Chaos. Everyone is rushing to get on the van. “Belata! Askar!” So many kids…how will we all fit? Basma makes room for Annie and I. Kids are crammed three, four to a seat. The driver turns on the radio, and off we go clapping, chanting, shrieking… I settle into my seat. I look out the window. We pass soldier after soldier. So many soldiers, so many guns. They have become standard. The kids don’t look twice. We are nearing Belata camp. We stop…a few kids hop off. “Masalama! Bye!” Next stop Old Askar camp. We stop. The mom pushes me off the bus. This is our stop. We walk with her down the main street. It is packed with young boys. I wonder do they hang out here everyday? We near a side street. It is dark. It is narrow. This is her street. We turn onto it. Hammad starts crying. He wants ice cream. The girls run with Hammad to get ice cream. The mom pushes us forth. On the right is a small iron door. She fuddles with it for a while. Finally it opens. We follow her up a dark flight of stairs. I can barely see. The mom is completely covered in her black n’kab, even her face is hidden.
I find myself standing in a brightly light room facing a smiling woman with shoulder length brown hair and beautiful brown eyes. She is still wearing her aerobics gear from her morning class at TYO.
There are two rooms. One is a salon and the other is a bedroom. The room is empty. There is very little furniture. There is space for her kids to play. The kids run up. Hammad bought bazooka gum. He hands me a piece. “Shokran! Thank you!” He still frowns, uncomfortable with us being in his home. I look at him. The gum comes with a tattoo. I show him. He inches forth slowly. He holds his arm out to me. We stick it on. “Wow!” He jumps up and down with excitement. Another, another…He shoves another wad of gum in his mouth, and we repeat the tattoo procedure. “Wow!” He laughs. We cover both his tiny arms in tattoos. “Wow!”
The mother serves us coconut cake. “Zaki! Delicious!” She smiles. “Afwan! Welcome!” Hammad starts to feed me some of his cake. I feed him some of mine. “ChuggyChuggyChuggyChuggy…ChooChoo! Here comes the train! YumYumYumYumYum!” He giggles…He repeats, “yumyumyum!”
I give the two girls a coloring book. For me really, they ask? They approach the coloring book with care. At first they are shy. What color should they use? What page should they start on? They start with black. “No! No black! Too sad!” They quickly change to blue, pink, purple, red…
We make hats. We make paper monsters. We make boats. We make planes. Annie photographs the kids at work. She sits with the mom in the bedroom. They talk. They talk of what happens after Annie leaves. They talk of attachments formed.
I play with the kids. I play with the baby. He pukes on me. He looks at me. “UhOh!” He starts to try and eat my t-shirt. I laugh. He smiles. The mom lends me a black t-shirt. Hammad runs to me. He jumps on me. We play airplane. We play circus boy. I spin him. I dip him. He climbs on me. He runs away and returns with a toy machine gun. He pretends to shoot me. He feeds me the gun. The gun could be a stuffed animal or piece of paper…It seems to be his only toy. The girls have a doll each. Hammad has a tiny gun.
It is time to go. Hammad hangs on to me. He grabs my neck. “Laa!” He wants me to stay with him. Don’t go, he says. “Tomorrow! I’ll see you tomorrow!” I slowly free myself from his grasp. He is upset. When I first met Hammad he frowned all the time. Hammad is three. But today, today he opened up. He embraced me.
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