Real integrity, as Oprah Winfrey once observed, is doing the right thing even if nobody will ever know what you did.
The story of Nure Alam, the Abu Dhabi taxi driver who handed in to police Dh88,500 of cash that had been left in his cab by a passenger, is just such a case.
When asked why he didn’t take the money, his response was: “I did not work for it. Why should I take it?”
In Mr Alam’s five years as a taxi driver in the capital, he has frequently returned possessions lost by his passengers, although this case was in an entirely different category to the usual mobile phones and handbags.
The owner of the lost money rewarded him with Dh3,000. Mr Alam was also honoured by his bosses at Al Ghazal and by TransAD, the taxi regulator, who presented him with a certificate and an additional Dh1,000.
This kind of incident reaffirms our belief in the good of humanity and ought to serve as an example to everyone, regardless of their means.
For Mr Alam, a father of three from Bangladesh, praise of a different kind was reward enough for his honesty.
His nine-year-old daughter Dhola told him she was proud of him, adding: “My father is a good man, an honest man.”
