Kandhar is a city a very long way from Punjab, and a great many armies have walked into it over the years.
Great conquerors came there with soldiers and horses and guns, and took what they wanted, and stored their treasure behind its walls.
And one day somebody else walked in through the gate.
He had no soldiers. He had no horses and no guns and no arrows and no treasure. He had two friends with him, and that was the whole of the invasion.
And as they came in, one of the friends said: master, where exactly are we going. Whose house.
And Guru Nanak Dev Ji said: it is the Lord's business. Whoever He means to give something to will come out and meet us.
So they walked into the city.
And Guru Ji stopped in front of a house.
A young Mughal came out of the door on his way somewhere, in a hurry, the way young men are.
And he looked up, and his feet stopped.
He stood there in his own doorway and looked at the stranger's face and forgot entirely where he had been going.
What is your name, he said at last.
And when he heard it he said: what does that mean. I have never heard a name like it.
It means the Lord's servant, said Guru Ji.
Then I am a lucky man, said the young Mughal. I have met the Lord's servant.
And he went on looking, and could not stop.
Which country are you from, he said. Kabul. Greece. India.
I belong to the Lord, said Guru Ji. People call me an Indian.
Your country is the Lord's, said the young man slowly. Then who is your teacher. Who taught you.
The Lord Himself, said Guru Ji. He sent me.
And the young Mughal stood there with his hand on his own door and said, half to himself: the Lord's servant. The Lord's country. The Lord for a teacher.
His name was Yar Wali, and what happened to him next happened inside him, where nobody could see it.
All his life he had read, and what he had read had given him a set of boxes.
This is God. This is a prophet. This is a proper teacher. This one has faith and that one has not. This person is holy and that person is nothing. He had learned every box, and where everybody went, and he had been careful about it.
And he had been dry, he said afterwards. Dry as a stick that has been cut off a tree and left on the ground.
He looked at the man standing in front of his house and every box he had went out of his head.
And he bent down and put his forehead at his feet.
And Guru Ji reached down and lifted his head up with his own hands, and looked at him kindly.
Yar Wali could hardly get the words out.
Bless me, he said.
The Lord is master of everything, said Guru Ji. I am His servant, like you. Tell me what you want.
And Yar Wali told him.
I want to be happy, he said. Really happy, the way I have heard people can be. I have spent my entire life looking for the Lord I cannot see. I have longed for Him and gone on longing and I have nothing at all to show for it.
I see Him in you. Take me. Let me be yours.
So they all went inside and sat down in the verandah of that house.
And Yar Wali asked the question that had been puzzling him most.
When you love somebody in this world, he said, their face stays in your mind. You can call it up whenever you like.
I have tried and tried to hold my teacher's face in my mind, and I cannot. It slides away. I have worn myself out trying.
What is it about you, that after one look I do not think I could lose your face if I tried.
Goodnight. Every other army that ever came to Kandhar came for what was in it. This one came to give something away.