Word: edhi
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Dates: during 2001-2001
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...Pakistan, heroes are in short supply. But ask any Pakistani whom they admire most, and they'll all mention the name of a former shopkeeper, a poor man from Karachi named Abdul Sattar Edhi. Karachi is a violent town; there are murders most every night. Gang wars, vendettas, crimes over women or money. And nobody collected the bodies. Then, a few years back, Edhi started going around the city at night with a cart, gathering up the bodies as though they were his own kin, washing them and giving then a decent Muslim burial. He still does that...
...border when one of Edhi's ambulances screeches by, coming from inside Afghanistan. On a narrow stretcher in the back of the ambulance lies an Afghan, Hekmatullah, 22, gasping with pain at every bump. He had the awful luck to be living not more than 200 yards from a Taliban ammunition dump near Kandahar. Hekmatullah was sleeping in his courtyard the night when American bombs struck. The ammo depot erupted like a volcano, spewing bullets and rockets everywhere...
...That's when the Edhi ambulance picked him up. From there, he was taken to the civil hospital in Quetta, where he still awaits an operation to remove the bullets. Abdul Halim, was beside him, gently massaging his brother's hand. Hekmatullah was bearded (of course), and he had a gaunt, ascetic pallor; it was like a deathbed scene by El Greco. "Why has this happened to my brother?" cried Abdul Halim in disbelief. Under the circumstances, I couldn't bring myself to explain about "collateral damage...