the Phlog

The 135 rials Fatma earns at the school is spread wafer thin over the house and granddaughter she takes care of, and she had to skip three months of electricity bills till she’d saved enough.

But while she never had much success with the adults, it’s the children that always flocked to her, and most of the line across the courtyard is weighed down with little clothes. Her granddaughter, 16, prefers to stay with her, and four pairs of little eyes from Fatma’s sister’s house peep eagerly at me from around the corner: a pair of twins, a brother and a little sister who says she’s barefoot only because her shoes are in a room that shouldn’t have been locked.