It was a sunny Sunday morning, in a peaceful suburb of Manchester when darkness loomed. Sounds like the opening of a Agatha Christie ‘Miss Marple’ novel doesn’t it? Sadly, as with her stories, the tale gets dark pretty soon.
I was with a friend, at a laundry, just passing the time, you know. When I noticed a couple of Asian gentlemen passed by the window. I don’t know why they caught my attention, but they did. They had looked in and seen me too, but had carried on. Then, a few seconds later they reappeared and walked into the laundry.
Innocent enough so far – maybe they were lost and needed direction? They approached me and opened up a conversation. apparently they were holy pilgrims looking to raise money for some place of prayer to be built. I listened with that sinking feeling that your pocket is going to be lighter. After a few minutes of listening to this tale, I patted my pockets and brought out a couple of pounds.
The main man shook his head and carried on talking. For some reason my attention had drifted from what he was saying and when I refocused I realised that he was after a much larger donation of multiple tens of pounds! I have to confess to you that I had had a long night with little sleep so I was fairly tired, still, there was no way I was parting with that kind of money.
Again, my focus had drifted and as I gathered my thoughts I realised that the man had gone onto to talk about how my fortunes and dreams would come alive because I was a giving person and one of piety. He brought out a scrap of paper and wrote something in Arabic on it, folded it and asked me to hold it. Whilst he prayed.
It was at these strange request that I looked at one and then the other. The other guy who had seemed silent at first, I now realised was muttering something under his breath and holding some kind of medallion in his hand. Again, my focus wandered. Of course I attributed it to my tiredness.
You must be logged in to post a comment.