My Mother — Page 36
36 days in a dark room and she kept me company most of the time. My affliction became so acute that hair began to grow under the upper eyelids, so that a portion of each eyelid had to be surgically cut off. In this situation ’s tender care of me, her love and her earnest supplications on my behalf became the principal source of solace for me. Separation from each other was agony for both of us. Despite the fact that during those years of suffering, though I continued my physical attendance at school, my studies were carried on during the cooler parts of the year only, I did not—by Allah’s grace—lose a year or fall behind in class. I matriculated at the age of fourteen in the first division, standing first in my school. My father sent me to Government College, Lahore, for graduate study, and for the first time I had to live away from home. That was a sore trial for. She insisted that I should go home every week, and finally reconciled herself to a fortnightly visit. After each visit I wrote reassuring her of my safe return to Lahore. Fortunately, in my second winter at college my eye trou- ble was healed and I was able to work diligently in preparation for the Intermediate University examination which I passed with good marks in the spring of 1909. My two years at college had brought me a certain degree of self-reliance, and made separation from endurable. During my first long vacation a letter from Hazrat Maulvi Nooruddeen, addressed to my father, suggested that I should make my covenant of allegiance to the Promised Messiah. I had deemed myself totally committed to him ever since September 3, 1904, when I had been privileged to behold him for the first time at Lahore. Thereafter, ’s dreams had reinforced