I left Pakistan in 2022, and I have been in Spain ever since. Distance does a strange thing to a person. It softens some opinions and sharpens others. The country I argued with constantly while I lived inside it is the country I now defend, quietly, at dinner tables in a language that is not mine, …

If you grew up in Pakistan, you did not need anyone to explain who Edhi was. You saw his ambulances — battered, silver and red, everywhere — long before you understood what they meant. He was simply a fact of the country, the way the weather is a fact.

Abdul Sattar Edhi built, more or less with …