To give or not to give

Beggars make me so uncomfortable.

I feel instantly guilty at the sight of skinny feral-cat like kids, cripples and amputees, mothers with babies at flappy breast and especially of battered old women without sons to care for them asking me for money, I who am traveling to exotic places, spending money on silly souvenirs and dieting because I have too much to eat.

Some people cope with this guilt by seeing all beggars as fakes who are actually earning riches by feigning poverty and deformity on the public sidewalks. I don't believe that, or if it's true, they still deserve something simply because that's an awful way to make a living. Some of my traveling friends believe that giving to beggars encourages more begging, which is why I never give to children in the streets. How likely would it be if they come back with a big haul that their pleased parents would decide, OK, it's time you went to school now! I was overwhelmed in Kampala at first by the sheer number of people approaching me for handouts so I developed this system of giving only to the old women and walking by the children and the lame. I try to keep my pockets full of small bills and all my coins to give away. In Bosnia I gave to the old ladies in kerchiefs on the street curbs.

But I am having some trouble with that system here.

Walking down a Tunis street a man in a wheelchair waved two leg stumps just inches from by body. I gave him money. The other day outside a little aquarium in Carthage that caters to tourists a withered old woman with scraggly hair and missing teeth sat outside on the cement terrace, a wash bucket and a crutch nearby. I pressed a dinar into her hand.

She started laughing and clutched my hand to return the coin. She spoke only Arabic and I only English. But I asked You are OK? and she nodded, still chuckling

Hmmm. How's that for meaning well and giving offense? Or maybe she is mentally ill or has a system of only taking money from countrymen. I don't know.

So, outside the Great Mosque in Kairouan I found this woman above (and no, I didn't coldly train my camera on her. I was shooting pictures of the facade along with about 38 other people and only zoomed in on her later by computer.) Beggars outside mosques are as common as the kicked-off shoes of worshippers. Islam demands the giving of alms, so mosques are a good place to remind practicing Muslims of that. Our newspaper in Algiers did a recent story about a trend the prayerful find disturbing of beggars coming inside the mosque and hitting up donors as they lift their heads from talking to God.

I thought maybe I should give her something. But she wasn't asking; she wasn't even looking at any of us. She was just sprawled on her rug with water and fan in the crushing heat. Was she begging or praying? Appealing to fellow humans or to God?