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What Is in This Book

This book is a literary work of faith, drawing a detailed and orderly comparison between the limited, perishing examinations of this world and the great divine examination, where the greatest test of all is held, and on it turns a man's forever: lasting bliss, or plain loss.

And it does not go by way of separate chapters; it walks with the candidate step by step and does not leave him. It begins from the moment he reads his name on the wall where candidates are called, and asks: who wrote my name here, and when? Then it moves to the numbered seat, and sees how people are put in seats they did not choose, and that the seat is not the mark.

Then it stops at the question paper, and sets out how the questions of the greater hall are made from health as they are made from affliction. Then it passes the invigilator, and the cheating that a man gets away with in one hall and is caught for in another. Then the rough sheet that the candidate thinks nobody reads, though it is read. Then the time lost at the start of the sitting, and the man who turns back, who rubs out a line and writes over it. Then the last bell and the handing in of the paper, and then the day the results are announced.

And in every chapter of it there are two facing scenes: a scene in the school hall that you know and can almost smell the ink of, and a scene in the greater hall that answers to it. The purpose of the pairing is not to frighten but to make plain; for a mind that cannot picture a day it has not yet seen has no trouble picturing a hall it has sat in many times and come out of trembling. And its proofs from the Book and the Sunnah come with their wording, their source, and their grading; nothing in them is composed.

And this book was written for a reader who reads knowing that what he reads concerns him; not so that he may be told what he does not know, but so that what he does know may be moved to the angle of view he almost never stands at: to see himself from above, sitting on a numbered chair, with the clock turning over his head.

Map of this part
The questionWhat does it mean for a man to be under examination in a hall he cannot see, and what follows from his knowing it or not knowing it?
The path1The scene of the name, the seat, and the wait for the bell2The uncovering of a second hall running with the first at the same time3The reason for the hall's furnishing: it is the matter of the test and not its decoration4The denial that silence saves, and the division of people into a man at rest and a man being examined5A statement of the book's method and the order of its stations
The two hallsA name on a list held up by four pins, a bag that stays outside the door, a seat numbered in chalk, an envelope broken open, a time written at the top of the paper, and an invigilator who can be deceivedA life that is itself the seat, questions coming down in the shape of an ordinary day of health and affliction, a time known to the owner of the hall alone, and a result after which there is no sitting again
Evidenceal-Kahf 7–8 · al-Mulk 2 · al-Insan 2 · al-Ankabut 2–3 · Sahih Muslim 2999 · Sahih al-Bukhari 6416 · Sahih Muslim 2956
Where it landsYou go out of the door knowing that you are in a sitting and not at a rest, and that the seat you were put in is not the mark.
What to do with it
  1. 1Say one sentence to yourself with the first breath of every morning: I am now in a second hall that I cannot see. Then spend your day on it.
  2. 2Leave at the door of your day what does not come in with you: comparing yourself with people, pleading a seat you did not choose, and the talk in your head about a yesterday that is over.
  3. 3Name what is in your hands before you use it: this is money that is a question, this is time that is a question, this is health that is a question.
  4. 4Bring back everything that comes to you today to two doors and no third: gratitude you bring about, or endurance you hold on to.
  5. 5Ask, before you go through with any decision: what will be written of this in the other record? Then go through with it, or hold back.
  6. 6Prove your claim by one act that nobody sees but you, and make it a fixed thing in your day and not an occasional one.
In short

A scene known to everyone who ever went to school: a name on a list on a wall, a bag left at the door, a numbered seat you did not choose, an envelope broken open, and a stillness waiting for a bell. And this is not the hall that is meant; for you are sitting in two halls at once: one you see, with its walls and its clock and its invigilator, and another in which your seat is your whole life — the act is one, and the recording is in both records. And the furnishing of the hall is not a flaw in its design but the matter of the examination: without the appetite in front of you, endurance would have no price. And you will not be left with a claim that is never tested; what lies before you is two answers and no third: gratitude you bring about, or endurance you hold on to. And so it goes from here on: two facing scenes in every chapter, and the aim is that you understand, not that you be frightened.