Fake Beggar Award Goes to…
October 3, 2008
Every ramadan we are inundated with requests from people, in various difficulties, asking for money. May Allah help them & help us to help them.
Among this deluge are a number of professional phony beggars who come to the UAE during the month to earn fat incomes by playing on the sympathy & generosity of people.
The following are the top three (in reverse order) contenders for the title of Fake Beggars of the Year Award:
3. ‘Burned-out’ - He paints his arm coral pink & then slathers Vaseline-like substance all over it & makes it look ‘authentically’ burned. Every year it’s the same man, with the same story, the same ‘freshly burned’ arm knocking on our doors. He seems to forget that he had approached us before, but, we remember. The moment we remind him of his story from previous years, he runs off.
2. ‘Aristocratic Hobo’ - This person is not your typical ‘down-in-luck’ fellow. He is dressed meticulously in crisp white kanddoras & designer watch. He steps out of his BMWs & approaches you in mall parking lots & tells you that he is a traveler (most likely from Oman) whose wallet was stolen/lost & he needs money for petrol to return. He will even have a family sitting in his car as ‘proof’. He will not accept anything less than Dhs.100. And he will get angry if you offer to pay for his petrol directly.
1. ‘Pregnant Man’ - This poor chap deserves the best fake beggar award for his ‘unprofessionalism’. He pretends to be really sick & even manages to produce a medical report as proof to gather sympathies & money. His fate takes him to beg from a man who happens to be a police Major General. The officer asks to see his medical report (btw, the report was in Arabic which was not the language of the beggar most likely) to verify. Lo & behold, it turns out to be a woman’s pregnancy scan report!! Needless to say, he was arrested after that. Read here.
October 4, 2008 at 2:10 pm
LOL @ the “Pregnant Man”; serves him well! Also, he deserves to win the award
In my case, it’s a woman in abaya with a young girl (7-8 years old) in tow. When I opened the door, she would undress the poor girl right then and there, and would show us burn marks all over the girl’s lower body.
The burn marks weren’t real, of course I had to examine closely. I ended up scolding the woman for exposing her innocent child. She walked away, shouting at me angrily in Arabic.
serendipitouslife replies:
“Thats shocking! And disgusting!
I didn’t know alm seekers (genuine & fake) approached apartment dwellers. How do they get pass the building watchman?”
October 8, 2008 at 6:29 pm
These alm seekers (pretend to)look like guests of people living in the building, so perhaps that is why the watchman didn’t bother to stop them.
serendipitouslife replies:
“No wonder.”
October 11, 2008 at 3:58 am
Unbelievably funny! The “noiv” of some people!!!
serendipitouslife replies:
“Lol, yes some nerve they have! But, ofcourse this is UAE, so they feel they need to up the sophistication factor of their ‘profession’.
October 12, 2008 at 7:46 pm
I can’t believe how well-thought out these deceivers are! Someone would actually bother to paint themselves up and fabricate such a story.
Of course, it backfires but still alarming!
We have those beggars here in the UK who say that they have left their countries as refugees, yet they dress their children in the latest designer clothing.
serendipitouslife replies:
“Yes! What bugs me is that such fake people actually help foster such mistrust & suspicion among Muslims, that real genuine needy people are rejected & eventually lose out on the alms & mercy of their brothers & sisters (which is their right).”
November 6, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Thank you for sharing this with us. I grasp that this subject is pricey to many and most folks have a amount of passion around it however ultimately we want to bring this into perspective and begin to appreciate what is really vital in our lives.