Stories for when the well is dry

Blowing on Embers: Stories for Hard Times

October 8, 2006

 

My mother told me before she passed away

After I'm gone don't forget to pray.

Son, there will be hard times

Talkin' about hard times

Who knows better that I.

-- Ray Charles

 

Stories for when the well is dry

Once upon a time, there was a young woman named Fatima.  She was the daughter of a prosperous spinner.  One day she and her father set out on a journey.  Her father had business in islands away from home.  He hoped that this trip would bring him wealth and a good husband for his daughter.

On their way to Crete, a storm blew up and their ship was wrecked.  Fatima barely survived, but somehow she dragged herself to shore.  Once there, she found her father dead.  Destitute, she wandered lost.  A family of cloth-makers saw her and took pity on her.  They took her into their home and taught her their craft.  Thus, it was that she made a second life for herself.  For a time, she was happy and reconciled to her lot.  One day as she walked on the beach, alone, a band of slave traders kidnapped her and carried her away, along with other captives.  They took her to Istanbul where she was to be sold.  At the slave market, a successful merchant, who owned a wood yard, bought her, intending to make her a servant for his wife.  When he arrived at home, however, he learned that he had lost everything when pirates captured his cargo.  He had to let all his workers go.  Fatima and his wife were forced to work at the heavy labor of making wooden masts, as he tried to rebuild his business.  Fatima worked so hard that her employer gave her freedom.  Once again, she made a new life.  One day the merchant having great confidence in Fatima, asked her to go with a shipment of masts to Java.  As before, disaster struck.  Off the coast of China, a typhoon wrecked the ship and Fatima found herself once again cast up on the seashore, in a strange land.  

"Why is it" she cried out, "that whenever I try to do something, it comes to grief?  Why should so many unfortunate things happen to me?"  There was no answer.  So she picked herself up from the sand and started to walk inland.

It so happened that when Fatima arrived in China, many people believed a legend that one day a foreign woman would arrive, and she would know how to make a tent for the Emperor.  He desired a tent, but no one in China at that time, knew how to make one.  Once a year, heralds were sent out in search of any new foreign woman arrival.  One of the heralds came upon Fatima, wandering lost.  He took her to the court where she was brought in front of the Emperor.  He asked her if she could make a tent.  "I think so," she said.

 She began her task by asking for rope.  Since there was no rope, she collected flax and, remembering what her father had taught her, she spun the flax into ropes.  Then she asked for stout cloth, but there was none.  She wove stout cloth, as she had learned from the cloth makers.  Since there were no tent poles, she made them using the knowledge that she gained as a mast maker.  When all her materials were ready, she searched her memory for tents she had seen during her travels, and lo, a tent was made. 

The Emperor rewarded Fatima for her labors.  She settled in China and as far as anyone knows, had a good long life there.  It is said that she realized she could use the knowledge she gained, as a result of horrible experiences, to create her future happiness.

Adapted from: "Fatima the Spinner and the Tent" in, Tales of the Dervishes by Indries Shah E.P. Dutton: New York (1970)

 

Nature works to keep things the same.  Humans are not unlike the large red ants in West Africa who defend their mud anthills from invaders by banding together and beginning to make repairs before assessing the damage.  We work madly to do something that might erase the events that have disrupted our lives.  We hold onto our expectation that our life story will come together into a logical narrative, and we continue with this story long after our lives have changed. 

Even when our lives run smoothly, we are bombarded by news of tragedy near and far.  We wonder how we might survive after losing a loved one in 9/11, or after Katrina, or the tsunami that washed away so many lives.  We want to help others, but we avert our eyes after the first shock of an event has passed, overwhelmed by the enormity of their problems.

But we can learn from others, who, like Fatima, have lived through hard times.  They have lost and found the threads of their lives and have grown stronger as they faced adversity.  Their diverse backgrounds offer us a wide view of the many pathways through hardship.  Keep posted here for stories that provide a map through Hard Times.