“I just can’t sit back and watch humanity suffer,” said Abdul Sattar Edhi, the Pakistani philanthropist and humanitarian, during a telephone interview with Arab News from the Lebanese capital. (AN photo)

JEDDAH, 9 August 2006 — As people streamed out of Lebanon fleeing Israeli aggression, Pakistani philanthropist and humanitarian Abdul Sattar Edhi did exactly the opposite, getting to Beirut from Karachi as fast as he could.

“I knew I would have to be in Lebanon,” Edhi told Arab News during an interview from the Lebanese capital. “I just can’t sit back and watch humanity suffer. I am not made that way. I have been engaged in this kind of social work for the last six decades. I am 82 now. Allah has always helped me.”

God helps Edhi to help others. Since arriving in Lebanon, under the auspices of the Abdul Sattar Edhi Foundation, he has set up a camp to care for thousands of refugees and continues to occupy himself orchestrating medical and humanitarian support for victims of the conflict.

“So many people are being killed. Many children are dead,” Edhi said in a voice choking with emotion. “There are nearly 10,000 people in my camp. We are providing food and medicine, and I am trying to arrange doctors. I already have donated three ambulances to the Lebanese government and, in the next few days, I will arrange some more.”

Edhi is among the legendary figures of Pakistan. His popularity cuts across the usual religious, political and national boundaries. He has been described by one well-known Saudi journalist as “Pakistan’s answer to India’s Mother Teresa.” Former Indian Prime Minister I.K. Gujaral once told him: “You were born in India. You should come back.”

Starting in 1951 with a tiny dispensary in Karachi’s Mithadar area, Edhi steadily constructed a nationwide organization of ambulances, clinics, maternity homes, mental asylums, orphanages, adoption centers, mortuaries, shelters for runaway children and battered women, schools, nursing courses, soup kitchens and a 25-bed cancer hospital. All are run by some 7,000 volunteers and a small paid staff of teachers, doctors and nurses.

Edhi has also personally delivered medicines, food and clothing to refugees in Bosnia, Ethiopia and Afghanistan. He and the drivers of his ambulances have saved lives in floods, train wrecks, civil conflicts and traffic accidents.

Born in Bantva, a small Indian town of 25,000 inhabitants in Gujarat, Edhi’s passion for healing dates back to his childhood. At age 11, he was obliged to care for his mother, who was paralyzed with a severe diabetic condition. “I bathed her, changed her and fed her,” he recalled in his 1996 autobiography, “A Mirror to the Blind.”

“Taking care of my mother made me ponder the misery of others who suffered; from that time on, I began to think of how I could help them, and to dream of building hospitals and a village for the handicapped,” he told Richard Covington who did a wonderful cover story on him in a recent issue of Aramco World.

A natural leader, when he was not prodding other children to join him in stealing corn and fruit from wealthy farmers, he was organizing impromptu circuses and performing gymnastic feats for the neighbors. Although his father brokered textiles and other goods and provided the family with a middle-class income, both of Edhi’s parents instilled in him the importance of simplicity and frugal living.

“Every day before school, my mother would give me two paisa and say, ‘Spend one paisa on yourself and give the other away,’” Edhi is quoted as saying in the Aramco World article. “When I came home, she would ask me where I had given my one paisa. It was her way of creating an awareness in me of the need for social welfare.”

At the same time he began caring for his mother, he also developed a habit of saving, putting aside one rupee for every five he earned working at a fabric shop after school. Thriftiness served him well; he gradually acquired government securities, the income from which now provides for some of his foundation’s needs.

Edhi said he arrived in Lebanon with a considerable amount of money but that he would probably need more in the next few days. He hopes people will donate generously.

He says there is only one course toward peace. “Immediate cease-fire,” he implores. “What is happening here is horrendous. I want to go to the south of the country, but I cannot. Ever since I landed here, I have been trying to get there. Thousands of people are streaming into Beirut from the south. ‘Upar aasmaan, neeche zameen’ (heaven above and earth below) ... They have nothing else. Beirut itself is empty. Its population has gone down to 40 percent of what it usually is. The rest have deserted this city. Shops are closed. There is no life in the streets.”

Amid the explosions and destruction of war, Edhi remains undeterred. “As an Islamic missionary, this is my duty,” he said. “I believe in Allah. I am a staunch believer. It is very clearly stated in the Holy Qur’an that the place and time of a person’s end is determined by Allah. Nobody can alter that. War or no war, I am never nervous.”

It also appears that nobody will prevent this devout humanitarian from doing God’s work. Donations to the Abdul Sattar Edhi Foundation can be made via demand draft in the name of the foundation to the United Bank Ltd. (UBL) in Dubai or to Askari Bank in Karachi. For further details, call 0092-21-2424125.