Cardboard for Sale

Written and Photos By: Saleem Ayoub Quna

This is a picture of a cheap push-cart standing in the middle of the square in front of Al-Husseini Grand Mosque. The time is noon of the last Friday of Ramadan, the month of Fasting and piety which has left us few days ago.

When I approached the two boys who attended this push-cart to take a photo, a third boy much younger suddenly appeared on the scene and forbade the other two boys from being photographed standing next to it! I could only guess why he did that. But can you guess what this push-cart, stacked with these flat brown pieces of cardboard was doing there?

If you could not guess, then have a good look at the following two pictures and make a second guess!
This is what I call an ad-hoc successful small business project that makes immediate tax-free revenue. The merchandise used here (the cartoons) can easily be recollected in a matter of minutes and ready to be used again with no worries about any kind of maintenance or fixing!

Prayer Cardboard

It is the business of “selling or lending” a substitute for a prayer carpet that is offered to the worshippers who could not bring along their own colorful cloth prayer carpets from home. Each worshipper buys one piece of a cartoon, big enough to stand on while making the Friday prayers in the large square downtown Amman. Each piece is sold or rented, depending on the customer’s wish, for 100 Fils. I tried to count the number of those cartoons on the spot. They were in the hundreds.

So if there were at least 200 cartoons that would be good money for a time which does not exceed ten minutes. This is what I call the entrepreneurial spirit of the young generation in that bustling part of Amman.

It is after all a small trade of a service for a small fee. But God’s ultimate rewards must be much more promising for all those worshippers and the three boys.

Prayer Cardboard