecca fast.
A famous teacher named Rukanudin came to see him and treated him with great respect, and once he had, all the other holy men came and bowed as well, and after that Guru Ji sat with them and they asked him questions for a long time.
The first question Rukanudin asked was the one everybody wanted to ask.
In your book, he said, who comes out better. A Hindu, or a Muslim.
Goodnight. A man went out to sweep the ground and found that there is nowhere on earth to put your feet where God is not already.