Meeting People Who Have Killed

I was thinking what else to write about. For some strange reason the first thing that popped in my head (while sitting in a cafe in Hartamas Shopping Center) was the image of a kindly old man working in the garden in Pakistan near the border to Afghanistan.

I still remember his name, his gentle smile and his fondness for plants. We never really spoke except for a few words through an interpreter. I never felt threatened in his company nor intimidated. In some strange ways, he reminded me of my grandfather - someone who I never really knew but whom my Mom said was a kind and gentle old man.

Yet, I had been told that the old man, who in his old age made sure that our garden was cared for, used to fight for the muhajideens. I suppose what I was told was true. And that was to be the first man I met whom I was told had killed for a cause he believed in.

Since then I have met others. All of whom who were fighting for some ideology they believed in - whether or not they were labelled by the world as terrorists, cowards or patriots. I got on with all of them. I fancied one. I had a short love affair with another. I had compared one to my own grandfather who never in his life hurt a soul. At each of those times I didn't think about what they did or had done. All I cared I suppose was that I got along with them on some level or the other.

Then I thought about it some more. Am I supposed to feel disgusted by these people? How is it that I can hate war and work as a humanitarian aid worker and be involved at any level with people who commit the very acts I am suppose to be absolutely against. Am I so accepting of people's right to be as they choose that I can accept anyone as they are?

I am still unsure of the answer. The only thing I can think of for now is that all these people had done what they did because they felt it was their duty to do so in the name of their country, their leaders, their people or their religion. And that I too do what I do for my beliefs and sense of duty, and perhaps in some strange way, I share something in common with these people after all. That because of my strong sense of duty to the people I saw suffer in the world namely Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan, I too, like them had been willing to put myself in a position where I could have been killed. No doubt, unlike them, I hadn't killed for my beliefs - but like them, I had put myself in extreme risks to champion something I really believed in. And perhaps that's why I can befriend people who I know have killed people.