Frequently, we fight over small matters that do not deserve the struggle. With the passage of time, they grow and take a larger space than they deserve. The matter that makes its resolution an affair not easy, and thus we must try to find solutions before the problem intensifies and worsens. Perhaps the best solution can be in changing that perspective with which we look at the problem.
Once there lived in one of the distant villages two neighboring brothers. The older was named Jamīl and the younger was named Jāksūn. The two were accustomed to living in love and happiness with each other’s company. Each of them possessed a farm with the other’s help. For forty years, the brothers lived in happiness and peace, exchanging agricultural labor and tasks and trade.
But one day, a small misfortune occurred between them. Because he did not resolve it immediately, the problem worsened and they entered into a great struggle with each other, until the matter reached them exchanging harsh words. Each was injured by the words, and naturally this led to a great estrangement between them, and the matter worsened to the extent that they ceased completely from speaking to each other, and no communication occurred between them since that time.
One day, a carpenter knocked on the door of the older brother Jamīl and said to him: “I am searching for work from which I can earn. Perhaps you have some small tasks that suit me. If you have any small work here, inform me, for I may be able to help you in performing it.” The older brother Jamīl thought and said to him: “Yes, there is work for you!” He said to him: “Look at this channel through which the water flows.” The carpenter looked at the channel’s direction.
Jamīl said to him: “On the other side of the channel is the land of my younger brother Jāksūn. I want you to build a wooden fence on the borders of my land from my brother’s side, so that I may not see him nor he cross over me.” The carpenter agreed and said: “I believe I understand what you want, but I need some measures and other things that help me complete this work.”
Thus it was upon the older brother Jamīl to go to the city to bring some tools the carpenter needed so that he might complete building the fence between him and his brother. Indeed, Jamīl roamed through the city’s neighborhoods searching for his request, until he found it. After the sun set, he returned to his land, but there was no fence there, not even a simple part of it, so the carpenter did not perform anything of what he had requested.
But with the weakness of his sight, he found a beautiful bridge passing over the channel and connecting his land with his younger brother’s land. It was a wooden bridge with wooden steps that enabled one to ascend upon it with smoothness and ease. He approached it to discern the secret of the bridge’s existence. There he was able to see his brother near in the middle of the bridge.
He approached him as he extended his hand to him, saying: “After all that you said to me and you did to me, you still built this beautiful bridge to connect between us? How erroneous you were in my right, then the brothers reconciled and sat together. Here Jamīl understood that the carpenter was the one who had built that bridge instead of the fence.
He began to search for him and found him working far away. He shouted calling him to wait, for he had much work for him. But the carpenter said to him: “I love to remain, but I have many bridges to build.”
Translated from: SOLUTION OF BROTHER S CONFLICT