Nearly every week, when terrorists blow themselves up in crowds to kill civilians, or people like the marathon bombers in Boston leave backpacks behind to kill and main the very kids and families they walk among as they leave the scene, it’s hard to maintain faith in humanity. The amazing Syrian refugee Yusra Mardini restores our hope. She’s the teenage Olympic competitor, who previously swam for three hours helping to pull a sinking boat to safety to save 20 lives. And there are millions of others whose names we will never know, often not on such an epic scale but, even when they have little themselves, selflessly helping strangers.
One was a skinny boy, probably no more than 16, who stood opposite me, as I got off a bus in Acapulco early one morning, and asked if I needed help. I remember his clear dark eyes and not much else. I had just traveled from somewhere, Cuernavaca, I think, but my memory is vague years later.
I was exhausted and had nowhere to go for hours until my parents arrived. They were flying in from Washington, D.C. to meet me. I hadn’t seen them in five months. After graduating from college, I’d left the U.S. for Latin America with no desire to return. Ever. This was the 1970s, with fury over the war in Vietnam and over the hypocrisy of U.S. government officials who preached democracy at home and overthrew governments abroad. But now, I was making my way back north.
I don’t remember a bus station in Acapulco, maybe there was one or maybe the bus driver unloaded us onto the street. I only remember this boy. “Tienes hambre?” he asked. I nodded. I hadn’t eaten since sometime the day before.
He led the way. I’d been traveling like this for months. Wandering. No maps or real knowledge of where I was or where I was going, a little money and a little Spanish and hardly any luggage. It had gotten me from southern Colombia, almost at the border with Ecuador, to here. And now this boy wanted to buy me breakfast.
I’m sure I was older than he was, probably 21 to his 16. I’ve always looked young. When I was 17, I was mistaken for 13, so he probably thought we were the same age.
He took me through the cluttered market, the smell of left-over grime and garbage from days before wafting through. I don’t remember seeing the ocean or feeling a salt-air breeze. I wasn’t in a resort.
He sat me on a stool at a counter in a market stall and spoke to a middle-aged woman on the other side of the counter. Soon a plate mounded with scrambled eggs appeared with tiny fish fried up into them. The minnows crunched in my mouth, head and all. He watched and smiled. This must be his favorite dish. I tried to get him to eat some, but he refused. While I crunched away, he kept smiling, like he was happy seeing me eat, like I was his sister or his best friend.
Then he asked if I was tired. I nodded. He led me through some alleys and into a building where we walked through a couple of open rooms with no furniture, past people sleeping on the floor on blankets. I had no idea what this was. In the third room, he motioned for me to lie down and handed me a blanket from the corner. He lay down next to me and draped his arm over me. We went to sleep. No kissing, no groping, just sleeping.
A few hours later, I woke up, headachy and hot. The sun had made the room feel sweaty and crowded. It was time to go. I was meeting my parents soon. And I felt guilty. I had wandered into his world and was wandering out, just like that, but he wasn’t. This perfect smiling boy, asking nothing of me, wanting nothing in return except to feed me and take care of me, was staying behind.
And before long, I was riding in a pink cart up to a cliff-side cottage overlooking the ocean at Las Brisas with my parents. Transported a world away, effortlessly. I thought about the one below us, the one I had just left. It didn’t seem possible that other world existed only minutes away — where eating a full meal was so special it made someone happy just to watch. And it didn’t seem at all fair.
I don’t know why that boy helped me or what I meant to him or what he might have wanted from me had I stayed. All I know is that morning he was generosity and love. And all I can do is try to pass it on.