Hospitality in Foreign Lands

Recently, for a few days, I was in Canada to get my visa stamped. I was staying in Quebec City, which is a few hours north of Toronto. I'm not entirely sure why, but I was bored out of my skull most of the time there. Maybe it was because Quebec City is a tourist attraction mostly for those who've just retired. At the risk of being cheeky, suffice it to say that I felt like a young gun in a cupboard full of vintage muskets. The ones that needed gunpowder to fire and oft blew up right in your face.

By the way, on a complete tangent from my main topic, can somebody please expound on the beauty of Picasso's art? Specifically, where exactly in his works can it be found? On my second last day in Canada, I went to a museum of fine arts, which had a Picasso exhibition, and I gotta say, it seemed that the dude wasn't even trying anymore. You remember those "portraits" you used to draw in kindergarten? Of people with huge smiles and round eyes? Well, expand them to wall size, and I think you'll be able to pass it off for a Picasso painting. I mean, I think I know why people devote so much time to studying Picasso's works in college, because I gotta tell ya, you really do need devoted study time to come up with something worthwhile in his works.

Anyway, back to my main topic. So, one evening before iftaari, I set out to find a halaal restaurant with the help of everybody's online friend, google. I found a nice middle-eastern one that was only a kilometer or so away from my hotel. Well, I'd no sooner reached it that I found out that it had been shut down - the only thing open there was a grocery store (the owner of which was middle-eastern, but that doesn't really help. I actually spent a good five minutes standing in front of the butcher's kiosk inside the store, looking at the raw meat and wondering where exactly it was converted into shawerma, before realizing that there was no shawerma for me here.)

In dismay, with my mouth-watering visions dissolving away, I asked one of the people in the checkout line if there was another halal restaurant nearby. The guy gave me some vague directions which I knew I had no hope of following, so I stepped out of the store, chagrined to the core, and started walking. Well, I realized after a few minutes that the guy I'd asked actually was following me (I always have been good at sleuthing....ahem). He caught up to me, and insisted that I come with him to his house for iftaari, instead of wandering around like a schmuck and eventually eating alone (okay, he didn't say that.) He said he'd just talked to his mother, and she really really wanted me to come.

So I followed my gut (literally) and went with him. My newly-found friend was Moroccan, and his apartment was only a couple of blocks away. What followed was an awesome conversation with him, along with great halal food (beef and lentil soup, burgers, moroccan sweets and this kickass curry made from calf's liver). We prayed maghrib together in jamaat. We talked about him, we talked about me, we talked about Islam in Quebec. All of a sudden, all intimations of boredom had vanished.

My point is this - it has become so rare nowadays for somebody to show such hospitality to a fellow Muslim that I was honestly taken aback. Of course, there are reasons that you don't see it much anymore. People get taken advantage of, they get hurt, and that's enough to make goodwill take a back seat. But it's a shame, honestly it is, because I feel that this is what a large part of Islam was about - taking care of others in your society, and that's exactly what this angel of a man did. He took a total stranger into his home and fed him in the way of Allah.

People often say that it is impractical to show goodwill to strangers. You can't trust anyone these days - that's a motto everyone lives and breathes by these days. But I think the scope of the problem is bigger. If people were good Muslims, they would know their limits. They wouldn't take advantage of those who offer such hospitality. That would ensure that the goodwill of such people would not fade away in bitterness and cynicism.