269 – Muḥammad narrated to me; Sulaymān b. Muḥammad al-Baṣrī related; an elderly ascetic called Rustam al-Abarqī, from the region of al-Balqāʾ, reported:
A woman from ʿĀbidah, who had lost her son, told me:
“She wept for a full year, ⦗194⦘ and not once did her tears cease. After that year I saw him in a dream: he was seated in his grave, still wrapped in his shroud, the lids of his eyes already fallen away. I said, ‘This is my son—by Allah, the earth has not yet consumed him.’ I drew near, alarmed by what I saw, and asked, ‘My son, how do you find your place?’ He knit his brow and replied:
I lie in the dust, my joints all brittle and undone;
If my mother beheld my remains, her tears would run and run.
“Then he stretched himself out in the grave. I looked again and there was only a black streak—no shape, no trace. The grave closed in on him, and I awoke, by Allah, shaking with fear at what I had seen.
“The woman was overcome by a bewildering grief; she mourned bitterly and remained in that state until she died.”