This image is a huge favourite. Both its capture, the follow up story and the gifted lesson all collude to
illustrate the importance of equally giving and sharing between people, no matter where they come from, what
circumstances they carry and why the photographer is there in the first place.
Moving through the marketplace in Luxor, I spied this fabulous face. Sitting down beside him I asked if he minded me taking his photograph. He immediately remarked - “As long as you taste my soup” and laughed uproariously.
Immediately I caught his expression and shared soup. The best soup I had tasted ever on trips to Egypt.
Many years later in ‘89 I returned on a private meditation visit with a group of eight others. I knew previously we would visit Luxor so armed myself with an A3 sized image of the soup seller. As we strolled around the same market place looking for my man, all redirected us until I hit upon his son. “Yes this is my father” as I showed him the print - “Please come back to our house as my father is very ill”. We were guided, all of us to the family house. A single story white cement construction some 10 minutes away.
By the time we arrived news had already got back that the ‘effendi’ were coming. Along the long white outside wall, all in line were a multitude of family ranging from toddlers to grandparents. We were treated like
royalty. I was invited to enter the humble abode by his son and presenting him the print, he took it over to a stone slab. His father was lying there a ghostly image of his former self as I remembered him and was apparent in the photo. He gently raised his father, supported by bolsters to admire the photo, explaining this foreigner had brought it. The old sick man looked up to me, some distance away and pointed his finger -”Ah, the young man who shared soup with me!” he managed to say. I could not hold back the tears as neither could the rest of my party. So touching this act of
gratitude had made an old sick and shortly to die man beam with recognition and delight.
What I did not know till then was that this image was as if we had presented them all with a king’s ransom. Unknown to us he was indeed the patriarch of the whole small tribe and this image, shortly before his passing would allow them to retain his visual memory for many generations, previously unattainable on their meagre means.
It was one of the most profound lessons in gratitude and its impact I have ever been gifted. Selfless giving can hold the most extraordinary returns never possibly imagined at the time of sharing.
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