Why Have We Become Strangers in Our Own Neighbourhood?
Last week a delivery boy stopped in front of our house and asked: “Brother, who lives in the house opposite? The parcel only has the street number on it, no name.” I looked toward the house opposite — the same house whose door I pass every day, whose light I can see at night from my room's window — and no answer came to me. Three months ago a family had moved into that house; I had watched their belongings being unloaded, their children can be seen playing in the street — but to this day I do not know the name of the head of the household. Embarrassed, I only said: “That's the house opposite; ring the bell, someone or other will come out.”
This embarrassment is not mine alone; it has now become all of our shared story. Once a neighbourhood was one family. Everyone knew everyone's name — who was ill in which house, which child had an exam, in which house wedding preparations were under way — all this was the neighbourhood's common news. Doors stayed open, a plate of curry went from here to there, and children were not only their own home's children but the whole street's children. Today the streets are the same, the houses perhaps bigger and more solid than before — only the doors have closed, and with them hearts have closed too.
We have given this closing a beautiful name: “privacy”. We say everyone has their own life, and no one should be bothered. To some extent the point is fair too — poking into someone's home without need is not a good thing. But there is a difference between privacy and ignorance. Privacy is not prying into someone's private matter; ignorance is not even knowing who lives in your neighbourhood, whether he is alive or ill, happy or troubled. We have adopted the second thing in the name of the first.
And we are quietly paying its price. Think: if someone suddenly falls ill at night, who can reach first? The hospital is far, the ambulance takes time — the neighbour's door is the closest. If an old man's son is abroad, he lives alone, and his window does not open for two days — who will ask after him? The neighbourhood was that first safety net which held a person up in hardship. Today that net has torn, and living in the same street we have still been left alone. There is perhaps no deprivation greater than loneliness in a crowd.
How high our religion has placed this very station of the neighbour can be gauged from a single saying: the Prophet ﷺ said: “Gabriel kept advising me about the neighbour, again and again, in such a way that I thought he would perhaps make the neighbour a partner in inheritance” (Sahih al-Bukhari: 6014). A relationship about which advice was given so many times — that means the neighbour is not merely the occupant of the adjoining house, but a companion of life — his right is the greatest after blood relations.
The solution here too is not difficult; it only needs initiative — and initiative always has to be taken by one person first. Three small habits can bring the neighbourhood back. First: take the initiative in greeting, and remember the name — the day you greet your neighbour by name, the first crack will appear in the wall. Second: now and then a plate, a cup of tea, a small enquiry after well-being — relationships are not built by grand gifts but by small attention. Third: in hardship, knock on the neighbour's door first — whether illness, a need, or a worry at home, do not hold back thinking “what will people say”; the neighbour's door exists for that very day.
Remember: we have made the walls of our houses high, but with them we have also made the walls of our hearts high. Walls may protect against theft, they cannot protect against loneliness. A neighbourhood is a neighbourhood only when those living in it know one another — otherwise it is only a row of houses, and in a row of houses there is no life, only residence.