http://www.thenational.ae/article/20081016/LIFE/102702312

The National, John Gravois, October 15. 2008

Mohammed Amin called to say hi last night, just as we were getting ready for dinner. He asked how we were doing and reported, via the usual mix of broken English and Urdu, that he’s been under the weather for the past few days. Then he said he had to run and sing the athan – the call to prayer – at the tiny mosque by the fish market where he is the muezzin, and hung up.

The phone calls have come ever since we met Mohammed. It was one night during Ramadan. My wife and I were wandering around the docks behind the Mina Fish Market, and there he was: a gregarious old man whose gregariousness and old age, come to think of it, seem less than ideal traits for a security guard, which is how he earns his living.

We chatted with him for five minutes that evening. He told us how, years ago, he made his way overland from his home in Bangladesh to Iran before sailing to the UAE. How he had once survived a shipwreck. How he was supporting a wife and five daughters back at home. My wife speaks Urdu, which charmed him. We exchanged phone numbers, and a few days later he invited us for iftar.

It was, as it happens, our only iftar this Ramadan. We were slightly ashamed at this, but we had reasons for being hermits in our apartment: we have a newborn daughter and we’re new in the country. We’ll have more friends next year, we told ourselves.

On the appointed evening we arrived at the docks, and Mohammed ushered us into an empty, brightly lit concrete room with a mound of food and a couple of sodas on the floor. Our daughter sat in her buggy; we sat on the ground. At some point Mohammed excused himself and went to the nearby little mosque. When the call to prayer sounded, we suddenly recognised it was his voice coming out of the tinny loudspeakers.

That night we asked Mohammed what he was doing for Eid – whether he was going to see family or friends. “What friends?” he said, looking downcast and almost flustered. So we invited him over to our apartment one evening during the holiday. It was no great feat of hospitality: we were late picking him up and scrambled to get the food ready; he drank half a soda and then said had to get back to sing the next athan. We apologised that we hadn’t been able to celebrate Eid properly, but he seemed thoroughly pleased.

He rings every few nights – to ask after the baby, to report that one of his daughters just got engaged, sometimes just to ask if we’ve had dinner yet. At first the phone calls seemed strange. What is this relationship about? we wondered. But now, when the phone rings at night and the kitchen’s a mess and the baby’s just stopped crying, we’re simply glad to hear from a friend.