It was a happy occasion. The town was now decked out in Christmas finery. My article had run so there was no longer a question of what I was up to. Hisham admitted that, for a while, he thought I was an F.B.I. agent. The New York Times business card didn’t fool him.

“I can print you a thousand business cards that say, ‘I’m the pope,’ ” he said.

The article appeared shortly after Abraham’s family had received an eviction notice. Donations from readers helped them pay the security deposit and first month’s rent on a new place, and get some used furniture and a bed for their 5-year-old. Someone from Texas paid off their electric bill. Abraham was able to buy a bicycle. That meant he could get to work on his own.

Hisham said the article had put Fort Smith on the map. One of the photographs we ran featured a sign for his car lot. He got calls from Atlanta, Cincinnati and Riverside, Calif. At first he thought they were telemarketers, but then he realized they were well-wishers. Dr. Nassri got calls from London and Switzerland.

The article seemed to satisfy a deep craving for something healthy after months of gorging on outrage. At a time when each side of the political divide seemed sure the other side was crazy and maybe even evil, it was an antidote. It helped people see that Americans are much more moderate than Twitter and Facebook would have us believe, that we actually have a lot in common, and that our mutual capacity for tolerance and kindness is quite large.

“You wove the lives of 2 men and their community in a way that for the first time I don’t feel like everyday I have to fight or be militant & absolute about good & evil, right & wrong,” one woman wrote on Twitter. “Thank you for that peace.”

A reader in Oregon said the story “gives me something to hold onto, an amulet, a prayer bead.” A woman named Linda Brown said the story was “a reminder that most Americans aren’t the caricatures we are presented with over and over.”

Abraham was stunned. He expected to be mocked. Instead he was praised. This flew in the face of his assumption that he didn’t have the right to take up space on this earth. He had been written off — by school, by society, by the world of educated adults — but here were complete strangers telling him he mattered.