Daily Times

Islamabad: Yousaf Lala, better known as Edhi of Parachinar, underwent a cardiac surgery at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) last weekend.

As he recovers at the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital, his well-wishers accompanying him at the hospital remain upbeat that he would soon return to his hometown to resume his philanthropic mission.

My first meeting with Lala was around four months ago in restive Kurram Agency of FATA. Lala was visiting the area to look after abandoned infants at a centre he had helped established.

Lala told me that he still remembered that afternoon during the summer of 1973 when he came across Abdul Sattar Edhi during his first visit to Lahore. “I was like any other carefree teenager and had no idea that I would end up spending that afternoon collecting donations. All that transpired after a brief encounter with Edhi sb,” he recalled.

Lala said Edhi was able to convince him in a matter of minutes to spend four hours, accompanying him and his team to collect donations.

“That was when I got serious about my life. I vowed to follow in his footsteps on returning to my hometown,” he said, adding, however, that it wasn’t until late 80s when he adopted an abandoned child and took him to his home despite family’s resistance. “I refused to let the child die. My family refused to let me keep the child at our house so I left,” he said, adding that he rented a house where he started raising that child as a single parent.

In 1990s, when sectarian violence was at its peak in Parachinar, and many Shi’a families were persecuted the extent that they had to leave the area. Amid that violence, Lala started an ambulance service which catered to those in need without any discrimination based on sectarian identity.

“My religion is humanity. I do my work on humanitarian basis,” he said.

Violence in Kurram Agency only escalated following the 9/11 attacks, and Lala’s ambulance service was the only such facility available in the area all along, as the government started a service much later in the area.

Lala told me that he had faced harassment during his walks through the streets of Parachinar seeking donations but that had never affected his morale. “I have become used to having people call out names and poke fun at me. They don’t approve of my work, but I am least bothered,” he said.

“I derive satisfaction from my work.” From late 80s to now, the number of abandoned children at Lala’s centre has increased to 136. These children are supported by donations Lala collects from the area. The centre also has a graveyard where unclaimed bodies are buried.

More recently, Lala extended the centre to accommodate people with mental disabilities who were left on the streets by their families, Javid Hussain, a Kurram based journalist, told Daily Times in a conversation at PIMS where he was staying to attend to Lala after his surgery.

Other activists accompanying Lala said that another feather in the 63-year-old philanthropist’s cap was a blood bank which was catering to the needs of 114 children infected with thalassemia.

‘Leave it if you don’t need it or take it if you need it’ is the message painted on a wall of kindness started by Lala in Parachinar in 2017. The wall in Parachinar main bazaar has since served as a site for people to leave additional winter clothes for the needy.

Speaking to Daily Times on telephone, rights activist Jibran Nasir recalled that he met Lala for the first time when he visited Kurran Agency last year after the heinous blast that left dozens of people dead. “Lala is a symbol of interfaith harmony and humanity. He provides services to the people without distinguishing among them on the basis of creed or cast. Pakistan should praise these unsung heroes in golden words so that the spirit of humanity can be promoted within all other Pakistanis,” Nasir said.

Published in Daily Times, March 8^th 2018.