A Handful of Wealth

Abu Ali murmured to himself as he weighed up coins in his right hand and sand on the other. When his friends asked about it, Abu Ali answered, “Both my hands are full of something but it appears that only one holds wealth.”
His friends agreed but asked him what was in his mind. Abu Ali replied, “If I need to drop the contents of one of my hands, which one should it be?”
The one that holds the sand, he was told. Abu Ali just shook his head and left.
His friends were perplexed by his strange behaviour. For Abu Ali was not a man to be usually lost for words. He was seen walking in a trance for quite a while after that incident, his hands still holding the sand and coins.
It was days later that his friends learnt the real story. One of his two sons had disappeared, and with him went half of his father’s fortune. It was the second son who comforted his father and promised to recover the money through the business. “I have a useless son,” Abu Ali explained to his friends, “who stole half of my wealth. He is like a handful of sand which has no value of its own.”
His friends completed the riddle: the coins in the other hand were the other son who proved his loyalty to the father.
“But why,” his friends wanted to know, “did you go around the town for days holding both the sand
and coins?”
“The hands that held both the coins and sand are mine just like my two sons. I have realised that no two similar things are equal and I should not have compared two sons just as my two hands are not comparable. These two hands of mine could have easily exchanged their contents and the situation would have been the opposite. I could not just drop the sand in favour of the coins that would have been like abandoning my other son,” said Abu Ali.
“Does it mean you have forgiven him?” asked his friends, greatly surprised. “Yes, I have forgiven him in this world and the next,” Abu Ali answered. “But why?” The friends did not understand his logic of forgiveness.
Abu Ali looked at them and asked very calmly, “Would you cut off one of your hands just because it has slapped you?”
His friends said no, but after a short pause they asked him again, “We can understand your sentiment, Abu Ali, but what is the reward for your honest son?”
“Nothing I could give him would be a suitable reward except the knowledge that he has done an honourable deed.”
Two years passed and the guilty son returned in rags. He had lost all his father’s money in a faraway country. He did not come
back alone, though, but with a wife
and son.
Abu Ali asked his son if he had learned his lesson. “Yes, father, I have and I have also come back to repay you.”
Abu Ali looked at his son’s rags and asked, “With what, son? You don’t seem to have much.”
“I have a son now who is also a grandson to you.”
Abu Ali later told his friends that his grandson was an acceptable repayment and would carry on the family name.