This is my newest friend. His name is Fajar, and he’s incredible. He just got that personality you know.
It's almost as if we just brought out the camera just to take a picture of him.
I mean look at him. He's a cool kid. He's cool. Everyone in this neighbourhood says the same.
They all say he's a natural leader. He's got that moral core. He's just got that personality you know.
It's like he’s endless smiles. Look at the smile. He's endless warmth. And just a good kid.
And the reason why I start this way is because if I told you that when he was four years old his government bombed him so badly
that he had to run to another country and live in a prison, you might pity him.
If I told you that he had nothing. That he’d spent ten of his years locked between barbed wire
watched over by foreign police and aid workers you might pity him.
But that's not what he needs. And it's certainly not what he wants.
What Fajar really wants is a piano.
I’m standing in the world’s most famous refugee camp.
It’s called Al Zaatari, in the far northern border of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
Over 70,000 Syrians live here and I swear every single one of them invited me in for tea.
It’s impossible to describe what it feels like to be here. I honestly don’t think I’m capable of explaining this.
When a problem is so complicated that even a little boy’s existence feels political, what am I supposed to say to you?
How can I tell you the truth when there is no truth except the existence itself?
Especially when that’s not even what I’m supposed to be here to say.
I came to Al Zaatari because of my sister.
She’s a professor of child psychology focused on bettering the mental states of children fleeing war.
She’s soft-spoken, intelligent, and wildly dedicated. A prototypical good person. Honestly, the best I’ve ever met.
Although she’d hate me for saying that. I suppose that’s part of being good.
But they didn’t bring her here to be some prototype. She’s an experienced professional,
and her job means evaluating the efficacy of NGOs working in her field.
Telling people who are trying to do good whether their plans are actually working out or not.
Whether their money is being spent properly. That’s why she gets to be here in Jordan. And in a sense, that’s why I’m here too.
That's how I got to meet Fajar. But the truth is, I’m not supposed to be doing a video on him.
This is supposed to be about his mother. She’s the posterchild of the organization my sister is here to audit.
An organization I’m ostensibly here to promote. They’re called We Love Reading, or in the local Arabic Taghyeer.
They’re the brainchild of a Jordanian Dr. Rana Dajani.
Although personally I spent much more time with her team, Palestinian-Jordanians Lina and Mays.
And they were all great. I really liked them. I don’t know if their organization is a success.
I suppose that’s up to my sister to determine. But that’s not what this is video is meant to be covering,
and honestly, I’m not sure it would change my opinion if it wasn’t.
Because unlike my sister I’m not a really a good person. I don’t have the patience for math.
The way I view the world is that if I personally like you, that’s good enough for me, and if I don’t, well, good luck out there.
But I’m also not a complete idiot. I understand that’s wrong.
I understand that the things that I personally like, the people I personally meet,
are no more important than those that I don’t.
I know full well donating to a mental health organization helps the homeless far more than giving the money to them directly.
It’s just that I also understand that it feels better to me personally
if I can look in their eyes when they receive it.
I understand that to me personally, the odds of my helping goes way up
if there’s a smile I can attach my actions to.
So regardless of how many women they’ve taught public speaking, how many countries they operate in,
how dedicated they are to finding some goodness in all this mess,
We Love Reading was really just a vehicle for me to find those eyes.
And it was through their connections that I was allowed to enter Zaatari at all.
Without them I would have no personal attachment to this problem, and therefore no real desire to help.
So even if the houses I entered seemed a bit Potemkin I truly appreciated what they’re doing here.
It was genuinely nice to see their volunteers happy. To see those mothers in action. To clap along with their kids.
Bittersweet never felt so easy to define as here. It was in one of those houses that I met Fajar.
He was thrilled to see us, to see our camera and what it might mean to him,
and in turn I was thrilled to see him too. From the moment I met that kid, I knew in my heart he’d be the story.
His was the smile that I needed to truly care about this place. Not because he was the best,
or because he was the saddest or his mother had the most success within We Love Reading’s stated goals.
Simply put, he was just the boy I liked the most. He reminded me of me.
And for three days I struggled with deciding what that meant. How to frame it so that you, the audience could understand
that he was no more than a symbol that the narrator of this story personally happened to like.
That donating to him directly would be far less effective than giving that same amount of money to those who run this camp.
And yet, at the same time, recognizing that this narrative symbol is also just a little boy.
As human as you are. And that without him, without his smile, I wouldn’t have written this.
You’d have never heard his cause.
The longer I spent here the more it became clear despite the nagging truth that the most effective thing that I could do
would be sitting down with my sister and doing the math,
I always knew I’d choose the piano instead. Because on my second day in this camp,
with Fajar leading me by the hand to see his life, his school, his friends, his home.
Everything he knew and cared about. On that day I asked him what he personally wanted.
What would make him, the child with the smile, happy. And what he said was a piano.
I asked his mother if that was ok, she said yes and that was enough for me.
I deliberately didn’t think about it much further than that.
I didn’t frame it as the white westerner here to deliver a gift and then leave forever. Even if I understood that’s what it was.
I deliberately chose not to internalize how this might affect his view of the world,
or what exact symbol he was seeing in my smile’s reflection.
It was simply me giving him what he asked for.
The thing I knew would make him happy before I had to leave.
So when I left him between those bars on that second day and went back to Amman to my four star hotel,
eating some of the nicest food I’ve ever had, feeling a form of freedom that I can barely articulate,
I took twenty minutes and walked down to the local music shop.
I asked to see their keyboards, and purchased the third cheapest one there.
It was eighty five dollars. Not that it’s about the money, it just had those buttons that plays music even if you don’t know how to yet,
and I thought he might like that. I was right.
So on my final day in Zaatari, I brought out the gifts that I’d purchased. A keyboard for him, a recorder for his sister.
Probably the most annoying thing I could have done to their mother, frankly, but she didn’t seem to mind.
For that entire day nobody stopped smiling in their house.
From the second I entered to the second I left, ear to fucking ear.
It felt good. And I know I wasn’t the only one feeling it.
But the moment I got back in that car, I started crying. I’m crying typing this right now.
Because the reality is that I didn’t really help. Not like I could have. Certainly not how I was supposed to.
This video didn’t really promote We Love Reading, my piano didn’t help their cause one inch.
Nor for that matter did it please my sister because frankly I don’t think the math supports it.
I was just playing the lottery because it felt more fun than an index fund.
The reality is I didn’t do any of this properly. And good or not, I know that was deliberate.
Because I do what feels best for me.
And I suppose I need a moral now. A way to tell you how to be better. To fix the problems I didn't.
So here it is, if you want to help the world, truly help the world, you have to look deeper than yourself.
If you want anything in this world to change, then learn the math. Talk to a professional.
Don’t search out that smile, never learn his name. Just know in your heart you’ve done something good.
The difference between my sister and I is that she never entered Zaatari once. She could have, it’s her job, but she didn’t.
It wasn’t about her like it was about me. She understood what it meant to actually care.
She knows that the smiles I created in that boy were less effective than the ones on her spreadsheet.
That good isn’t a feeling, it’s a statistic. A saviour dies for everyone.
Not just the kids they met. But maybe you’re not good like her.
Maybe you’re more like me. Maybe you’re just trying to keep your focus inwards to manage that personal tempest,
and if that’s the case, I hope when your time comes you choose the right keyboard.
The one with the buttons that plays music even when they don’t know how.
Because that’s the one Fajar wants.
And I hope when you give it to him, his smile is ear to fucking ear.
This is Rare Earth.
Wohoo! Perfect! Give me that five! Ugh.
[Francesco] Do you want to do one more? [Evan] No, that was good.