Qari Muhammad Ayub of Bannu, Pakistan, was one of the gentlest human beings I was to meet on my journey to Karachi. This was before all the present nonsense and its distortions and misrepresentations. I remember turning up on my first day - it was a Wednesday. I stood at the door, actually a side door, when a window opened above me and a head with a straggly beard wearing a little cap popped out then in again like a cuckoo in a cuckoo clock.
Moments later he stood in front of me. he was slight in build as far as I could tell, as he wore the long single-piece smock and a pullover on top. After I introduced myself, he always called me "brother Tony" and took my right hand in his when we met and held it close to his chest.
He took me upstairs to a little room with a carefully placed desk and two chairs either side of it. I would usually prepare a little lesson with a drill and some vocabulary, then we would talk informally over a cup of stewed tea.
Ayub was the answer to my inquiries about Islam - a living embodiment from whom I could gain information. Eventually, I got to see the inside of the prayer area of a mosque. Then he took me back to his home on foot. Inside there was a large sheet covering the way to the kitchen (literally a purdah) and I sat in his rather spartan living room while he practiced some of his English with me.
Interior of a mosque.
Ayub also invited me to the Muslim Union of Reading University. It was a lively gathering of men, and I will always remember the first naat I heard. A large man ina scruffy pullover stood in the middle of the gathering, and without accompaniment opened his lungs and heart with a very beautiful rendering of a verse praising the Prophet (SAWS).Ayub never pressurized me. Rather he would ask me regularly whether I was reading my own book - The Bible.
Renowned Qari Waheed Zafar Qasmi.
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