This Too Shall Pass
An English-language retelling of the 13th-century Persian fable that birthed a famous adage
The young dervish panted heavily, the sweltering sun beating down on him as it had done now for weeks as he trekked through the Persian desert. He pursed his dry, cracked lips, peering through wind-battered eyes at the small village that laid just beyond the horizon. He was barely a man, naive, and hungered for the wisdom that only a life of austerity could provide. But even the most spirited and idealistic youth might have his faith shaken without some respite from the ruthless, unrelenting desert sun.
“Finally,” thought the dervish as he approached the outskirts of the village. After a long, hard journey he had finally found a place to rest, nestled conspicuously along the sandy dunes of the Maranjab desert. The exhausted dervish stumbled into town center and to the first villager he could find, asking politely where he might find food and lodging for the night.
“Well,” said the villager, puzzled, “no such place exists here. We are but a small village and we keep to our own.”
The dervish’s heart sank, his legs hardly able to support his weight anymore and his throat parched. The villager, as if he could see the defeat passing across the dervish’s face, had an idea.
“You might try and see the old man, Shakir. He is the owner of a small ranch but a few hundred paces from here, and he is generous of spirit. I can’t imagine he would be anything less than happy to provide for you tonight.”
The dervish thanked the villager profusely, and followed his directions to the ranch owned by the man called Shakir, whose name means “one who thanks the Lord constantly.” As promised, Shakir was a kind and hospitable man who had enjoyed a life of wealth. He insisted that the dervish stay for a few days. The grateful dervish ate plentifully, drank, and slept away his fatigue, and Shakir was happy to make a new friend and help a stranger in need.
At the end of his stay the dervish thanked Shakir, who had taken a liking to the young man. As a parting gift, Shakir supplied the dervish with plenty of food and water for the journey ahead. The dervish marveled gratefully at Shakir’s bounty.
“Thank God for you,” gushed the dervish. “Thank God for your fortunes!”
Shakir smiled.
“Don’t be fooled by appearances,” he said warmly. “For this, too, shall pass.”
The dervish looked at Shakir quizzically as he began on his way down the desert road upon which he would trek again through the Persian desert. He toiled over Shakir’s words with a puzzled laugh, as the sun rose above the desert and the little village disappeared behind him along the horizon.
As the years passed, the dervish grew to be a young man and continued on his Sufi path, hungering for enlightenment and living a life of self-imposed poverty and austerity. With some age he had come to understand that anything he heard or saw during his journey offered a lesson to be learned and thus was worthy of contemplation.
Five years passed, each year ripe with travel to different lands, new lessons, people, and adventures. And then, by happenstance, the dervish would find himself happening again across the little village in the Maranjab desert.
The dervish immediately recognized the town and remembered his friend Shakir from years ago. He asked around and tried to find Shakir at the old ranch where they first met. The dervish began to wonder if Shakir was still alive.
Finally, he met a villager near the old ranch who knew of Shakir’s whereabouts.
“He lives in the neighboring village, ten miles from here. He now works for Haddad,” the villager speculated. Overjoyed at the prospect of seeing Shakir again, the dervish threw his satchel over his shoulder and set out for the neighboring village.
After another two days of travel, the dervish found himself at the luxurious home of a wealthy man named Haddad. The dervish rapped on the door, and was surprised to be greeted by Shakir, who looked much older now and was dressed in rags.
Time had taken a hefty toll on Shakir, whose hair had turned white as snow and whose frame had grown frail. Shakir may have fallen into poverty, but his kind smile remained magnificent and unyielding.
“What happened to you?” the dervish lamented, wanting to know how such a kind and generous man of such great riches had fallen upon such hardship.
“My old friend,” Shakir laughed, as he embraced the dervish. He welcomed the dervish in and replied that a great flood had left him with no cattle and no house. Shakir had become a servant out of necessity who worked now in Haddad’s employ, and lived in a small room with little to his name.
His turn of fortune, however, had not changed Shakir’s kind and friendly manner. He graciously took care of the dervish, gave him food, water, and much needed companionship. They laughed as the dervish regaled Shakir with stories from his travels, and the dervish helped the old man with chores about the house that he could no longer manage in old age.
Shakir felt great affection for the dervish, who likewise viewed the old man as the father he had never known. After a few days, it was time for the dervish to set out again on his journey of enlightenment. This time, as he was leaving, the dervish felt a pang of sadness to say farewell, and looked sympathetically upon his old friend.
“I am so sorry for what has happened to you. I know that God has a reason for what He does,” the dervish said.
Shakir smiled.
“Remember, my son. This, too, shall pass.”
They held a long embrace, and the dervish could here Shakir choking back tears. The old man’s words echoed again in the dervish’s ears and although he did not fully understand Shakir’s meaning, that smiling face and calm spirit would remain with him.
For eleven years, the dervish traveled to and around India. As he approached middle age, he returned to his homeland of Persia, and his thoughts turned once again to the old man Shakir. He longed to reunite with his friend one more time, and traveled the long and tedious journey back to the Maranjab desert with a gift for Shakir — a golden ring inlaid with fine Indian rubies.
But instead of finding the old man, he came across a modest grave with Shakir’s name etched faintly into it, and underneath, a singular inscription.
It read, “this, too, shall pass.”
The dervish wept.
“Riches come and go,” thought the dervish to himself, tearfully, “but how can a tomb change?”
The dervish was filled with remorse that he was unable to visit Shakir one last time, and resolved in that moment that every year he would visit the old man who had shown him such kindness in his youth all those years ago.
For many years, the dervish made good on his promise to visit Shakir, traveling dutifully every year to the tombstone underneath which his old friend laid.
However, one year, as the dervish began to show signs of old age, he found the cemetery and the grave were gone, washed away by a flood. The dervish was heartbroken and began again to weep. He touched his fingers to the soil where the tombstone had been. The only memory of his old friend Shakir had been swept away as if he had never existed, and no keepsake remained to remember him by.
But then the dervish stopped crying and dried his cheeks. He lifted his eyes to the sky, and as if discovering some greater meaning he said with a gasp, “this, too, shall pass.”
More years were to pass, and before long the dervish himself had finally become too old to travel. He decided to settle down in the little village in the Maranjab desert where Shakir had lived. People traveled from far and wide to have the benefit of his wisdom, as he had become a wise and loving elder statesmen. The knowledge he had gained from his travels became well-known, and eventually his fame spread all the way to the Great Adviser to the King of Persia.
It so happened that the vizier had been searching desperately for someone with great wisdom. The fact was that for some time, the king had been consumed with grief over the death of his wife and first-born son, who had died in childbirth. The king was a benevolent and generous ruler, but every night he wept in his chambers trying to make sense of the tragedy that had befallen him.
In the midst of his mourning, the king asked his grand vizier for a ring to be made for him, but no jeweler or vizier was able to create one to his liking. For the ring was to be a special one, with clearly-defined yet seemingly impossible specifications.
The ring, the king demanded, must carry an inscription such that if one felt sad, he could look at the ring and it would make him happy, and if he was happy, he could look at the ring and it would make him sad. Many men and women came forward with suggestions for the ring, but the king liked none of them. So the grand vizier wrote to the infamous dervish, informing him of the king’s woes and asking for help.
A few weeks later, a box made of satin made its way to the king. A gift, the messenger said, from a wise man in the Maranjab desert. The satin box was presented to the king, and inside it a golden ring laden with tiny Indian rubies. The king, who had been depressed for months, reluctantly put the ring on his finger and inspected it carefully.
He peered down and read an inscription carved delicately along the band of the ring. He paused for a moment, contemplating the words, then started to smile for the first time in months, and a few moments later, he was laughing, a joyous, bittersweet and heart-rending laugh.
“What does it say?” the vizier asked, shocked that the dervish had managed to do what had till now seemed impossible. The speechless king, overcome with emotion, wiped tears from his cheeks and held the ring up for the vizier to read.
And illuminated in the candlelight of the king’s chambers, the vizier was able to make out the inscription.
It read, in four simple words, “this too shall pass.”
For Dustyn.
“This too shall pass” (Persian: این نیز بگذرد) is a Persian adage translated and used in multiple languages. It reflects on the temporary nature, or ephemerality, of the human condition. The general sentiment is often expressed in wisdom literature throughout history and across cultures, although the specific phrase seems to have originated in the writings of the medieval Persian Sufi poets such as Rumi and Fariduddin Attar.
