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