Basatin al-uns 77.40

77.40

a sincere servant of the king must be such that if, in the path of utmost devotion, the gem of his noble soul is cast into the burning fire
of adversities, like a ruby not an atom of change or alteration appears in its nature, but rather the gold of his sincerity,
like pure gold, becomes of higher assay; and if his precious limbs are cleaved into two halves by the saws of misfortunes like a platter,
he does not remove the ring of servitude from the ear of his heart and, like a threshold, does not abandon the door of his royal palace. When
a rose of good fortune smiles in the garden of his desires, he deems it obligatory to attribute it solely to the effusion of the cloud of the king's universal favor and bounty;
and if, contrary to that, like a willow, the tree of his hope remains barren and stripped of the fruit of success, he conceives it to be from the effect
of his own deficiency in tending the sapling of service and considers it the result of the adversity of his own unpropitious fortune. I was in
the midst of these reflections and thoughts when the breeze of the zephyr of God's infinite generosity blew upon the withered rose of my heart,
and the dawn of delight broke from the orient of fortune and prosperity; and the herald of auspicious fate delivered the glad tidings into the ear of my soul: 'And when We parted the sea for you
and rescued you,' and cast off the veil of hardship from the visage of comfort. And with the aid of
the blowing of a favorable wind, that plank of the ship reached one of the islands near Sarandīp. With a heart
bare of clothing like an alif, a stature bent like a nūn from an empty belly, and a face dotted like a Kufic Quran
from the succession of blood-stained drops of tears, I fell upon the shore of the sea. Out of extreme
bewilderment, I writhed upon myself like an alif and lām, and, keeping both eyes open like a dū-chashmah hā, watched the surroundings and
quarters. My lips, from biting in regret, had become tooth-notched like a sīn; my tongue, split down the middle like a kāf
from the urge of gnawing in the severity of hunger; my heart, constricted like the ring of a mīm from the extremity of grief and sorrow;
my soul, bowing its head like a tā in the corner of the body before the assault of the army of tribulations; and my body, from excess of emaciation and
abundance of weakness, remained a name without a referent, in the manner of a nunation. And from the effect of parting from the ease of life and the absence
of means for opening the door of deliverance, the body had become so weak and frail that raising my voice was in no way possible.
I envisioned the summoner of fate and the collector of death before my eyes, and having resolved upon bidding farewell to life,
I shed a sea of blood from each eye, until a period passed in this state, and
the commotion and terror of the surging waves subsided; and the soul, which had deemed it obligatory, out of dread of the host of affliction, to heed
the maxim 'fleeing from that which cannot be borne,' returned to its familiar dwelling in the body; and the heart, turned to blood,
which under the power of the army of sorrow had made weakness and impatience its companion, took rest and tranquility in the gardens of joy and