THE LOST SOUL WHO BECAME A MAN OF THE WAY

Haji Muhammad, Meknes

With the departure of his regular driver, Sidi Muhammad ibn al-Habib asked his fuqara to help him find a replacement. After looking throughout Meknes, they returned, saying, "There is one very good driver, but you wouldn't want him."

"Why?" asked Sayyiduna Shaykh.

"He's a degenerate sinner," they explained. "a drunkard who lives in a brothel."

"Find him and bring him to me," Sayyiduna Shaykh told them. The man who shared the Shaykh's name, Muhammad, appeared sheepishly before the great saint, eyes lowered in guilt.

The Shaykh offered to hire him immediately, on the condition that he refrain from drinking while serving him, explaining, "I don't like the smell of alcohol."

The driver agreed and took the job.

Sidi Muhammad began working for the Shaykh, driving him to circles of remembrance, mosques, the homes of his fuqara, the tombs of the saints and celebrations of the Prophet Muhammad's birth.

He spent every day with one of the greatest living saints of the age, completely sober. Gradually, he began joining the ritual prayers and then the circles of dhikr.

Finally, he turned up at the zawiya door, asking to live there. It turned out that he had been keeping up his daily prayers in the brothel, and he felt he should leave.

When Sidi Muhammad ibn al-Habib died, his driver was devastated, like a man shipwrecked. Proximity to the Shaykh had transformed the lost soul into a 'Man of the Way.'