one of the greatest human beings I have ever known. I had met him
quite by accident. He lived in a small shack in a poor neighborhood.I
had to deliver some medicine for my father's pharmacy. Once inside
this man's quarters I realized I was in the presence of someone quite
unusual. For one thing, he possessed the relics of several great
shaikhs of different orders. The day I met him he was having a
conversation with two other young men about my own age. Their names
were Metin and Refik. After hearing theirconversation I began to lose
interest in the things that had occupiedme. I wanted only to attend
these conversations. The three of us were learning so much that we
wished that more and more people could also hear these conversations.
We begged our sheikh to allow the size of our circle to increase. One
day we were attending the prayers at a great mosque. It was the feast
of Ashura, the twelfth of Muharram. We were just leaving the mosque
when our teacher paused on the steps because he noticed that a pigeon
had just dropped dead from the sky. He picked up the poor bird, which
was totally lifeless, held it tenderly in his hands, breated a long
Huuuuuuu...and the birdcame back to life and flew off into the sky.
Well, this act did not go unnoticed and before long there were many
people intersted in our shaikh. Many of them asked to attend his
conversations and our circle grew.
It was not long before we found that we had very little time with our
beloved shaikh. He was too busy to see us, attending to the needs of
so many people. Then one day, while doing thenight prayer after our
zhikr, our shaikh let out a loud and smelly fart. People were
astounded that this holy man could do such a thing. In a short period
of time most of them had lost their faith in him and our circle
returned to nearly the size it had been originally. One night when
just the three of us were sitting together, our shaikh remarked: "You
see my sons, those who come because of a pigeon, leave because of a
fart!"
