the uses of laughter

last night
i interviewed a boy, tall, and so thin his friends
say that shaking his hand is like grabbing nails.
he laughs and and they laugh.
his thinning hair covered with a knockoff yankees cap.
The Y is too small.

We were sitting on a bed
drinking tea and the boy was telling his story of losing his life savings to a guy he still calls his friend. Meanwhile, the TV behind him played "Wedding Outtakes
Volume II"
And he says that the worst part of being robbed of one year and a half's
worth of salary
was not the money
or his future
or having to see
the faces of his children
but
knowing that he, duped, had duped his friends and cousins too.
And he is telling the story and he is laughing
in the moments of the story where you might expect
outrage
and/or sadness and/or shame
He is laughing. He doesn't know the word Yankees.
There are looseleaf poems in his pocket
addressed to the abstract hypocrite
and behind his ear, hypoglycemic bridesmaids
are collapsing into the furniture
into the grooms
into the priests
and i ask him why he is laughing he says:

"in every job
one person become rich
one person become not rich.
it is not also your idea?
in the school
it belong to the person to first position
it belong to another person to last position.
Every person want to approve. But every person
cannot approve. This is how the school, the job, this is how the life.
and in the last part it belong to God."

oh my god,
i think.
he still doesn't
even
know
he was
scammed.

And then
his tale told,
my microphone put away,
he starts to sing.
And my friend, whose
bed this is, and tea this
is, tells a story about this boy:

how he had a tailor shop
during taliban time
and he would sing and tap his fingers on the loom
the taliban heard it
and burst into the shop
and started to search
saying 'where is the tape, the tape'
and the boy said:
my dear brothers,
there is no tape.
no tape in here.
the sound you hear is just me singing, and drumming on the loom.

and then he sang and he drummed for the men until they cursed
and left the shop and he sighed.
And breathed.
And thanked God
They hadn't searched his drawers
and found the porn.

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.