Did you see the evening news about the starving Syrian town? The pictures of children crying for food? The 11-year-old boy too weak to walk? The little chests with rib bones protruding?
All of it is even more shocking, because while the people of Moadamiya starve to death, barrel bombs delivered by airplanes of Assad’s regime fall on the town, explosions reverberating through the streets already full of rubble.
The rebels in this town at the edge of Damascus will not give up. And the forces blockading the town will not open a road to save the civilians. Until they do, the bombs will fall and the children starve. The adults in these families admit that they are trying to comfort the children with lies. “Food is on the way; maybe tomorrow it will be here.” “Daddy is gone to buy ice cream.” The adults feel they have to give the children hope. Without hope, maybe they cannot hang on.
Not just because of Moadamiya but mostly because of the intensifying refugee problem, I have thought a lot lately about the peculiarly Arab attitude toward food and hunger. It is something I never quite figured out: the Middle Eastern reluctance to admit hunger. Only once in 30 years in the Middle East did I hear someone openly ask for food. It was a child in Beirut. I had gone hurriedly to the grocery around the corner from our apartment building and was walking out with a tray of eggs, 30 on a big square cardboard carrier. A small voice spoke from just behind me. I thought I heard, “Give me an egg.”
I turned then and saw the little boy, a pretty child, clean, well-dressed, and asked him, “What did you say?”
And he said again, “Give me an egg.”
He didn’t look like a beggar. I guess that’s why I asked him, “What are you going to do with it?”
“I want to eat it for my breakfast.”
So I leaned a little, extending the tray toward him, and he took one egg from the corner. At that moment I thought I saw a question in his eyes. He looked the way a child looks when you offer him one cookie, and he has to take it, just one, from a platter full of cookies.
I said, “Is one enough?”
He said, “It’s enough for me. Can I have one for my sister?”
“Of course, take one for your sister.”
He took it in his other hand, flashed at me a look of joy and started running. I wondered if he would get home without breaking them.
I had walked around the corner, gone up in the elevator and was in my kitchen cooking eggs before I started to feel guilty. What about his parents? Did they have breakfast? I could have asked the grocer for a paper bag and sent the child home with a dozen. Probably his father was one of those people who earned a living one day at a time. There had been fighting, keeping people like that at home, unable to work. If only I had had my wits, I could have given him the whole tray and bought another.
Three days ago, after hearing the news, I ate my chicken soup, thinking about the children of Moadamiya and remembering that a high percentage of those hordes of refugees in Lebanon and Jordan and Turkey are living on less than they need and with diets devoid of protein and vegetables. I keep asking myself, what does hunger do to people, bred in a culture that requires one to deny his need?
In Amman and in Beirut I have been accosted by beggars in the street and at my door, but they never said they needed food, not even when asked. There was always another story: “My little son is sick and must have surgery; I just need money to pay the surgeon and the hospital, so my son doesn’t die.” Once in Amman an old man at my door told me such a story, and I doubted that he even had a young child. I went to my kitchen and made him a great big sandwich, and when he saw it he betrayed himself by trembling as he reached for it. He did not carry it away, but sat down on my doorstep and ate every crumb.
I heard that when the Palestinian refugees first came to Jordan in 1948, the men in the camp refused to stand in line to collect rations provided by the UN, because it so destroyed their dignity.
Before I knew any of this, all I knew was that when we were guests in Middle Eastern homes, the host would put food on our plates, even against our will. We would feel obligated to eat more than we wanted, and it took us a while to learn that the food would keep coming until we simply left it on our plates.
The reason, of course, is that one Arab cannot trust another to admit that he is hungry. I have seen affluent Lebanese eat something at home just before leaving for the place to which they have been invited for dinner. It would be unseemly to arrive for dinner ravenous! Yet the host will insist that the guests eat!
To frank, undignified Americans, this feels like a foolish game, but whatever causes it is deep in the psyche of the Middle Eastern people. We once knew a young man who went to the U.S., to the state of Mississippi, to go to college. The next time we saw him he told us that he nearly starved to death in the U.S., because “no one made me eat.” It took him several months, he said, to learn that if you tell an American you are not hungry, he will believe you and give you nothing to eat.
I keep wondering about the reaction of men, heads of families, responsible for taking care of women and children, proud men accustomed to making a living, men in a shame and honor society who learned in childhood to discipline themselves and save the best for guests, now destitute, at the mercy of the world. What happens to human dignity? What does it cost such men to ask for food or admit that they cannot provide for their families?
A picture I saw on somebody’s facebook page has haunted me for about three months. It was among those pictures we saw of big groups of refugees walking through Europe. A man has divided one piece of bread three ways. Each of his little boys has a piece, and he still holds one in his hand. But he is not eating; he is sobbing uncontrollably, his face contorted, his eyes raw with pain. One of the children, a mere six or seven year old, is reaching to touch his father’s face, in an attempt to comfort him.
An American woman who has recently been in the Middle East, participating in ministry to Syrian refugees, tells me that even now the destitute ask for money for rent or medicine, never for food. And when aid workers deliver to needy homes such things as blankets and clothes, the recipients exult over these gifts, but a bag of food they whisk away quickly, visibly embarrassed that they need to accept it.
She sees as I do that this enormous humanitarian crisis is compounded by Arab culture in which honor is found in sharing food and shame is attached to need. To protect the pride of the needy, aid workers have begun to disguise food with the packages in which it is delivered.
So what is my purpose in telling this?
I just want to mention, for anyone who doesn’t know, that Middle Easterners are people with a sense of honor. They want the respect of their neighbors; they want to respect themselves, and they easily feel shame. If such people are looking for a place to immigrate, it is not so they can live off of charity. They are looking for an opportunity to earn what they need. In fact, in their own eyes their honor will not be restored until they are able to share what they have.
We need to know this kind of thing about our neighbors on this planet.The sensitivity that comes from knowing what honors and what shames other people is one of the things that makes friendship possible. It is time we got to know the people of the Middle East.