The Color of Hunger

Purple is said to be color of passion. How them do we account for the purple fingers of this child-one of 20 million people in Ethiopia and other parts of eastem africa currently threatened by famine? Perhaps it's because at the age of six months she weighs less than four and a half pounds and can barely open her mouth to drink the milk offered by relief workers. Perhapes, experts say, it's because of an iron deficiency, which is the most common cause of this beautiful, horrible discoloration in malnourished children. Or perhaps it's because suffering is, in it way, a kind of grotesque passion.