It was 5:08 p.m. when I pulled in.
Tavira Plaza’s underground garage yawned cool and shadowed, echoing with the low boom of bass. Portuguese summer. A Peugeot—dented, silver, tired—sat idling across two spots. Its windows were open. Inside, three young men. South Asian, maybe Pakistani. Loud Arabic trap throbbed from a speaker duct-taped to the dash. Tires dirty, hood clean.
One of them leaned out the window, flicking ash from a cigarette. The other laughed too loud at something on a phone. And I—I was supposed to just walk past. Like everyone else, the groceries done. My newspaper resting between my arm, just coincidental of its own space of being very much Portuguese. Proper Lisbon sway, eclectic gaze, espresso and Tom Ford – Grey Vetiver. Sapatos de vela.
But I didn’t.
I slowed my step. A half-second of fear, not for safety, but for being misunderstood. My autism does go beyond the facade of intentions. The unmasking. I could still turn around. Just get my coffee and go home. Be a man of silence. Dream mitigation.
But my soul tugged forward. My body shrugged.
I stepped into the wave of music and raised my hand lightly to my chest.
“Salam alaikum,” I said. Not performative. Not exaggerated. Just honest. I was unmasked. “I read the Qur’an. I’m not Muslim… but I found peace in it.”
The music didn’t stop—but the world did. It left an empty space.
The boy in the passenger seat blinked. His smirk collapsed into something soft. The one smoking straightened in his seat, like someone remembering their own name. The driver nodded—once, slow. The space became the warmth of sand dunes.
“Wa alaikum salam, senhor,” he replied, in Portuguese-accented Arabic. “That… that means a lot.” Broken English.
I smiled. I wasn’t there to convert or praise or correct. I was just one proud Canadian-Portuguese man speaking to another man in exile. Caught between the providence of Tim Hortons and the scent of summer.
“Shukran,” I added.
The driver turned down the music. Not off. Just… lower.
And for a moment—beneath the concrete and dust, under the weight of difference—two worlds that touch.
I walked on. Espresso and Pedras Salgadas still to be had. Groceries still to buy.
But the air behind me now buzzed not with trap beats, but with something older. Something holy. Back in my car, Paulo Gonzo sings “É nas pedras da calçada que a canção nos sai melhor.”
Bismillah to the good people of love.