Dream of father, woke up, woman, breast, children, eyes

I was traveling through the Middle East, a rare sight of a woman alone with her children. Everywhere we went, small children with large, dark, haunted eyes would watch my son and daughter as they laughed easily, teased each other and tried to talk to one another in Arabic from a small red phrasebook. One day we sat on a hot, dusty, crowded train. As the vista flashed by outside the window, a young boy, close to the same age as my son, sat across from us with his father. He watched quietly, seriously, as my children giggled, poked at one another and pointed out goats, mountains and beautiful rolling dunes awash in browns, soft pinks and ochers. My daughter turned to the boy and spoke a short phrase to him - "Hello; how are you?" - and suddenly he smiled, huge brown eyes lighting up and his face transformed into that of a beautiful and carefree young man. He began to answer when his father, eyes flashing, gave him a sharp reprimand in the universal language that every parent understands, the tone conveying words I understood in a language I could not. The boy cast his eyes downward. I looked at the man and attempted his language. "I'm sorry and it is not my business yet...why is it not alright for our children to speak with one another?" He looked at me and, with a small sigh, said "Our children are not the same." I said, "We are not wealthy people; you have no reason to dislike us." He barked a short laugh and said, "You, wealthy? You have riches. We -" he pointed at his breast, "we have wealth. We have the wealth that comes from true knowledge of our Creator, of our thousands of years of history, of our struggles. Of our losses. Of our families, of our heritage, of our culture. Your children have riches. Riches of the promise of a future. My son has wealth. But the promise of a future...?" He raised his arms heavenward in a fatalistic gesture and slowly turned his head to look out the window of the train. His proud face looked resigned yet strangely at peace. I woke up with tears running down my face.