I knew I was in for the long haul when she wiped her snot on my hand. "Kleenex! Kleenex!" I told her. None were readily available, so she grabbed the closest thing within sight. My hand. Her nose began to run again. At one point there was a direct route of snot from her nose to her upper lip and then into her mouth. She rather happily facilitated this transfer by maneuvering her lower lip over her upper lip when necessary and smiling gleefully after each successful transmission. I know, I know...EWWW. But such are the hazards of children and cross-cultural communication.
Her name is Samaa. She is a 3-year-old refugee from Sudan. I met her in a refugee shelter run by Doctors of the World in Athens over spring break. Our Alternative Spring Break group was fortunate enough to stumble upon this humble shelter during our week in Greece. That's where I found this particular little one. Big brown eyes that you could just fall into, her hair in cute little half-pigtails, and an infantile voice that shouted "Love me!" She looked much like how I might envision a future daughter of mine to be. So of course, when given the choice between serving as a referee for a group of 10 preteen boys or playing blocks and Play-Doh with Samaa, I chose the snotmeister herself.
She knew a little English and as I utilized my limited amount of Arabic, from a summer spent working in an Egyptian restaurant, we got along just fine. She would have her crying fits from time to time and she would get a little cranky when another child took a sip of her orange juice, but by our third day there, I had her pacified and napping in my arms. She was absolutely precious. Her mother struggled with her English to relate to me her harrowing journey without her husband out of Sudan to Greece via Turkey. In Turkey, she was separated from her daughter in a foreign land for nine months while pregnant with Samaa's baby sister, Leila.
Such a trip was certainly not taken up eagerly or by choice. Darling Samaa and her family are refugees. It just so happens that in some odd collision of time and space, I ended up in that shelter at that time to hear their story. There were hundreds of other families with similar accounts who passed through just that one shelter in Athens every year.
They come from places where we have done and continue to do nothing or very little to remedy a dangerous situation. Sudan. Somalia. Rwanda. Iran. They come from places where we are acting selfishly in the holy name of the infallible and ill-defined gods that are "national security" and "freedom." Afghanistan. Iraq. Palestine.
I wondered what would happen to Samaa and her family and the other families after I left. It killed me inside to realize that despite my good intentions and my empathy, I would go back to my cozy hotel room to continue my luxurious vacation in Greece. I would go on with my $1,000+ spring break adventure while people like Samaa, her mother and baby sister continued to suffer. I realized that despite our three days of well-intentioned service there, I got more from the experience than did the children or their parents. I learned more about international relations and geopolitics putting together puzzles with Samaa than I have from any class I have ever taken in SIS or SPA.
I'm struggling to pull together all the emotions I was feeling that day in the shelter into a compelling narrative for this column. They were just too raw. It is one thing for me to sit at home watching CNN shaking my head about the tragedy of these terrible wars and their tragic consequences. It is another thing for me cradle one of those consequences in my arms feeling its heart beat next to mine.
I'm reminded of Sting's famous song "Russians" in which the chorus line goes, "I hope the Russians love their children too." Sting was referring to the Cold War and the d?tente between the United States and the Soviet Union over the use of nuclear weapons. In the end it seemed that both sides loved their children too much to initiate a first strike. What possible differences could we find between a young child like Samaa and one born in California or Texas or any state that would allow us to justify action or inaction that would bring her and her family suffering? Would we not be outraged if similar pain was inflicted upon an American child?
We justify such action by convincing ourselves that we are striving for conveniently abstract concepts such as defense, freedom and security. In the end, this is not what matters. People matter. Martin Luther King Jr. tells us, "We must rapidly begin the shift from a 'thing-oriented' society to a 'person-oriented' society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered."
These wars and our inaction in Darfur are simply cowardice and selfishness disguised as a struggle for freedom. Samaa reminded me that we need to refocus our efforts to make people and alleviation of human suffering our main priorities. Otherwise, this vicious cycle of violent retribution will never end and we will one day find ourselves looking into the eyes of American refugee children with the same feelings of helplessness and despair in our hearts. Sept. 11 was our very own American taste of retribution for a century of our hegemony and ill-advised domination. Let's stop this insanity. Power to the peaceful.
