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I love assalamu alaikum. What a blessing to be able to escape the office at lunchtime and to stand in prayer with one’s brethren, and at either end to exchange these words. “Peace be upon you,” to a stranger “And upon you peace too,” he replies. I don’t know the names of my companions: these old men and the younger ones, the South Asians, West Africans and Arabs. I appear for the midday prayer and then I disappear. But still we share this greeting. “Assalamu alaikum,” we say when we see one another—peace be upon you—and somehow these are all the words we ever need.