Abdul Karim

The electricity's gone again. By candlelight I write with pen on paper for a change. These days they cut it twice a day.
I've just been playing football with a few kids in the street - Hamid & Hossein (our neighbours) I knew already, they're two of the sweetest kids I've ever seen - slightly malnourished, but therefore incredibly light to pick up and throw around in the air. When they're playing on the street and I open the door in the big metal gate leading from the institute's garden to the street, they'll shout "ya Selim!!" and come running towards me with stretched out arms. I'm not allowed to get past until I've picked them up into the air, turned them around over my shoulders and put'em down on the ground again at least twice. They're great.

Then there was a few other children from the nearer neighbourhood I hadn't met before, most of them called Mohammad or Abdullah (Islamic countries aren't famous for variety of names) and there was one boy called Abdul Karim - not a friend of mine, I've decided. He claimed to be 15, which makes him much elder then the others, but he's probably around 12 (Yemenis don't know their age, but more about that later). He was wearing a dirty white thaub, cut in half by a brown leather bullet-belt around his waist, filled with live copper bullets. Over the thaub he wore a vest of the kind either soldiers or retired German tourists wear (with dozens of pockets and zips for all their camera equipment!), in which his discman was stored. He had a big mouth and his feet seemed to sometimes be acting independently of his mind. After he disturbingly joined our hitherto peaceful and enjoyable game, Arnaut & I asked him, why he was wearing the bullet-belt.
"To kill the Jews in Israel"
"I'm a Jew!" I replied quickly.
He said: "Where's my gun?"

It made me very sad to meet Abdul Karim, who obviously came from a wealthier family in the neighbourhood and has probably been utterly neglected as a child. I felt both aggression and pity for him, as he repeatedly mimicked the sounds I was making while playing football. What made me sad was, that with his unfriendly and impolite attituted he would probably meet a lot of aggression, which is the opposite of what he needs. The lack of love he received from his parents has made him into a person that causes aggression in other people. How will anyone ever be able to give him the love that he needs?