Two old friends met one morning, and one of them was different.
Welcome, said Ubare Khan, looking at him. Something has happened to you. Your face has changed. It is shining.
Well then, said Sheikh Malo. Are you not going to congratulate me. Put a garland round my neck. Give me a present.
Tell me what has happened.
And Sheikh Malo said: a heart has no tongue to tell it with, and a tongue has no heart to feel it with.
Then tell me anyway, said Ubare Khan.
How does a man who cannot speak describe the taste of a sweet, said Sheikh Malo. He can eat it. He cannot tell you.
Then give me a crumb of it, said his friend. Out of your own hand.
They went round and round like this for a while, the way old friends do. And at last Ubare Khan said: stop making riddles. I have seen your face. Now take me to whoever did it.
And Sheikh Malo asked him a question.
Will you bow down to somebody who is not a Muslim.
Ubare Khan thought about it. Then he said: I will bow to a Hindu.
Will you bow to somebody who is not a Hindu either.
I will bow to anybody at all, said Ubare Khan, who can bring me to the Lord.
Then you can have it, said Sheikh Malo. When the fences come down, the river fills every gap.
But a river in flood, said Ubare Khan, knocks the fences down itself.
You do understand, said Sheikh Malo.
If I understand, take me. And if I do not understand, take me anyway. If it is a true door, then it is the master of the door who makes people understand, not me.
And Sheikh Malo's eyes filled up, because that was exactly what had happened to him.
So he told his friend the news.
He is here, he said. In our own town. He has been here more than a week, singing.
And Ubare Khan said: you mean that Hindu holy man.
Yes, said Sheikh Malo. That one. The one who cured my fever, and every Muslim I know has the same fever, and it is called pride.
Then why did you not go, said Sheikh Malo.
And his friend was honest with him. Because I am proud of being a Muslim, he said.
So was I, said Sheikh Malo. Let me tell you how I went.
I did not go politely. I went with a question ready, meant to catch him out. I said: tell me, which is better, a Hindu or a Muslim.
And there was such warmth coming off his face that I could not manage to be angry, so I asked it a different way. I said, if nobody is a Hindu and nobody is a Musalman, why did the Lord make the two of them.
And he answered me quite easily.
Every body is made of the same earth, he said. One Lord made all of them. There is one soul in everybody. A soul is not Hindu and a soul is not Muslim, and neither is a body.
If two mothers give birth on the same night, one Hindu and one Muslim, go and look at the two babies and tell me which is which.
Then he asked me some questions of his own.
Suppose a man is called a Muslim, he said, and he is proud, and hard, and cruel, and a liar, and cheats people. Would you stand up and say, this is a Muslim.
I said no. I would not.
Would you recommend a Muslim to me who is not a good man.
No, I said.
And suppose a Hindu is kind and honest and good. Would you say he is a wicked person.
Never, I said.
And then he looked at me and said: then what was it you came to ask me.
And I stood there, said Sheikh Malo, and I could not answer him.
Because there was no difference. Not in what we are made of. Not in what we do. The only difference was in here, and I had been carrying it about all my life and calling it faith.
Goodnight. He came with a question to catch somebody out, and the question turned round and caught him.