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His job required him to take his employers’ camels, sheep and goats into the plains for grazing. He thus had to spend, all by himself, the major portion of his day in the grim desert outside of Mecca. Letting the animals roam about in search of a thorn or a blade of grass among the pile of stones, we can visualize how a young, sensitive and intelligent boy of the age of Muhammad must have spent his time.
It is a rule of nature that misfortune and sufferings create bitterness in a person and these make him conscious of his situation, especially when he finds himself with nothing to distract him from his thoughts. Such a person grieves over his misfortune and tries to find out its causes. While doing so, he develops a strange internal feeling, which can be described only by a person who had undergone such an experience in his own life.
Since the above observation amply applied to young Muhammad, we may safely conjecture that in the midst of his frustrating loneliness, he must have asked himself why he had come into the world as a fatherless orphan, and why he had to work as a shepherd at such a lonely place at such a young age, while other children of his age were spending their time in the company of their parents. He must also have asked himself why his mother had to leave him at the mercy of the people he hardly knew, and why their treatment of him was different from that of their own children.
Despite the fact that he brought in some income to his uncle’s family, yet still they continued to treat him in the manner of the past. The continuity of their past behavior hurt him deeply; its resultant pains being the major cause for deepening his hatred towards his mother. He believed that if he had been living with her, nobody would have subjected him to the degrading insults that he suffered from at his grandfather’s house, and which continued to be heaped on him at his uncle’s house. He held his mother responsible for all of his sufferings.
His ego, sensitivity and feelings greatly hurt, Muhammad stopped playing with other children in his spare time. Instead, he felt more at home when conversing with the people who came to Mecca on pilgrimage or on trade. He enjoyed their conversations on religious matters. He also derived immense pleasure from their story-telling sessions. Very often, he prompted them into narrating the tantalizing and fascinating Arabian tales of the past. Most of the tales and fables he heard from them acted like balm for his wounds. When he got his opportunity, he narrated them eloquently to his listeners, who, in their own turn, made them an important and integral part of the Quran.
When he had no story-telling session to attend, he took pleasure in watching the arrival and departure of the caravans, which traded in Syria and Yemen, and thronged at Mecca before their dispersal. The thought of being in foreign lands filled young Muhammad’s mind with excitement and carried his imagination to things he himself hoped one day to see in those distant lands.