Tales of Rabi’a

One day Rabi'a and her serving-girl were getting ready to break a fast of several days. The serving-girl needed an onion and was about to go next door and borrow one, but Rabi'a said: "Forty years ago I vowed never to ask for anything from anyone but God—we can do without onions."
Just then a bird flew over, and dropped an onion into Rabi'a's frying pan, peeled and ready to fry.
"Interesting but not convincing," she said. "Am I supposed to believe that God is an onion-vender? I mean, really."
That day they fried their bread without onions.
One year Rabi'a planted corn—but then a swarm of locusts arrived, and landed right on it.
Rabi'a prayed: "O God, this corn is my livelihood; it's taken both my money and my sweat. Who would You like me to give it to, then? To Your enemies or Your friends?"
As soon as she finished her prayer, the locusts rose in a cloud, and flew away, and were never seen again.
One day two holy men came to visit Rabi'a, hoping to get something to eat; they were sure that whatever food she gave them would be ritually pure since it was "obtained in a lawful manner."
After they had seated themselves, a cloth containing two loaves of bread was laid before them. Eagerly they reached for the food—and then a beggar appeared at the door. Rabi'a immediately gave him both loaves of bread.
This really bothered the two holy men, but they kept it to themselves.
Pretty soon a slave-girl arrived, carrying a load of freshly-baked bread. "My mistress sent this."
Rabi'a counted the loves. "I don't think so," she said. "There are only eighteen here." Protests, denials—whatever the girl said, Rabi'a would not believe her.
(What'd happened was that the slave-girl had taken two loaves for herself.) So she went away and came back with the full twenty loaves. Rabi'a counted them again: "That's more like it."
So Rabi'a served the hungry holy men with the twenty loaves instead of two. They were really baffled. "Two loaves, no loaves, twenty loaves of bread—how could that be enough for two holy men? Then I remembered the Promise: 'You give one; I give ten.' So I gave two to the beggar—
"But when only eighteen came back, I knew that there was either something wrong with my prayer, or that somebody had sticky fingers."
Rabi'a's niece Zulfa once asked her: "Aunt Rabi'a, why do you want to keep people from visiting you?"
"It's because I'm afraid that they'll spread stories about me, saying I did things I never did, said things I never said."
"But they say already that food appears miraculously in your house, and that you cook it without fire."
"Daughter of my brother, if such things ever showed up in this house, I wouldn't touch them with a ten-foot pole. Everything I have, I bought with my own money—that's why all things bless me."




From Doorkeeper of the Heart: Versions of Rabi'a, translated by Charles Upton (Putney, Vt.: Threshold Books, 1988). Used by arrangement with Threshold Books.
Copyright © 1988 by Charles Upton