A Visit to the Health Quarantine

Thanks to my graduation from the "Lebanese School for Social Training" and my work with the "Union for the Protection of Juveniles in Lebanon," I have been able to make several visits to the health quarantine where vagrants and beggars are seized and confined, and I have seen many of their distressing cases, especially those of the minors among them. So I thought it well to present a page from the pages of their lives, and to review some of the measures taken concerning them, through what you are about to read of these somber faces upon which fate has borne down harshly:

This is Youssef: thirteen years old, shy and sad, like a stranger among his fellows. His mother died as soon as he was born. He has an older brother who grew up with no one to care for him or watch over him, so he became a vagrant, then a criminal; the spirit of crime took root in him until he became a danger to society, and he is now in prison.

Youssef used to go to school and was a diligent pupil. His father took him out of school to work with him in his shop. This father was of a harsh temper and mistreated his son Youssef, driving him into vagrancy with his elder brother egging him on.

Youssef fell prey to bad company, and this is the third time he has been returned to the quarantine.

We took an interest in him, and he grew at ease with us and showed us his strong inclination to enter school; we are earnestly searching for a school that will accept him.

And this is Camille: fourteen years old, talkative and restless, always merry, cheerful of face, bare-chested summer and winter.

One morning Camille was found asleep at the door of a certain lady, who took pity on him when he told her that he was motherless and had fled the house to escape the whip of his father, whose address he did not know.

The lady informed the "Union for the Protection of Juveniles," which hastened to find him a shelter; he obtained a place with the Sisters of Charity and was lodged in one of the convent's quarters until the delegate should finish her inquiry and her search for the father's home.

As for Camille's mother, who is alive and well, she had been searching for him everywhere, appealing to the Union for the Protection of Juveniles. When Camille sensed that his secret was out, he fled again and at first could not be found; and how great was our astonishment when we came upon him by chance in the quarantine, happy as a prince among his vagrant fellows! He declared to us proudly that he had given himself up to the police so as to remain in the company of Samira, of whom I shall speak presently!

And here is Said: a boy from the mountain, eleven years old, perpetual motion, full of life and intelligence, hopping on one foot because his other leg was crushed by a large stone one day while he was climbing a wall to watch a brawl.

Said left the mountain to follow Samira and stay near her. One evening, while Samira was crawling into one of the wooden crates near the port to sleep, as all the members of her band used to do, a policeman seized her and marched her off to the quarantine — whereupon Said gave himself up so as to remain near her.

Said told us: "Samira loves me very much; she is tender-hearted, affectionate, and kind. One day I was asleep and she thought I was cold, so she pulled off her jacket to cover me. She eats nothing without sharing it with me. I too love her and hold her very dear, and I treat her the same way."

Now for Samira: small of stature, ten years old. She came down to Beirut from the mountain in the company of her brother Abd, sixteen years old and an addict of hashish smoking; Samira took to selling chewing gum in Martyrs' Square, and her meager earnings went up in the smoke of her brother's hashish.

She is lively, gentle, obliging, and alert beyond her years, and so she came to be surrounded by a retinue of vagrant minors.

When she was arrested and taken to the quarantine, every member of her band gave himself up in order to remain near her.

Slender is Samira, and willowy, wide-awake, wrapped in a long dress of black silk: she has become a miniature picture of the complete woman. The watching of Samira and her retinue of admirers so troubled the guards that they feared the consequences and set her free, to escape the responsibility.

Today she roams the streets, easy prey for the nets of exploiters.

Space would fail me if I tried to finish describing the condition of all those I saw in the quarantine. Whoever wishes to learn the condition of some of them may look at their likes among the sellers of chewing gum, newspapers, and lottery tickets,

and those in like condition with them — an example of neglected childhood, and a voice crying out in the midst of society.

If we look at these children with the eye of reason, we find that they stand on the brink of the abyss of crime, and that it is our human and social duty to extend a helping hand to them and to hasten to reform those of them who fall, so that each may become a useful member and not a burden upon society.

As for the law, it counts begging and vagrancy among punishable offenses.

In 1897 the Turkish lawgiver forbade begging by anyone capable of work, and the offender was punished with forced labor and imprisonment.

In 1909 vagrancy was prohibited by law, on the principle that whoever does no work despite his ability to work, and takes begging as his trade, is considered a vagrant.

The law likewise punishes the guardians and trustees of a minor, or whoever incites him to vagrancy and begging for his own private gain.

The French Mandate then confirmed these measures taken against beggars and vagrants, introducing certain amendments, notably a heavier penalty for those who incite or exploit juveniles.

In 1944 the Lebanese Penal Code was enacted; it provided for the punishment of beggars and vagrants, and likewise for the punishment of the guardian or trustee, or whoever incites a minor to beg, and it held that any minor under eighteen years of age who leaves the home of his parents or his guardian, or of those entrusted with his care, for a week without lawful excuse, and roams about without work, becomes liable to reform measures.

Yet despite all these wise measures, the beggars and vagrants still fill the streets and sidewalks, with their disheveled hair and their tattered clothes, slipping away with such lightness and agility that it is hard to catch them. When arrested, they used to be taken to a special depot near the prisons and treated like prisoners, with no work to do.

In 1943 the condition of these wretches troubled the Minister of Health of that day, the late Hikmat Bey Jumblatt, who entrusted their care to Father Yaacoub the Capuchin, founder of the congregation of Deir al-Salib, placing at his disposal the Bashbash building at a cost of 100 piasters a day for each person; this allowance was later raised to 150 piasters.

In 1948–1949, on the occasion of the UNESCO conference held in Beirut, the Ministry of Health asked Father Yaacoub to look for a building large enough for a hundred persons, undertaking to pay him 225 piasters a day for each person.

Father Yaacoub rented the Doumani building, and under his care and the attention of the Sisters of the Cross the situation changed: all the wretches, upon arriving at the shelter prepared for them, were sent to the bath, and then their filthy, tattered clothes were exchanged for clean ones. Thus a visitor could walk through the dormitories safe from mosquitoes and vermin. Certain kinds of work were organized, for each according to his aptitudes and capacity.

At the beginning of 1950 Father Yaacoub was relieved of this task, on the claim that it cost the treasury too much, and it was handed over to the Municipality of Beirut, which set aside for them three lodgings among the quarters prepared for pilgrims: one lodging was assigned to the men and boys, the second to the women and girls, and as for the third, one of the guards informed us that it was "set aside for the well-dressed vagrants."

And this shelter was named the health quarantine!

As for how the beggars and vagrants are picked up, and their present condition, here is a small picture of it:

Two municipal policemen make a round of the city streets in a special car, picking up every beggar and non-beggar they come across, recognizing them by their ragged clothes; they seize him and bundle him into their car. Most of the wretches are exposed to this "seizure": whoever among them happens to be passing through Martyrs' Square or the Bab Idriss quarter is shown no mercy, because he exposes the city's reputation to disgrace before the great personages, foreign or national.

And I shall never forget the pain that seized me when I went to this quarantine for the first time: on a rainy day, the cold bitter, the mud filling the road that leads to their lodging. We reached a large, spacious, filthy room whose windows had no glass; the mosquitoes frolicked in it at their ease despite the kerosene poured about. And I saw beggars, two and three together, old and young, sharing a single worn-out cover and shivering with cold.

Twenty men between twenty and eighty,

among them the simple, the feeble-minded, and the imbecile.

Fifteen women of various ages, one of them crippled.

Twenty-five minors between seven and fourteen years of age, among them Youssef, Camille, Said, and Samira.

The "Union for the Protection of Juveniles in Lebanon" has for twelve years shown every care and activity on behalf of a great number of these wretches. But this Union alone cannot reach the result it desires and hopes for. It needs more complete laws and wider powers, and schools and industrial institutions large enough for all these poor creatures, leading them into honorable trades that will secure them the means of earning a living.

Our greatest wish is that such schools, industrial institutions, and agricultural establishments should be founded in Lebanon, so that our vagrant children may be turned from the paths of corruption and become men useful to the country, not a burden upon society.

The Social Worker