Spoilers Off applies to all Moment of Awesome pages, so all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
- After receiving a gift of some lovely bread, Amir decides that the best way to repay her newly made friend is to grab her bow and shoot her a bird out of the sky.
- Mr. Smith isn't an obvious badass, but scaring away a group of armed riders and rescuing Karluk and Amir with an impromptu flock of sheep is quite something.
- He's also brave enough to be an Englishman openly roaming Afghan lands a few years after the Anglo-Afghan wars. And on the eve of the Crimean War, to boot, when Britain and Russia are about to go to war.
- Balkirsh riding up a mountain on a goat to rescue a child. She's how old again?! She also personally kills Amir's father, so that he won't come back and cause more death and destruction.
- Amir saving Karluk from her own father. Her brother Azel is no slouch either when fighting the Badan. For example, after taking out many Badan gunmen while both are on horseback, he goes to stop Amir and his father, and ends up fighting the Badan mounted gunmen on foot with just his sword, he thinks that he can reasonably take out at least five of them.
- Henry Smith is very capable when it comes to using scant information, despite his extensive education not being applicable. E.g. when posing as a doctor in the village by the Aral Sea, with only his brief notes which he made in chapter four to assist him.
- Azel only needs a passing glance of the Badan pastures and their army to determine that not only are the Badan in bed with Czarist Russia, the Badan are planing to betray them, and Russia?— they want the tribes of Central Asia to fight amongst themselves. This is without any direct contact with Russia, mind you. He also manages to direct much of a chaotic battle with very low visibility, no problem. Baimat and Joruk do likewise when Azel is not present.
- Ali, by means his work history, knows a lot and has seen a lot. He knows all of the routes his boss needs (and presumably many more, since he is a guide), can speak multiple languages common to the area, can be a photography assistant (for an old fashioned view camera, including the developing process), can come up with strategies for an avenger to reach his quarry, and can convince even the most stubborn of men.
- Talas presumably has little to no formal education. Despite that, she can speak some Arabic or Farsi, figures out how to use the view camera only having seen it (the explanations were in English, after all), and can keep up with all of Henry Smith's intellectual talk.
- Smith utterly refuses to leave the area when war is looming ahead: he chooses to stay precisely because war looms ahead, as he wants to gather and document as much about the peoples and cultures of the Silk Road area as he can, before it all risks being lost in the war. The UNESCO's Blue Shields
would be proud.- (slightly edited for brevity of example)Smith: It's vital, that I take this chance while I have it. [...] The natural features, the people and customs, all of it will change. A lifetime would be too short to take it all in.Hawking: But if you're killed out there? [...] It's tremendously bloody dangerous! This isn't some feudal scrap-up, Henry! We're talking about entire countries!Smith: (long pause) If it comes to that, well and truly... then it makes it all the more imperative I stay. [...] There's no way of knowing what has been lost once it's gone.
- Anis' husband building a whole new house in his estate for Sherine's aged family, instead of simply providing for them in their old home or even giving them a room in his own mansion, is really going the extra mile. And he does that on his own. Bear in mind, while he ends up as much in love with Sherine as he is with Anis, he starts building it before the wedding. He just rolls that way.
- Side serving of extra awesome/heartwarming: The elderly couple are actually the parents of Sherine's first husband, yet Anis's husband receives them with as much respect and filial piety as he would have shown to his new wife's birth parents.
- Chapter 69, we see yet another example: After 52 chapters, Henry Smith and Talas are reunited in Ankara. Even better, it was Talas who sought him out, after having married another man. And said husband, upon hearing of what had gone on between her and Smith, helped her get to Ankara and reunite them under a cover story of going together on a honeymoon pilgrimage. Awesome mixed with heartwarming for both of them: for her, for being willing to follow her true love no matter what; and for her husband, for being willing to let her free to follow her true love (bear in mind the time and society they are in) and to take her all across much of Central Asia after her true love, all while treating her with utmost respect during the whole travel.Smith: If... if I may ask... why would you even go to the trouble?Husband: (puzzled face) (ponders the answer) I mean, wouldn't you? The world being what it is, things are rarely ever certain. But if you could give a woman her happiness... wouldn't it be worth a try? You know, I lost my first wife. If the one you love is out there... you just have to go to them. While you can.
- In Chapter 94, when the village that Smith and company are staying at comes under attack by Russian soldiers, they evacuate with the women and children while the men stay to defend their home. Some soldiers catch up to the fleeing group, so Nikolovsky stays to hold them off but fights so fiercely that he actually makes them retreat.
