Is this forbidden to us?" "Who art
thou?" asked Ahmed. "I am the sister of Bishr el Hafi," replied
she. "O household of Bishr," rejoined the Imam, "I shall never
cease to quafl full draughts of piety and continence from your
hearts." Quoth one of the learned, "When God wills well to
any man, he opens upon him the gate of action." Malik ibn
Dinar,[FN#83] when he passed through the bazaar and saw aught
that he wished for, was wont to say, "O soul, take patience, for
I will not accord to thee what thou desirest." He said also (may
God accept of him), "The salvation of the soul lies in resistance
to its desires and its ruin in submission to them." Quoth Mensour
ben Ammar,[FN#84] "I set out one year on the pilgrimage and was
making for Mecca by way of Cufa, when, one overcast night, I
heard a voice crying out from the womb of the night and saying,
'O my God, by Thy power and Thy glory, I meant not by my
disobedience to transgress against Thee, for indeed I am not
ignorant of Thee; but my fault is one Thou didst foreordain to me
from all eternity; so do Thou pardon me my sin, for indeed I
disobeyed Thee of my ignorance!' When he had made an end of his
prayer, he recited aloud the verse, 'O ye who believe, keep
yourselves and your households from the fire whose fuel is men
and stones!"[FN#85] Then I heard a fall, but knew not what it was
and passed on. On the morrow, as we went our way, we fell in with
a funeral train, followed by an old woman, whose strength had
left her.
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