For a while, no one knew who Dhaim was, where he was, where he was from, or where he was going – unless he told them.  And he tried to tell anyone who would listen. 

He tried to tell his social worker at the Camp LaGuardia homeless shelter.  Dhaim tried to tell him how he had come from Morocco to New York City to seek the American Dream, get a job, and earn a lot of money for his family.  How he worked in a Manhattan restaurant and learned to cook Pakistani food – nothing like Moroccan food, he says.  How he lost his job after September 11, then lost his apartment, and ended up homeless, riding the Number 7 train back and forth, back and forth between Times Square and Flushing.  Dhaim tried to tell them how his passport and legal papers were stolen, how he became very sick, how he had open-heart surgery, how he was discharged into the shelter system and ended up at Camp LaGuardia.

Camp LaGuardia is an outpost of New York’s shelter system.  A thousand men, shipped an hour upstate to the small town of Chester, New York.  Dhaim got there and he was stuck.  He says he wasn’t able to get any help, any good food, or any sleep.  He went to his assigned social worker every day and asked to be sent somewhere else.  He wrote a letter to the director of the shelter who said, “Maybe I will help you, and maybe not.”  As this dragged on for three years, Dhaim began to have suicidal thoughts.

Finally one day, Dhaim was sent to The Bowery Mission.  The Intake Chaplain welcomed him and told him he would have to give up smoking for six months to participate in The Bowery Mission’s program.  Dhaim had been smoking two packs a day for 45 years, but that day he ended his smoking habit and entered into the program – the chapel, the counseling sessions, the classes, and the career center – with enthusiasm.

Dhaim says that quitting cigarettes allowed him to open his heart to Jesus Christ.  Once lost, empty, and without hope, Dhaim found himself filled with a renewed faith.  He began to anticipate a better life.  As Dhaim put it, “Jesus opens the door every day.”  He spoke with his wife and four children in Morocco, who asked, “Where do you live that they give you anything you need – food, clothes, anything?”  Dhaim told them, “This is the house of God.”  Still, he wanted to return to his country.  Prayerfully, Dhaim went to the passport office and had a passport within five minutes of turning in his papers – a miracle.  Then the money for a plane ticket home was donated – another miracle.

A few days later Dhaim arrived at the airport for his 18-hour flight to Casablanca.  From there, he traveled home to his wife, his two sons, and his two daughters – family he had not seen in five years.  “I will never forget The Bowery Mission,” Dhaim said, “If I live one for day or if I live for many, many years, as long as I live, I will never, never forget this house of God.”