As-salamu alaykum. Have a blessed day.

by Jamison Koehler on November 16, 2022

My daughter received mad at me a couple of yrs ago for publishing a website entry below complaining about the panhandlers on Martin Luther King Boulevard in Baltimore.

Executing the day-to-day commute from Baltimore to D.C. at that time, I was commencing to feel oppressed by the mournful appears to be like of the panhandlers shuffling by me at every single stoplight on Martin Luther King Avenue.  On my way to operate. On my way residence.

My blog entry was supposed to be intelligent, light-weight-hearted.  My daughter imagined it was churlish.

You really do not want your daughter to assume you are churlish.

Although I am no longer commuting from Baltimore, I do move by means of Union Station each day, and Union Station has its possess challenges with panhandlers.

Also criminal offense:   I have represented several persons accused of getting fully commited a felony offense at the station, which includes a recent stabbing.  I know where by every single surveillance digicam is positioned.  I simply cannot assist strolling via the station devoid of sensation that I am remaining watched, devoid of imagining what my impression appears to be like like on the small Tv keep an eye on in the regulate space.

I am even now churlish, particularly when it arrives to the more aggressive panhandlers who solution your table at Chopt or Chipotle.

But I do make an exception for this one particular unique man.  I wait to connect with him a panhandler for the reason that he under no circumstances actually asks any individual for funds.  Instead, standing by the leading of the escalator down to the metro station, he bids absolutely everyone who passes him a blessed working day.

I have a problem with people telling me to have a blessed working day.  (Didn’t my daughter accuse me of remaining churlish?)  I never like to have people’s spiritual beliefs foisted on me.

I permit this move for a few of days.  Then, not getting ready to assist myself, I gave him my traditional “allahu akbar!” response.

I imagined I may possibly be the only individual who finds that clever.  But he bought it instantly.  He laughed.  He patted his coronary heart. And then we bumped fists.

The upcoming working day we experienced the specific exact same exchange, besides this time, acquiring completed his research, he prolonged it. “As-salamu alaykum,” he added.  And then:  “Have a blessed working day.”

Yet again, we laughed.  We bumped fists.  I had to ask my son for the reaction to this: “Wa alaikum assalam.”

This man and I have been finest buddies at any time since.

It has gotten to the point where I appear forward to seeing him just about every morning.  We do our little exchange, our private joke, and then we fist bump, and I keep on on to the metro smiling and in substantially better spirits.

On the exceptional days he is not at his customary article, I am let down.  Usually I can listen to him wishing folks a blessed working day prior to I can see him. A person time I arrived around the corner to discover he was not there.  Then I listened to a snicker powering me:  “You have been searching for me,” he reported.  “Weren’t you?”

Of system I was.

As-salamu alaykum.  Have a blessed day.