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Friday, May 12, 2006

Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord
Posted by Jill | 3:23 PM
...and the meek shall inherit the earth.

Here are two women who should get the Nobel Peace Prize, while the 101st Fighting Keyboarders seem to think we need to destroy the entire world, including ourselves and our freedom, to get "revenge" for 9/11:

The two Massachusetts women walk down a fly-infested alley where sewage from mud huts drains onto the dirt walkway. In a tiny backyard, they find two dozen chickens, five children -- and one Afghan war widow.

Patti Quigley of Wellesley and Susan Retik of Needham -- whose husbands were killed in the Sept. 11 attacks -- decided to use the financial support they received afterward to help war widows in Afghanistan, where the Al Qaeda planners of the terrorist strikes found harbor.

Yesterday, they met for the first time one of the recipients of their donations -- an Afghan mother who now has a small chicken farm.

The Americans, their heads wrapped in scarves out of respect for local tradition, peppered her with questions: How many chickens do you have? How many eggs do you get? What do you do with the money?

She answered: The chickens produce 10 eggs a day. The family eats some of them and sells the rest. She buys food and school supplies with the money.

Retik then asked what she had traveled across the world to learn: Is your life better because of this program?

The woman, whose small home has dirt floors and drapes for doors, answered honestly:

"It's OK, but not great," said Ahqela, who has only one name and says she is 35, but looks far older. Her husband died in Afghanistan's civil war in the 1990s. "I can at least buy some things with this money."

Quigley and Retik were both pregnant when hijacked jets carrying their husbands crashed into the World Trade Center in 2001, and met after the attacks. Retik saw an Oprah Winfrey show on Afghan women soon after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, and the two widows decided to help Afghan women.

"The differences were so stark between what we were receiving and what they had," said Retik, 38, who has a son, 8, and two daughters, 6 and 4.

"We already had everything we could want," said Quigley, 42, who has two daughters, ages 10 and 4.

[snip]

Then in 2004, they created Beyond the 11th, a nonprofit foundation to aid widows in areas touched by conflict. They have held two fund-raisers -- bike rides from ground zero to Boston -- raising $325,000. They hope to raise $250,000 this year.
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