First day of this year Ramadan and National day of Saudi Arabia fall in same day and it has given a holiday mood in the beginning of Ramadan. Almost time for iftar, the breaking of the fast, I walk in to a fast food restaurant where they announce special “Iftar Meal” with chicken BBQ, oats porridge, sambousa, laban, dates and water. There were very few customers, and it seems strange to me that according to the cashier it will take 15 minutes to deliver my order “iftar meal” and the suppliers seems to be very irritated by the customers. Perhaps they were tired due to the first day of Ramadan and seem to be not organized or well prepared.

While I was waiting for my meal, a mentally challenged man with dirty dress entered the restaurant and thrown few riyals to the cashier and requested some food. Initially they tried to ignore him and kicked him out. As he was quite aggressive, they forced to take his order and they offered some food for the money available with him. But he insisted some particular type of BBQ and the money was not sufficient. The next customer beside him offered the lacking amount and solved the matter amicably.

Finally, the orders are delivered even though the breaking of fasting time was over and the prayer started in nearby mosque.

The mentally challenged man again approaches the counter and requested a bottle of water and cashier insisted for “one riyal”. As he couldn’t get the water from them, he straight away approached to my table and grabbed the water bottle. I just hand over to him the bottle happily and ordered another bottle of water.

Providing the fasting Muslims with Iftar is one of the major activities by many people in this part of the world and even you can find people serving food to those are coming on Mercedes, Lexus and BMW in signals. Every time we can hear from many preachers / scholars that “It’s a great blessing when you feed someone (needy) iftar”. 

See…this fast food restaurant chain is one the biggest in the country and they can’t even give out one bottle of water free of charge to a deserved one. 

Also, others are just performing their duty by providing the fasting Muslims with Iftar, but forgetting to find out whether it is reaching to the right persons or not… try to help the deserved ones….

Iftar, or the breaking fast, when it finally arrives each day after the call to evening prayers, is really lavish for most of us…and anyone really thinking about those deserve some help….???