My friend Zaher Wahab was profiled (again) in The Oregonian today. Zaher is a professor at the graduate school of education at Lewis and Clark College. Liz was actually one of his students when she got her masters degree. Over the last few years he has made repeated trips back to his home in Afghanistan to help rebuild that nation’s education system. He left Afghanistan to obtain his bachelors at Beirut University and later earned a PhD from Stanford University. This well educated man lives in the same building as my friends Alan Bogner and Mollie Copeland. Both Mollie and Alan worked with me at Portland’s Goose Hollow Family Shelter. Zaher offered to be our shelter custodian. For several years he would arrive each morning (by 6am) to clean-up the shelter before going home to change and head-off to Lewis and Clark to teach. He sent his meager wages from the job back to Afghanistan to help his family, buy school books for children, and even to build a well. We became good friends during his time at the shelter.
For many Oregonians he became the face of Afghanistan after 9/11. His public presentations on that nation drew hundreds of people nearly everywhere he went. Zaher was a vocal opponent of the bombing campaign and the later war in Iraq.
Zaher Wahab is an amazing man. This picture is of Zaher and our daughter Katherine during our trip back to Portland in late-August and early September. He'll be giving a free talk at Lewis and Clark on December 7th for those in the area.
