Three Sufis once walked along the earth, and they were so observant and wise that everyone called them clairvoyants.
One day, during one of their many journeys, they met a camel driver on the way. Seeing the travelers, he rushed towards them.
“My camel is missing,” he blurted out, staring at them with bulging eyes. -Have you seen him?
— Is he blind in one eye? - asked one of the travelers.
“Yes,” answered the driver.
“And he’s missing a tooth in front,” added another.
- Yes, yes...
- And he’s also limping, right? - asked the third.
“Yes, yes, yes,” the driver rejoiced.
Then all three pointed to him in the direction from which they had come, and told him that he could hope to find the missing camel.
The driver, deciding that the elders had seen his camel, rushed along the indicated path, without even thanking the travelers. But he did not find the camel and thought that it would be nice to talk with the clairvoyants again, maybe they would tell him what to do next. He caught up with them late in the evening, when the travelers settled down for the night.
“Your camel has a wineskin of honey hanging on one side and a sack of grain on the other, am I right?” - asked one of them.
“Yes,” the driver answered in surprise.
— Is he carrying a pregnant woman? - asked another.
And then a worm of doubt began to stir under the driver’s heart, but after hesitating a little, he drawled out again:
- Yes.
“We don’t know where they are,” finished the third.
Now the driver had no doubt that it was these three who stole the camel, the woman, and all the luggage. Blinded by anger, he dragged them to the nearest village to the judge and accused the elders of theft.
The judge, after listening to the driver, decided that the matter was obvious and ordered all three to be taken into custody. But after some time, the driver finally found his camel, which was calmly grazing in some field. Returning to the judge, he begged that the clairvoyants be released.
The judge, who at first did not allow them to even say a word in their defense, began to ask how they knew so many details about the ill-fated camel, although, and now this is already obvious, they had not even seen it.
“But we saw camel tracks on the road,” one of them answered.
“One of the prints was very weak, so we concluded that he was limping,” added the second.
“He gnawed the leaves of the bushes only on one side of the road, therefore he was blind in one eye,” continued the third sage.
“The leaves were split in the middle, indicating the absence of a middle tooth,” the first one spoke again.
“Bees and ants were gathering on different sides of the road: we saw that honey was spilled on one side, and grain was scattered on the other,” said the second.
“We found a long human hair in the place where the camel stopped and someone got off it, it was a woman,” said the third.
“In the place where she was sitting, we found prints of her palms, then we thought that she must soon be resolved, since she had to get up, leaning on her hands,” concluded the first.
- But why didn’t you demand at the trial that we listen to your explanations? - the judge was surprised.
“We just thought that the driver would not give up the search for the missing camel and soon, perhaps, would find it,” answered the first clairvoyant.
“And having found him, he will think that it would be a very noble act on his part to achieve our release,” said the second.
“The judge’s curiosity could not speed up the investigation,” said the third.
“The truth established through his own actions will be more obvious and indisputable to him than our attempt to prove that we were detained without any reason,” the first added with dignity.
“We know from experience that people are more inclined to believe the truth when they think that they have discovered it themselves,” said the second clairvoyant.
“And now it’s time for us to go.” There is still a lot of work ahead of us,” concluded the third.
And the Sufis went their way. They are still in labor, traveling along the roads of the earth.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru