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Naperville restaurant offers free Thanksgiving meal to those in need

Hossein Jamali has always liked to help people, to extend a little charity to those in need.

It's a lesson he learned from his father, who struggled to make ends meet but still managed to “give a little bit” to those who were facing even greater hardships or challenges.

Jamali will follow in those footsteps once again this week when his Naperville restaurant, Meson Sabika, provides a free sit-down Thanksgiving meal to many in need.

On Thursday, the upscale Spanish restaurant will be serving its special guests traditional meals — complete with turkey, salad, pumpkin pie and drinks — starting at 11 a.m.

Jamali says the restaurant at 1025 Aurora Ave. already is completely booked, with close to 2,000 reservations from all sorts of folks in need, “whether it be financial, emotional or physical.”

Meson Sabika has been preparing free Thanksgiving meals for years, he says, giving people who don't often get a chance to eat out the experience of dining at a top-end restaurant.

“If they were to have this experience someplace else, they would have to pay $35 to $40 a person,” he says.

His staff members, he says, are forbidden from mentioning that the Thanksgiving dinners are free.

“They (patrons) just come in as regular guests, they get waited on as regular guests,” he says. “The only difference is at the end, there's no check presented to them.”

That attitude, he says, helps his guests relax.

“We got feedback from a struggling family that they were going through a rough time with unemployment and stuff one year and they were very reluctant about coming in,” Jamali says. “They thought it would be like a soup kitchen, they would have to get a plate, stand in line. And they were overwhelmed when they saw they are just treated with dignity and waited on with professional staff and volunteers.”

Children also appreciate the experience, he says.

“You could see the joy in their eyes. They've never been to a fancy restaurant and they have no idea that it's a free meal or anything like that,” he says. “So they think their parents brought them to a fancy place for Thanksgiving dinner and you can see the excitement in their eyes and, of course, that makes my day.”

At the end of the day, after all the guests have headed for home, Jamali says he has his own Thanksgiving dinner with the volunteers who work that day.

“Thanksgiving is one of the happiest days of the year for me,” he says.

Jamali, who was born in Iran, says he tries to live his life based on lines written by Persian poet Saadi Shirazi.

In his poem, Shirazi writes that humans are members of a whole, and that when one part of the whole is afflicted, the others also are affected. If one does not have sympathy for human pain, he says, one cannot retain the name of “human.”

“So, basically,” Jamali says, “part of being a human being is to help and have sympathy for other people's pain and suffering.”

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