The fridge is a dangerous place and I blame my Grey Crayon for it, sending me home with party leftovers, chocolate-peanut butter pie, breadsticks, yummy rice, and bon-bons. Bon-bons for corn’s sakes! Sheesh! I think I left the party with more food than I brought.

But hey, I sneaked some of the food she was trying to send me home with back into her refrigerator while she wasn’t looking, so at least I haven’t brought home any Panini. And somehow, she’s ended up with my watch. It’s all very complicated folks, party politics usually is.

I’m going back to her house to negotiate the release of my watch tomorrow and to return one of her backgammon pieces and I’m worried that she might try to send me home with her first-born child. Crazy, lovely, generous people.

I had a friend in the states that was SOOOOOO sweet that if you complimented anything at all she was wearing, she would try to take it off and give it to you. Absolutely anything really, earrings, watch, clothing if she thought they would fit you. She gave away one of her favorite rings to a stranger once, just because she told her it was pretty. She was just so totally nice. And whenever I think of her I remember all the stories you hear about people converting to Islam just because of the generosity of a Muslim stranger.

I read the account of a woman who complimented a shirt that a hijabi on her train was taking out of her shopping bag, and the hijabi just gave it to her, absolutely insisted she have it. Of course the woman tried to refuse, then tried to pay her for it, and in the end she was made to take the shirt home and then wonder about what kind of religion made people who just gave stuff away to perfect strangers. Of course that wondering led her to Islam, and Alhamdulillah, she converted.

(drops breadstick on floor)

I’m also reminded of one of my cousin’s uncles. (who was also my uncle by Pakistani standards, or maybe he was my brother, you never really know) He frequently bought out the entire stock of whatever a child-vendor was selling on the street (child-vendors are very common in Pakistan) and then brought it home and passed it out to the horde of cousins. Sometimes it was flowers, sometimes it was plastic toys. In doing so he made the child-vendor’s day and made his pack of nephews and nieces deliriously happy at the same time. Another crazy, lovely generous person. He died a few years ago, of cancer. No one even knew he had it, he just passed out one day from the effects of an unchecked brain-tumor and that was it. Inna lillahi wa inna ileihi rajioon.

Allah has said: “…so let each of you protect himself against Hell-fire, be it with even half of a date (worth of charity)- and if he find it not, then with a kind word.”

-Hadith Qudsi 13 of 40, narrated by Adiyy Ibn Hatim on the authority of Bukhari.

Labels: Islam

posted by Abez @ 9/23/2003 08:28:00 PM