Something For Nothing

SOMETHING FOR NOTHING

To them I must have looked like many other refugees and there had been
no shortage of them pouring into their country in the last two months,
driven out of their homeland by despotic dictators and hunger and lack
of work. The porous borders allowed us to seep into this far wealthier
land, where we thought possibilities would surely abound.

Yet it didn't turn out that way. Many ended up like me - unable to
speak the language, unable to register with the authorities, and for
both of these reasons unable to get a job and so reduced to the means
of begging. Even here, however, I hoped there was not reason to
despair. After all, one look around showed that these people were
wealthier than we, and our plight and suffering had been well
documented on the television and other media. It seemed inconceivable
that these people, remembering the pictures of us in wet and windy
weather climbing barren hillsides to seek shelter in forests with only
a few blankets and bits of bread for sustenance, would no longer feel
pity for us just because we were on their soil and using up their
resources.

Every morning, from about ten o' clock, I dress, put on my sling, my
ragged clothes, and go to the subway. There I board a train, usually
without a ticket - the system works on trust, and the one time I have
been caught by an inspector he uttered something to me I did not
understand and then walked away without causing trouble. When the train
is moving I walk down the aisles of the carriage, my hand outstretched,
mumbling supplications for help. Sometimes the people give me money,
paltry helpings of change, barely enough to buy a loaf of bread or a
packet of milk when all donations are combined; more often than not
they give nothing, do not even look at me, or brush me away with a curt
'No,' as if I was a piece of dirt or a dog begging for scraps of meat.
Sometimes I think that if I'd been a dog I'd have met with kinder
responses.

Why won't these people help me? They do not understand what it's like
to be me. They do not know my history, they do not know what
difficulties might have brought me to this state, they do not know why
my arm is permanently in a sling - only the most visible of my
disabilities - they do not know whether I have starving children
huddled in some dank corner of an alley waiting for me to come back and
feed them; they do not know, and they do not seek to know; therefore;
they do not care.

I get angry. A woman who is older than me, who is wearing clothes that
if I had them would probably have been sold by now to buy food and
shelter, who has beautiful hair, beautiful lips and eyes, beautiful
hands, is in every proportion and every dimension of her appearance
beautiful, sitting while I stand and not acknowledging me when I raise
my hand from my side and mumble in my own language a line or two of my
plight, followed by a torturously moaned 'help . . . ple-e-ase,' in
their language - this woman today is the straw that breaks the beggar's
back. I know she has money and I know that she can help me if she
wants.

So I reach out my hand and touch her shoulder, because with her head
lowered and her eyes buried in a magazine she thinks she can pretend
I'm not there. She must understand that I need her help, I need her
money, and will stand here till I get it. She cannot ignore me, I will
not permit it.

At last she looks up, her face flushed with rage, or it could be shame
because other passengers in the carriage are looking on, perhaps hoping
to see a beautiful person turn out to have an ugly soul, which will
make them feel better about themselves and maybe (I hope) they will
give me money to prove it. I have learnt that embarrassment is one of
the best tools for a beggar to use. But my cause is genuine: why should
she ignore me?

She stares at me with an imperious glare, as if to ask what right have
I to stand here in front of her?

I point to my arm in a sling. I want her to see my disability.

'Yeah,' she says, and shrugs. 'And?'

To this I have no response. Even if I did not understand her simple
words the look in her eyes and on her red lips is clear: that she has
nothing to give me, just as I have nothing to give her, not even peace
of conscience. That is what she wants me to know: that I do not even
merit her pity.

At the next station I get out of the train. This sort of thing happens
from time to time and my immediate reaction is to run across the
platform and leap in front of the next oncoming train. But something in
me always stops short. There is a fierce determination in me, a
determination whose strength I had never been aware of before, to one
day turn the tables on these people. I dream about a day when I can
speak their language, get a residence for myself, get educated and find
a job, and finally have enough money that people will come begging from
me and if a woman like that woman, through a series of misfortunes that
leaves her destitute and broken, comes looking for help I can look down
on her in the same way she and her kind now look down on me, and with
that same immunity of feeling reject her supplications with a shrug and
words so cold that they cannot be answered.