from The Boston Globe, March 9, 2018
ALI MAOW MAALIN was a handsome man. You can see that in a photograph taken in 1977, when he was just 23. He’s shirtless, standing erect, his head tilted forward as he peers towards something the viewer cannot see.
Those good looks aren’t what drew the photographer’s eye, though. The image centers on a scattering of blemishes running up his right arm and across his chest. The blisters are more or less round, and it’s possible to pick out the indentations in many of their centers — obvious signs for those few who still knew how to read them.
Maalin had put himself in harm’s way. A health care worker responding to an outbreak of infectious disease in southern Somalia, Maalin had driven two sick children to an isolation camp in a nearby town. The three were together in the car for perhaps 15 minutes — long enough, it turned out, for the infection to pass from passengers to driver.