No need for any smart a$$ comments. Mr.Sajjad says it all at the end.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/12/international/asia/12INDI.html
2 Nations Set Aside Ill Will for an Ill Child
By DAVID ROHDE
AHORE, Pakistan, Aug. 9 - Just after 3 a.m. on July 11, Nadeem Sajjad, a 35-year-old scientist, led his wife and 2-year-old daughter out the front door of his parents’ comfortable two-story home in eastern Pakistan into the predawn darkness.
Fear filled the young couple, but their daughter Noor’s wan, stunted body drove them on.
The young girl’s heart, roughly the size of a plum, had a small hole in it, and her best chance for surviving into adulthood lay with surgeons hundreds of miles away in Pakistan’s neighbor and frequent enemy, India. That morning, the family planned to board the first bus to link the two nuclear-armed nations since the beginning of 18 months of bitter hostility that nearly resulted in war last spring.
Mr. Sajjad worried about Indians attacking the family, if people discovered they were Pakistanis. His wife worried that thieves would descend on her if she dared wear jewelry on India’s lawless streets.
“Pretty scared,” Mr. Sajjad said, recalling how he felt that night. “Anything can happen.”
One month later, the young couple and their daughter have become symbols of the surprising success of re-establishing “people to people” contact between average Indians and Pakistanis. The partial re-opening of the border has generated an unexpected groundswell of popular support for peace between the longtime rivals, many people in Pakistan and India say. One newspaper columnist called it “the Noor effect.”
The current thaw began after the Indian prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, announced in April that India was extending a “hand of friendship” to Pakistan and offered to restore bus and air links. The offer was accepted, and buses now run four times a week. In addition, long-delayed talks on the restoration of air service are scheduled for Aug. 27.
Relations between the countries have been strained since they won independence from Britain in 1947. Amid grisly communal riots, Pakistan was declared a homeland for South Asia’s Muslims, while India became a Hindu-dominated country with a substantial Muslim minority.
From independence to now, the countries have feuded over the disputed territory of Kashmir. In addition, India accuses Pakistan of financing, arming and training Islamic militants who have been waging a 14-year separatist insurgency in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir.
For its part, Pakistan says it offers the guerrillas only moral support and accuses India of denying Kashmiris a United Nations-mandated referendum on independence and engaging in gross human rights violations. Experts say the idea of encouraging cross-border travel is similar to one being used in Northern Ireland and Bosnia, where frontiers have been opened to allow some contact between rival populations.
The idea is that relations between average people can gradually create enough good will for leaders to compromise their long-entrenched positions.
The Sajjad family’s experience, while clearly not representative, shows the potential of the approach, or at the very least the appeal of a sick child.
“It certainly shows that when it comes to it, human beings are the same,” said Navtej Sarna, spokesman for India’s Foreign Ministry.
To the amazement of the soft-spoken Mr. Sajjad, who favors dark Western-style pants and brightly colored golf shirts, the plight of his daughter, whose name means “light,” eventually became a national obsession in India.
After Indian journalists discovered the family, every stage of Noor’s surgery - from anxious preparation to successful completion in a hospital in Bangalore - played out on the front pages of India’s main newspapers. The family’s tearful departure was broadcast on the country’s 24-hour news channels.
Thousands of Indian well-wishers, from an 8-year-old boy who invited Noor to come and play to an 80-year-old woman who sent her a doll, showered the family with letters. Mr. Sajjad said his friends had been amazed by the 40 pounds of cards and gifts he brought back from India. “They say ‘Who stands between us?’” Mr. Sajjad said. “‘Why are we fighting each other?’”
Other children seeking medical care, as well as businessmen, students and members of Parliament, have also crossed the border and returned with rave reviews. But a majority of cross-border travelers appear to be members of families divided since the time of independence.
Last Friday here in Lahore, Shaheen Kutay, a 53-year-old handicrafts shop owner from Kashmir, stepped off a bus from New Delhi and saw her brother Altaf for the first time in six years.
Ms. Kutay said her bus had been filled with Pakistanis and Indians who were members of the same family, literally. “These are all divided families,” she explained, waving at the other passengers.
Despite the popularity of the new contacts and the stepped up pace of negotiations between the governments, Western diplomats remain nervous that the momentum could be lost. Neither side has shown any concrete signs of flexibility on the core issue - the disputed territory of Kashmir - and an incident like a terrorist attack in India could end the good will.
Hopes have been dashed before. A surge in contacts between the countries in 1999 abruptly ended when India accused Pakistan of seizing a part of Indian-controlled Kashmir near the town of Kargil. The two countries fought a brief war, and India regained control of the territory.
Mr. Sajjad said he was optimistic and believed that average people in both countries could counter the influence of “fundamentalists,” a reference to Hindu and Muslim hard-liners. He said his trip had shown him there was “absolutely no difference” between Indians and Pakistanis.
“The only thing that is lacking is trust,” he said.