The Day All The Waters Changed

This is a famous Sufi story I want to share with you. I apologize for not remembering the source but since Sufi stories are usually anonymous and have many versions, perhaps it doesn’t matter much.

There was a man who one day saw Khidr (Hızır) in his dream. The wise man told him that soon will come the day when all the wells and springs will dry for some time and later they will flow again but he shall not drink this new water. Instead he has to store some water now and drink only this water when the waters have changed.

Not knowing how to interpret this, the man built himself a cistern and stored a big amount of water. Just like the wise man told him, one day all the waters dried for a short time and than they started to flow again. Remembering those words in his dream, he only drank the water from his own hidden cistern.

Soon he realized that people were acting differently. They were doing things they wouldn’t do before and they seemed to have gone all mad. But when he told them they are acting strange, they treated him as if he is crazy and ignored him. He found it very hard to relate to them and felt very lonely.

After trying over and over in vain to remind people that they were different, he gave up and drank some of the changed water. That moment he forgot about his cistern and his dream and he was accepted by other people as a madman who had miraculously been restored to sanity. To this day, he is living among us as a “normal” person.


You can interpret this in many ways but there is one thing for sure; the waters change and we forget.