#declining charity

There is also the humiliation of asking for sedekah, and occasionally for zakat, and being refused -- an experience that is far more common today. Hamzah, one of the more 'reputable' poor, speaks with more feeling about this humiliation than about the gain he is denied. . . . As is usual in these cases, the refusal was not a blunt rejection but a cold shoulder -- silence ( sengap). Later in the year I listened to Hamzah grumble to a friend about being shortchanged on wages by Haji Kadir. He had helped fill and sew gunny sacks with paddy disgorged from the combine-harvester, for which he expected a wage of 50₵  a gunny of M$25 for the fifty gunny sacks he had done. H was given only M$5. When I asked him whether he complained (merungut), he explained, 'Poor people can't {complain}. When I'm sick or need work, I may have to ask him again. I am angry in my heart.' Here then is the bitterness, the swallowed bile, of a man who has decided to conduct himself according to the rules imposed by the rich -- to be available, discreet, and deferential, unlike his brother Razak and unlike others of the poor who rarely ask for help