Story about a Prayer Rug in London

I've been thinking about Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum of Dubai's generous gift (reported two posts below) that is for an education center for reading skills (especially women) and job creation in the Middle East. In the course of thinking about it, I found myself thinking about an amazing thing that happened in the early 90's. The theme of why it came to my mind is how close I feel to the mainstream of Muslim worshippers, even though I am a Roman Catholic.

From 1985-1994 I worked for a major international bank. I often had reason to visit London, which I enjoyed, as I used to love that city (having traveled there on business even before this particular job) and I developed deep friendships, even loving a Brit lol. But even after that relationship ended, I had wanted to work on assignment in London, either in my current (at that time) field of information technology and banking, or in a very different field (one of my friends had an antiquities shop and I enjoyed collecting and identifying antiquities.) So I was always trying to get a way to work in the London office of the bank, so I could get a work visa, and hopefully raise the money I would need for perhaps the antiquities business.

In the early 1990's my staff started working on a small but significant project for a Saudi bank that was a partly owned affiliate of the bank we worked for. I visited them on location in their separate building, which was in what is called the "Bishopsgate" section of London. I met our Saudi bank liaison manager and I just loved him, he was such a great guy. Everyone had raved about him, what a great manager he was, and how humanistic and friendly he was to everyone, and they were right. He was such a cool guy. During my visit he gave me and my two staff members a tour of the building.

When we walked into a conference room he gestured to follow him toward the coat closet, which he then opened. It was empty except for a rolled light color rug of Oriental design on the top shelf. He said, "This is our prayer rug." The moment I saw it I was touched so deeply. In the early 90's it was the height of secularism, and to see the devotion that was brought into the office by the Saudi bank employees greatly moved me. At the same time I felt the most urgent need to bless the rug and without conscious thought my hand reached up to touch it with a blessing of the God of Abraham. Our friend intercepted my hand quickly and said very nicely that I should not touch it. I understood why, but I had a very bad feeling of something unfinished in not doing so. I also realized that this was a secular building full of men and women, including cleaning staff, who had undoubtedly handled the rug, but I truly respected their rules and so of course we moved on with our tour and gave it no further thought. I'm sure that my manager friend thought I was just being an uninformed nosy woman who didn't understand the sacred context of the prayer rug, but of course I did. I could not rid myself of the feeling that my not being able to touch and bless the rug was something that left unmet a need (and this is no reflection on any incompleteness of the rug itself or the people who used it). I could not identify my feeling of disquiet.

Over the next couple of years I tried to get to London, including my wish to work for the Saudi bank. I really would have liked to work for our friend there, and with the people who worked for him. These were mostly Brits, men and women, who worked there, as they employed locally. But my friend had no openings and I could not get an interview there. And I eventually found that I was being pushed out of my very job in New York, in the sadistic way that any reader of Dilbert comic strip would recognize, lol. So in 1994 was tortured into resigning and moved on. I wasted 1994 still trying to get a job in London, as I still loved that city, even though I no longer had friends there, but I had to give up and get a job in another hell hole bank in NYC.

One day I heard the news that the building which housed that Saudi bank affiliate had been blown to smithereens by an IRA truck bomb. Thank GOD that it had taken place at night when no one was working in the bank building, except security. As I recall, there were several casualties on street level, and every one is painful and unfair. But it could have been horrendous if this had occurred during business hours. I heard through a mutual friend that everyone was OK, and had to squeeze into the main building of the bank I used to work for.

So now I know why I had felt such a need to bless the prayer rug in the building. I like to think the good news and blessing that can always been found in even the worst, is that the building was not filled with people, and it was not rush hour, or the height of the shopping day on the street. Even though the building had to be torn down, when I hear the name Bishopsgate, instead of visualizing the building, I see that rolled up prayer rug on the top shelf of the closet and praise God.

Here's the info from Wikipedia: On 24 April 1993 it was the site of a Provisional Irish Republican Army truck bomb, which killed journalist Ed Henty, injured over 40 people and caused £350,000,000 worth of damage, including the destruction of St Ethelburga's church, and serious damage to Liverpool St. Tube Station. Police had received a coded warning, but were still evacuating the area at the time of the explosion. The insurance payments required were so enormous, that Lloyd's of London almost went bankrupt under the strain, and there was a crisis in the London insurance market. The area had already suffered damage from theBaltic Exchange bombing the year before.