Read Online Muhammad by Deepak Chopra - Free Book Online Page B

took one of the Quraysh aside, a young man who stood out for being slightly more thoughtful than his peers. I unfolded a parchment before his eyes. It was wrinkled and yellow; it had been clumsily mended in several places.
    â€œWhat do you think of this?” I asked.
    The young man was barely literate, but he looked impressed. “Your will?” he guessed. He was an old camel trader’s son, not yet twenty. He probably dreamed about his inheritance every spare moment.
    I smiled. “It’s more precious than my will. It’s a page from the Bible. I’ve been translating it.”
    His eyes widened. “Better be careful,” he warned. I had pushed the page toward him, but he backed away as if I were offering him a hot coal.
    It was comical, really. Everyone knows that such pagesexist. A merchant whose route passes through the tiny communities of Jews and Christians may buy or sell an occasional tattered leaf from their jumbled scriptures. But we Arabs pretend that these communities have not sprung up in our midst. It would be like admitting a growth of black smut in your bags of wheat.
    I reverently kissed the parchment. “It tells of Abraham and Isaac. You should let me recite the story to you sometime. There’s almost a murder in it. You like knives, don’t you?” I was toying with the young man, who looked relieved when I folded the scrap and thrust it back into my robe. I was lucky. He could have led a move against me.
    What does “the believer” believe? No one ever asks me to my face. They only know that the idols are good business, and anyone who speaks out against them threatens everybody’s income. “Listen to reason, my dear Waraqah,” they say. “We will shrivel like a barren womb. Mecca will die without the pilgrims. You see how much they spend.”
    It’s true. You can get money out of a pilgrim simply for letting him set eyes on a golden idol. They spend even more during the Hajj, when hundreds flood Mecca to run the circle around the Kaaba. No one knows when that started, but now it’s a fixed tradition.
    I am approaching Muhammad, my spiritual son, in this roundabout way, because that is how he approached me.
    One day, it was a dozen years ago, I was sitting in my courtyard. I was expecting a messenger momentarily and left the gate open. A little boy wandered inside. We looked at each other. I asked where his mother was, but he didn’t reply. He gazed at me shyly. From his dress I saw that he must be a nomad. They are fierce about keeping their children close by.
    I went over and crouched in front of him. “Do you know me?” I asked. I had the strangest feeling.
    He shook his head. “I don’t know you, but I hear your voice.”
    Well, of course he did. I had just spoken to him. But the boy didn’t mean that. He turned and pointed past the gate. “I was playing by the well, and I heard you. What do you want?”
    If he meant Zamzam, it was ten streets away. “I don’t want anything from you,” I said, feeling very queer talking this way to a five-or six-year-old.
    â€œThen I must want from you,” he said.
    Before I could question him, one of those Qurayshi toughs was at my gate. He didn’t dare come through it, but he started yelling. “Hey, hey, he’s here. I found him.”
    A second later two of his fellows ran up and behind them a Banu Sa’d woman, red-faced and puffing. “Muhammad!” she cried and rushed into the courtyard to sweep him up. Immediately she realized her discourtesy and began spewing apologies, tangled with a disjointed tale about bringing the boy back to his mother, who hadn’t seen him in three years. I didn’t care. I assured her that her infraction was nothing. I escorted her back to the gate, glaring at the Qurayshi roughnecks, who lingered in case I gave them a coin. If I didn’t, they’d shake down the poor woman, so I