When the Stones Remained… and the Story Was Folded Away

Adam «peace be upon him»… When the Barrier Falls

I did not come to Cairo as a tourist this time. I came to meet a man who had come to know me through my writing.

Abu Muhammad had been following my writing for more than a year, and we had exchanged messages until I knew a great deal about him before ever seeing him: an employee at a bank, working and toiling for his family—his wife, Umm Muhammad, and their three sons.

Muhammad, the eldest son, was a well-mannered young man, standing where so many young people stand, between the demands of life and their ambitions. He was studying at university and trying to find a clear path for himself amid questions about the future, as though searching for a roadmap that would tell him where he was headed.

Mustafa, who was younger, was quieter and spoke less. He seldom intervened, but watched and observed. His eyes would catch the details before he spoke, as though his silence were not an emptiness, but another way of understanding what was happening around him.

Adam… the child who was no more than eight.

There was something different about him: an innocence that needed no explanation, and a pure humanity untouched by the calculations adults learn as they grow older. Adam approached people with his heart before asking who they were, and perhaps that was why he was the first to make me feel I was no longer a stranger in Abu Muhammad’s home.

Before I met him, Muhammad had said to his father:

«Let Abdullah come so we can play football with him.»

I promised, but a whole year passed before I arrived.

During that year, Adam would hear about me and sometimes see me from afar. My son Fawaz would sometimes join my calls with Abu Muhammad and speak with Adam over the phone or through messages.

Fawaz stayed in Qatar, but Adam had not forgotten him. When I arrived in Cairo and met Adam, he looked at me as though he already knew me.

To him, I was not the man who had come from somewhere far away.

I was simply «Abu Fawaz».

He said something in his childish way of speaking that I did not entirely understand: «al-ziywa».

I laughed; the barrier that might have made me a stranger to him had fallen.

We did not need a long conversation.

A child, a ball, and a phone call from long ago were enough to bridge the distance of an entire year.

When it was time for me to leave for the hotel, Adam surprised me with a question I had not expected:

«Are you going to the hotel? I want you to sleep here… in our house… in my room.»

At that moment, I did not feel like a guest. I felt I had entered a home where a child knew me, though he had met me only a short time before.

A Small Home… and a Warmth Greater than the Space

Umm Muhammad had insisted that we have lunch with them.

The food was plentiful and varied, and the home was beautiful in its warmth, but something in their welcome was greater than the space itself.

I sat with them, and we talked, laughed, and drank tea.

In Cairo, I saw many of these small details: a smile, an invitation to a meal, a door opened to someone they did not know well, as though a person could carry something of the past without knowing its name.

I was not thinking about history then. I was simply living in the moment.

But there are moments whose value you recognize only once you have moved away from them.

The Cairo the Eye Does Not See the Same Way

After lunch, I went out with Abu Muhammad to Old Cairo.

I had visited Cairo before, but a person does not see the same place in the same way every time.

This time, I walked along asking myself:

How many people have passed through here?

How many times has this gate been opened?

How many armies have entered?

How many sultans have passed through?

How many funeral processions have gone down this road?

And how many people lived their lives here and then disappeared, while the stone remained?

We reached Bab Zuwayla. I stood before it for a long time.

I was not looking merely at a gate; I was looking at layers of time, some of which remained visible on the stone.

The gate was built in the Fatimid period. Then other times came, the city changed, dynasties succeeded one another, and the gate remained.

Al-Mu’ayyad… the Prisoner Who Returned to His Prison

Al-Mu’ayyad Shaykh was one of the Mamluk sultans. But before becoming sultan, he had been a prisoner.

He was imprisoned in a place known as Khizanat Shama’il, the site where his mosque would later be built.

In prison, he vowed that if he emerged from his ordeal and became sultan, he would turn the site of his imprisonment into a mosque.

Then what the prisoner had not expected came to pass.

He was released.

He became sultan.

And he returned to the same place.

But this time he did not return in chains.

He returned as sultan.

He demolished the prison and built the Mosque of al-Mu’ayyad in its place.

The mosque was built between 818 and 824 AH, corresponding to 1415–1421 CE, and the two towers of Bab Zuwayla were used as the foundations for its two minarets.

I stood reflecting on the scene.

The prison that had once borne witness to his weakness had become a mosque bearing his name.

How strange is what time does to a person!

A person may emerge from his ordeal, yet be unable to escape the memory of the place.

Al-Mu’ayyad did not erase what had preceded him.

Rather, he built on top…

Reading the Walls

Here I began to think about something different.

A wall does not speak, but it retains traces of those who have passed by it.

You can see an old layer, then an addition, then a restoration, then an alteration.

You can read a place without finding a written book before you.

You can ask:

Who built?

Who altered?

Who demolished?

Who added?

And who preserved?

And who left the place so that it reached us?

This is reading the walls: seeing what stone does not say in words, but what its layers say.

When Things Remain and the Thread Is Lost

As I stood before Bab Zuwayla, I could not prevent a question from arising:

If a person can read the layers of stone, why can he not always read the layers of a text?

Why do we preserve things, then sometimes lose the relationship between them?

The mosque may remain.

And the gate remains.

And the names of the sultans remain.

And the history books remain.

And the names of scholars remain.

And the tales of heroic deeds and defeats remain.

But what happens if the thread that binds all these things together is broken?

Then the things do not disappear; they remain before our eyes.

What disappears is their interconnected meaning.

Civilizations are not built from a single moment.

One generation builds, then another comes and adds.

An idea is discovered, then someone comes to develop it.

An error is made, then those who come after learn from it.

A city is built, then changes.

A field of knowledge emerges, then opens the door to another.

A heroic deed ends, but its lesson can remain.

This is how experience passes from generation to generation.

Not only through the things we leave behind, but through the ability to read what we have left.

If this thread is severed, the entirety of inherited tradition may remain before a person, yet they do not know where to begin.

The stone remains.

The name remains.

The tale remains in books.

But the relationship between them recedes.

Civilization then turns from a living memory into scattered remains.

Adam… and Standing Before the Future

I returned to Adam in my memory.

A child who had not asked me about the history of Cairo.

He had not asked me who built Bab Zuweila.

Nor did he know anything about the sultans who had passed through here.

All he knew was that a man named Abdullah had come from a distant place, that he could play ball with him, and that he could sleep in his room.

But the child who did not know the past was standing before the future.

That was what made me think:

What do we leave children?

Do we leave them only the things we have inherited?

Or do we leave them the ability to understand them?

Do we want Adam to memorize the names of those who came before him?

Or to know what they did, where they were right, where they were wrong, where they ended, and where he can begin?

For a person does not inherit the past in order to live in it; they inherit it to know how to build after it.

From Stone to Text

From here, the question in my mind moved from stone to text.

If stone can preserve the layers of time, perhaps a text preserves something deeper.

Perhaps the problem is not that the Qur'an has become absent.

For the Qur'an is present.

The muṣḥaf is present.

The verses are preserved.

Recitation is present.

And the books that have discussed the Qur'an are numerous.

But what if what has become absent is the thread connecting the verses to one another?

What if the parts remain, while the map has become less present?

A person may know the verse.

And know the hadith.

And know the narration (riwāya).

And know the story.

And know the ruling.

But do they see the relationship that brings these things together within a single question?

Here, the difference becomes considerable between possessing information and knowing how to read it.

But another question began to press upon me:

Why do so many peoples in America and Europe preserve the remains of their preceding generations, safeguard their buildings and landmarks, and turn them into a living memory from which their children learn, while in many countries of the Islamic ummah we find remains, civilizations, and landmarks left by preceding generations that are then neglected or abandoned to time, as though what the fathers built were unfit to serve as a foundation upon which their children could build?

Why can a child in the West stand before a building hundreds of years old and learn through it something about the history of their country, while a child in our countries may stand before a magnificent monument and know nothing about it except that it is an “old building”?

The problem, then, is not in the stone alone; the problem is in the memory the stone carries.

For peoples do not build their civilizations from scratch in every generation; they build upon what their predecessors left.

They preserve their achievements, study their mistakes, safeguard their remains, and then add a new layer of work to them.

But when what came before is neglected, the thread between generations is severed.

History is no longer a cumulative construction; instead, it turns into scattered stories about people who died and whose lives came to an end.

Here I understood why I had liked the phrase “reading walls.”

For a wall is not silent stone.

In its layers, you can read time:

Who built?

Who altered?

Who restored?

Who added?

And who preserved what they found?

If peoples read their history in their stones, why do we not read our history in the same way?

Indeed, why do we not ask a deeper question:

If civilization is built layer upon layer, what happened to the thread that should have connected the generations of the Islamic ummah to one another?

I Said to Abu Muhammad

“There is something about Egyptians that caught my attention.”

I told him that, despite the hardship I saw in their lives, I saw many people smiling, laughing, and welcoming strangers with a generosity that seemed out of proportion to the magnitude of what they faced.

I was not saying that poverty is beautiful, nor that suffering is a virtue. I was speaking about something else: the spirit that may remain alive despite the harshness of circumstances.

I said to him:

“I have visited America and Europe, and seen high levels of progress, organization, and prosperity, but in some places I did not feel this same Egyptian spirit: someone who does not know you smiling at you, inviting you into their home, or sitting with you as though you had known one another for a long time.”

Perhaps that was my personal experience, and I do not claim it is a judgment on an entire people.

But I wondered:

Can centuries of faith and traditions leave something in people's sensibilities that endures even when circumstances change?

A smile.

An invitation to a meal.

A cup of tea.

A door opened to a stranger.

And a child saying to you:

“Don't go… stay in my room.”

Small things. But sometimes the spirit of civilizations hides in small things, not in slogans.

The Ummah… and to What Does It Bear Witness?

Since that day, the question of witnessing (shahāda) has become more present in my mind.

If the ummah bears witness, to what does it bear witness?

It is not enough for a witness to carry something, nor is it enough to know that the thing exists.

A witness must know what they have seen.

And what they have understood.

And what they bear witness to.

Here, the question becomes larger than preserving the text.

How can an ummah bear witness if it has not seen the map connecting the questions to which it bears witness?

Everything may be present:

The Qur'an.

And narrations (riwāya).

And works of exegesis (tafsīr).

And history.

And names.

And the sciences.

But if the relationship between them is no longer clear, a person may become like someone standing before an ancient city who sees all its stones but does not know how they were connected to one another.

Here, the stones are not lost; what is lost is the way.

The Survival of the Remains… and the Survival of the Tale

Perhaps this is why Bab Zuweila remained in my memory.

Not because it was the oldest thing I saw in Cairo, but because it made me think about the difference between the survival of the remains and the survival of the tale.

Stone can survive for hundreds of years.

But it is the person who decides whether to read it or pass it by.

And a text can remain preserved for centuries.

But the question is:

Has the method that reveals its relationships survived?

Has the map that makes the verses lead to one another survived?

Has the ability to see the question in its entirety, rather than collect its parts, survived?

And might something be concealed from a person not by hiding it, but by making its parts present without their seeing the link between them?

This is not an answer; it is a hypothesis worth testing.

What Will We Leave Adam?

Here Adam returns once again.

I imagined him, years later, standing before something we had left him.

Perhaps a book.

Perhaps a city.

Perhaps a house.

Perhaps an idea.

And perhaps a Qur'an that he carries as we have carried it.

The question is not only: What will he find?

The question is:

Will he know how to search?

Will he know how to ask?

Will he know that what lies before him is not a collection of disconnected parts, and that behind every trace lies a path that led to it?

The most important thing we can bequeath to the next generation is not to give it all the answers, but to teach it how to see the question.

To stand before the gate and see more than wood and stone.

To ask:

Who built it?

Why has it remained?

Who passed through here?

What happened?

What did those who came before me learn?

And where did they end?

And where do I begin?

When I Left Cairo

When I left Cairo, I did not think that Adam would remain in my memory more than Bab Zuweila itself.

The stone remained in its place.

But the child stood before the future.

On the way to the hotel, I realized that I had not taken away only a photograph of an old gate.

I had taken a question:

What do we leave for those who come after us?

Not only what we have memorized.

Nor only what we have collected.

Nor what we have inherited, unchanged.

But the ability to read what we have inherited, to see the relationships between its parts, and to know where those who came before ended and where one begins.

For the danger is not that everything will be lost.

The danger is that everything will remain, and then the thread connecting it all will be lost.

Then the stone remains.

And the tale is folded away.

The text remains.

And the map is absent.

The past remains before our eyes.

But the path to the future becomes obscure.

And when I remember Adam, I remember his simple request:

“I want you to sleep here… in my room.”

He wanted to make a place for me in his small world.

And perhaps the question that has stayed with me since that day was:

What will we leave room for in the world that comes after us?

Will we leave him only what we have inherited?

Or will we leave him the path that helps him understand what he has inherited?

Bab Zuweila remained behind me.

And Adam remained before me.

And perhaps this was the question that kept pursuing me from the moment I stood before those stones:

What does a person do upon gaining power?

For power reveals not only what a person can do, but also something of what has settled within.

When a noble person is able to inflict harm, his moral character restrains him, leaving room for reconciliation.

But one who harbors harm within himself, upon gaining power, reveals his capacity to inflict harm, and its effects expand as his capacity expands.

From here, the question of the allotted share returned to me.

If the Qur'an has spoken of an allotted share, then linked it to leading astray, arousing vain desires, commanding, and altering, the question does not stop at the past:

What happens when those who belong to this share gain power?

In this age, when Jews, and especially Israel as a state, have acquired extensive influence, capacity, and impact, the question becomes more pressing:

Does gaining power reveal the moral character of the one who holds it?

Does capability become a means of protecting human beings and the vulnerable, or an instrument of domination and harm?

Here, the question is not about Jews as a religious community, or about every Jewish person, but about the category identified by Qur'anic inquiry, and about conduct that can be tested against reality.

For the allotted share, if it extends into history, cannot be established by slogans, lineages, or names.

It is tested only when power is gained.

Here I remembered these lines of verse:

When a noble man is able to inflict harm — the virtues of the noble come to him, and he desists. > > Yet you see the base man, when able to inflict harm — transgress, leaving no room for reconciliation.

Perhaps gaining power is the moment when masks fall.

For one who is noble, greater capacity brings greater restraint.

And for one who harbors harm, capacity reveals the path to it.

Thus the question is no longer:

Who possesses power?

But:

What does one do with it upon possessing it?

And here Adam remained before me.

A small child who knows nothing of sultans, prisons, wars, or history.

Yet he represents the generation that will come after us.

And the question we will leave him is not only what happened in the past, who possessed power, or who prevailed.

But:

When those who came before us gained power… what did they do to the human being?

For this is where the reading of history begins.

And this is where the allotted share is tested.

And this is where we recognize the difference between one who possesses power and one whom power possesses.

Between the two, the question remained:

When the next generation reaches what we have left it, will it find only the things… or will it find the thread that connected them?

The danger is not that everything will be lost, but that everything will remain, and then the thread connecting it all will be lost.