There were some lines that had long been in my mind but I had not understood their true meaning. Now before that sad scene I gained a full understanding of them. The lines were these: “If there was no separation from friends, death could find no way to our spirits to seize them.”14  That is to say, what kills man most is separation from those he loves. Yes, nothing had caused me as much suffering and sorrow as that situation.  If assistance had not come from the Qur’an and from belief, my grief and sorrow and suffering would have made my spirit fly away.

Since early times in their verses, poets have lamented the destruction with time of the places they have been together with their beloveds. I had seen this most painfully with my own eyes. With the sorrow of someone passing by the dwellings of beloved friends after two hundred years, my heart and spirit joined my eyes in weeping. Then one by one the happy scenes of the life I had passed for nearly twenty years in study with my valuable students, when the places which were now in ruins were flourishing and happy, sprang to life before me like pictures at the cinema, then died away and vanished. This continued before the eye of my imagination for some time.

Then I felt astonished at the state of the worldly, how is it that they deceive themselves? For the situation there showed clearly that this world is transitory and that  human  beings are guests within it. I saw with my own eyes how true are the constantly repeated words of the people of reality: “The world is cruel, treacherous, bad; don’t be deceived by it!” I also saw that just as man is connected with his own body and household,  so  is he connected with his town, his country, and with the world. For while weeping with my two eyes at the pitifulness of old age in respect of my body, I wanted to weep with ten eyes not only at my medrese’s old age, but at its death. And  I felt the  need  to weep  with a  hundred  eyes at the half-death of my beautiful homeland.

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14 These lines are in Arabic in the original text, and are by Mutanabi. (Tr.)