Of trust, love, compassion

A simple letter from 6-year-old Alex, of New York, to President Barack Obama, with a simple request, “Can you please go get him”, has tugged at millions of heartstrings across the world.

Alex wants to share his home, toys and bicycle with a 5-year-year old Syrian boy, Omran Daqneesh, yet another little victim of the violence and bloodshed raging in Syria, where an airstrike in Aleppo killed his entire family. He escaped and was pulled out from a building and placed in an ambulance. Amidst all the noise and screaming around him, ashen-faced Omran sat totally silent, covered in blood and grime, and in stark contrast to the bright orange chair in the ambulance. Reports described how the dazed child “wiped his hand over his wounded face, looked at the blood, wiped it off on the chair. And he stared”.

This image, which horrified the world, led to Alex asking his president to “go get him”, promising that when the “ambulance” reaches New York, “we’ll be waiting for you guys with flags, flowers, and balloons. We will give him a family and he will be our brother. Catherine, my little sister, will be collecting butterflies and fireflies for him. In my school, I have a friend from Syria, Omar, and I will introduce him to Omar. We can all play together.” He would also teach him to ride a bike!

Alex also read out this letter, which was posted on Facebook. At the recent Leaders Summit on Refugees, Obama shared Alex’s letter with the world leaders assembled to discuss possible solutions to the global refugee crisis. Obama told the gathering that the humanity “that a young child can display, who hasn’t learned to be cynical, or suspicious, or fearful of other people because of where they’re from, or how they look, or how they pray, and who just understands the notion of treating somebody that is like him with compassion, with kindness — we can all learn from Alex”.

His words are so strikingly similar to another story I came across that it needs to be shared. In 1991, under the Rotary Youth Exchange programme, 377 teenagers from across the world, including India, were sent to the US for a year’s study. Barely 17 or 18, all of them were hosted by different families across the US. The highlight of that year was the five weeks they all spent together in 8 buses, touring America’s iconic spots such as the Grand Canyon, the Niagara Falls, etc.

Even though deep friendships were forged at that young age, after they returned home, some of them exchanged letters for a couple of years, and as they went through college, started working, they drifted apart.

But five years ago, a few of them came together in a Facebook group, and started the hunt for others through social media platforms such as FB, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google.

As the livewire behind the group, Emma Naas, now a teacher in Sweden put it, “a group of barely 30 swelled gradually to 278, and the magic of our friendship came back”. They are now in their mid-40s, small groups meet occasionally, host each other’s children, and provide a lot of support. Recently when a member’s child got cancer, she got gifts from across the world.

After a year’s planning, in July 2016, 100 of them came together for a reunion in Spain to celebrate their friendship which had survived the passage of 25 years.

Of course the fun, food and laughter were a major part of this reunion, but it was much more. What was important was that as teenagers they had learnt to trust strangers and forge friendships across regions, religions, languages and cultural divides, with total trust and zero suspicion.

As Valerie Nys from Belgium pointed out, “I learned to trust others that I barely knew, to open my mind to other points of view and to listen, to share and most of all, to trust myself.” Much more important, now she wants to inject in both her kids a “virus” that will make them “citizens of the world, like me!”

Now this group has written a letter to governments across the world urging them to promote/sponsor such youth exchange programmes and thus plant a “seed of trust in the current world of turmoil and growing nationalism. Trust overcomes fear; we see a lot of fear in today’s world. Fear of other religions, refugees, fear of losing sovereignty to other groups or nations. Even fear of accepting foreigners in one’s own country”.

The punch line is that their world is small, but much more peaceful, as it is built on trust and friendship.

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