WORK FOR * GOD * : PRECIS

YUSAF ISLAM is ready, finally, to explain himself. His new memoir explores the path of the man, who left behind Cat Stevens.

The third time, Yusaf Islam, then known best as the singer-songwriter Cat Stevens, almost died, he didn't tell anyone.

The first near-death experience had been as a gallivanting teen, when he slipped while jumping between British rooftops, only to be caught by his best friend an instant before the plummet.

His second had come at 20, when doctors diagnosed him, then a pinup pop star, with tuberculosis after he began coughing blood onto his piano.

Late in 1975, soon after Islam turned 27, his career seemed to be flagging. While he waited for lunch with his manager and label boss in Malibu, Calif, he decided to swim in the Pacific.

After 15 minutes in the cold water, he tried to head back, only to find that the current was sweeping him to sea.

'' I thought I could swim well, but I could not fight or beat the ocean. I had only seconds left,'' Islam,  77,  said recently during a video interview from a rented London apartment.

SO he prayed, insisting that, if he lived he would '' Work for God.''

The World Students Society thanks Grayson Haver Currin.