Stories from the Street

Meet Mahmoud.

He's 10 years old. He carries around an old rag and wipes dust off cars to raise money for surgery that he needs to fix some burns. How did he get so badly burned? He was playing in the street near his home in the slums and people had lit some trash on fire. He fell and his clothes and skin got caught on the fire, hence the burns. He has an older sister who is married. And he used to have an older brother who died from getting electrocuted. He does not go to school.

The way he talked and the heavy look in his eyes made it seem to me like I was looking at an adult stuck in a child's body. He has probably seen more than I'll ever know.

The Dark Side of the Moon

The title is a bit figuratively incorrect. The dark side of the moon usually means the mysterious side of the moon. But there is nothing mysterious or even slightly ambiguous about this topic. The dark side truly means dark, unwanted, sad.

I have been reluctant to share what I am about to put in this post. Primarily because I don't want people to think that I am negative or only see negative things in my country. I'm sensitive. But who isn't? The point is to raise awareness. And not to sugar coat reality with touristic pictures of a history that is long gone. This reality is true and tangible not only in Cairo, or Egypt, or Africa, but in all corners of the world.

This child is sleeping in the middle of one of the busiest streets in the city. Might I add about a dozen people walked by in the thirty seconds it took for me to capture this image. Not. one. of. them. looked. Actually, one of them glanced, but he looked at me.

To others on the street, at least to my best interpretation, this child is just a fact of life. Young and old, rich and poor. To each, its opposite. And the opposite has to exist. In spite of my best intentions, I didn't reach out to the little boy. I figured this is the best sleep he can get and I did not want to disturb it. And I honestly didn't know what I would do if I did awaken him.

But there is something about the way his hands are placed next to his chest and face that is so innocent yet so eager to protect. It speaks that every child is the same, and thus deserves the same. Why this child is sleeping on nothing but cardboard in the middle of the street, I'll never know. But once again, I want to raise awareness. Lecture alert: Women and children are the poorest populations in the world. Millions of people in the world live on less than $2 a day. You try living on less than even $5 a day, let me know how that works out. Yet we live on streets where we don't have to see the poor. The government marginalizes them and we happily forget they exist just because we don't see them.

This is just one of the side-effects of poverty. A child sleeping on the street. More stories to come on what these children come to be involved with.