By Asif Tejani

It is easy to get desensitized to the poverty in Iraq. Because it is so pervasive; because it is so prevalent.

There are children, who ought to be in school, who hang out at the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border looking to make a few cents carting luggage in home-made trolleys through the short strip of no-man’s land. In the souq outside Basra, there are widows in patched abayas willing to pawn off their only belongings to make ends meet. In the streets, outside the mosques, at the traffic lights, little children carrying even younger children, extend their palms begging for food and a couple of dinars. It is easy to get desensitized.

But it is very hard to come to terms with the suffering of the Iraqi people.

We met with Hassan and Batool, two young orphans who now live with their grand-father. He also cares for his other grand-children, most of them orphaned too, in a small house on the outskirts of Basra.

The family went out of their way to host us, offering us packaged drinks and cakes that they could hardly afford. But it’s important in Iraqi society to be hospitable. And we had come from another continent. And so the family abstained while the children served us.

The grand-father was a deeply religious and dignified man. He told us how Hassan’s father had suddenly been whisked away in the middle of the night during Saddam’s rule. He told us how they had found out later that he had been electrocuted to death, leaving four orphans for him to bring up.

Batool sat in his laps, a cherubic 8 year old girl with missing front teeth and a shy smile that would melt any heart. She silently listened to him talk. I wondered what she was thinking.

This is what I was thinking: that Child Aid ought to feel honoured that a family as dignified, yet as disadvantaged as this would even accept a contribution from us. When we made enquiries, we found out that there were no other humanitarian organizations that specifically targeted orphans in this part of Iraq.

We ventured that $30 a month was a negligible contribution to raise a family of nineteen. But Hassan’s grand-father shook his head. “Hardly so,” he said. "Your $30 increases our blessing from Allah -- even $3 is a step in the right direction."