What Makes a Hero?
	In this special issue, an honor roll of European, African and Middle Eastern heroes, TIME salutes those people who remind us what it means to make a difference
	By AMANDA RIPLEY

In the 1980s, Xavier Emmanuelli, co-founder of Médecins Sans Frontières, was working on the border between Cambodia and Thailand. With bombs falling uncomfortably near, Emmanuelli and another doctor attended to wounded refugees. The first victim was a young woman. She was alive but eviscerated, her body nearly sliced in two by a mortar fragment. Emmanuelli made a quick diagnosis. "I thought there was nothing to be done and went on to another victim," he remembers.

But when he looked back, the other doctor, a young man named Daniel Pavard, had not moved on. He was cradling the woman's head and caressing her hair. "He was helping her die," says Emmanuelli. "He did it very naturally. There was no public, no cameras, no one looking. The bombing continued, and he did this as if he was all alone in his humanity."

In his 35-year career, Emmanuelli, now head of the French emergency service organization SAMU Social, has witnessed most of the tragedies of our era, from Saigon to Sierra Leone — places where heroes are made if ever there are heroes. But he has never found them in the obvious spots — behind podiums, say, or astride armored personnel carriers. Sometimes he hasn't even recognized them until later, reflecting on what he has seen them do. "It is in gestures," he says, "that you know the raison d'être of someone — gestures that almost escape detection."

Today, the newspapers are full of hero nominees, some more convincing than others. The British papers gushed over Lieut. Colonel Tim Collins' pretty speech to his troops before they marched into war: "We go to liberate, not to conquer," he said. "If you are ferocious in battle, remember to be magnanimous in victory." News reporters have been called heroic for doing their jobs, and bombing victims have been called courageous for surviving. There have been grainy black-and-white portraits of U.S. General Tommy Franks and elegiac silhouettes of Jacques Chirac, the "white knight of peace" as Le Figaro called him. Still, most of us are hard pressed to believe in any of the major players for more than half an hour. A hero, by most definitions, must be both brave and generous, a rare combination — especially in the tumble of information and misinformation that has come out of Iraq.

For some, the very notion of a "European hero" is conflicted. It is Americans, after all — whom Oscar Wilde disparagingly called "hero worshippers" — who put all their faith in a romantic notion of the individual. Europeans like to put their faith in the collective; they believe they know better than to overestimate the lone actor. Isn't it delusional to think that a single, flawed human can change the world? Haven't we learned by now that history is a mosaic of contexts, not a totem pole of great men?

"In the U.S., it's more likely that the rugged individualist will be admired more," says Oxford University philosopher Roger Crisp. "It's kind of old-fashioned. There's a sense [in Europe] that we've already been through that." Billionaire businessmen are not embraced as society's saviors. That's what the state is for. When Time asked Italian novelist Umberto Eco who his hero is, he responded with a quotation from German playwright Bertolt Brecht: "Unhappy the land that needs heroes."

And yet, for all of Europe's worldly cynicism, there is no doubt that heroes live here — and not all of them went to the war zone. People still crave heroes, still rely on individuals — if not to solve problems single-handedly, then at least to frame them, to point the way toward a solution and, not least, to inspire the rest of us.

"People do need heroes in Europe," insists Sister Emmanuelle, the Belgian-born nun who spent 22 years living among the garbage pickers of Cairo, forcing the rest of the world to reckon with their existence. "Currently there is a real search for grandness, in a different way than wealth. I can see how people need this when they cry as I tell them about the love and deep fraternity that saves people. That touches them deep in their hearts," says Emmanuelle, now 94 and still working in France with her nonprofit charity, the Friends of Sister Emmanuelle. She is living proof that for the European hero, collective good and individual accomplishment need not be mutually exclusive.

In ancient Greece, heroes inhabited a space between gods and men. "Their heroes were very often flawed," says Crisp. "Achilles was sulky and arrogant, but admired because he was big and tough." The same might be said of some European heroes today. In a March survey of six European nations, people were asked to name a famous figure from European history with whom they would like to pass an hour. The study, sponsored by three European associations, was meant to identify the "great men" who inhabit a collective European memory. In the end, despite the fact that we have spent the past 40 years toppling politicians from their pedestals, people chose their own country's current leaders. The Germans wanted an hour with Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. The British picked Tony Blair. The Spanish, José María Aznar. The French ... well, the French picked Charles de Gaulle, of course. But the second most popular choice was Chirac. Even as we disparage our leaders, we still want to believe in them. In late 2002, the BBC generated hours of dinner-table bickering when it invited the public to vote for the greatest Briton of all time. John Lennon and Princess Diana made the short list. But the winner was Winston Churchill.

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