and he replied, “Alas! The veil has fallen.”’”

He said: “Whenever something occurred during a gathering that unsettled the hearts of those present, the teacher Abū ‘Alī would say: ‘This stems from the True One’s protective jealousy: He wishes that what transpires in the serenity of this moment should not be made known.’ They recited these lines to convey this meaning:

She meant to visit us, but when she looked
Into the mirror, her lovely face restrained her.
This was not the recompense her beauty owed me:
Tormented by her absence, I wasted away with grief.”

I say: Mentioning these matters in the chapter on protective jealousy is harmful. Although the True One jealously guards against granting some people what He grants His God-fearing friends—the foremost and those brought near to Him—they have termed the True One’s withholding ‘protective jealousy,’ as noted above. Yet this wording suggests that the True One withheld from that servant the immense gift He possesses, and that the servant was unworthy of it—just as one jealously guards a noblewoman against marrying someone who is not her equal.