Superman Elseworlds: 'In the Name of...'

Odyssey (Part 8)

Extracts from Kam's video journal

I wasn't sure about going back and I didn't think I had been away long enough to justify it. It felt too soon. I wasn't sure about going back but I needed a change and a different perspective. Med school was and is exhausting but I am enjoying it. I think, though, that I may be getting impatient with everything. I look around and there are so many things wrong with the world and so many things that we can do to change it and make life better.

That only really happens when like-minded people come together, though, doesn't it? Like a society or a league...

I've found a lot of like-minded people at uni, but they haven't seen the things I've seen or experienced what I have – even the ones who've done volunteer work abroad, from what they've told me, had had security and protection. They have ideals, but I think ideals can only take someone so far until they're tested, and I think that's the dividing point.

Allah (swt) tells us that we should expect to be tested, that there is no way we can really claim to be good if we've never been tested, and looking around I see people espousing good things from afar but ignoring the realities on the ground. People are expecting some sort of immediate change but ignore that there are people out there who will resist it. It's not just people who are set in their ways, but also those who don't want the change because the change would render them poorer, materialistically.

Change takes time.

I wasn't sure about going back but Jawad's emails make me want to see what's been happening. It hasn't even been a year, but if what he says has been happening has happened, then maybe those changes are underway...

I wasn't sure about going back but I needed someone to talk to...

Extracts from Jawad's various notes and recollections

The plans were simple, but the hurdles were so many! I don't know how we did it. I don't know how things happened so quickly. I honestly thought that even though some of the basic infrastructure proposals had been submitted a few years ago – that some of what we were going to do was just building on what had been put forward before – it would be a couple of years before anything came of our renewed efforts, not months. It's been a rush, though; getting all these things in place and seeing so many people come together. Definitely wasn't easy, but it still felt amazing.

Maybe the fact that so many things had been done behind the scenes should have made me wary but, in all honesty, all that's happened is that I have even more certainty, more confidence, more conviction that we were on the right track.

Raising the funds was, surprisingly, pretty straight forward, especially after the patents were submitted and we had taken part in a few exhibitions. I suppose the exchange rates helped a lot, but I think it was the appeal of the material we were going to be putting out there – as well as the other projects that we had highlighted - that grabbed peoples' attention. The tricky bit was making sure the right people were investing and for the right reasons. We knew we weren't going to work with the big investment banks or take loans from the retails banks, and I think that put off a lot of people. We didn't quite go for the crowd-funding approach, either – not to the extent that people could put small amounts in directly, individually. Not for the mill, but we did allow for that approach for the schools, university, and, eventually, the tech company.

Sorry, I'm getting a little carried away.

I made it quite clear from the beginning that I wanted to do something along the lines of the Waitrose model, with a dollop of Cadbury thrown in, and to also incorporate many of the things the older philanthropists used to do. I wanted to things certain things as a kind of waqf and make things sustainable and productive so we wouldn't have to rely on external funding to keep them going further down the line. I made sure any investors knew that this wasn't just business but community development, too.