a young man read
somewhere about microfinancing
googled it
went to a microloan
site
with the intention
of lending 25 US dollars
the sort of money
he might otherwise
have spent on coffee for a week
at the website he
had to choose
man or woman ?
woman, they’ re
more disadvantaged
which continent ?
no way to choose
really
which business
sector ?
agriculture, so many
people are starving
he clicked and the
website served him up a list with photos of women involved in
agriculture in the Lebanon
he had selected that
country
because of vague
memories of reading in the Bible about Lebanese cedar
and because of
stronger memories of smoking Lebanese red as a teenager
so he clicked on the
image of a Lebanese woman
who was short of 25
dollars funding for a loan to purchase livestock
thus in a country
some six thousand kilometers away
a woman called
Nadine received a loan totalling two and a half thousand dollars
she hoped to prosper
she dreamed of some
measure of financial and personal independence
of her four brothers
one, fervently anti-
Western, disapproved very strongly of women working,
of Lebanese people
receiving money from foreigners
one was indifferent,
one was jealous –
if only he had that money he could get cut in on various illegal
ventures that a friend of his was involved in
and the fourth, well
he hardly ever spoke,
no-one knew how he
felt about anything
one afternoon the
four brothers
met and sat
discussing their sister’ s life
they were drinking
tea
chain-smoking
cigarettes
and her life hung on
a thread
and that particular
woman survived
it transpired
that her brothers
grumblingly accepted
the situation
