Sadiq's Greeting

Sadiq’s Greeting

            We tend to enter our favorite local supermarket through the parking lot that is below the store.  From this lot, we pick up a wagon and then enter a vestibule leading to a long people-mover ramp that delivers us to the main floor.  In that lower vestibule, we often see Sadiq, a Pakistani man who works security at this lower entrance to the store. 

            I cannot remember when I first met and exchanged greetings with him, nor can I remember when he first greeted my kids and learned their names.  However, each time that he is working there he greets me.  If I only have my daughter, he greets her by name and asks “Where is your brother?”  Dara smiles and tells him that Micah is at home.  When Micah is there, he greets him, “Hello Michael. Is Michael a big boy?”  (Sadiq is not the only one who hears ‘Micah’ and says ‘Michael’.  It is somewhat of a unusual name for many who speak excellent English.)  The kids now know him by name.

            We greet any of the usual security guards in this vestibule, but Sadiq is the only one who consistently steps forward with a smile.  If, God forbid, something unsavory were to occur in the lot, I would want Sadiq to be the one on security at that moment.  While I never have felt unsafe in the lot, the presence of a kind face and presence there lends a sense of peace and emotional security.  It helps me to slow down and ease the way into the mundane, and often stressful, supermarket experience.

            The Rabbis teach us in the Mishnah to greet everyone with ‘a cheerful, pleasant face’ (sever panim yafot’).  This instruction is not as easy to do as it sounds at first.  A recent experience illustrates a painful lack of any facial recognition.  We were pushing our kids in the wide, but smooth gliding, ‘jogging stroller’ on the sidewalk in our town.  Two male tweens were approaching us on the sidewalk with their phones in front of their faces in ‘texting position’.  They kept their eyes on the screen and did not, or pretended not, to notice us.  Startled, we pulled aside and they walked past without turning away from the screen. 

            A positive greeting is a validation, an offer of respect, an opening to dialogue, and something that clears the air and reduces the tension between people.  Sadiq inspires me to be a better greeter, someone who consistently tries to connect with others even when others may ignore or avoid a response. 

            Sadiq translates to the Hebrew ‘tzedakah’, justice, righteousness.  His greetings, our greetings and response and recognition of others, is an act of righteousness that makes us feel more human and contributes to the creation of a world where we can feel motivated to bring people closer together, whether at the supermarket, or in the complex and dangerous politics of international relations.

            I’m willing to start small.  Let’s give it a try.