and the revelation was still being withheld(1) when a messenger of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ came to me and said, “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ commands you to separate from your wife.” I asked, “Am I to divorce her, or what should I do?” He replied, “No—simply keep away from her; do not go near her.” The same order was sent to my two companions.
So I said to my wife, “Go to your family and stay with them until Allah decides about this matter.”
The wife of Hilal ibn Umayyah then came to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and said, “O Messenger of Allah, Hilal ibn Umayyah is a helpless old man who has no servant. Do you object if I look after him?” He said, “No, but he must not come near you.” She replied, “By Allah, he feels no urge for anything; by Allah, he has not stopped weeping from the day his affair began until today.”
Some of my relatives said to me, “Why do you not seek permission from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ regarding your wife, since permission was granted to the wife of Hilal ibn Umayyah to serve him?” I said, “I will not ask the Messenger of Allah ﷺ about her, for I do not know what he might say if I were to seek his leave, and I am a young man!”
I remained in that condition for ten more nights, so that a full fifty nights had passed since we had been forbidden to speak to anyone.
On the morning of the fiftieth night I performed the dawn prayer on the flat roof of one of our houses. While I was sitting in the very state that Allah the Exalted described of us—my soul constricted and even the vast earth seemed narrow to me—I heard the voice of a herald who had climbed Mount Salʿa(2), crying at the top of his voice, “O Kaʿb ibn Mālik, rejoice!” I fell in prostration, realizing that relief had come.
The Messenger of Allah ﷺ had informed the people, right after the dawn prayer, that Allah—Mighty and Majestic—had accepted our repentance, so they set out to bring us the glad tidings. Some went to my two companions, while a man galloped toward me on horseback and a runner from the tribe of Aslam hurried on foot, scaling the mountain; but the voice reached me faster than the horse.
When the man whose voice I had heard arrived to congratulate me, I removed my two garments and clothed him with them in gratitude for his news—by Allah, I owned nothing else that day. I then borrowed two other garments, put them on, and set off straight(3) for the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, people meeting me in groups