Acts of Kindness

I caught up with my good friend Ed, one of my all-time favorite human beings. Over the Eid holidays (beginning of October) he'd gone to Pakistani Kashmir to visit a colleague who worked there. He mainly wanted to get out of Kabul for Eid, because the whole country shuts down over the holiday, but he had also decided he would help three families in the earthquake zone.

Ed had been on Phuket, Thailand, when the tsunami struck, and spent the next week first searching for survivors, then searching for bodies, then helping loved ones locate the missing. So even though he knew heading into Kashmir was likely a mad idea, it seemed like a normal thing for him to do.

He and his friend worked their way into the mountains. At several villages their car was mobbed by desperate earthquake victims - any car with a foreigner in it could be bringing relief. They had to drive through the mobs at a crawl - it was too dangerous to stop, too dangerous to get out of the car. Finally they arrived at a camp of journalists, where they stayed in tents. The winter hadn't begun, but it was bitterly cold.

The next morning, Ed's friend took him out to a village where he knew of three widows in need. Between the two of them, they gave each widow and her family $300 - a small amount, but a huge help in this impoverished region. Thinking of his night in the tent, Ed asked how they'd survive the winter.

"Allah will provide," they told him. "Allah sent you."

When Ed returned to the camp he met up with some jaded BBC reporters, angry that the Pakistani government hadn't sent the army in sooner, that people were freezing, that more would die. One derided Ed's mission to help three Pakistani families. What good would it do? What did it solve? "You Americans think you can save the world," he sneered.

Really?