Poverty breaks family bonds

"Khan Al Tamaseel," in Tripoli, Lebanon, is an old caravansary where fifty-five poor Sunni families live today, according to Zakariah, an elderly local resident and fisherman who guided the TV crew.

Children played among flasks of water and detached stones from the cobbled surface. The TV crew and Zakariah climbed to the first floor through a dark, narrow passage. From up there, the courtyard looked even more chaotic.

"It is horrible and not hygienic! Why don't you clean the courtyard of the rotting garbage?" The female TV reporter, disturbed by the smell, asked.

"Here, nobody cleans. That's the way it is!" Zakariah answered.

"I have a question! Whose garbage is this?" the reporter asked a mother standing at her doorstep with her two kids hanging around her legs.

"Our own garbage!" the woman said. "We are used to throwing the garbage from the terrace."

"I have seen big waste dump tanks empty near the entrance. Garbage bags lay around them, but not inside! Why are they not used?" the reporter asked.

"Women are not allowed to go out there on the street to throw their garbage. They give it to their children, who throw the bags carelessly." Zakariah said. He added: “Wal Hamdu Lillah' (Praise be to God), we have a place to live."

As two children came in, the reporter asked the man whether they went to school. The man said the elder only goes to school. "To which school?" The reporter asked him. He replied: "I cannot remember the name. My son lives with his mother. She should know."

The reporter entered another cave room with Zakariah.

"Who lives here?"

"A divorced woman with four children. Her eldest daughter is married and has two children, but lives elsewhere. She is divorced now!"

"And in the room here?"

"A man with three children. His new wife takes care of them!"

The TV reporter looked stunned by the carefree attitude of all concerned, the number of divorces, remarriages, even among the wretched, and the number of children around. She often tried to leave the one-room homes in the cluster to breathe fresh air and avoid the stink in the dark, unventilated dwellings.

These scenes, in which children are invariably cast to the wind, are found on street corners in the Arab world.