refugee
As of Thursday, the Red Cross reported 900 Palestinians from Gaza killed, half of them civilians, over 3,400 severely wounded, and 28,000 displaced from their homes. The special medical supplies which I brought here from the U.S., augmented by blankets and powdered milk and other food bought locally in Cairo, all seemed a drop in the bucket compared to the dimension of need.
Fleeing a tragic civil war, almost one million refugees from El Salvador live silently in our midst. Many have mental problems rising from their experiences at home: repression, terrorism, and outright combat. What follows is an account of one refugee's story, changed only in minor details to protect her identity. A similar story could be told by almost any one of the million refugees. --B.B.Z.