Nuschar Allah

In this time of Thanksgiving, when we attend a table laden with the fruits of the earth and the stuffed turkey draws us together in community, everyone pauses in reverence even as we as we delight in swapping stories about all sorts of things. I give thanks both for the obvious bounty surrounding this day, but also for something greater - the very given Ordinary: the roof over our heads and the money in our pockets.

Early on, I was led to the certainty that the flow of money comes from a Divine Source, and that my best return to God for that currency was making sure to say, Thank you. More pointedly, Meister Eckardt, the twelfth century mystic taught his students: “If the only prayer you say is ‘Thank You,’ it is enough.”

My Arabic father was very sure about certain matters and the everyday back and forth flow of money was one of them. To him, all money’s blessings came from God. “You work hard, you take risks, you pray like hell and for all of it, you never forget to say thank you.” Or more to the point, I would hear him utter the Arabic phrase, Nuschar Allah at every turn: Thank you God.

Underlying my immigrant father’s sense of awe in the market place was always that simple Nuschar Allah. It was daily grace bestowed and he rarely forgot it as he stuffed precious green bills into our grocery cash register or later on, banking bigger profits from land acquisitions.

Profits in our grocery grew. Every gain sent him escalating to ever wider ownership. Soon he was expanding beyond the walls of his little store into the surrounding Florida land he loved so well, one parcel after another, even to acquiring an orange grove. Of course, Dad didn’t have a clue about how to grow oranges. To him it was a simple matter: “Florida is orange groves. We have to acquire one!”

Azar’s Market stood amid the galloping whiff of orange blossoms. It was about the size of an average convenience store, lit by white fluorescent lights and cooled by wooden ceiling fans whirling the Florida heat out the door. Orlando, in the forties was a sleepy city then, only two core department stores, surrounded by cattle ranches and crystal lakes. In these days of Orlando’s blown away commerce, I sometimes long for that forgotten old time neighborhood.

I spent much of my youth playing grocery store until, at one point, my father looked down on his nine year old daughter and saw another helpmate. Even though from behind the counter I could barely reach the cash register keys, I got my first lesson on a rainy afternoon when the playground was only puddles. “Push these keys down, hard! Listen to the bell, count out loud when you give customers change”

Soon, the money flowed through my own fingers. Pure Grown Up! I totaled patron’s loaves of bread and ice-cold coke on the counter, weighed bunches of tomatoes, and even advised them they could get two cans of black-eyed peas for the price of one. Customers smiled at this little dark-haired child pressing the right keys, and who always honored dad’s mandate: “Never let them go without saying thank you.”

In the sixties, Charles Azar sold Azar’s Market and at last viewing, it had morphed into a Vietnamese grocery where other young immigrants set themselves on the path to the American Dream that my father had pioneered so many years before. Dad retired to his kitchen, singing his Syrian songs as he prepared various ancient recipes - today’s touted health conscious offerings: tabouli, humus, stuffed grapevines leaves to name only a few. He pursued readings in his huge Arabic Christian bible at the dining room table, savoring God’s words about the abundant blessings given to old King Solomon. He continued to thank God each time a profit of some sort came to him, regularly returning a portion of that bounty to St. George’s, his local Greek Orthodox church.

When finally he lay dying in what was then called, Orange Memorial hospital, his soul was ready. He had carried the twenty-third psalm, The Lord is my Shepherd in his wallet and which now hangs framed in my own home. This Orlando pioneer completed his earthly work Every piece of Florida land he owned had been blessed. Every untethered risk he took flowed from his deep sense of faith, love and gratitude expressed by that ever blooming, Nuschar Allah.