Original content

English translation

A Sufi came toward his house by day; the house had one door, and his wife was with a cobbler.

The wife had coupled with her own servant in that single chamber, driven by the temptation of the flesh.

When the Sufi knocked earnestly at mid-morning, both were confounded — neither trick nor way out.

It had never been his custom at that hour to return home from the shop.

Purposely that day, at an unaccustomed hour, that alarmed man returned home on account of a certain premonition.

The wife's confidence rested on the belief that never at this hour would he come home from work.

That reckoning of hers was not borne out by fate; for though God is the Concealer, He gives punishment too.

When you have done evil, fear — do not feel secure, for it is a seed, and God will make it grow.

For a while He conceals it, so that repentance and shame may come to you from that evil.

In the time of 'Umar, that Commander of the Faithful, a thief was handed over to the executioner and the constables.

The thief cried out: "O lord of the realm, this is the first time I have committed this offense — spare me!"

'Umar said: "God forbid! For God does not pour down wrath in punishment the very first time.

Many times He conceals, to manifest His grace; then He seizes, to manifest His justice —

so that both these attributes may become manifest: the one becomes a bearer of glad tidings, the other a warner."

The wife too had done this evil many times before; it had passed easily, and easy it seemed to her.

That feeble-footed reason did not know that the pitcher does not always come unbroken from the stream.

Fate pressed her into such straits as sudden death presses the hypocrite —

no path, no companion, no safety, the angel's hand already reaching toward the soul.

Just so, this woman in that chamber of wrongdoing — she and her partner were frozen by the tribulation.

The Sufi said to himself: "O you two infidels, I will take my vengeance upon you — but with patience.

Yet I will carry it out secretly, so that every ear may not hear this bell.

The rightful one draws his vengeance from you in secret, little by little, like the wasting disease of consumption.

The consumptive man diminishes like ice at every moment, yet thinks at every breath: 'I am getting better.'

Like a hyena being seized while it is beguiled by the saying: 'Where is this hyena?'"

The woman had no hiding place whatsoever — no cellar, no vestibule, no way to the upper floor.

No oven in which to hide, no sack to serve as cover.

Like the broad plain of the Day of Resurrection — no pit, no mound, no place of escape.

God described this place of distress for the Gathering: "You will see no crookedness in it."