The Bosnian War during the early 1990s pitted Bosnian Serbs against Muslims, making the sides bitter enemies. But after the war, journalist Chris Hedges heard a story of unusual kindness in the midst of savagery. Rosa and Drago Sorak, a Bosnian Serb couple, told Hedges that during the war the Muslim police took their oldest son, Zoran, away for questioning. He never returned.

Five months after Zoran's disappearance, his wife gave birth to a girl. The mother was unable to nurse the child. The city was being shelled and there were severe food shortages. Infants were dying in droves. The family gave the baby tea for five days, but she began to fade. "The baby was dying," Rosa Sorak said. "It was breaking our hearts."

But on the fifth day, just before dawn, the Soraks heard someone stomping up to their front door. It was their Muslim neighbor, Fadil Fejzic, one of the few people in town who owned a cow. He was wearing black rubber boots and holding a half a liter of milk. Other families insulted Fadil and told him to let the children of their enemies die. But Fadil, the man with a cow and heavy black rubber boots, kept showing up on their porch—for 442 days in a row, until the Soraks' daughter-in-law and granddaughter left the country.

The Soraks said they could never forgive those who took Zoran from them. But they also couldn't forget the kindness of their neighbor Fadil. Drago Sorak said. "The milk he had was precious, all the more so because it was hard to keep animals. He gave us 221 liters. And every year at this time, when it is cold and dark, when we close our eyes, we can hear the boom of the heavy guns and the sound of Fadil Fejzic on the stairs."

"Here was the power of love," Hedges concludes his story. "What this illiterate farmer did would color the life of another human being, who might never meet him, long after he was gone. In his act lay an ocean of hope."