But lacking patience and endurance, they, to their detriment, prayed: "O Allah, our Creator, would You make our stations distant and far apart and not close together and our commercial travels remote in time" and they wronged themselves. In response to this request We made them the talk of the town existing then and of those towns existing thereafter. We tore them apart, while those who remained lived dispersed among the Bedouins in the desert and among other people else-where. This was an act making the patient who is thankful lift to Allah his inward sight.