When I had first entered the Al-Mahdi Institute, I had to learn Arabic and at that point recognise the letters. One night, alone in my rented house, I was attempting to read the first few lines of surat al-Baqarah with intense, self-conscious concentration. After some minutes of this, I looked up from the page to ease my eyes and brain. To my surprise, the room was full of mist. I blinked and shook my head, but the mist was still around me.
I kissed the Qur’an and jumped up from the floor and ran into the kitchen and bathroom. There was nothing on the stove and no hot water taps running to cause steam. I walked back through the mist, noting that it had no smell or feeling of dampness. I checked the windows – no condensation. I looked at the light and observed that there was no aureole around it as there would have been with smoke, fog, or another material cause. I sat down on the floor once more and reasoned that since there was no apparent material cause, I was experiencing a spiritual or mental anomaly. Therefore, I closed my eyes and recited three salawats an-Nabi. When my eyes opened, the mist had gone.
Some months later I encountered a hadith that described the Prophet looking at a companion some distance away and declaring that he was reciting the Qur’an. When asked how he knew the Prophet (saw) said that there was smoke rising from the man, which happens when people read the Qur’an.
My Arabic teacher, a Kurdish Sunni, to demonstrate his love for Ahl al-Bayt, told me that his father’s legs were untreatably paralysed following an accident while in the army. For many years his father remained upstairs in bed unable to move. However, the family were very shocked one morning when their father walked down the stairs and sat at the table for breakfast. Naturally, the family clamoured for an explanation. The father told them that Ali had come to him in a dream and told him that he had to get up in the morning because he had things to do. Thinking himself still dreaming, the father got out of bed and found himself awake, downstairs and waiting for breakfast.
I was lying in bed with my new wife at the time when she shook me awake and asked me who the man was, standing in the doorway. Her eyes were bulging, the colour had drained from her face, large beads of sweat rolled down her face, and she was shaking violently. I looked through the dim light but saw only an empty doorway.
“What does he look like?”
“He is dressed like you, in robes.”
“Is he wearing a turban?”
“Yes.”
“What colour is it?”
“Red.”
“He is the spirit of an Imam or of a Seyed scholar, so there is nothing to fear. I don’t know who wore a red imamah, though.” And I slept feeling no fear.
A few days later, she hastily left while I was in the masjid at prayers. She was already married to someone else and other irregularities also came to light. She feared that many things being disclosed would have harmed me.
Some years later a brother narrated a hadith to me. The Prophet overheard some men mocking Ali in his absence and called them out by saying, “If you see Abu Turab approaching you wearing a red imamah you will pale, your eyes will bulge, and sweat will pour from your faces.” I smiled and wondered about the unseen man in the doorway and thanked Allah.
All lovers of Ahl al-Bayt believe that the Twelfth Imam performs Hajj each year and that people unexpectedly meet him there or receive a message from him. Among the common features of these encounter narratives are that the person encountered is not recognised and they are not asked their name because they seem so familiar and ordinary. I believe this has happened to some friends and teachers, but this is what I experienced.
I had become detached from my companions when they went one way, past the cleaning machines in the Haram of Mecca, and I stepped in between two of those large machines. Waiting between the machines was a young man dressed, as was I, in the two pieces of white cloth that is all pilgrims may wear. He had tidy dark hair, light brown skin, wore spectacles, and had a tightly trimmed beard. Very ordinary except that his right hand extended from beneath the upper cloth, palm towards me and fingers extended toward the ground in a calming gesture of peace. We exchanged salams and smiled like old friends. He then said, as if continuing a previous conversation, “How long will they oppress you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Not long, not long,” he assured.
We exchanged salams again and I took three paces away and, aware suddenly that I did not know him, looked back to see him smiling as he watched me leave. Filled with internal debate, I took two more steps away before deciding to go back and ask his name. I turned again, but he was not there although in the hour before Fajr I could see clearly for forty or fifty metres around me on the concourse. I checked around the cleaning machines, but could not see him anywhere.
Whether he was someone I had met before or a passing stranger who by chance or inspiration asked a question with meaning for me, that question lingers with me. We Muslims often ask in the plural how long will they oppress us, but he directed the question by tone and gesture just to me. Also, Saudi officials had done nothing but assist me. Policemen had willingly stood by me as I quietly read a ziyarat outside al-Baqi in Medinah, the cleaners in Mecca stopped work waiting for me to finish reading the Qur’an, and one of the religious guards guarded my property. He and his colleagues also gave me their salams at every meeting, although after examining my prayer book they knew me to be a Shi’a. My thoughts turned towards the realization that sometimes it is our friends who oppress us, the spiritual us, with their concerns for form and propriety.