The Reminiscences of Zafrulla Khan — Page 83
83 REMINISCENCES OF SIR MUHAMMAD ZAFRULLA KHAN roused your wife and said, 'Inamullah has died,' and she said, 'Mother, have you had an indication?' and I said, 'Yes, I have just had this experience. '" Sure enough, when the man whom we had sent to Hyderabad came back and gave us the details of the last hours of our friend, he told us he had died at about 3 a. m. I might mention one event that happened when I was only 17 years old. We were then in Sialkot, where my father was practising as a lawyer. It was the year of King Edward VII's death. There was no news yet of the King's illness or anything of the kind and mother had a curious dream. She saw that she had gone for a drive into the cantonments at Sialkot and passing near the Church of England cathedral she noticed that a stone was missing from the spire of the church, from near the top, and that there was an unsightly vacuum. She said to a cousin of mine, who was with her in the carriage, "Sharifa" - this was the cousin's name - "look there is a stone missing almost from the center of the tower and the vacant space looks very unsightly. " My cousin replied, "But, Aunt, do not you see the masons are having another stone made ready and it will soon be fitted in so that nobody will notice any difference. " When mother related her dream she said, "I wonder what this portends. " Within a week or ten days, we heard the news of King Edward VII's death. He was, of course, the head of the Church of England. I mention these two not as being too typical, but as showing the kind of experience that she used to have. There were others through which she was definitely guided along certain ways. It was through such guidance that she was led to join the Ahmadiyya Movement in advance of my father. In those days the Movement attracted much more opposition than it does today. The Founder was alive and fierce controversy raged around him and his claims. Mother saw him in her dreams though she had never set eyes on him in real life. Subsequently, when she had the opportunity of seeing him she was able to recall all the details, the house, the place, and everything else was exactly as she had seen in her dreams. She had not known who he was or what his name was or what his claims were. My father knew, but she did not. She had heard only his courtesy title, the Mirza Sahib. When she saw him the third time, in her dream, she asked him who he was. She said, "People ask me, who