Egyptian Gumbo

Bismillah,

His eyes had mischief in them. He looked like he was on the beach all day long. I was with my cousin and her friend getting gelato ice cream from this famous place in Alexandria that sits right across the street from the ocean. It’s the type of shop where you just park and have waiters come to your car and you sit in your car and eat. With sand covering his feet he walked toward my rolled down window.

I was getting ready to pay so I had my wallet in my lap. I see he has some beach items in his hands. He came up to me and asked if I wanted to buy them from him. We all declined. He was selling toys for kids. He insisted, but he kept looking into my eyes. My cousin Asmaa replies, “As you can see, we don’t have kids. What would we do with them?”

View of Mediterranean Sea with an umbrella blowing in the wind from Le Prince, a restaurant I went to today in Alexandria.

I looked down at my lap and realized why this 7-year-old boy was mischievously smiling at me. I had my wallet in my lap with some American dollars showing. I couldn’t help but laugh. The kid was mashaAllah adorable. His face, the way he tried to persuade us was just too cute to let go. So I told him to wait while I gave him some money. I pulled out two Egyptian pounds. He takes them, puts them in his pocket, pauses and then says, “No I want one of THOSE.”

“What? You want WHAT exactly? A Dollar?” I asked. “Yes.” He replied. So I agree, give him a dollar and tell him it’s worth about 5 Egyptian pounds. Next thing I know he yelled, “MUHAMMAD!” And goes running to tell his little friends to tell them what had just happened. Right then is when I realized we were about to get mobbed by a bunch of kids — so we jetted off.

MashaAllah, I don’t think I’ll ever forget his smile. Poverty here really gets to you. It was funny because my cousin was telling me how one of her professors at AUC (American University of Cairo) when he has to turn in something if for any reason and it’s past deadline he always jokes and says he could always use the “Third-World Excuse.” You know the excuse where you say since you live in a third-world country, everything always “comes late” and communication is “not that great.”

Then it hit me, “We’re in a third-world country…” The images here are enough to make you cry. An ayah from Surat Ya-Sin came to me:

“And when it is said to them: ‘Spend of that with which Allah has provided you,’ those who disbelieve say to those who believe: ‘Shall we feed those whom, if Allah willed, He (Himself) would have fed? You are only in a plain error.’”

Allah ‘az wa jal could have indeed made everyone rich in this world. But there is hikmah (wisdom) that only Allah knows why such things are done. But one thing is for sure, I wouldn’t have felt so humbled and grateful to Allah if I never saw these images or interacted with the people.

My cousin was also telling me how one time she went to this bakery and wanted a piece of cheesecake she saw on display. She ordered it and the woman behind the counter told her it was sold out. My cousin asked her about the one that was in the display, and the woman told her that wasn’t for sale, that it’s “just for display.” My cousin ordered something else but was very bothered and asked the woman what she would do with it to which she simply shrugged and told her “throw it away.”

Wallahul musta’an.

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