"You and me.."

"They led him then to the esplanade where before an enormous crowd they cut off his hands and feet after having flogged him with 500 lashes of the whip.

He rubbed his bloody, amputated hands over his face, so that both his arms and his face were stained with blood.

"Why did you do that?" people enquired.

"Much blood has gone out of me," he replied. "I realize that my face will have grown pale. You suppose that my pallor is because I am afraid. I rubbed blood over my face so that I might appear rose-cheeked in your eyes. The cosmetics of heroes is their blood."

"Even if you bloodied your face, why did you stain your arms?"

"I was making ablution."

"What ablution?"

"When one prays two rak'as in love," Hallaj replied, "the ablution is not perfect unless performed in blood."

The executioners then plucked out his eyes; he was then stoned by the crowd, after which they cut off his ears and nose. He uttered his forgiveness of them as they were preparing to cut out his tongue.

An old woman shouted, "What right has this little wool carder (hallaj) to speak of God?"

Thereafter, he uttered "It is enough for the lover to diminish himself before the uniqueness of the One."

Then his tongue was cut out, and, finally, he was beheaded at the time of the evening prayer. Then his trunk was rolled up in a straw mat, doused with fuel, and burned.

Later, they carried his ashes to the minaret on the Ra's al-Manara promontory beside the Tigris to disperse them to the wind. "

- ( Al-Hallaj )