But it was not a belief.

It was something deeper than belief, lodged in the body below the reach of any argument.

Maya knew, intellectually, that there was food; she could see the full basket every morning.

But five years of scarcity had written a truth into her nervous system that her rational mind could not overrule: that food disappears, that the next meal is not guaranteed, that you must hide what you can while you can.

You cannot talk a body out of that.