Discourses of Rumi

194 V DISCOURSES OF RUMIsome sign, like a scratch or abscess, will show onits skin. Then you can say, in a sense that the handspeaks since it gives information, “I ate somethingcausing inflammation, and so I became like this.”Or the hand is wounded and becomes black.These signs tell a story, saying “A knife struckme,” or “I rubbed myself against a black pot.” Somuch for the philosophers!The Sunni theologians say: God forbid! Noindeed! The hands and feet will speak just as thetongue speaks. On the day of resurrection a personwill deny their past saying, “I did not steal.”But their hand will answer, “Yes you stole, since Itook it.” They will then turn to their hand, saying,“You have never spoken before, how can youspeak now?” The hand will answer, “God gave usspeech, just as It gives all things speech. It givesspeech to the door and wall, the stone and clod.What is so astonishing about that?”You speak with your tongue, yet it is merely apiece of flesh. Your hand is also a piece of flesh. Isyour tongue endowed with reason? Yet when Godcommanded it to speak, it spoke.