My heart is virtually in a million pieces, and I don’t want to keep it together any more.
Not far from here is a place we call “the park”, which really isn’t a park at all. It’s better defined by “patches of grass between intersecting roads”. A few days ago, close to two-hundred refugees were living in this small space. Today we went there. This is the story:
I had just slipped play-tex gloves onto my hands and started to pick up trash when I was summoned by someone on my team. There was a woman who was sick, and since I have missionary medical training, I was to examine her. I cringed and prayed at the same time as I walked toward her, knowing full well my own in-experience.
I noted the look of desperation and exhaustion in Ahmadi’s face as I bent down to speak with her. She and her husband Aman were sitting on a sleeping bag on top of cardboard. A three month old son named Amar was laying between them. The girl less than two year old was romping around with a bubble wand and another girl from my team. Three or four small backpacks containing all they owned set behind them.
I greeted them and then asked Ahmadi, “Are you eating?”
“No, we don’t have food.”
Okay.
“Are you drinking water?”
“No, we don’t have any.” They showed me two empty water bottles.
Okay.
As I nodded in understanding, my heart wrenched inside my chest. I asked Ahmadi to show me the areas of pain on her body. She rocked back and forth in agony as she took my hand and pushed my fingers deep into her side, under the rib cage. Then she took my hand and ran it up and down her back, on both sides of her spine. She rubbed the entirety of her shoulders. I could feel no abnormalities and immediately knew the woman isn’t sick. She’s starving, and her kidneys are freaking out because she isn’t drinking liquids. And she has a three month old son. And she just walked pregnant from Afghanistan, and carried a pack.
Not long ago, the Taliban made it too dangerous for their family to remain in Afghanistan, so, mothering a small child and pregnant, she and her husband journeyed one month for a new place to call home. Somewhere between Iran and Turkey, Ahmadi was involved in an accident. This resulted in the baby then being born a few months later, with a bruise covering half his face. The journey still wasn’t over when they finally reached Macedonia. For six hours a day for five days they walked. Ahmadi fed the baby drugs so she would remain asleep throughout the journey.
Aman and Ahmadi have been in Greece for six months now. Even though they have asylum, Aman can’t find a job. This results in no money, and therefore no food or water. Excessive walking sores and blackened toe nails linger on their feet. Because of Ahmadi’s own malnourishment, her breast milk is too scarce to feed the baby. Aman took a baby bottle into his hands and shook the milk, saying the formula is “not good: it’s number 3 and should be number 1” (probably based on the baby’s age).
In that moment, all I wanted to do was shake my fist at the world and scream. “This isn’t okay! These people need food! They need water! There’s a grocery store just around the corner! No one should live like this! Why isn’t somebody doing something!”
But the only thing I could do was look into Aman and Ahmadi’s helpless and pleading eyes and say, “I’m sorry.”.
As if having accepted yet another disappointment, Ahmadi took up the baby to feed him a bottle. The bottle was rejected and Amar started to cry. Ahmadi looked at me wearily and told me she herself is tired and needs to sleep, but she can’t because of the baby. “Could I please give her some drugs for both of them?” Again I shook my head. I reached down and lifted the baby from her arms. “You lay down and rest.”, I told her. “I’ll keep the baby.” Relieved, she thanked me, then she rolled up a blanket for her head and stretched out on the cardboard. She let out a sigh. As Amar laughed and cooed in my arms, I couldn’t help but notice the way Ahmadi lay, gripping her stomach and wincing every time she moved.
After a little while, I felt Amar relax on my shoulder. Soon his eyes closed, and he was fast asleep. His father took him from my arms and laid him beside his wife.
I prayed over the family before I said goodbye. I asked God to provide food and water for them, and to protect them. After “amen”, I physically walked away, but my heart remained on their sleeping bag with them. I couldn’t get them out of my mind, nor did I want to. I knew there had to be something I could do. And then I verbalized it. I had to take them something to eat, that night. It wasn’t logical for me to eat pasta for dinner, knowing Aman would have to wait another fifteen hours before the next possibility of finding food for his family. I just couldn’t bear the thought. And besides, how could I pray a prayer asking God to provide for them, when the means was within my own hands? Why shouldn’t I be the answer to my own prayer? What sense does it make for me to expect someone else to be that answer?
I scarfed down my dinner, then I invited two friends to be my mission partners. At the grocery store, I stuffed granola and granola bars into an unassuming bag. When I approached the building Aman and his family had been sitting by earlier in the day, I found myself in a potentially unnerving situation. The area was littered with refugees. What would happen when they see me giving food to only one family?! Would they attack me, or the family? I weaved through the people and the blankets covering the ground. I walked slowly at a distance, searching for my family. And then I spotted them. From behind a bush, I pulled the food out of my bag and quickly approached Ahmadi. Her face lit up like the sun when she saw me. I knew my time was limited before I’d be noticed by everyone, so as quickly as I could, I stuffed the food between two packs. Thanking me profusely, Ahmadi grabbed my hands and pulled me close. She kissed my cheek. Our hands squeezed as I pulled away. Our brief meeting was less than sixty seconds, and already my presence was drawing attention. I forcefully closed my ears to the neighboring woman’s cries: “Hey miss! I need you to give me food for my baby, too!”, and exited the scene.
There’s so much more to the story (because this was written a few days ago): how we went back the next day and they were gone, and how the enemy wants to accuse me for their absence by saying “It’s your fault they’re not there. Maybe they were attacked because you gave them food.”
These stories are real. There are hundreds more, but time fails me to speak of them all.
