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28 March 2024

Makkah cleaner turns into a millionaire overnight

Bangladeshi cleaner with brother. (SUPPLIED)

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By Staff

A sweating Bangladeshi cleaner earning less than Dh1,000 a month was busy sweeping the ground just outside the Grand Mosque in Saudi Arabia when an old man rushed forward and hugged him. With tears in his eyes, the man began crying when he told the cleaner that he is his brother and that he would give him millions.

The incident is not part of an Asian movie. It happened in Makkah on Friday, which the cleaner described as the “most beautiful Friday in my life.”

The cleaner had come to Saudi Arabia to flee his repressive brother, who usurped his share from a family inheritance and sent him to jail many times. At first, he could not recognise his elder brother because of his shaven head and pilgrimage dress.

People who know the cleaner stared in surprise as the old crying pilgrim nearly strangled him with his hugs and kisses. Their surprise quickly turned into curiosity as the old man started to recount the story to his brother’s friends.

They were told that the cleaner is not that poor man as he looks. He hails from a wealthy and prestigious family at home but that he left his family after his older brother denied him his SR17-million share (Dh16.8 million) of the inheritance.

But what made the old man return to his senses and decide to give his younger brother his rights back.? His answer was that he could not stop feeling guilty for years and that he believes he suffered from cancer because of his oppression of his brother.

He told them he had wanted to go to Saudi Arabia for pilgrimage for many years but that he had not known he would meet his brother in the Gulf Kingdom.

“The old man told the crowd who gathered to see this dramatic scene that he and his brother hail from a very rich and prestigious family, including former cabinet ministers and dignitaries……he spoke to them in Bangladeshi language through his young brother who spoke Arabic fluently,” Sabq newspaper said.

“After he finished relating their story, scores of men surrounded the cleaner to hug him and congratulate him on the new wealth.”

The paper quoted the pilgrim as saying he felt much better after he met his brother and performed pilgrimage, adding :”I don’t see just a brother but one of my sons…perhaps he is dearer to me than all my sons….I pray to God that I will be able to compensate him all these years of deprivation and oppression.”

The cleaner told the paper that he decided to return home immediately and to “turn this page of hunger, loneliness, deprivation and torment for being away from home.”

“I will never forget what I have been through in my country and here…I will always remember the poor and I promise to support and help them because I know poverty and its harms,” the paper quoted him as saying, adding that he had memorized a large part of the Koran during his stay in Saudi Arabia.

Sabq said the two later went together to a nearby restaurant and invited the cleaner’s friends to have a meal with them.

“A Saudi man who has known the cleaner for a long time whispered to a friend at the restaurant ‘I have always given money to this cleaner but I have never known I was helping a millionaire.”

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