In response to daily post one-word prompt : Sanctuary
Sometimes it can be tricky if one gives shelter to a stranger. This happened to us in Comilla( Bangladesh). My mother had a very soft heart whenever someone asked for help she’d give it to them without knowing the background of the person.
One evening a man came to our door asking for shelter, he said he didn’t have a place to go,and wanted to work and stay in our house, we the siblings were not sure he was all that innocent as he pretended to be, for starters he had a bag which contained expensive shirts, we were sure he’d stolen them. Mom refused to listen to us.
On a hot day one evening we sat outside in our verandah, we were hearing some strange noise in the other part of the house, we ignored it and we even said, “Hey you thief you better not steal anything in our house.”
We were laughing and repeating this every few minutes, i.e do not steal. Little did we know this was exactly what the thief was doing. After staying out for couple of hours, we went to bed.
Next morning our young servant from mom’s village told us, the man mom gave shelter to had disappeared and stole a lot of things while we were joking around. There was no way to find his whereabouts, he didn’t tell us where he came from. We did notice he had a funny Bengali accent, which we told mom, she kept saying we were mean and to stop finding faults in this guy, who we thought was a crook. It was a lesson we all learned, more so my pious mom who agreed she must not give shelter and a job to an unknown man.
It’s better to be safe than sorry!
…………………………..:)
Sabethville 