Tom Little: When a statistic becomes a name
Among those killed, one name stood out for me as more than a statistic - Dr Tom Little, the American ophthalmologist, who had served the Afghan people for close to forty years, helping them by literally bringing vision and sight.
EVERYDAY WE hear of killings, bombings, terrorist attacks; so much so that I don’t take a note of them even if they are in my own country - much less an attack, a bombing in a foreign country. They are just benumbing statistics, which mean nothing because they mean nothing. I don’t know the people, what they do or did and obviously not their names or any other personal detail; and yet, once in a while, images blur and the statistical data becomes a name, a person, a distant, albeit faint memory that one can’t shake off. That happened to me on August 9, 2010. I got the news from some friends that some ten people had been killed on Friday (August 6), in Afghanistan. The news filtered down to me on Saturday (August 7) and the name on Monday (August 9). Dirk Frans, the director of the International Assistance Mission in Afghanistan and a man I had worked with briefly in the past had held a press conference in Kabul to announce the killings of these ten people. Among those killed, one name stood out for me as more than a statistic – Dr Tom Little, the American ophthalmologist, who had served the Afghan people for close to forty years, helping them by literally bringing vision and sight. When he was killed, it was probably quite typical that he was killed while holding an eye camp in the Afghan province of Nuristan.
As I write this, I do so in the midst of significant personal difficulties that show no sign of going away, if they ever will. And it is easy enough to wallow in one's own pain, sadness and hurt. But Tom's life and even more than his life - through his death, Tom Little reminds me and challenges me of what it is to live for something bigger than yourself, thinking beyond one's little aches and pains and have in sight only a city whose builder and founder is the creator himself. I met Tom Little only a few times, and my memories of him are sparse. But even so they are enough to proclaim him to be a hero, worthy to be listed among the heroes of faith listed on any list in the world. It was the early 90s, my wife and I used to be the part time caretakers of a guest house in Delhi. It was often in use by people transiting through India and boarding flights to the United States or Europe. Tom Little was a guest, who used the place often - either flying to Afghanistan or returning back there after a brief vacation. I remember Tom from then, even though we met only a few times and he was just a guest and I a nominal host making polite conversation over the dinner table. But then sometimes, dinner table conversations, become memories that you carry around for a life time.
I remember Tom as one of the few people, who had chosen to serve in one of the most dangerous places in the world and he had chosen to serve for the long haul, because he was clear that God had called him to come and serve him in Afghanistan and he would obey cheerfully and without asking questions. Tom served in Afghanistan not merely for five years or ten years, but for close to 40 years till people who didn’t know his worth or value, killed him in harness as he served their own people. Governments came and went - the Communists went, the Mujaheedin went, the Taliban went, and today the Karzai government is tottering, but Tom laboured on.
But through it all, like the unchanging God that he served, served the resolute Tom Little weathering every battle, witness to every war. Every day life brings forth battles; small and big. Perhaps the only choice we are afforded is to make choices about the kind of battles we will fight and their size. Tom made the choice to bring a glimpse of what humankind could be to come in one of the harshest places of earth to serve in - by literally and figuratively, giving the Afghan people sight and vision for 40 years. Greater love has no one than this that he lay down his life for his friends. in a country, where people come and go like sifting sand, Tom hung out there for that long a time. The fanatics, who killed him and nine others on Friday, may not have realised that it may be a very, very long time again before they find another man from a different language, culture, race and faith, who loved them enough to live with and for them, and in death be buried with them on their soil. Sadly in life, the most important lessons are often learnt the last or never learnt at all...
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