birthday candies

it's my birthday today. i spent a chunk of it with the poorest family i've ever met. They live in the bombed out grounds of the king's old palace, in what was once the royal stables. The windows are plastic sheets covering holes in the brick. To keep warm they all lie in a circle and put their legs under a big group blanket with a few hot coals in the center.

So there i am, my 33rd birthday, playing toesies with five little girls and boys under a polka-dot red blanket and all of them begging me to take their photos, me no me no me first. Really I was only there as a favor for a friend who used to work in Afghanistan. She'd asked me to pass on some money on her behalf to this family she'd pretty much adopted here four years ago. I'd seen her photos and I'd heard some stories "Now Fareed is ill and can't get help" "Arzoo is just getting her big teeth in" but the stories didn't mean much to me until today, when all of a sudden it's real kids crowded around my real head and the real stink of the real blanket and we're talking through pictures, basically, making faces and striking poses. I should print some of the photos and bring them back for their walls. The mother was so hard-bitten, her daughters so giggly and fun, you felt that she'd tried to absorb most of the blows. All of them were illiterate; they don't go to school or do anything during the day except play games with each other. It was only the eldest daughter who seemed worn.

(She's the one below with the kefiyeh wrapped around her face.)

We stayed for tea, so as to make the exchange of money feel less nakedly colonial, but for a long time the tea didn't come. I mean we just sat there, coughing under the blanket, talking and taking pictures. I saw there was a lot of secret whispering between the mother and the eldest daughter. And I realized what was happening but was powerless to stop it; I knew they were scrounging up something special for us guests; I just prayed it wouldn't be too extravagant, like they'd gone and pawned their only shoes so we could eat chocolate biscuits. In the end they served tea on a tray with two tiny bowls of Pakistani candies. The children eyed the candies interestedly but when I tried to pass them out only the very littlest one took one. The rest were too polite, or too proud. The candies were just for the guests, apparently. So me and my translator dutifully downed two of the sweet stale white things and washed them down with questionable tea. Then the littlest and cutest girl coughed twice and sneezed right into my face. After it happened we just looked at each other, then she gave a big smile as if she'd just learned a new word.