A Close-Up Look At People Who Matter : Worker Goes the Extra Mile to Help Poor

As Muhammad Aftab traveled along the Euphrates River delivering frozen meat to impoverished Iraqi villages, he blamed himself for the poverty around him.

It’s better than arguing over who is really to blame, he said.

“At the end of it, people are still suffering and dying,” said Aftab, a Van Nuys resident and 28-year-old student at Pierce College.

Aftab, a Canadian citizen living in Los Angeles, is regional coordinator for West Coast fund-raising for Islamic Relief Worldwide, which moved its U.S. office recently to Burbank. In late April and early May, he went to Iraq on a humanitarian mission, during which he was able to assess the living conditions of people there.

Aftab and a representative of Islamic Relief Worldwide’s office in England were in Iraq for what is sometimes called the Festival of the Sacrifice, during which Muslims commemorate the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, who God saved by accepting a lamb in Isaac’s place.

In Baghdad, Aftab and his partner bought 601 sheep, which were slaughtered and the meat frozen for distribution to the poor.

“Six hundred sheep for a whole country, that’s not much,” Aftab said.

In a nation where salaries average from $2.50 to $28 a month, meat is nonexistent for most. The majority of people live on a diet of rice. “They make pickles out of orange peels,” Aftab said. “Nothing is wasted.”

With three local volunteers, Aftab headed south to Basra, transporting the meat in refrigerated trucks.

They followed a route along the Euphrates River almost reaching the Syrian border, stopping at every village they found. They would distribute meat and check on conditions at local hospitals, where they found the sick sleeping in beds infected by previous patients and doctors using disposable syringes multiple times, Aftab said.

He recalls images from the trip: of an old woman with her arm in a cast who was left without meat when a fight broke out in line; a mother in a hospital crying in shame as she was asked to take her toddler’s shirt off to show the severe malnutrition. He remembers most vividly the sick and malnourished children.

He also remembers the gratitude that prompted villagers to volunteer to help, like the man who led them to an island on the Euphrates using a motorcycle with no headlight. “He was so surprised to learn we were from the West,” Aftab said.

But he prefers to keep in mind those images, rather than bare numbers usually cited when experts talk about poverty. “It just becomes a statistic,” he said. “It becomes very hard to realize that each figure is a person.”

The contrasts between life in Iraq and America were staggering, said Aftab, who was born in Pakistan and lived in Canada before moving to Los Angeles to be with family here.

“When I want some meat, I open the freezer and there it is,” he said. “Or you just go down to Vons and get what you want. Even someone working at minimum wage at McDonald’s can afford that.”

But to Aftab, wealth is not a blessing, but an opportunity to do something better in the world.

“The Iraqi people are being tested by God by having things held back,” Aftab said. “We’re being tested by having things in abundance. All of life is a test.”

Personal Best is a weekly profile of an ordinary person who does extraordinary things. Please send suggestions on prospective candidates to Personal Best, Los Angeles Times, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311. Or fax them to (818) 772-3338. Or e-mail them to valley@latimes.com