JEDDAH, 20 November 2003 — Deep in the tungsten-glary canyons of downtown Jeddah, where a profusion of bustling white flows and eddies around the squares and plazas fringed with shops full of exotic frippery, there is a less regarded walkway leading to a car park.
Littered like flotsam on the marble pavement are traders of a less prosperous kind, spreading their blankets and setting out a few gaudy baubles or jars of mysterious and unidentifiable comestibles, hoping to garner a few riyals from the white tide in full spate flowing past them.
In the very center of the walkway, barely noticeable at first, is the diminutive figure of a tiny and incredibly dirty child. Almost a caricature of hunger, he moves slowly in circles, huge eyes looking around, hoping for something in the way of charity to come his way.
For his minimal size, he has a disproportionate helping of natural dignity, for he doesn’t beg. He fixes a passerby with a steady gaze and a huge smile. No aggressive running to a potential donor and shouting. He can’t. His withered and twisted legs, knees carefully padded with grubby bandages against chafing, only allow him to crawl.
Occasionally he rolls out of the way and is lost in a passing wave of shoppers, some of whom step over him; one on him.
He doesn’t cry out, but like the experienced street-surfer that his circumstances have forced him to become, he just resurfaces a few moments later. The only clue that he has noticed the insult is a brief flicker of an eye at the disappearing figure, head down, now deeply engaged in a conversation on a mobile phone.
Luckily, as he is only perhaps four years old, he is probably unaware that he is in the holy land and it is Ramadan. It would be cruel to disillusion him. But he is certainly aware enough to understand being trodden on.
In over 20 minutes of avoiding feet and being clipped by heavy bags full of shopping, Adam, as he spoke his name, collected precisely nothing. No parent seemed to be aware of him, he made no effort to approach any of the traders. He patiently sat and waited for aught.
When the flash of the camera lit up the walkway, he spun round, face full of smiles and inquisitiveness. Transfixed by the camera, his face lit up when he saw his image on the screen — stabbing at it with a pencil thin finger. “Wall’ah, wall’ah!” he intoned, shaking his head in disbelief, a little old child-man, clucking like a grandfather.
The flash also attracted a small gathering of rude mechanics, standing in a semicircle wagging their heads from side to side like an troupe of shoddily made marionettes operated by a beginner. We sat on the floor, Adam and I, looking at the pictures and then looking at the lookers looking at us. He was far better at the blank stare of contempt than I, more than 10 times his age.
It is amazing how different the world can look and how your relationship to it changes from a height of half a meter above ground level. Oncoming knees present a real threat to your face; faces are less recognizably human when seen looking upward against a background of bright lights.
Height gives a perspective, and on a clear day, you would swear you could see the future. Adam’s perspective is constrained by giants and high kerbs, occasionally — perhaps just very occasionally judging by his pitifully thin form — broadened by the purchasing power and choice given by a riyal or two. A future worth the name is for the privileged.
A pond fits the hole in the ground it fills perfectly as if both were made for each other and, from the pond’s point of view, it might conclude that this is the way things are meant to be. It seemed Adam had much the same stoical approach to his condition. It’s just the way it is. The question is, should it be?
As we sat, staring at what was for me the oddly altered perspective, atavistic memories of negotiating chair legs from this same low angle and crawling into the deep dark cavern of “under the bed” welled up and sneaked about on the edge of remembrance. There was never any fear in exploring strange new worlds as an infant, because the certainty of retrieval and comfort was axiomatic, even at four — for some anyway.
What Adam was learning from the same perspective but vastly different circumstances was survival, and it reminded me that I had forgotten what it was like “down there.” He taught a lesson in humility that capable adults could benefit from, “The World: By Adam (Aged Four and a Half.)”
After sharing a juice, we shook hands slowly and very solemnly, his small sinewy hand gripping with an unexpected strength developed from using it as a means of locomotion.
Salaam, Adam and Eid mubarak. And thank you.
