Spreading aid and feeding the soul

HUSEIN MASHNI

Jabalya has the dubious honor of being the most heavily populated

refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, and with that, the added title of

being, per-square-mile, the most heavily populated area on the

planet.

There is the city of Jabalya, which is made up mostly of families

originally from the Gaza Strip. The neighboring refugee camp absorbed

the “48” refugees, which means they became refugees in 1948. There

are also the “67” refugees.

I’ve come out here many times with a Christian group that

distributes food to the families. We get to visit the families and

to learn about them as we try to provide a meager measure of

assistance to them: a 40-pound box of rice, sugar, tea, split peas,

garbanzo beans, regular beans, oil and shortening.

Along with rations some of the families receive from the United

Nations once every three months, the food we bring may be the only

food these families have to get by. In the families with a father, he

is usually unemployed due to the Intifada, which has dragged on for

three miserable years. Other fathers may have physical or mental

limitations to where they can’t work. If they could, there is the

added problem that there is no work.

Then there are the widows. We visited one today.

She has five daughters between 9 months and 12 years old. All were

there to greet us when we arrived with our coveted coupons.

The husband died nine months ago of cancer. The wife raises the

children alone and takes care of her mother-in-law, who lives with

her in the ugly cinder block and corrugated metal house. There is an

old fashioned washing machine. Freshly washed clothes are hanging

from the lines. There are mattresses on the floor. There is an open

courtyard between the bedrooms, the kitchen and bathroom that water

floods into when it rains.

“How do you support your family?” I asked.

“We get a coupon from here, a coupon from there,” she said.

“Thanks be to God. Sometimes, a relative will give us something.”

Most of the homes in this part of the camp are about eight feet

high. They have whitewashed walls and the ever-present corrugated

metal roofs held down, at times, by heavy cinderblocks. There was a

woman who told us that she was the man of the house. Her husband

can’t work due to physical limitations.

“Do you want to see our castle?” she joked.

Inside the heavy metal door, there was a dark, 5-foot-by-5-foot

bathroom which is really just a hole in the ground. Next to it was a

kitchen of the same dimensions. There was the living room which has

no ceiling.

When it rains, it pours.

Then there’s the one room that the family sleeps in. The parents

and their five children, which includes a 15-year-old son, all sleep

on the floor of the one room.

There was nothing deceitful about this woman. No need for

sympathy; she didn’t expect it and didn’t radiate an air that

demanded it.

Since my back was hurting from carrying the heavy boxes, I asked

if she knew any young men in the neighborhood who could carry the box

from the van to her house.

“I’ll come get it,” she said without hesitation.

And I know she could, but having been brought up in America, where

we’re taught to open the door for a lady, I couldn’t let her. So, I

carried it on my shoulder from the van through the two-foot-wide

streets between these homes, to her house. She said thank you. Not

all people say thank you. Some, so accustomed to receiving, take what

you give and expect more.

At the next house, there was a boy named Majed (that’s not his

real name). He’s 12. His house is ugly. Made of cinderblocks and

corrugated steel. You enter the steel door. On the right is the

5-foot-by-5-foot restroom and a kitchen of the same dimensions next

to it. The living room is an open courtyard. They bring out their two

plastic chairs and insist that we sit and have coffee and tea. Every

family, regardless of their situation, does this.

We sit. There are three rooms about 20 feet by 20 feet in size. In

one room lives a brother, who is unemployed, and his family -- wife

and five sons, including 12-year-old Majed. In the middle room, lives

the grandmother and her single daughter. In the third room lives

another brother and his wife and their six children. The second

brother is a police man who makes about 1,200 shekels (about $300) a

month. That helps support everyone under the roof, which isn’t really

a roof. When it rains, it drips on everything, on everyone.

I asked 12-year-old Majed, who seems too small for his age, what

grade he is in. He told me sixth. The grandmother tells me he is a

below-average student. I tell them I was also a below-average

student.

Because my back hurts, I ask if any young men could help carry the

heavy box from the van some 200 or so feet away to the house. There

are none. The mother herself volunteers to come get it.

Instead, I asked 12-year-old Majed to help me. He came out with

me, oblivious that he was wearing his mother’s medium-heeled plastic

slippers.

We went to the van and took out the box. I grabbed one side, and

he another. We squeezed our way through the excruciatingly narrow

streets to their home. They insisted we sit and drink coffee and tea.

We did.

I wanted to plant something in Majed’s heart. I told the whole

family that Majed was a great help to me and how he helped me carry

the heavy box all the way from the van. He beamed. Everyone started

talking about what a good young man he is.

Then we went to a bigger and uglier

cinderblock-andcorrugated-steel home. Beyond the heavy steel door was

a wildly smiling teenage girl. I was told she was mentally

handicapped. She also has four sisters who are either mentally or

physically handicapped.

Altogether, there are 15 children: one of the sons died recently

when he touched an electrical outlet with a wet hand; another son

fell from a ladder and broke his back; another son is in jail for

political reasons; another son is not allowed to leave the West Bank

to come back to be with his family in Gaza.

The father is unable to work. The mother begs from here and there.

She gets some assistance from the United Nations every few months;

flour, oil, etc. It’s difficult to believe all that has happened to

this woman. Her face shows no signs of the horrors she has lived and

is living through.

She insists that we sit in the living room on mattresses to drink

coffee, tea, cola.

“Rest and be refreshed,” she says in Arabic.

We don’t have the time today. Her daughters scurry to cover their

heads or to just hide from us, maybe peering from behind the bedroom

walls and giggling. Although the house is large, there is no

furniture in it. Like most houses in these parts, it has no glass to

cover its large windows.

When it rains, it pours.

* HUSEIN MASHNI is a former Daily Pilot education reporter who

became a Christian missionary in the Middle East. His articles appear

in Forum on occasion.