Today's Hadith

A Sweeper Becomes a Millionaire

The Messenger of Allah (sal Allahu alaihi wa sallam) said: “(Often it so happens that) for a certain believer, Allah ordains a high position that he cannot achieve by himself. So Allah afflicts him with some physical or material distress or grief from within his family, whereby he is granted the good fortune of being patient. Thus Allah raises him to the high station originally decreed for him.” [Abu Dawud]
 
An expatriate working as a street sweeper in Makkah saw his life change in a blink during Hajj season after his estranged brother sought to make amends for wronging him by returning his share of the family fortune.

The Bangladeshi man was sweeping Taneem Street in Makkah when an old man wearing the Ihram cloth of Hajj pilgrims crossed the busy road and embraced him warmly much to the perplexity of passersby. However, the sweeper returned the embrace, indicating his familiarity with the older man.

The embrace in fact was between two brothers who had not seen each other for more than five years in the aftermath of a bitter dispute over inheritance rights, Saudi news site Sabq reported. The two men were from a wealthy family in Bangladesh, but the older brother had refused to give his sibling his share of the inheritance estimated at 17 million Saudi Riyals in cash and several properties.

The older man even managed to have his younger brother sent to prison when he asked for his share. The younger brother, disappointed and dejected, opted to leave Bangladesh and work as a sweeper in the holy city of Makkah. As it turns out, the sweeper has become a millionaire in his home country.

He told the people who gathered around him and his brother that he had forgiven his brother who had apologised profusely for mistreating him and that he was ready to return home. 

The older man said that he had been diagnosed with cancer and that he was not sure how long he would live. He had looked for his brother in several places to ask for his forgiveness and make amends for all the years of deprivation he had forced him to endure. He even offered financial rewards to whoever could help him locate his brother.

The younger brother said he was ready to forget the past and move forward with his new life. “I will always be kind to the poor and the needy,” he said. “I have learned a lot about deprivation and poverty in the last five years. I will always be fair with everyone after the years of injustice I lived through,” he said in Arabic, a language he learned during the time he spent sweeping the streets of Makkah.