He recalls seeing a group of European Jews in London — "ghosts" amid the "pitiful ruins of their lives" — frantically trying to obtain passage to various distant countries.
Nev, we realise, has become an unexamined reader of surfaces, a budding middle-aged reactionary who finds himself increasingly out of place in democratic South Africa, averse to "poking around in the pitiful contents of strangers' lives".
The few hundred Romas who found refuge in the Serb-enclave on the northern bank of the river live in pitiful conditions.
But the court refused to take emergency action to strike down the regional decree that allowed the shelter to open two years ago, when the towns around the tunnel were complaining of refugees living in pitiful conditions in parks and deserted alleys.
Prosecutors said he lived in "pitiful conditions and in a poor physical state" and, after his family finally tracked him down following a media campaign, they could hardly recognise him and described him as being a "broken man" who looked far older than his years.
I see poor families living on pitiful salaries, I see the unemployed who cannot even feed their children, and I see a government that after all these years cannot even manage the electricity supply.
"I am living," said the king, "in a very pitiful condition"."I am living," said the king, "in a very pitiful condition"His duties, he said in hesitant English (his father had struggled to pay the school fees), are religious and cultural, and he cannot speak outside them.
The union's rank and file would be far better off if Mr Miller had dedicated more of his bargaining chips to pursuing sharp increases in the league's minimum salary, or to challenging the amateur draft.An even bigger black mark on Mr Miller's record is his callous disregard of minor-league players, whose lives are downright pitiful.
They are living on a pitiful proportion of the state pension that, by rights, they are entitled to.
"Many others live in a pitiful situation... Like they are animals".
