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He created a charitable empire out of nothing, masterminding Pakistan's largest welfare organisation. Today Abdul Sattar Edhi is revered by many as a national hero.
Content with just two sets of clothes, he sleeps in a windowless room of white tiles adjoining the office of his charitable foundation. Sparsely equipped: it has just one bed, a sink and a hotplate.
"He never established a home for his own children," says his wife Bilquis, who manages the foundation's homes for women and children.
What he has established is something of a safety net for Pakistan's poor and destitute, mobilising the nation to donate and help take action - filling a gap left by a lack of welfare state.
"Mr Edhi sits here, waiting for your donations," sputters the speaker of an Edhi ambulance parked in an affluent neighbourhood of Karachi, the port megalopolis of glaring inequalities.
Passers-by deposit alms or pay their respects to the frail old man, whose white beard and worn karakul - a triangular cap - are known throughout the country and beyond.
Edhi has been nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize, and appears on the list again this year - put there by Malala Yousafzai, Pakistan's teenage Nobel laureate.
Edhi, born to a family of Muslim traders in Gujarat in British India, arrived in Pakistan after its creation in 1947.
Armed groups, bandits spare his ambulances> Motivated by a spiritual quest for justice, over the years Edhi and his team have created maternity wards, morgues, orphanages, shelters, and homes for the elderly. > The most prominent symbols of the foundation - its 1,500 ambulances - are deployed with unusual efficiency. > His work so conquered the esteem of Pakistan's masses that armed groups and bandits were known to spare his ambulances. |
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