Begging

That last day in Jordan and I was headed back to the hotel.  A woman sat on the sidewalk with a bundle hidden in her abaya – maybe a baby. She was dirty and held out her grimy hand and pleaded with her eyes, saying something in Arabic which I couldn’t understand.  

I walked on.  Ignore them, I had been advised. 

One young Jordanian teacher told us that the woman and the dirty boy and raggedy man and the laden donkey digging through the trash bins – "that’s their job."   Huh? "That’s their job, they recycle stuff."
  

And about another woman in clean clothes who clutched a nice-looking handbag and a baby, "she’s got money, look at her purse."
 

So I walked on. It wasn’t my job to support these people.  Wasn’t the US spending enough money in the Middle East, why weren’t these people being taken care of. Blah blah blah.

But then something clicked in -  الحمد لله     

I went back and did the right thing.