Time. For Compassion.

The old warehouse space on the Pireaus port of Athens, Greece was a 150-year-old relic of business in times long past. It was built for storage of stuff, not people. No running water, electricity, toilets, fans. Just windowless stone walls, squaring off an area slightly bigger than a basketball court.

The time was 8 years ago, 2016, the year after one million people migrated into Europe, half of them coming as refugees from civil conflict in Syria.   

The people in the warehouse pitched donated, 2-person tents inside that space, for bits of privacy, or sat, slept and ate on old pieces of carpets or blankets with no bits of privacy. Three thousand people whose lives, livelihoods and relationships were now dislocated from anything they had known or imagined would ever happen to them. 

The guests were five of us, representing agencies wanting to know first-hand the circumstances people were facing, to plan how to help them. Our eyes slowly adjusted to the dim light in the warehouse, coming in from the bright Greek April sunshine outside. A few young men moved towards us excited to use their best high-school English to figure out what we wanted to talk about. 

When I spoke Arabic to them, the young guys politely retreated to stand behind older men anxious to speak about their people displaced from their communities – now that there was someone to talk to who could understand them. A large, well-worn carpet appeared and got spread out. Cushions were recruited from tents, and strong, black, super-sweet tea from a couple of huge boiling kettles was poured into small tea glasses. Packets of crispy cookies were handed out. We all sat in a large circle around the edges of the carpets. 

Suddenly we were in a Syrian living room. Now, the proper space was in place for a proper discussion to begin.  

We listened and talked, and they talked and listened for two hours while I translated Arabic-English-Arabic. A very thirsty time – good that the tea glasses were always topped-up.

Everybody had a story to tell. Stories that they had not had someone ever to tell them to. Each story a glimpse into a world of surviving against tremendous odds and a determination to thrive regardless of those same odds. Stories that seared our ears and humbled our hearts.

At the end of that time in their space, it came time to leave. “Now what is going to happen?” tens of people asked all at once. We had been very straightforward when we first walked into the dimness of that warehouse that we were there to learn what would be required to be done for them. We also could not guarantee that we could do something about all the things we would hear, maybe just some of them. It was early in the European refugee crisis response and too soon to be certain of what resources would be available. 

At the door of the warehouse, my eyes again adjusted – this time to the bright light outside. I turned to a hundred eyes framed by that door and said, “I will never forget you. Ever.” And I have never forgotten their stories and the cellphone pics I took – the bits of their lives they shared with me, a stranger, who saw them and wanted them to know they were seen. 

I have listened with hundreds, if not thousands, of people who have had stories to speak, my ears open to hear their words, their cries. I have sat in crises with people, and I have observed crises of others from afar.  My personal goal has been to see them, to behold them, to appreciate them and bear witness that they are not forgotten in their struggle to be human. My professional goal has been to bring the best assistance possible to restore better outcomes – what will happen after these crises. Physical basics like food, water, medicine, shelter. Other basics like listening, enabling, healing, caring, accompanying - to illuminate the hopes to which they aspire. 

The alternative is to diminish them as humans, not appreciating and honoring their struggle.  To discount their presence and worth. To make them “NOT” – not visible, not heard, not existent, not present, not human. Over my past 40-some years living in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, I know that when I see and respect others in their struggles, they turn out to be my best teachers to become my better self. If I diminish them in my eyes and make them less than I am as a human being, then my distorted eyesight dries out my own heart and I start to shrink. I become a danger to myself, to them and to others.

The space is now. Two million Palestinians are being diminished in Gaza. Two million people whose homes are gone. Whose families are gone. Livelihoods are gone. Two million stories lost. More than three million Palestinians in the West Bank. Losing their homes, cut off from their farms, unable to get to jobs, watching their youth being “disappeared.” Totally diminished. 

The time is now. In the short period of a year, entire generations have been wiped out in Gaza. The pressure to erase Palestinians from the West Bank is ratcheting up, just like in Gaza. We cannot afford to deny, to not know, to not see. Surely, we do not want our hearts dried out and our capacity for compassion to shrink to something unrecognizable and dangerous to ourselves, our children and our children’s children. 

We, together, are people who see with our eyes, who behold with our hearts, people pushed aside by the fearsome challenges they face. We have launched a program in the West Bank to ensure that children and youth (up to the age of finishing high school) have well-trained and well-organized grannies and aunties who bring learning to them – even when the school building is gone, or when they cannot get to that building. Education for learning that is one-on-one, that can go on in the presence of the pressure of conflict. 

We also provide shelter, food & water, and medical assistance to thousands of refugees who have very recently fled into Syria from Lebanon. Our local partner network there is strong and stable since 2009! Even before the Syrian crisis began in 2011. 

We can do these things with these people because you do these things with your resources through our hands. You keep the hearts of LOTS of us growing in our capacity for compassion.  No risk of shrinkage here, for any of us!

How we are grateful for you!