Recently, a woman stopped me in front of the grocery store and asked me for change.
“Please,” she said, “I'm homeless. I swear I am; look at my hands, look how cracked and dirty they are. I'm seven months pregnant.” She was talking a mile a minute and shaking.
I gave her money and the bag of chips I was about to tear into myself. I was glad to give her money. But there were four homeless men on my walk home who I avoided eye contact with.
I can't give money to everyone, right?
“Right,” I said, and went home to make myself lunch.
But where is this cutoff point that I have established? Does someone have to be pregnant and starving and shaking and “actually homeless” to warrant my pocket change?
I really hope not. But I have drawn some imaginary line somewhere in my head between the people who deserve my help and the people who don't. And that line is much closer to desperation than I would like.
* * *
I think about that concept a lot when I think about the United States of America. Because, to be honest, Donald Trump won a long time before this executive order against refugees was established.
Donald Trump has won because we have commodified human beings. Donald Trump and his ilk have won because I see churches now with signs that read “refugees welcome,” but that should have been a given in the first place.
In fact, refugees should be lining the floors of every church, cooking in their kitchens, making friends with the children and the elderly, learning English from the congregation.
When can we say that someone has suffered enough? Is it when they have crossed five countries, or seven?
Is it when they are 17 when ISIS bombs their neighborhood, but not when they're 18? Is it when they are emaciated?
Is it when they come from a place that the Western media decides to cover this week? Is it when they are Syrian, but not Kurdish or Somalian or Iranian?
* * *
I could say “I'm no expert,” but after having visited a refugee camp this winter, I have no excuse not to write these observations.
I have met men who now might have died riding in refrigerated semi trucks across the United Kingdom border. Do I deserve a fancy UK visa more than they do, because I study at Oxford?
Christians, Americans, Brits, people who are mad at Trump - heck, anyone who professes to have a conscience: I would urge you to stand in this fight.
And I would urge you to fight your own mind, and exercise your muscles of compassion.
Expand the scope of who you care about, even if it's painful. For every article you encounter about refugees as an entity, as an anonymous, dangerous mass, look up an interview of an individual refugee. Or read about these guys conquering incredible odds to find their mom. And read about these guys, too.
If you attended a women's march, spare a thought now of the new mothers carrying their babies in the freezing waters of Greece.
Think of the mothers in Dunkirk, whom I saw making sure their daughters didn't have a hair out of place every morning, to preserve some regularity while they were penned into that little corner of France indefinitely.
Think of those mothers making sure their daughters knew they were beautiful in muddy, grey northern France.
Think of the little 3-year-old girls who used lipstick donated by some aid group to give me a makeover. Think of them putting on a dance show to Frozen and singing along and giggling and giving hugs at the end of the day.
Think of the teenage girls in camps, still navigating their identities as young women, but also as displaced people.
* * *
The people I met in Dunkirk will probably never see the United States of America, a place many of them praised for its freedom and cool movies.
They are from the Muslim countries that Trump pronounces “dangerous”: Iraq, Iran, and Syria, to name a few. And their countries are dangerous: they came to the north of France because they fled persecution, many by ISIS.
One of them, a former Ph.D. student in public health, sends me emails from prison, where he is detained for trying to become a British citizen. The rest I hear of thirdhand now.
They are the names, especially the children, who I whisper to myself every night after I pray for my own family. They are the faces I think I see everywhere and look for in the news.
They are people who I have come to love, despite all the safeguards I initially put up to keep myself from becoming attached to those whom I might never see again.
And I wouldn't have it any other way.
* * *
Once refugees become human to you, there is no turning back. But that they have ceased to become humans is why we can have this “debate” in the first place.
Because be honest with yourself: if it were your friends trying to come to America, would you consider economics? Would you make some argument about “bad apples?” No way: you'd fight for them.
When is someone good enough, important enough, to warrant our compassion? Do they have to have our religion? Do they have to “contribute”? Where is our threshold for suffering? And why is that threshold higher for others than it is for ourselves?
If these words rouse something in you, look up the stories of some refugees. Read about the refugee camps. Look at the photos of the children there.
I have held the hands of children in a refugee camp and walked along the road with them; I have seen them painting pictures of cats on paper plates and grinning; I have seen them playing house and having a dance party to Disney songs.
They are real people.
* * *
If you have the money, go to a camp. Or donate: really, it does make a difference. Monetary donations support volunteers, and they also allow the people who are actually in the camps to decide how best to spend money, instead of, say, receiving 100 additional teddy bears and no gloves. Giving money buys the non-governmental organizations things you can't think of yourself, like heating fuel or baby wipes or a battery-powered vacuum.
Whatever you do, don't let politicians or news sources convince you that an enormous, solid mass of bodies are trying to cross our borders.
Because the difficult reality is that human beings who have suffered unimaginable persecution in all forms are trying to cross our borders. Not only that, but interesting, compassionate, complex human beings with personalities and hopes are trying to cross our borders.
And I'm not sure it's my place to say who has suffered enough to warrant human rights. I would hope that human rights are something we strive to give to everyone.