After his father’s death and the departure of Saleem, his elder brother, master Mohammad Amin remained alone in their home with his mother.
Therefore, his maternal uncle brought his own wife and children to live with them in their house. Now, this may seem a strange state of affairs, but one must keep in mind that in Islam a widow is not allowed to live alone, and is deemed to need a close male relative to take care of her. This would usually be her father, or married brother or son.
However, soon after the uncle’s family arrived, Amin’s aunt was unhappy that the little boy and his mother occupied the upper room, which was spacious and bright, catching the sun’s warming rays for much of the day. She started a whispering campaign in the household and kept on urging her husband to turn them out of this room, so that she could take it for herself. She continued to badger her husband with this underhanded course of action until eventually he gave in to what she wanted.
The uncle had the furniture removed from the comfortable upper room, and took it down to a small corner room of the house. Now, this room was totally unsuitable for habitation, as it was damp, smelled musty, and was untouched by the warmth of the sun’s rays. Nevertheless, this is where the belongings of the boy and his mother were taken.
When young Amin returned home, his mother was distraught and defenceless in the face of such unfair treatment at the hands of her brother, especially within her own home.
On seeing his mother in that dreadful state he resolved to act quickly: a thought crossed his mind but he kept it to himself.
He had decided on a clever plan which should resolve the situation and stop the uncle in his tracks!
In the evening, when all was calm and peaceful, his uncle was sitting in the courtyard, happily puffing on his narghile. [26]At that moment, the plucky little chap came through the street door, pulling the horse behind him, and causing a great cacophony of sound as its hoofs clattered on the tiled floor. This chaos was only added to with the animal neighing loudly, objecting to this strange behaviour.
The uncle soon came out, in a furious rage, wanting to see what was the cause of such commotion, and hoping to stop the chaos; he was so angry that he was quite prepared to beat whoever it was.
When he saw his nephew with the mare, he glared at him and spoke to him with a voice full of fury, saying, ‘What on earth are you doing? How can you bring a horse into the house? Take it back to the stable immediately.’
He spat out these words in a most scornful and arrogant way.
A great roar of rage erupted from the proud young boy as he pointed towards the small corner room, which had been declared unfit for use before the uncle had dumped the furniture of Amin and his mother in there, without giving the matter any further thought. He then looked pointedly at his uncle, saying, ‘Al-Assilah (the mare) will spend the night in there.’ He could no longer contain his fury at the way he and his mother had been treated in their own home.
The uncle was thunderstruck.
He could not understand what had happened to him!
It was the first time that he had seen his nephew in such a state!
Whenever he had been in the boy’s company in the past he had seen him as a gentle and attractive child, with straight, fair hair and wonderful green eyes. But now before him there seemed to be a creature from the wild, screaming at him furiously, and looking at him as though daggers would come from his eyes to pierce the very depths of his being. His heart started to pound and he feared for his life.
An all-encompassing fear had overwhelmed him.
At that moment he gladly would have given all that he owned, even the whole world if it were his to give, in order to escape the raging fury he saw before him: so desperate was he to free himself from this terrible predicament.
This was a situation that seemed to have arisen from nowhere. Indeed, it was an unusual turn of events that he could not begin to comprehend.
Totally incapable of putting up any resistance he gave in to what was right and just, and told Amin and his mother that the rooms would be changed back to the way they had been previously. With no further ado, he gave way to what was fair and honest, and told them that he would arrange the room immediately. Thus, in the face of that firm will to establish justice and to correct what was wrong, the man ended up detaching himself from his unfair deed. Contrary to his own original wishes, he put all their belongings and furnishings back in the spacious, bright and comfortable room.
His wonder at the stupendous sight of that little boy was so great that he later told one of his relatives about his astonishment at seeing him during that dreadful, frightening scene. He went on to say how, at the moment of the confrontation, it seemed as though this nice, kind, handsome boy had been cloaked in the kind of reverence more usually associated with the mightiness of a higher being: a being that has the power to totally demolish mountains and reduce them to dust.
He wondered what the secret was behind it.
What was the reality?
He did not know; or rather, he was too afraid to even think about what had happened.
A dreadful panic came over him at the very sight of young Mohammad Amin until he was convinced that the boy was no longer the sweet, gentle nephew that he had previously known.
This was the overwhelming feeling which put paid to his tyranny and arrogance once and for all!
The moral of this story
Mohammad Amin’s heart said, ‘Oh Uncle! You have sacrificed your humanity and compassion to get whatever you want for yourself, to the point that you regarded your sister and her son as animals, and decided to let them live in a room that is fit only to be used as a stable. No, Uncle, this is wrong!
‘We are human beings! Only animals live in a stable.’
When his own inherent sense of justice clashed with the injustice embedded in his uncle’s spirit, his heartfelt actions, in carrying out what was right and just, erased the wrongdoing of his uncle, so that its negative effect on the uncle was eliminated. Thus, he helped him to regain his sense of reason and turn back towards a path of honour and rectitude.
Needless to say, the uncle dared not repeat such harebrained conduct ever again!
We would do well to remember the old saying, ‘Do as you would be done by.’