This evening, while I was waiting for my ride home around 8:30 PM at the office’s lobby, a curious security guard approached me and started to ask me the usual stuff like where I got to speak fluent Arabic and English like any other. Moving back a bit, my first encounter was when I heard him reading the holy book for Quran on the lobby. So he seems like a nice person therefore I let him talk, it started like any other interested people on how I get to this point of my life. But then, he started to talk about himself when I mentioned that I was not married.
It’s all good, it was probably his opening chance to talk about himself, but something told me that he’s not an ordinary security guard. It turns out that he’s a collage graduate in Education and was a high school then turned University teacher. He used to own four different cars and used to live his life from his prime year and now left without a single car. An African Saudi who’s originated in City of Mecca, he came to Riyadh to find fortune. Yet he lost most of it. Now at 31, he has no car, not much money to get by yet I was curious.
“Since you’re a collage graduate, why are you here working as a security Guard?” I asked.
He simply said that he’d rather taste the hardships of life in order to remind himself of what he has lost, wasted most of the ten years in career, blinded from pleasures in life and yet he is happy despite of his loss. He also mentioned a verse in the Holy Quran “And [remember] when your Lord proclaimed, 'If you are grateful, I will surely increase you [in favor]; but if you deny, indeed, My punishment is severe.' “– 7 Ibrahim.
That time I could not help but to shed a tear for the good man, so I shook his hand and asked his good name, “ Ustadh (teacher as a title) Jam’an” he said “but now you can just call me Jam’an”.
During the past few days I’ve been meeting good strangers with their great personal stories. Jam’an the humble security guard is one of them. He reminded me to be thankful but also push me to strive more and work hard, but most importantly, not to lose Faith in God.
“I have nothing left now” as Jam’an said.
He maybe lost them but he didn’t lose his faith, I too should be thankful to God that I met him and thank him for re-showing me the right path, it’s there… it’s now my choice to make things right, it’s time to go home, get there on a day by day practices, one step at a time, one prayer at a time…
