Saturday, May 06, 2006
Accomplishing one great thing
Another short excerpt from Mark Bowden's spectacular Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America's War with Militant Islam
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Greatness is inspired action multiplied by context. A small but generous gesture -- something as simple as the mailing of newspaper clippings to Tehran and faith that an American hostage is reading them -- can be great, and should be remembered. My first criticism of Bowden's book, 355 pages in, is that he does not tell us this taxi driver's name.
:Multiple copies of the comics and sports pages of the Boston Globe were being mailed to the hostages daily by someone from that city, and though the students saw no harm in passing them along, the cartoons and stories often disclosed useful information. Garry Trudeau, the cartoonist, was spoofing the Iranian students in his popular strip Doonesbury, which gave a heartening indication of how intense public interest remained in their plight after six months. When a letter from Bill Keough [one of the hostages - ed.] published in the United States thanked the anonymous sender, the Boston benefactor surfaced. He was a taxi driver who was thrilled to learn that his long-shot effort to help his kidnapped countrymen in Tehran had scored. He sent a card to Keough sayinig that he regarded the success of his gesture as the only "great thing" he had ever accomplished in his life. He promised to keep mailing the sections, and did.
Greatness is inspired action multiplied by context. A small but generous gesture -- something as simple as the mailing of newspaper clippings to Tehran and faith that an American hostage is reading them -- can be great, and should be remembered. My first criticism of Bowden's book, 355 pages in, is that he does not tell us this taxi driver's name.
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