A Polio Story - Taliban Father with a Polio-stricken Child
In a recent conversation with TIME, Memon described an experience he had when he visited a hospital in Peshawar to drop off some wheelchairs and took a break to have tea and a biscuit. A hospital worker told him that a Taliban chief and his 18-month old son—who had been stricken with polio and lost the use of his legs—were in a room nearby. This was the kind of man who could make a difference if he could be persuaded to support vaccinations. Memon went into the room to have his tea and chat with the man while the child played on the floor.
Eventually the topic of the boy’s illness came up and Memon chose to tell the father a hard and candid truth. “If you had given this baby two drops,” he said, “he’d be running now.”
The man, who was wearing a gun on his hip, grew visibly angry. “Are you God?” he demanded. “It was his destiny to suffer this way, and now you are challenging me.”
Memon apologized for giving offense and the two fell silent. At length he noticed that the room had become overly hot and that the boy, who was wearing two sweaters, looked uncomfortable. He recommended that the father remove the sweaters but the father refused, saying that his family came from a cold, mountainous region where the boy was used to bundling up, and he didn’t want him to get flu or pneumonia. Memon saw his moment.
“But wouldn’t that be his destiny?” he asked. “Now I am challenging you.”
The Taliban chief, hardly a sympathetic figure, nonetheless did what an ordinary father would do, which was to grow teary. “You said you could have given him two drops before,” he said. “Could you give him four drops now?”
Memon nodded his head. “No,” he said. “It’s too late.”
Nonetheless, Memon did extract a promise from the man: that he would take some vaccine with him when he left the hospital, vaccinate the rest of his family and offer the drops to his neighbors as well. The man promised he would, then asked Memon for his cellphone number, explaining that he would be sending him a message within the week, and when he got it, he was to read and delete it. Memon agreed. Six days later a text arrived saying that the man had fulfilled the promise he’d made. Memon, as he’d promised in return, erased the message from his phone.
There may never be a way to verify Memon’s tale, but even if it is destined to become merely a part of polio apocrypha, its larger lesson is important. In a world of the bloody and bad, it may take only a single human exchange to produce bits of fragile good.