A “Morsel of Kindness” for the Boy Thrown into a Trash Can

In late November, a video was posted online showing two young men throwing a street child into a trash can, apparently just for fun. The next week, a charity called A Morsel of Kindness found the boy and rendered him some kindness.

The video made many people angry, especially children’s rights activists. Shortly after it was posted, related news led to further controversy on Twitter. First it was reported that the two young men who had committed the cruel act against the child had been arrested, and that they had begged for forgiveness – from the boy and the public – on state television. Then the spokesman for the national police said that the men had turned themselves in and said they had had no intention other than making a joke. The director general of the Welfare Organization of Alborz province announced that it would be offering psychological treatment to the child [Persian link].

News also emerged that volunteers for a charity called A Morsel of Kindness, which promotes children’s rights, had found the boy on the margins of Karaj near Tehran after an extensive search. The boy’s name is Zalmay, he is 13 years old, and he does odd jobs along Fardis Street in Karaj and sends some of his income to his family in Afghanistan. The group of volunteers took him to a barbershop and out shopping, hoping to show him that kindness is not dead and that there are still kind-hearted people in the world.

Some on social media criticized the fact that these acts of kindness were captured on video and photographed, saying the volunteers were “showing off,” but others praised the volunteers working for A Morsel of Kindness. Among them was the journalist Javad Heydarian, who said that helping a wounded child and taking care of him is a praiseworthy and valuable act, even if it could be argued that they were bragging about it.

Heydarian praised Alnaz Bagheri, the founder of A Morsel of Kindness, tweeting: “She found the unwell boy, took him to the doctor and treated his wounds with the balm of kindness” [Persian link]. He said that what the volunteers did was praiseworthy, regardless of their motives.

A Hot Meal and More

A volunteer who works with A Morsel of Kindness told IranWire that the group was formed in 2013, set up by young volunteers with the aim of providing child laborers and street children with one hot meal a day. In a short amount of time, the group was able to expand its services.

A Morsel of Kindness sends care packages to mothers and children who have been hit by calamities such as floods or earthquakes, and on the eve of every Iranian new year, they gather, or buy with their own money, stationery and clothing for needy children and send medicine and health products to deprived villages across Iran.

Every Thursday the group provides child laborers and street children with hot meals, and also buy them fruit. They have so far supported close to 1,200 children.

IranWire spoke to Fatemeh, who has been a volunteer with A Morsel of Kindness for two years. She says the idea of creating the group came to Alnaz Bagheri after she was diagnosed with cancer and the doctors told her she did not have long to live. But she did live and throughout the years that she has struggled with cancer she has also “done her best wholeheartedly to help children who have nobody to care for them,” Fatemeh says.

As a volunteer for the organization, Fatemeh says she is automatically involved with the problems of these children. “We thought about the pain that Zalmay must have felt and this motivated us to find him and make amends,” she said.

For a full two days, the group searched all the streets in Karaj and everywhere they could think of hoping to find Zalmay. Eventually, after being misdirected to a few wrong addresses, and with the help of other children who live on the streets as Zalmay does, the volunteers came across a workshop that buys what the children salvage from the trash. And that’s where they found Zalmay.

A reporter for the website Rokna talked to Zalmay and published his story in the boy’s own words. 

“Saturday afternoon I was busy doing my own thing when suddenly I felt that I was up in the air,” Zalmay told the Rokna reporter. “A moment later I suddenly fell on my head into the trash can. I managed to gather myself and stand up. When I stood up I saw a few young men, who were laughing. Because of the gases inside the trash can I was dizzy. When I got out of the trash can, the young men also came with me. I was scared of them. First they showed me the video [of them throwing him in the trash can] and then they bought me a sandwich.”

Fatemeh says that, based on what she has heard, she believes that the young men who treated Zalmay so badly really had no criminal intent and did not even think that they were doing anything dangerous. It was a damaging and stupid act, but she says maybe they were not in their right minds and that is why, after the video was posted online, they felt ashamed, gave themselves up and asked for forgiveness.

Fatemeh says that A Morsel of Kindness received praise from government agencies after it looked after Zalmay. “Less than five minutes after Zalmay was found, a female doctor from the provincial government’s Women’s Affairs Department, somebody from the Welfare Organization and the deputy governor got there to see what they could do,” she said.

The video, which was taken on a mobile phone, has brought the life of street children and child laborers to the attention of the Iranian public. Government agencies have stepped forward to help Zalmay and the Welfare Organization of Alborz Province, with the support of the prosecutor, has brought charges against the young men who threw the boy into the trash can. This is all commendable and proper. But who is telling the public the stories of close to three million homeless children in Iran? Who is telling people about the livelihoods of these kids, which come from the trash cans of Iran’s cities, and whose faces are not captured by any cameras?