I am very excited to share the good news that a big-hearted donor and reader of the blog offered yesterday to buy Afghan Refugee Noorul Potak a computer or an Ipad. I suggested an Ipad and Noorul said he would be very happy to have one.

So Kathleen is going to get one on  Friday and ship it to me, and when it arrives, I ‘ll take it to Albany to give it to Noorul personally.

Kathleen is one of those very remarkable people who thanks me for letting her give me money. She has also helped Eh K Pru with her tuition bills.

“Jon, it is so fantastic to be able to extend a gentle, positive hand to someone who has suffered these insane human conditions of war…please give it to Noorul with a nod from me for his intellectual and creative curiosity and wish for  some fun here and now..as always, thank you.”

No, thank you Kathleen. People like you make it all possible, I am just the delivery man.

Noorul Potak is one of those 21st century stories than can break a heart. He is 13 years old, and an honor student at the Hackett Junior High School in Albany, N.Y. He has been in the United States for two  years and came speaking no English.

He is shy with a quick sense of humor and his wonderful teacher Kathy Saso, a great champion of the refugee children,  says he is one of the brightest students she has ever met.

Noorul is from the war-ravaged country of Afghanistan.

He grew up in a world of bombings, killings, war, and child kidnappings.

His father was a doctor who died while treating sick children, he caught one of the illnesses he was trying to cure. He died just before Noorul was born, he never got to see his son.

Noorul’s mother, who works 14 hours a day in a Wal-Mart bakery, fled to Pakistan with her family and came to America two years ago.

Noorul was invited to tour the Albany Academy and take an admissions test, he decided this was not the place for him. He wanted to stay with his friends, the school unnerved him a bit,  so I am researching some other schools that might be a better fit.

I was touched by Noorul’s smile, he exudes some sadness and much intellect.

Noorul, says Kathy, has a special intellect, he needs a more challenging environment that the public system can provide right now for gifted refugee children.

When I bring him the Ipad, I’ll talk to him and ask if he wants to look at some other schools.

I am very grateful to Kathleen for this gift, this will  help Noorul tremendously in his studies, and research.

He is a math whiz. He seems to me to be very serious. I’ll urge  him to have some fun with it also.

The experience of being a refugee is shattering to many of the refugee children I have met in the past few years. Some never recover from it. “A man who wants to lose his self discovers, indeed, the possibilities of human existence, which are infinite, as infinite as its creation,” wrote the moral philosopher Hannah Arendt, herself a refugee.”But the recovering of a new personality is as difficult – and as hopeless – as a new creation of the world.”

For children, this rip from the known is painful and terrifying. I see it in Noorul’s face and in the faces of so many of the other refugee children we have tried to help. In the crush of news and the distraction of life, it is easy to forget the great difficulty facing a young man like Noorul, who left everything he knew behind to come a country suddenly schizophrenic about refugees and immigrants.

“Our optimism,”  wrote  Arendt, “is admirable, even if we say so ourselves. The story of our struggle has finally become known. We lost our home, which means the familiarity of daily life. We lost our occupation, which means the confidence that we are of some use in this word. We lost our language, which means the naturalness of reactions, the simplicity of gestures, the unaffected expression of feelings. We left our relatives in the Polish ghettos and our best friends have been killed in concentration camps, and that means the rupture of our private lives.

Nevertheless, as soon as we were saved, and most of us had to be saved, we started our new lives…”

Noorul is starting out his new life with courage and hope, he carries a lot of weight on his shoulders. I’m with Kathleen, what a gift it is to be able to extend a positive hand to a human being like this. I hope to stay with him on his journey and help where I can.

People like Kathleen remind me of the good in most people, given the chance. It is easy to watch the news and succumb to despair and cynicism. Kathy lifts the spirit and shows us what it means to be truly human.

If you wish to support my work with the refugee children, you can donate via Paypal, [email protected] or by check, Jon Katz, Refugees, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. And thanks for caring.