Our Beloved Master - His Early Life — Page 112
•oUR BELoVED MASTER• 112 other hand he could not bear to keep the boy forcibly with him, separating him from his mother and father. He began to think of how to answer Ha rith. Seeing the Holy Prophet sa perplexed, Ha rith said with a great deal of anxiety, “O noble son of the chief of Quraish! We beseech you in the name of your honourable ancestors to have mercy on us and return our boy to us. Would that you realized how the parents are afflicted upon being separated from their child and how restless and anxious they grow upon losing their child. Trust us when we say that we have passed this entire period mourning his loss. ” The noble son of the chief of Quraish replied, “That is not the case. I fully realize the grief you must have gone through upon being separated from your child. Your son is surely with me but the fact is that having lived with him for this much time, I have begun to love Zaid so much that separation from him causes me pain. Cannot there be any other means of reconciliation?” From this discourse with the Holy Prophet sa , both the brothers thought that this son of the H a shm i chief did not want to free their son from his servitude and was making excuses to put the subject off.