[Editor’s Note: The writer is poetess laureate of Culver City.]
Here is a poem I wrote a few years ago as part of a series in my memoirs. At the time I was in Beirut, too young to fully understand the political ramifications. Through the years, I recognized how the Arab brethren of the refugees had used and manipulated them. While I was studying for my doctorate at USC back in the 1970s, I saw a film made by a student from Saudi Arabia. Part of it showed Palestinian refugee camps. The accompanying script gave the impression that the Saudis were magnanimous in allowing them to live there. This was nearly 30 years after the partition. Yet none of the refugees was given equal status — citizenship, education, employment…
In 1954, at the age of 17, while a student at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon, I volunteered for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) by working on the weekends in Burj Al Barajneh, a refugee camp outside the city near the airport.
I was assigned to teach the children games and to spray them with DDT. During those years, even UNRWA was not able to improve the basic lack of hygiene and facilities or convince the local governments to provide for these people other than giving them a place to stay in a collection of tents. It is worse today.
“Host” countries have used them as propaganda. They have blamed others for their plight – Israel, the U.S., the U.N… Who will be blamed for the latest group of refugees?
Zahirah – Casualty of War
by Janet Hoult 10/2006
Zahirah of the shining dark curls
liked to sit next to me and watch the other children
play the games I taught them in the refugee camp.
Charming Zahirah, an innocent 5 year old –
her sweet face reflecting her longing to join the others –
her brown eyes filled with tears
because she lacked the energy to enjoy the game with them.
She could not keep her head up.
She closed her eyes and lay quietly against me.
Thinking she was asleep, I carefully began to stand up,
but Zahirah slipped off the bench onto the dusty field – motionless.
Her heart had stopped beating and she had died –
sitting there, her head against my side.
Shining and luminous,
Zahirah was but one of the camp children
to be worn down,
to lose their luster and zest for life.
Zahirah died of malnutrition I was told,
but I think there was something more
happening to the refugees in the camps –
Loss of hope
Loss of a sense of humanity
Loss of regard for the welfare of other human beings
Abandonment by their own people
as the battle in the Middle East rages on and on
Dr. Hoult may be contacted at HOULTight@aol.com
