" I swear, by the spirit of my mother, that I have nothing to
conceal before Allah and the prophet. Do not wound me, Masa, with
your alarm. You seemed to me this morning the loveliest of women;
until then Sitta Khadra was her son's only love. You must know that
when she had died, Mohammed Ali fled into solitude and intended to
take his own life. But in the solitude, Allah said to him: 'The life
I have given you, bear with manfully, and take upon yourself the
sufferings I see fit to visit upon you.'
"I bowed submissively to his commands; I left my solitude and raised
myself by my sorrow as by a pillar. But in you I seemed to see my
mother's spirit; then pain vanished from my heart, and my mother
seemed to be regarding me through your eyes. Therefore, Masa, have I
followed you. I have come to say that which brings the blush to my
inmost soul, that which the ear of no other human being shall ever
hear. In the name of my mother, I beseech you, do not let it be here
upon this open path where men may pass, and which the foot of man
has desecrated. In the name of the mother you love so well as you
this morning declared in the mosque, and in the name of my mother
whom I have loved as few sons have loved their mothers, in the name
of the moon, and in the name of the golden stars that glitter above
us, I entreat you, mount with me to the summit of the rock.
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