I was 9 or 10 years old when I was in Germany studying in a British school in which during recess one day I noticed a group of about six or seven kids playing soccer with a type of bread called a Brotchen. The Brotchen is a very hard type of bread and is as big as a fist…
Anyways, I noticed them playing with that bread and I was flabbergasted…The concept of food that has been ingrained in me by my family regarding the respect which we give to Rizq, or anything we eat just left me dumbfounded…I couldn’t believe when I saw those kids playing with bread that way…It was inconceivable…
So I approached the biggest of those kids and told them not to play with that bread as it is food and that you don’t treat food so disrespectfully…Having no clue what I was talking about, the big kid looked at me and said 'What? Why?..I said because it’s food and food no matter what must not be disrespected…
The big kid pushed me back so hard I almost fell backwards…I retreated to the bench area and the kids started kicking the bread around again…I couldn’t stand Rizq being treated that way, so I moved closer to the kids, and at an opportune moment ran in between them, grabbed the piece of bread and ran full throttle to the corner of the playground…I couldn’t run anywhere else…I couldn’t throw the bread over the wire mesh as the kids might later retrieve it, so I did the next best thing…I crumbled it to tiny pieces and threw the rest through the wire…
When the kids came up to me, I knew I was gonna get beaten…As they converged on me I knew it was do or die, so I jumped and grabbed the hair of the big kid and didn’t let go…I knew that if I let go of his hairs, I am going to get such a beating, so I grabbed on for dear life…
The other kids however were immune to the pain of the kid I had grabbed hold of, and they snatched me free from the big kid with fistfull of clumps of his blonde hair in my hands…
I was hit repeatedly and my arm was twisted behind my back so badly that it was swollen for a week…
Seeing all this the teacher in charge, Mr. Mansell, came blowing his whistle…He had caught the part where I had snatched the bread from between the boys…He asked me why I did that and I explained tearfully the importance of Rizq in my culture and religion…
Now Mr. Mansell, being a westerner was as ignorant about the concept of Rizq as the boys with whom I had wrestled…Instead of sending me back to class he wanted to listen to what would make someone do something like I did…He didn’t have to listen to me…After all, I took someone else’s food and someone is entitled to do whatever the heck they desire to do with it, but no…Being a literate educator he wanted to learn what would make anyone do something like that…That is one of the hallmarks of literate people…They want to know and learn…
He told me that what I did was a very brave thing, however I should have talked to him first before grabbing someone else’s stuff like that…
The word got to the chancellor somehow as to what happened, and Alhumdulillah, the result of the matter was that two weeks later, a new playground rule was established that food was, on any account, not allowed to leave the bench area…Whether it was an act to respect the beliefs of other people or whatever, but Rizq from that day in that school, was not treated like a football…
I doubt you have made it this far in your reading whatever I wrote as I am sure it must have bored you out of your skull, but if you have and not been able to figure out what I meant by my diatribe, it was that discussions usually have a fruitful result…If not anything else they serve a purpose of timepass…
When you closed that thread I was a little dismayed and a little saddened…Dismayed at the education wasted on an unrecipient mind and saddened at the results…
When I first saw the thread with a lock on it, it reminded me for a second about the beaurocracy of Pakistan and where it has gotten us, the red tapes, the deliberate delays, the noncaring of those amongst us with even the slightest of authority signifying power without morals…
I once wrote another diatribe which you might not want to search for and not want to read about Campesinos someplace…If you read it, you will not find out what it dealt with, but I can sum it up all up for you in one sentence beautifully in the beaurocratic language of Pakistan:
“Jitthay di khoti, utthay aan khaloti” :heehaw:
Long story short, I did not ask you why they were banned, hence the closing of the thread was not a necessity…What was necessary was that you see the differences for what some were banned indefinitely and for what some were allowed back in…This would have to mean a conscious effort to think and deliberate on your part, so I think we can end this matter here…
At this point you can ‘G.W. Bush’ me and slap me with your fave title of ‘ghattiya’ this or that and we can call it quits…
And don’t worry about me pursuing this…I won’t be bothered with you again…
so emotional
