“How warm is warm?” I asked.
“It’s hot,” Menekse finally admitted. “It’s hot about the war.”
As Meneske continued, I could feel my own internal danger meter rising. Though I wasn’t sure which war she was referring to, it could have been the troubles in Iraq or the ongoing fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan. She could have been referring to the civil war in Syria or the general unrest of every country I planned on visiting.
“Maybe you change your route?” Menekse asked.
Change my route? I was planning to leave for my route in the morning. I hoped that when Menekse’s husband arrived, he might have a more congenial view.
“I think it’s not a good idea,” Talat offered.
“Not a good idea?” I asked again, hoping for a different response.
“Not a good idea.”
Together, Talat, Menekse, and I walked to their home, where I watched the news for the first time in months and saw what all the fuss was really about. Things were getting worse in Syria and throughout the Middle East—no one knew where the violence might strike next. War wasn’t just coming. War was here. Kindness One doesn’t do very well in war. I don’t do well in war. The truth is, no one does well in war.
Talat asked me if there was anyone who might be able to get me a plane ticket. That would be great, I explained, but I wasn’t sure how I was going to get Kindness One into economy. First class, maybe.
Then I remembered that Mehmet had told me that if I ever needed any help I should call him. Could this be a moment to reach out my hand and ask for assistance? I knew that if anyone would understand my predicament it would be Mehmet and Nasuh. I also knew that if anyone could help me circumnavigate an entire region of the world, it would be my new Turkish family.
I called Mehmet to see if he could help.
Mehmet was happy to hear from me, but I wasn’t sure for how long as I explained my predicament, and asked his advice: “I’ve met a lot of people and I’ve told them I’m traveling east through Iran and Pakistan. And the reaction I’ve received has been pretty bad.”
Mehmet replied with a thoughtful: “Mm, hmm.”
It wasn’t the reaction I was hoping for, but I continued, “I mean, evidently something is happening in the Middle East that suggests that going through those two countries is not very wise right now. So I just wanted to know what you thought about that. If there was another solution.”
Silence.
Bad news typically follows silence.
I don’t like silence.
Or bad news for that matter.
“Look Leon, I thought about it when you told me in Istanbul,” Mehmet replied, his voice deep and serious. “Maybe this route is not such a good idea, but every day it’s looking worse. I think your friends there are right. You should not continue.”
Should not continue? I felt my rebellious side surge up, wanting to respond to Mehmet’s warning with, “Not continue? Are you mad? The Ambassador of Kindness is not stopped by war. The Ambassador of Kindness—”
Who the hell was I kidding? The Ambassador of Kindness didn’t like the idea of driving through or near a war either, but I still had a worldwide quest to complete. I tried to explain, “Not continuing isn’t really an option, my friend. Either I find another way around, or I have to go through.”
“Hmmm,” Mehmet replied. I liked the sound of that. Thinking is better than silence. Mehmet told me he would call me back. He might have a plan. Plans are good, especially ones that don’t involve war.
After eating dinner with Talat and Menekse, I received the call.
“Leon,” Mehmet began, his voice brimming with joy. “Pack your bags, we have found you a plane.”
I didn’t know what to say. A plane was great, but what about Kindness One?
But then Mehmet corrected himself, “A cargo plane.”
Could this moment even be happening? Here I was in a small Turkish town, threatened by a Middle Eastern war directly in my path, eating dinner at the home of a kind and concerned couple I had just met on the street, a couple who might have just saved my life, and Kindness One was being offered a trip to India via cargo plane.
“You will have to come back to Istanbul,” Mehmet explained. “But then you will go to India.”
I couldn’t thank Mehmet enough, but I still had a decision to make.
Thankfully, Talat and Menekse had the Internet. And Lina and I had Skype. In most of the places I had stayed, I didn’t have good enough service to actually see her, but now across the miles, her warm face came into grainy view.
“Good morning, Penelope,” I said, though she had no idea what I was talking about.
I explained my situation.
She sighed. It was the kind of sigh that said, Really, Leon, is this even a question?
“I mean, we kind of knew this was going to be an issue,” she reminded me.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “But I hoped it wouldn’t be an issue.”
“You hope too much,” she replied, her voice tired.
“I miss you, Lina,” I said, hoping those words might encapsulate everything I felt in that moment—my fears, my excitement, and the distance that even Skype was unable to bridge.
“I miss you, too,” the video began to break up, but I still heard Lina’s words. “You don’t need to come home now, Leon, but you need to come home safe.”
I could barely see her face anymore, as the image froze and rearranged itself.
I nodded, not knowing if she could still hear me.
“I’ll be home soon,” were my last words before the connection was lost altogether.
Talat and Menekse showed me to my own bed. After spending the previous night listening to the heavy snores of a Bulgarian truck driver, I finally got to do something I had been dreaming about all day: sleep.
When I woke up in the morning, my decision had been made. I knew that dreams could be fickle—sometimes they had to change in order to be achieved. Perhaps Mihali’s suggested detour had done more than introduce me to Ephesus—it might have just saved my life.
I said my good-byes to Talat and Menekse, and thanked them for their gentle nudging. I am sure that Lina would have thanked them as well. Menekse looked at me and smiled. I could see relief on her face, but also surprise. I don’t even think she could quite believe what had just happened.
And here again, goodness and darkness found themselves overlapping. The generosity of my friends in Turkey standing in contrast to the war that was exploding all around them. And those friends who had suddenly popped up across the landscape all echoed my greatest friend back home—make it home safe.
Often, it just takes a little bit of faith, hope, and love, for us to see that a broken plan doesn’t mean a broken dream. It just means another path will open up.
I arrived in Istanbul and went straight to the airport, meeting up with Mehmet’s contact to begin the arrangements for the plane and to have the bike crated and expedited to its new destination: India! I sat in my seat—a far cry from first class, but far safer than riding Kindness One across Iran. I looked down at the world below. If flowers can grow through concrete, love can surely sprout in violence. There was no way to keep it down. Because “these three things remain: faith, hope, and love,” and Paul was right: The greatest of these is love.
* * *
Ever since I was a child, I had dreamed of seeing India. It was probably all those Rudyard Kipling stories, which made me think it was filled with elephants and monkeys and boys raised in the wild. But as I grew older, the dream changed. I no longer imagined that I would be running through the jungle next to a tiger. I dreamed that I would be riding through it on a motorbike. I thought that in India I might meet God.
On my arrival in Delhi, the first thing that hit me was the heat. Humid. Powerful. Overwhelming, 120-degree heat. The second thing: the poverty. It was gu
t-wrenching poverty, the type where emaciated children begged with dirty fingers and whole families slept in the streets, in homes made out of cardboard.
As I stepped out of the airport, I thought I would be confronted with color and spice, and instead I was hit with unspeakable sadness. How was it possible that so many could have so little?
Once I got into the city, I parked Kindness One and began to explore on foot. Children cried out to me, “Meester! Meester!” hoping to get just a rupee from me. For the first time on this trip, I was embarrassed to be without money. Sure, I had seen homeless people in Turkey, in Greece, in America, but nothing like this. How could I come to India with no money to give? How could I ask its people for help when I should be the one offering it?
I turned down a quiet street and away from the busy road filled with honking buses and scooters. The sidewalk had been turned to rubble by the trees growing underneath, the roots breaking up the concrete, making an uneven path down the narrow street.
I saw three “Westerners” (which I quickly found out was the word used for all white people in India) standing outside a building. I walked up only to discover it was an ashram.
I went inside and saw a handful of people meditating in a garden, lush green foliage hanging down over them as they sat in silence.
Off to the side was a small bookstore, which appeared open. A bookstore? Why not?
Inside, there was an older man with a long white beard sitting at the register. He was reading a book with an even older man on its cover.
He looked up at me and asked quietly, “How can I help you, son?”
I breathed a sigh of relief. After feeling powerless to help anyone outside this quiet sanctuary, I was so grateful to feel that there was someone I could share this burden with. I told him everything about my journey around the world on kindness, about all the ups and all the downs. I told him that though I intended to offer people gifts along the way, I didn’t know what to do about asking his people for help. How could I do that? How could I come here with empty pockets?
He lay down his book and smiled, “My child, money is not inside the pocket. Many Indians have no pockets and no money. But what do they have is biggest hearts. Remember that God is inside us all. A man will only help you if he can. And if he cannot, he will not help. This is not your concern. Let it be.”
I felt in awe of this man. He had calmed my spirit, and he had quoted The Beatles.
I thanked him profusely.
“If there was something I could give the ashram, I would . . .” I began, but he shook his head.
“You can go meet India. Love her. That will be your gift.”
I walked back out onto the street, my faith restored. And you know what happened next? Nothing. Well nothing good anyway. First, I stepped in cow shit. Yes you heard that right, literally two minutes after I left the holy man, I stepped in cow shit. Second, no one would help me. No one. In fact they all wanted my help. Third, I was beginning to think that the man who I had spoken to only forty-five minutes earlier might have actually been a mirage brought on by the stifling heat.
I was about to give up hope when I bumped into a chap standing next to a motorcycle rickshaw. Dheeru was well dressed and spoke only broken English, but we were still able to understand one another.
I told him of my journey, “I left Los Angeles in America, and I got all the way to Delhi completely on the kindness of other people.”
At first, I wasn’t sure how much he understood me, but then a big smile broke out across his face, “That’s my culture!”
He wobbled his head back and forth, which I quickly learned was a common Indian gesture, meaning that the person heard what you were saying, even if they weren’t sure they knew how to respond. Dheeru continued, “My culture is kind and respectable. Everybody is like a guest who comes in.”
After a few more minutes of chatting, I decided this was the type of man my holy friend was pointing me toward. But then I remembered that after leaving him, I had stepped in cow shit. So I asked my standard question with a bit of trepidation, “Is there any way that today I could stay in your house?”
“My house?” he responded, looking very confused. The kind of confused that says, “Why does this white man with a yellow motorbike want to stay in my house?”
“Yes,” I replied.
But then Dheeru’s eyes opened wide and he wobbled his head, replying, “Yes, you could stay in my house. My place has a lot of people living in it.”
Long live Indian rickshaw drivers! Long live Dheeru!
That day was a holiday in India, and thus the streets were somewhat empty (which made me wonder what they might look like full). Dheeru had far fewer customers than usual, so he offered to take me back to his home to meet his family. I had been forewarned never to go to the slums of India. I had heard stories of people being robbed, beaten, some even killed. I had been told that Westerners do not go to the slums. Well, this Westerner had heeded enough warnings for one trip. I felt safe in Dheeru’s presence, and I remembered the old man’s words at the ashram, “Meet India. Love her. That will be your gift.”
Dheeru drove me in his rickshaw to the slum where he and his wife and two sons lived in a one-room shack. In one bed.
His wife brewed us some chai as we went outside and he told me about their life. We sat in lawn chairs that could have once been in the backyard of any American home.
I asked Dheeru, “So you’ve told me how hard it is to make a living in India. How much do you make a week, if you don’t mind me asking?”
He looked at his wife as she came outside with the tea. Wobbling his head before replying, “Rickshaw is very hard. If don’t get customers for two, three days, no eat.“
“So sometimes you and your family do not eat for two or three days?” I asked, overwhelmed at the thought that his whole family would go hungry.
“Yes,” Dheeru explained, as though it was the simplest fact. “It depends on my work. If I work, we eat . . .”
I found it heartbreaking that they sometimes went without food. How could there be a world with so much and yet another world with so little?
We sat and talked about life and love. He told me he had always dreamed of being a rickshaw driver, though he still hoped that one day he would own his own.
“What does that mean?” I asked him. “Do you pay someone else?”
“Oh, yes,” Dheeru laughed. “I pay much to drive rickshaw.”
Rent was not cheap for rickshaws, I learned. Whatever money Dheeru had left over he spent on his family, but often there was not much. He had no money for his sons to attend secondary school. He had no savings should his wife get sick, or worse, if something should happen to him. They lived one inch from disaster in a one-room shack, and yet as he explained, they still gave to those who had even less. Just as I had seen in Pittsburgh, in Turkey, in France, there were so many people who survived by their connections to other people. They were creating a web of kindness, taking care of each other, and being taken care of in turn.
As Dheeru told me, the little money his family had left over went to others, “When there is good day, when we have some more, we give to orphans.”
“What?” I asked, thinking I had misheard him at first.
“That’s Indian culture,” he replied. “If I have a nice client give lots of money, I give to orphanage. You know, children that don’t have mums and dads.”
By now, a crowd had gathered outside, word spreading through the community that a Westerner had come to visit Dheeru and his family. I had become a celebrity—and I didn’t even have Kindness One with me! As Dheeru took me on a walk through the slum, a group of children followed at a close distance, giggling and whispering as though I were the King of England. Just as I had grown up on stories of India, so they had grown up on stories of Britain.
I looked around at the women sitting outside, the men
coming home from work, the children behind us, and immediately saw the paradox: Though there was extreme poverty, there was also extreme joy. Of course, there is no greater pain than a hungry belly, and living a spiritual life also requires having one’s physical needs met, but I also saw that in the absence of material things, the bonds of family and the camaraderie of friendship were not just about friendly social connection. They were about survival. They were about love. They were one home connecting to another home, lighting up the grid of this world.
I wished I could do something that would change all of their lives for the better, but I knew that I did have the power to change one life, and in that transformation, I hoped that many more might be touched.
When Dheeru and I returned to his home, I asked him, “What about renting your rickshaw? How much is that a day?”
“Rickshaw rent is 300 rupees a day,” he replied. I quickly did the math and realized that was about $10 a day. Dheeru thought about it and added, “And uh, 200 rupees for the fuel.”
“So it costs you 500 rupees a day?” I confirmed with him.
He wobbled his head, making me wonder whether it was a yes or a no, but then he explained, “After 500 rupees, I make goes in my pocket.”
“So how much do you make on average?” I probed
“On average, 800 rupees, but then I pay owner of rickshaw.”
“And the fuel,” I finished his sentence.
There was so little left for them and yet here they were, cooking me dinner, offering me one of their few mats to sleep on. Inviting me into the web of kindness.
Later, as I lay my head down to sleep in one of the poorest parts of the world, I felt a richness pervade my soul. India had not been what I dreamed it would be, but sometimes our dreams are limiting. Who needs tigers when you have love?
As the sun rose on the slums of this small part of India, I convened an impromptu family meeting, during which I planned to let Dheeru and his family in on my secret. “You see,” I explained. “This journey is all about kindness. It’s all about the generosity of the human spirit. That’s why I started this journey, and that’s why I find myself here with you. Having spent the night in your home, having spent the night with your whole family, I feel very, very welcome. And for that, I am truly grateful.”
The Kindness Diaries: One Man's Quest to Ignite Goodwill and Transform Lives Around the World Page 11
