“You’re the first journalist who’s ever made me tear up,” he said, embarrassed as he dabs his eyes.
It’s the memories of old friends who’ve died seeking social justice in an unjust world that makes him weep.
He talked about his friend Mohammed, whom he roomed with at Khartoum University while studying medicine in Sudan.
Mohammed was tortured and killed for protesting the 1988 military coup in that country. When his body was returned to his family, he was battered and bruised and all his fingernails had been torn out.
And he remembered Aqila al-Hashimi, an Iraqi woman and member of the Iraqi Governing Council gunned down in her driveway in 2003
Mohammed’s death was a turning point in Hoskins’ life — the point at which he knew that while his career was in medicine, he also wanted to become a crusader for human rights and social justice.
