You ain't never seen salesmen

till you've experienced the street kids of Cairo

The adults are pushy too. Pushier than any salesmen you’ve ever seen in fact, but the kids! words can't properly describe it.

Heck, I get in trouble all the time with Americans - chicks in particular - who refuse to believe that I can possibly be poor. But go and convince the street kids of Egypt that you don't have an extra dollar to give to… each and every of them.

Faves so far are a boy named Hazem who claims to be 16 but can't be more than 13, and a girl named Janna (as in גן Gan, i.e. “Garden of Eden”, Paradise) who claims to be 7 and probably is 7.

Hazem’s been at this for a while and knows well his place in the pecking order.

He’ll drag you along to meet his ‘brother’, some fellow in his early 20s who wants to be your fixer for camels, horses, or any other form of locomotion/food. And before his brother he knows to stand silently (the newbie kids are a few neck grabs or whacks away from fully comprehending their place), but he takes care of all the kids his age or younger in any sort of need and makes sure that they get their fill of any passerby’s enforced largesse. Genuinely a good kid though I doubt it's that easy for the few Ramadan period tourists to see it.

Janna is dirty, disheveled, and adorable.

She's the youngest of 5 and because (so she thinks) school costs money she can't go to school but wishes she could. Her father is with Allah and her mother, while very much an adult by age, appears to have the mannerisms and maturity of a child.

Buying the lot of them $1 worth of Kneifa, a middle eastern pastry makes the whole lot of them happy. It's not especially advised as doing so will instantly call forth hordes of dusky children non-stop begging for as much of anything they think they can get but for me it was worth it. Yesterday too.

Janna doesn't appear to know the alphabet (in Arabic) but she does know her Koran, and was as happy as any child would be as I counted with her to a hundred as she… (members only)