Why Islam is my choice — Page 32
32 to leave the school without graduating. My craving for driving continued even after I left school. My intense passion for driving got me into the taxi business. Soon after I was licensed as a cab driver by the city of Cambridge, I started my career first from Central Square, but soon I moved to Harvard Square. Harvard Square has always charmed me even up to this day. This square is the hub of most social and business activities around Harvard University. One can find a fine cross section of people from around the world, most of whom are intellectuals and scholars. I always enjoyed talking to these people as I would drive them in my cab to their respective destinations. I gained so much knowledge just by talking to these people that when I used to discuss some of the same issues with my colleagues, they used to be amazed. Some of them jokingly would say to me that I was going to turn into a scientist or a psychiatrist. At the square, while waiting for passengers, I would buy a newspaper from the stand and read it. This habit of mine gradually grew into reading more serious material. Soon I started reading books on all sorts of subjects. One day I picked up a newspaper published by the Black Muslim community. It seemed very interesting, so I started reading this newspaper on a regular basis. It must be in early 1960s when one day my wife saw the paper that I had inadvertently brought home. My wife had a job in the Christian Science Monitor’s library. She asked me if I was interested in reading more about Isl ā m to which I replied in the affirmative. The following day she brought me a voluminous book on Isl ā m from her library. I started reading that book with a great deal of interest. Some of the issues that I had read in the Black Muslims’ newspaper seemed to be in contradiction with this book. I was somewhat perplexed, so I decided to talk about these issues with someone who had knowledge about Isl ā m or was a Muslim