Of Cats and Refugees

By Noha El Maraghi

I wanted to write about our AUB campus because it is really gorgeous, but not only that it has a huge cat population that is all friendly. I’m not very cat friendly myself, maybe I’m a little scared of them, but these cats are so sweet. I’m contemplating having one of my own. We found out from a Lebanese friend that this huge cat population actually has designated money from the budget of the university. He said they put aside a good amount of money for these cats to feed them and vaccinate them. Also it is illegal to take any of the cats out of campus or harm them in anyway. One time his friend was cited and fined by the Dean’s office for pushing a cat away from his food on campus. According to him the campus has some cat-keepers that feed and take care of the cats that are left to roam freely in the vast vegetation on campus. 

It is ironic to think of these cats in luxury and the Palestinian refuge camps we visited last week at the same time. While a population of cats is left to flourish and is provided with food and medicine a population of people is left with almost nothing. The two entities cannot be compared because the AUB flourishes from rich parents paying for their kids and apparently the cats, while the Palestinians camps are left to mend for themselves. Nevertheless, it’s hard to mend for yourself when you don’t have the right to work many jobs; limited to the low income, high labor jobs, and you don’t have the right to many other things that are necessary to make a life and integrate in the community. 

The camps are half built slabs of brick and cement with small alleys that you can easily get lost in. There are wires spiraling everywhere. People are making do with what they have, or the lack of it. What struck me about these camps is the suddenness of poverty. Usually when you are going into a poor part of town it progressively gets worse as you go. Here everything seems to be normal outside the boundaries of the camp and as soon as you enter you see how miserable the lives of people are inside.