Cherished Memories of Africa — Page 240
222 ‘You asked me for a prayer mat and went to the other room and offered salat there. With due apologies, I peeped at you while you were praying to see what was your salat like; being ‘non- Muslims’ what was the mode of your worship. I saw you offering the full salat and it was not different from our salat in any way. The day you met me for the first time, you told me that you were fasting. Moreover, I have noticed that your driver Ousman offers tahajjud in addition to other salats and that too like us, the Muslims. I am really perplexed. What is all this? Is all that I have been hearing about the Qadianis from our maulvis all my life untrue? Or is your salat and fast different in some hidden way?’ I explained to him the character of the maulvis, jama’at’s beliefs and teachings in detail. That surprised him a great deal. As long as the young man, Safdar Ali, stayed in Senegal he read the ‘Alfazl’ newspaper regularly. Once a cargo ship docked at Dakar port. There were some Pakistanis in its staff. Safdar Ali went to the ship to see them. One of them told Safdar Ali that they had been on the voyage for a long time and were getting bored. They requested him for any Pakistani newspaper or magazine in Urdu. Safdar Ali told them that he only had some issues of Ahmadiyya Jama’at’s ‘Alfazl’ to offer, if they would like. Thus he gave quite a few issues of the ‘Alfazl’ to those seamen that they accepted happily. It is nearly fifteen years since. He respects the jama’at very much, seeks my advice in his personal matters till today and gives me kind of respect that is due to an elder brother. The purpose of narrating this episode is that when one is abroad, his mental attitude changes. The environments influence people a