Read An Afghanistan Picture Show: Or, How I Saved the World for Free Online Page B

once. The other men stopped talking, watching to see what would happen. —“He want you give him money,” Akbar said. —“Do I need to?” said the Young Man, wondering if he was being taken advantage of. —“No, no,” said Akbar politely, holding out a few paisa, and the leper took the money without saying anything and jumped off the moving bus…
POST MORTEM
     
    Should I have given the leper money, or did I in fact present an appearance of courageous steadfastness by being selfish? (I should make the record accurate by confessing that I did not in fact come to a decision; in this case, “not to decide was to decide.”) If I was in fact obligated to give him money, should I have also accepted those many services offered to me by the coolies, tour-guides and prostitutes until my money was gone? And if I was obligated to give
them
money, should I not have been more obligated to give all my money to my poorest neighbors in America? If I’d stayed home, I could have given away the cost of my plane ticket. —But no! How could I have Saved The Afghans then? And, being no longer at home, I had to hoard my money; I did not know how much it would cost to Save Them.
BEGGARS AND CHOOSERS [2]
     
    Clifton was the end of the line. Everybody got off. The Young Man and his companions passed through a British pavilion in memory ofLady So-and-so, and down a long, gentle flight of steps to the beach. It stank there. Akbar and Muhammed Ibrahim stopped so that he could admire everything. A quarter mile out, a twin-masted ship had run aground or been abandoned. The wreck was canted and decaying. To the right, and possibly a bit farther out (it was hard to tell), were a pair of islets, or rather—if one were mean-spirited—rocks. For the sake of saying something, he asked if anyone ever went there. Akbar gave him a look which he thought might be contemptuous. —“Smugglers go there.” —“Oh,” the Young Man said. —Families squatted along the beach, roasting what looked like Indian corn over open fires. On the little bluff between him and the ocean stood the booths of the banana and mango sellers, faithfully attended by swollen flies. Sweat ran down the Young Man’s back.
    Akbar insisted that the Young Man have a camel ride. The camel crouched in the warm sand by its master. Its fur was matted with little dried balls of mud or dung where it had rolled on the ground. The Young Man took his pack off and clambered onto the place that Akbar directed, just below the hump. —“You want by yourself, or you lonely?” Akbar said to him. —“Lonely,” the Young Man said, feeling that not to have replied so would have been impolite. —Akbar got on behind him and held on to him tightly. The owner of the camel, a bitter-looking fellow with a mustache, kicked the camel in the throat until it stood up. Then he led it down a path to the waves. Muhammed Ibrahim came smiling behind with the Young Man’s pack. After the camel ride he carried it for the rest of the day, despite the Young Man’s embarrassed protests.
    Later they walked along the beach, ignoring the beggars. People approached the Young Man with various commercial offers, but his two guardians motioned them away, until presently no one importuned him anymore. (Nonetheless he knew that the whole mass remained aware of him, that if he were for a moment left to himself, then the consequences would be the same as that morning. He tried to imagine a comparable situation for a foreigner in America—being stuck in the middle of a ten-lane superhighway, maybe. But maybe there was none.)
    Akbar and Muhammed Ibrahim invited him to go out wading with them, but he declined, knowing that salt water was bad for his cameras, which he would need to take pictures of famous battles; so his friends went out into the breakers alone and had him take a picture of them.
    “You will send to us?” Akbar said.
    “Yes, I’ll send it.”
    “If you no to send, we will be sad. Very